Category Archives: Taiwan Republic

“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

© 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.

“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

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© 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.

“US to deliver TOW-2B missiles this year. MORE FIREPOWER: The TOW-2B missiles can be used to attack tanks and bunkers, and destroy landing ships, which would greatly bolster the nation’s defense capabilities,” Taipei Times. Geostrategery, Taiwan Republic 台灣国, and world history classrooms. The TOW-2B anti-armor missiles are good examples of where the US and the Free World should begin to test the best ways to bring Taiwan Republic into the arms manufacturing supply chains and begin to bring larger Taiwanese military units to the US and allies, and rotate American and Japanese units into Taiwan, for training and coordination.

As luck would have it – President Tsai spent eight years repairing the severe damage done to Taiwan’s national security caused by the China KMT’s Ma and his defeatist surrender monkeys. So, there are many new weapon systems purchased by President Tsai for the US and allies to use as models for training, joint maneuvers, information sharing, and supply-chain/maintenance coordination. These new systems range from F-16Vs to M-1A2T, to shore-based Harpoons, to HIMARS, Javelins, Stingers, AMRAAMs, and Sidewinders.

The most important part of this report, and the most critical task of this new unusual civilian Minister of National Defense of Taiwan, is dealing with the Chinese Taipei entrenched national security establishment. One of the problems are national identity crisis within the military’s leadership. Other problems are long unresolved inter-services rivalries. The CSIST – Taiwan’s military-run center for domestic weapon research and manufacturing — was established under dictator Chiang Kai-shek as a military-centered, secretive weapons development center. Like the national security establishment in general, CSIST has not yet adjusted to the modern, democratic age. Taiwanese democratic polity has not debated and discussed what role CSIST should play, what its strengths are, and where it might need to curtail its portfolio. This problem is a subset of a broader issue – among Taiwan’s many problematic transitions from the China KMT dictatorship to a modern sovereign democracy, the national security establishment has been the most insulated/isolated from that transition.

Another problem with long-needed reforms of the CSIST and strategic resource reallocation for Taiwan-designed/made weapons has been the history of the erratic behavior of the United States towards the region and Taiwan. Western imperialist think tankers in DC and policymakers may circle the wagon and claim otherwise – the reason some Chinese communist and China KMT conspiracy theories about America abandoning Taiwan have plausibility is because there were significant moments in recent history when the US sacrificed Taiwanese security interests to placate the Chinese communists. Prominent examples include unreasonable restrictions on updating Taiwan’s combat jets, to preventing Taiwan from acquiring submarines, to refusing to supply Taiwan with antiship missiles, to interfering with Taiwan acquiring cruise missiles, and so on. And so, in this historical context, even civilian Taiwanese leaders most friendly to the United States cannot ignore this history and abandon homegrown weapon systems altogether.

The most sensible first step for the United States is to have greater strategic clarity towards the region and Taiwan, while testing new collaboration with specific weapon systems. For example: Taiwan has developed comprehensive surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missiles – TK 1, 2, and 3 for SAMs, and HF 2, 3, and 3ERs – are there ways for the US and Taiwan to collaborate on how these Taiwan-made systems can be integrated into US Patriots and Harpoons? This is where something like a TOW2B or Javelins – not super complex – license-produced in Taiwan – may also be a good, concrete first step – to signal a different American commitment, to test out the strengths and weaknesses of Taiwanese arms manufacturing, and to find weak points in Taiwan’s security system (leaks of classified information to China) before testing out collaborations in higher level weapons. 18.6.2024

[photo borrowed from Taipei Times: Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times]

© 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.