“US needs to invest in cheaper long-range drones for Taiwan scenario, report says. “I don’t know if it’s going to be a fair fight,” said Stacie Pettyjohn, director of CNAS’s defense program and one of the authors of the report. “There are a lot of things that are stacked up against the United States when it’s playing an away game,” Breaking Defense. Taiwan Republic 台灣国, geostrategery, and world history classrooms. This is a fair report with useful suggestions. It is good to see that years ago President Tsai, and now President Lai, are taking these ideas seriously – though as is often the case, the resistance is coming from the Chinese Taipei, ossified, reactionary generals. The most worrisome reality is not about the “home game/away game” idea – war is not a ‘game’, is it? It is that the analysts focused on the two weakest parts of the Pentagon and postwar US public policy making – this obsession with thinking that one can use technology and printing money to avoid sacrifices needed to achieve important national objectives. The American failure in the recent pandemic is a textbook case study. All the weapon’s programs where there was a supposedly a hi-lo mix – “cheaper” F-16s at a higher numerical rate, “cheaper” Constellation frigates …. Inevitably the cost of the “cheaper” units climbs as more and more functionality and technology gets added. Wasn’t the F-35s supposed to be a more affordable jet fighter? This is why even though a nation Taiwan’s size ought to focus more on license producing and importing American weapons, the per unit price is prohibitively high – could Israel afford the world-class military with top-line US weapons without US financing?
Weapons alone – “Hellscape” and “Porcupine” and so on, will not deter and defeat Chinese communist imperialism and military adventurism. As is the case with Putin’s Russian imperialism – the authoritarian’s assumption is that the US is unfocused, short-attention spanned, without courage and conviction, not a serious empire. Putin’s disastrous bet on Ukraine is that the US and NATO would issue emotive diplomatic statements, pass symbolic feel-good sanctions, hand wring, but not really act – and to be fair, the US and NATO had been erratic and indecisive regarding Russian imperialism and military aggressions in the decades ahead. Down to the embarrassing malfunctioning “reset” button. Seen from Beijing’s perspective, US policies regarding Chinese imperialism and military belligerence have also been erratic. How does one convince the communist dictators of China that the US and its democratic allies are serious and committed this time while remaining measured? Sooner or later a small but visible contingent of US and allied soldiers must be rotated in and out of Taiwan to signal to communist China that this is a war they do not want to start. Without a physical presence, one can see why a perfectly “rational” dictator Xi may talk himself into guessing that America is a paper tiger. 22.6.2024
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