“US bill calls for arms stockpile to aid Taiwan. BUILDING TIES: A US House version of an NDAA bill would require that the Pentagon report on efforts to bolster defense industry cooperation with Taiwan,” Taipei Times. Taiwan Republic 台灣国, geostrategery, and world history classrooms. It is interesting to see continued bipartisan legislative leadership on the emerging American strategy in the Indo-Pacific. The joint naval drill led by Japan with vessels from Canada, the Philippines, and the US in the South Sea is another news over the weekend to note. And the admiral in charge of the Indo-Pacific command visiting Indonesia is super important – Indonesia, like India, is not likely to become a formal ally – but when China starts a war, it is critical that neither Indonesia nor India stay fully neutral.
These annual legislative pushes from Congress for the executive branch to do more and to be more decisive are a reminder that America has yet to have a full, national, alliance-wide strategic reappraisal of the threat to its national security posed by communist China. This is where episodic banning of companies – TikTok, DJI drones, Huawei, etc. – misses the point. China has waged a coherent, strategically clear war against liberal democracies since 1949 – while liberal democracies have been in a dreamscape, well-meaning, naïve, self-serving. Engagement as the US and the Free World had conducted with China from 1979 to 2024 is what financed the Chinese communists into the leading military threat to liberal democracies. What are the commercial, financial, technological, educational, and other tools of statecraft America may use to decrease the China Threat without going to war? Sure would be nice to have a presidential election cycle where such weighty issues for national survival is debated instead of the usual nonsense, no?
In a similar way, these congressional calls are fine ideas as far as they go – but they lack an overarching coherence – perhaps because the executive branch is still stuck in over cautiousness, bureaucratic inertia, the hubris of thinking a continental empire like the Chinese communists can be “managed.” To stockpile munitions in and around Taiwan Republic in case of a Chinese invasion would require a national, and alliance-wide, strategic vision. From strategy to doctrine, from tactics to coordination. If the Americans and allies are to store munitions inside Taiwan, how should the Taiwanese national military go about its own national military planning? Likewise, the plan is to bring Taiwan into the American national security supply chains. Wouldn’t it make sense to quickly pick a few obvious, less challenging items – Javelins, Stingers, Sidewinders – to license produce in Taiwan with American supervision, to test the collaboration process, and for the US to aid in Taiwan’s ability to prevent classified information from being stolen by the Chinese? Here too the American national security supply chain requires a commitment and strategic clarity for Taiwan to either curtail or modify its own domestic weapons program.
The most obvious next concrete steps to normalize American relations with Taiwan as a sovereign nation is to license produce those lower-end weapons, and to use American weapons Taiwan has already purchased — like the new M-1A2T main battle tanks, HIMARS, and land-based Harpoon anti-ship missiles — to rotate American sailors, soldiers, and marines into Taiwan to “train and coordinate,” unit to unit – eventually, ideally, these rotations would involve all branches on all levels – from command to small outposts, from the three branches to logistics and intelligence and military academies and so on. Here again, a national strategy and clarity from the American side is required. 17.6.2024
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