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.
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