A former top envoy to the US and a defense expert yesterday called on the government to increase its defense spending to prove the country’s mettle to US President Donald Trump, who began his second term this week.
Trump has raised questions over how supportive of Taiwan he would be after saying on the campaign trail that Taiwan “stole our chip business” and needed to “pay us for defense.”
He has also suggested that Taiwan pay the US for protection and that it increase defense spending to 10 percent of its GDP.
Photo: CNA
Speaking at a seminar in Taipei yesterday, Stanley Kao (高碩泰), a former top envoy to Washington, said Taiwan should not worry too much about Trump’s campaign rhetoric because turning that rhetoric into actual policies requires going through a process.
Trump’s new Cabinet is also stacked with Taiwan-friendly people who are considered hawkish on Beijing, including his choice for US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, a foreign policy hawk on China and Iran who has proposed a number of Taiwan-friendly bills, Kao said.
Nonetheless, given Trump’s “transactional” nature, Taiwan should make a strong argument to Washington that Taiwan-US relations are “irreplaceable,” he said.
That should include gradually increasing its defense budget to beef up its defense capabilities, reinforcing its supply chain resilience and ensuring the “continuation and normalization” of Taiwan-US relations, he said.
Echoing Kao’s argument, Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said at the forum that Taiwan would likely remain strategically important to the Trump administration.
Trump’s interest in securing control of Greenland and the Panama Canal showed that his national security team was prioritizing the recalibration of the US’ presence in geographically strategic locations, Su said.
The Taiwan Strait, as a shipping and air corridor of global significance and part of the first island chain that forms the US’ first line of defense against China, is of great strategic value to the US and would likely factor into that approach, Su said.
That is why Taiwan needs to increase defense spending to enhance its defense resilience and prove to Trump that Taipei is a reliable partner to Washington and is willing to do its part in boosting its self-defense capabilities, the defense expert said.
Su added that Trump’s appointment of a number of China-hawks, including Rubio and his nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth.
The appointments suggest that Trump would be playing the “good cop” while his China-hawkish national security team would play the “bad cop,” with Trump adopting a more sympathetic demeanor and his team adopting a hostile approach to get others to cooperate.
Kao, who served as Taiwan’s representative to the US from May 2016 to July 2020, facilitated the historic telephone call between then-president-elect Trump and then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in December 2016.
The call marked the first time that a US president or president-elect had directly spoken with a Taiwanese president since Taipei and Washington severed official diplomatic relations in 1979.
Kao retired in July 2020 and now serves as the senior adviser of a local think tank, according to the Institute of National Policy Research, which organized yesterday’s seminar.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS