The nation is going through an especially heightened state of political division and polarization, even by the standards of its lively democracy. Recall movements are unfolding nationwide — a response by civil society groups to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) lawmakers attempting to tighten requirements for recall petitions and rendering the Constitutional Court inoperable by blocking President William Lai’s (賴清德) appointments.
The court normally has 15 justices, but currently only has eight. Recent amendments passed by the opposition would require a two-thirds quorum to hear constitutional cases, rendering it frozen. Many believe these are to punish the court for ruling last year that the legislature’s power grab was unconstitutional.
Recent haggling over the defense budget — with opposition lawmakers freezing 30 percent of the drone budget, 50 percent of the submarine budget, and cutting 3 percent of the military’s equipment and facilities budget, while spending just 2.45 percent of GDP on defense — raises questions for many foreign observers about whether the nation is willing and able to properly fund its defense, although Lai yesterday said the government would aim to increase defense spending to 3 percent of GDP this year.
However, while the nation faces significant political challenges given the polarization and institutional deadlock stemming from the legislative and executive branches being controlled by different parties, the broad trendlines on defense show positive developments and commitments to boosting deterrence.
The nation’s defense budget has increased 80.47 percent in the past eight years and is to be raised about 5 percent this year. Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) — only the third civilian appointment in the nation’s history and seen as less tied to traditional military structures — has been making headway in reforming the military’s command and control structures, transitioning to an asymmetric strategy and improving training for conscripts and professional soldiers.
As Ryan Hass, director of the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center, wrote in September last year following a Brookings research trip to Taipei, “Taiwan’s military establishment is populated with the most reform-minded leadership since its transition to direct democratic elections in 1996.”
Taiwan in recent years has also made significant purchases of military assets including tanks, fighter jets, anti-tank missiles and anti-ship missiles, and is likely to see steady delivery of these systems in the coming years. This week it signed a NT$24.99 billion (US$762.59 million) contract for three Norwegian Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, just one example of significant investments in modernizing the nation’s military.
Although the defense budget was hotly debated, US President Donald Trump’s transactional approach to foreign policy and concern about Taiwan’s trade surplus, as well as the Asia “prioritizers” in his administration, could provide scope for significant arms procurements, which could be passed as a special budget. Demonstrating the administration’s priorities, US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz last month called for Washington to speed up arms deliveries to Taiwan. “We have over a US$20 billion backlog of things that they’ve paid for and that we need to work hard to free up and have them get what they paid for as a deterrent,” he said.
With ongoing military reforms spearheaded by Koo, significant defense procurements scheduled for delivery and greater scope for arms purchases during the Trump administration, although partisan bickering is posing challenges, the broad defense reform trajectory is trending in the right direction.
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