“Sale Of Over 1,000 Kamikaze Drones To Taiwan Points To Grand “Hellscape” Counter-China Plans. Masses of loitering munitions could engage approaching Chinese landing craft, as well as targets ashore, and overwhelm vessels in the Taiwan Strait,” The War Zone. Taiwan Republic 台灣国, geostrategery, and world history classrooms. The only way to deter-prevent-defeat a war against a dictatorship like communist China is to speak clearly and to prepare for an invasion decisively. “Hellscape” and “kamikaze” are provocative words. The most encouraging signs are that national security leaders in Taipei and DC, Tokyo, and London are finally taking the existential threat posed by Chinese imperialism seriously – and that the preparations are now into the less provocative, but “real” levels – training, munitions, supply chains, spare parts, hardening bases, dispersing command and control nodes, and so on. Not as evocative and sexy as “hellscape,” but these preparations will make the difference between victory and defeat.
These American drones are but one small point in a thousand policy changes within the US-led Indo-Pacific security preparation to deter and defeat the China Threat. On the Taiwan Republic side, encouraging signs that the new president and his civilian Minister of National Defense are leading the charge to democratize and modernize the national security establishment – a China KMT imposed establishment with a national identity crisis, to a mentality that is stuck in the era of the 1930s. For a high-technology superpower with millions of IT specialists and online gamers, the bottleneck preventing Taiwan from becoming an unmanned vehicle superpower has always been within the Chinese Taipei-China KMT national security establishment – one is hopeful that the new leadership in Taiwan, with US and democratic allies’ assistance, can change this. These drones should also be another opportunity for the US and democratic allies to routinize training and collaboration between their armed forces and Taiwan’s military. President Tsai wisely started a Taiwanese Unmanned Vehicle “national team” of civilian manufacturers – this is also an opportunity for the US and its democratic allies to include Taiwan in the global democratic UAV supply chain.
The most reassuring part of this report is that the US Indo-Pacific command apparently realizes the mistakes the US and NATO made in Ukraine. The US and NATO policy in Ukraine has succeeded on the “porcupine” side – short-range Javelins and 150mm howitzers and HIMARS along with Ukrainian bravery and ingenuity allowed democratic Ukraine to prevent the much larger authoritarian Russia from annexing Ukraine. These shorter-range drones Taiwan is importing from the US, along with Javelins and TOWs and HIMARS and Stingers, the defensive sides of “Hellscape,” are roughly what’s occurred in Ukraine. However, lacking long-range counter-strike options, for over two years Russia has been allowed to pummel Ukraine with little to fear for its own military and civilian resources. This is not about “fairness” – by allowing this, the Russians have had no real incentive to cease their aggression. In fact, they have had time to source resupplies from Iran, communist China, and North Korea, knowing that the Russian homeland is largely untouched by the war they chose to start. Obviously, Beijing cannot be allowed to think that if they choose to start a war to invade Taiwan they would be afforded a similar arrangement – Chinese communist targets, military and civilian, must be disrupted immediately to interfere with the ability of the Chinese invaders to succeed. 20.6.2024
[Photo from Taipei Times: https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2021/12/25/2003770170
]
© Taiwan in World History 台灣與世界歷史. This site grants open access for educational and not-for-profit use. Maps and illustrations are borrowed under educational and not-for-profit fair use. If you are the rights holder and prefer not to have your work shared, please email TaiwanWorldHistory (at) Gmail (dot) com and the content will be removed.
Taiwan in World History (台灣與世界歷史) 