U.S. Concerns About China Put Focus on Taiwan’s Defensive Weakness

An increase in Chinese military activity near Taiwan and U.S. concerns about Beijing’s intentions are putting a new focus on the island’s capabilities to deter any future invasion.

While there are no signs of an imminent move by Beijing to take the self-ruled island, which China claims, U.S. officials have said they believe the odds of conflict have gone up, especially since China’s crackdown on Hong Kong showed it could assert its authority without major international repercussions.

U.S. officials, former Taiwanese military leaders and security experts say they believe that means Taiwan needs to do more to ensure it can inflict enough damage to discourage an invading force or hold it off until the arrival of help—possibly from the U.S. After years of increases in military spending, China now has around 100 times as many ground force personnel as Taiwan and a military budget 25 times as large, according to Pentagon data.

“From my perspective, we are really far behind what we need,” said Lee Hsi-min, chief of the general staff of Taiwan’s military until 2019. Mr. Lee said Taiwan needed to invest more in military assets that raise its ability to wage guerrilla-style warfare such as sea mines, missile attack boats and portable rocket launchers.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier this month that the U.S. was committed to ensuring Taiwan has the ability to defend itself, a reference to an American law that has allowed for arms sales to the island. But Mr. Blinken declined to say what the U.S. would do if China attacked Taiwan, keeping to a longstanding U.S. government stance of ambiguity intended to deter conflict.

Some U.S. foreign policy experts advocate the U.S. making an explicit commitment to intervene if China attacks Taiwan. The Defense Department is studying hypothetical scenarios to counter a Chinese blockade or attack on Taiwan—from sending in American troops and Navy vessels to missile attacks—but one recent opinion poll showed the U.S. public wouldn’t support the deployment of American troops to defend Taiwan.

Military drills in Taiwan scheduled to start Friday are meant to sharpen Taipei’s responses and show allies the Taiwanese military isn’t falling behind.

The annual Han Kuang exercises begin with a week of computer simulations of Chinese actions, including electronic and cyberattacks, psychological warfare and uprisings among pro-China groups inside Taiwan. Taiwan’s defense minister said this week the simulations were lengthened this year to allow more time to fully review all scenarios of Chinese attack.

The drills shift to live-fire exercises in July, which are also intended as a show of force to deter Beijing from aggression.

“It’s not in our consideration how long it would take for others to arrive. I will fight on as long as you want,” Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said at a recent press conference.

Taiwan’s military ranks, however, have fallen over the last decade with the phasing out of conscription in response to public pressure, with many young Taiwanese more interested in pursuing other careers. Compulsory military service now consists of four months of basic training, down from two years maintained for decades.

Although salaries have been improved as Taiwan tries to build an all-volunteer force, the number of active-duty soldiers fell to 165,000 last year from 275,000 three years earlier. More than 2.5 million reservists only receive a handful of days of training every couple of years.

Alexander Huang, a former deputy minister in Taiwan’s mainland affairs council, which coordinates policy toward China, said an underlying factor affecting Taiwan’s preparedness was that most Taiwanese don’t believe China would attack.

“Even in the past two years, when we started to see the trade war and U.S.-China strategic competition, (and) shows of force by (China’s military) around our air defense identification zone, poll numbers tell us that Taiwan’s perception in a general sense is that China won’t do it,” he said.

The head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Phil Davidson, recently forecast that China could attempt to take over Taiwan within the next six years.

In testimony to Congress’s U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in February, Oriana Skylar Mastro, an expert on the Chinese military at Stanford University, said she had been told by Chinese military leaders that they believe they will have the capabilities to force unification with Taiwan within a year.

The Chinese military has flown more than 260 sorties near the island’s southwest coast so far this year, according to a Wall Street Journal tally of disclosures from Taiwan’s Defense Ministry. A record of about 380 similar sorties from China were tracked by Taiwan in all of last year.

Beijing committed to a policy of “peaceful unification” in 1979, and has offered to assimilate Taiwan under the “one country, two systems” framework applied to Hong Kong, while stressing that a military takeover remained an option.

Some security analysts say the threat of Chinese action is overstated. An all-out invasion across the 110-mile Taiwan Strait wouldn’t be easy because the sea is often rough and Taiwan’s built-up coastlines and mudflats make it hard for ships to land, said Scott Harold, an expert on Taiwan at the Rand Corp.

China also has other options to exert pressure, including imposing some form of blockade on Taiwan, or seizing any of the small islands controlled by Taipei close to the Chinese mainland.

Taiwanese experts still worry about worst-case scenarios. James Huang, a retired Taiwanese army lieutenant colonel, said Taiwan would quickly be plunged into chaos in any Chinese attack, as control centers and other targets would be destroyed. War games have shown that China could neutralize Taiwan’s air power in minutes, he said.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has said Taiwan would look for other countries’ support in the event of any attacks. She also has raised Taiwan’s military budget by 10% this year to $15.4 billion. U.S. arms sales to Taiwan last year included weaponry for so-called asymmetrical warfare, including drones, antiship missiles and truck-based rocket launchers.

In a speech at a U.S.-Taiwan defense-industry conference last year, David Helvey, acting assistant secretary of defense for East Asia in the Trump administration, called for Ms. Tsai to go further.

Recent spending increases, while a step in the right direction, “are insufficient to ensure that Taiwan can leverage its geography, advanced technology, workforce, and patriotic population to channel Taiwan’s inherent advantages necessary for a resilient defense,” Mr. Helvey said.

Some analysts point to Taiwan’s years of trying to foster closer ties with Beijing as the period when the balance of power shifted decisively in China’s favor. During the administration of previous Taiwan president Ma Ying-jeou, who emphasized building economic links with mainland China while in power from 2008 to 2016, China’s annual military spending doubled, while Taiwan’s edged up 3.5%, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

“The Ma years were a bit of a loss because in terms of preparedness and in terms of signaling to the Taiwanese military, they were not putting as much emphasis on countering a Chinese attack as they currently are,” said Michael Cole, a Taipei-based policy analyst.

Photo: Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has raised Taiwan’s military budget by 10% this year to $15.4 billion.
PHOTO: WALID BERRAZEG/SOPA IMAGES/ZUMA PRESS

Link:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-concerns-about-taiwan-put-focus-on-islands-defensive-weakness-11619113253