Tag Archives: military

22/06/2024 · 8:32 AM

“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,” Breaking Defense. Taiwan Republic 台灣国, geostrategery, and world history classrooms.

“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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20/06/2024 · 8:44 AM

“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.

“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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18/06/2024 · 9:02 AM

“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.

“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]

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17/06/2024 · 8:07 AM

“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.

“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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13/06/2024 · 8:48 AM

“Calls for China regime change are ‘reckless’: Kurt Campbell. U.S. deputy secretary of state says ‘careful coexistence’ needed with Beijing,” Nikkei. Geostrategery, Taiwan Republic 台灣国 and world history classrooms.

“Calls for China regime change are ‘reckless’: Kurt Campbell. U.S. deputy secretary of state says ‘careful coexistence’ needed with Beijing,” Nikkei. Geostrategery, Taiwan Republic 台灣国 and world history classrooms. I would love to see a scholarly study on why Western imperialist academia, IR circles, and policymakers love to trap themselves in these strawmen-extreme arguments. It is such a waste of time and energy, and they can’t seem to get enough – strategic ambiguity, engagement, regime change …. China’s either going to take over the world, or it will cease to exist …. We either need regime change or engagement. To Campbell’s credit — one of the Biden liberal hawks I admire — his position coheres to the real world, couched in diplomatic phrasing because he is an important official. As a retired monkey, I can be less diplomatic. What happens in communist China does not concern me. How the Chinese choose to organize their nation is not my business. My interest in communist China is purely focused on how Chinese imperialism threatens democratic Taiwan Republic, the US, and the Free world. That’s. It.

As a retired academic historian, I really should not have to remind Americans, of all people, why “regime change” is never a good idear. I mean seriously, the invasion of Iraq and the American quagmire in Afghanistan was not that long ago – imagine those decades and trillions America poured into the Middle East invested into this global struggle against communist China and other autocratic forces. Nor should the US give the ethno-nationalist Chinese Communist Party an easy excuse to rationalize their imperialism and belligerence. As a historian of China’s history, I am also delighted to share this reminder: it could always get worse. That is to say, millions of ordinary people lost their lives from the end of the Qing Dynasty to now because of utopian promises of a new order in China, and the recurring lesson is that with China, it could (and often) become worse. Call me cautious or conservative – better the devil we know as far as geostrategic choices for liberal democracies.

“Engagement” unrestricted is how we got ourselves into this current global crisis in the first place – Campbell’s interesting modifications of one of these Western imperialist academia cult-like phrases is reassuring. Liberal democracies cannot engage communist China because it is not an ordinary member of the family of liberal democratic nations. No more than we can pretend that there are private Chinese companies not under the thump of the dictatorship, or that Chinese universities are different than the Chinese Communist Party. Liberal democracies cannot “engage” China without caution because the Chinese Communist Party’s stated goal — Beijing is frank and honest, it is the West that has been delusional for decades — is to subvert and defeat the liberal democratic world order. This is a fact even during what some Western imperialist academics consider to be the “good old days” of engagement when Chinese dictators such as Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao were more reasonable. Go ask the Tibetans and Uyghurs if these communist dictators were more mellow. More importantly, the core position of The Party did not change, albeit the tone and atmospherics were of course different than dictator Xi.

So, the academic arguments and catch-phrase wars notwithstanding, the main public policy choices facing the US and the Free World are to protect global democracies with better social welfare safety nets, to modify previous decades’ mindless globalization with a better system that enhances liberal democracies and punishes autocracies, and to update core liberal democratic principles to defeat the multi-domain war waged against them by autocrats foreign and domestic, state and nonstate. The only way to deter a Chinese imperialist war is to build global alliances (not merely military, but economic, educational, technological ….), to stock up on munitions and harden military bases, and to take a cue from the innovations in thinking led by the US Marines, and for the US and its democratic allies to deliver a clear message to dictator Xi that the consequence of a war instigated by him will be the end of his dictatorship. The Free World failed to convince Putin of this, and the survival of the dictatorship and the ill-gotten gains of the dictator and his family are the only things dictators care about. Short of a military war instigated by the autocrats, we must find ways to contain and mitigate these autocracies as peacefully as possible. 13.6.2024

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12/06/2024 · 9:46 AM

The race to protect Taiwan Republic’s democratic sovereignty, “Taiwan Coast Guard ship docks in Honolulu Harbor,” Taiwan News. Geostrategery, Taiwan Republic 台灣国 and world history classrooms.

The race to protect Taiwan Republic’s democratic sovereignty, “Taiwan Coast Guard ship docks in Honolulu Harbor,” Taiwan News. Geostrategery, Taiwan Republic 台灣国 and world history classrooms. The most important facet of this news is dismantling the decades-long, artificially imposed “ambiguity” on the sovereign status of Taiwan. Next time this ought to be Coast Guard to Coast Guard, routinized, official visits. Barring an unwise push from the Chinese communists and its allies inside Taiwan Republic, the US, Japan, and the Free World will continue to walk up to the edge of fully recognizing Taiwan’s democratic sovereignty in what I have termed “all-but fully normalized.” When the Taiwanese Coast Guard vessel – what could be more official and “sovereign” than that – can publicly sail into an American harbor, then why shouldn’t American and Japanese Coast Guard vessels visit Taiwanese ports? And when that occurs, then why shouldn’t naval vessels, and air force aircraft follow? Rather than thinking of these changes as “message sending” or primarily symbolic, the important element is the ongoing global struggle to generate irreversible “facts on the ground” in the Indo-Pacific by both sides. The Chinese communists, their allies inside Taiwan and the West, are desperately trying to delegitimize Taiwan’s democratic sovereignty – by declaring the Taiwan Strait as they have with the South Sea as “domestic waters,” denying Taiwan has the right to self-defense, in academia and information warfare arguing that “cross-strait tensions” is a continuation of the latest Chinese Civil War which ended in 1949, etc. An important part of this Beijing-led “facts on the ground” warfare is the probing military and quasi-military missions – flying manned and unmanned military aircraft and naval vessels close to Taiwan – crossing the international boundaries, first around Quemoy and Matsu, probing missions near Tamsui, and so on. In this context, the US, Japan, and the Free World must respond by rapidly creating a different set of “facts on the ground” – unlike the Cold War era where tens of thousands of troops were stationed in Taiwan, what is required now are naval port visits, airport layovers, joint training missions, American and Japanese military advisors and liaisons, all concrete ways to demonstrate to the Chinese communists that in reality, the Free World does not require permission from the dictators in Beijing to conduct sovereign-to-sovereign activities with the duly elected national government of Taiwan. At this stage of Chinese imperialist belligerence, these are the only ways to convince dictator Xi that a military invasion of Taiwan will guarantee a military response from the US and the Free World.

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11/06/2024 · 9:49 AM

“US plans ‘hellscape’ of drones if China invades Taiwan. ‘Unmanned hellscape’ involves deploying thousands of unmanned submarines, surface vessels, aerial drones in Taiwan Strait,” Taiwan News. Geostrategery and military classrooms.

“US plans ‘hellscape’ of drones if China invades Taiwan. ‘Unmanned hellscape’ involves deploying thousands of unmanned submarines, surface vessels, aerial drones in Taiwan Strait,” Taiwan News. Geostrategery and military classrooms. Putting the word “hellscape” into the headline is marketing SEO genius. As I have noted recently, American admirals and generals and speaking of, and preparing for, a war against Chinese imperialism in ways that are less and less hypothetical. We know that admirals and generals and intelligence can be wrong, though as observers this is an important data point to notice. This frank conversation by the admiral in charge of the Indo-Pacific command is an example of this preparation. The fact that Taiwanese military leaders have finally started to prepare munitions, spare parts, and hardening bases, that is another example. If the Indo-Pacific command can finally drag the Chinese Taipei Ministry of National Defense generals out of their cult-like bayonet age and into the unmanned vehicles AI era, that alone would be a Nobel Prize-level accomplishment – not just to finally grudgingly purchase drones, but for these Chinese Taipei generals to think in concrete and creative ways on how best to deploy them.

The US and Taiwan Republic have been preparing for a Chinese invasion for decades. What is unusual about this news and recent examples from civilian and military leaders from America and the Free World is that the old “strategic ambiguity” (if you belong to the IR cult you need to chant that phrase three times while spraying Kissingerian holy water over your shoulder ….) rule is to do but to not speak of it. An important part of Taiwan’s normalization as a nation-state with democratic sovereignty is this kind of public discussion – as one would expect normal democratic allied nation do.

I agree with Rogin’s critique and will add this. A swarm of unmanned vehicles – hellscape or not – is a good beginning and ought to be in place now. I do not think anything will deter dictator Xi unless he is convinced his dictatorship, and his criminal family’s ill-gotten financial gains are on the line. Chinese communist manned and unmanned vehicles have been harassing democratic Taiwan and other East Asian neighbors for years. Ultimately these unmanned vehicles alone will not do the job, nor should they be the centerpiece – warships, submarines, aircraft carriers, innovative US Marines units, and so on – the US has this habit of trying to technology and print money to avoid boots on the ground, whereas all historical lessons point in the direction that wars are still wars, national borders and sovereignties and national interests require human soldiers and sailors to defend. And because the Chinese communists and its allies inside Taiwan and the West are waging an all-domain, fait accompli war – the sooner the US and allies put boots on the ground in Taiwan and surrounding areas-nations, the sooner it can leverage that fait accompli to remove the option of a military invasion off the table for dictator Xi and his criminal communist associates. 11.6.2024

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10/06/2024 · 9:32 AM

“US clarity key in Strait: ex-commander. SECURITY: The head of the US Indo-Pacific Command has said nothing is vague about helping Taiwan, while a researcher said ‘strategic ambiguity’ prevents conflict, “ Taipei Times. Geostrategery and world history classrooms.

“US clarity key in Strait: ex-commander. SECURITY: The head of the US Indo-Pacific Command has said nothing is vague about helping Taiwan, while a researcher said ‘strategic ambiguity’ prevents conflict, “ Taipei Times. Geostrategery and world history classrooms. My first reaction to Admiral Harris is “Well duh ….” But that’s not very scholarly I suppose. As a world historian what I am reminded of is how often seismic, institutional, complex changes in history take place – and how slowly the supposedly smartest most expertly people adjust to changing, different realities. Often stubbornly refusing to accept these changes. You add in the very human, self-serving tendency to rewrite and smooth out the historical narrative after the fact, and then we tend to forget that almost all major world events came as a massive surprise to leading experts and policymakers. The age of empires. The age of modern nation-states. The two world wars. The communist and fascist movements. 9-11. Globalization. De-Globalization ….

Strategic ambiguity, whether it was all that great to begin with, has become one of those not very useful, cult-like phrases (like porcupine defense) that policymakers and the mandarins of Western imperialist IR circles cannot let go of. Taiwan’s first president Lee Teng-hui articulated the earliest, in the mid-1990s, the end of strategic ambiguity’s applicability and usefulness. Unlike scholarly, word-obsessing, catch-phrase laden arguments the think tanks and policymakers often get stuck in, Lee was not as much a genius as he was pragmatically responding to rapidly changing realities in Taiwan (democratization) and in the then not quite yet named Indo-Pacific region – namely the rise of communist China as a menacing global belligerent, funded and aided by Western consumers. The world of 2024 has changed radically enough that it is self-serving now to forget how lonely Lee was – Western democracies, even after the Tiananmen Massacre – remained attached for decades to the naïve idea that consumerism and materialism would mellow the communists. An even deeper problem is this hubris that somehow these global autocrats could be “managed” with words, soothing, ambivalent, jargony words.

All of this makes President Biden and his liberal hawks worthy of high praise – while they are a part of this longstanding official and academic IR circle in the West, they are also sensibly changing longstanding US policies regarding the Indo-Pacific, communist China, the meaning of “status quo,” and without actually saying so outright, rendering strategic ambiguity meaningless. At least five times now President Biden has stated that the US would militarily defend democratic Taiwan – at least the first four times mandarins of DC policy-making circles had a massive self-indulgent tantrum, spoke as if they had more right to decide national security policies than a democratically elected president of the United States of America. It takes even the most powerful democratically elected leader of the world saying something five times to finally get through the thick skulls, and healthy egos, of these folks.

But the key idea is probably what Biden and his officials understand. These are not parlor games. These are not monks arguing over words in sutras. The most important lesson comes from Ukraine. Why did the West fail to convince dictator Putin that an invasion of democratic Ukraine was not in his dictatorship’s interest? Because for too many years the US and NATO have given Moscow mixed signals – “strategic ambiguity,” European edition. No matter how much IR professors and think tank scholars wish, I don’t think dictators respond to dialogue and treaties and so on. If you think about the careers of dictator Putin and dictator Xi (remember the same mandarins having a cow when Biden called both dictators? ….) – the kind of ruthless machination required to rise to the top of a mafia-like communist dictatorship, what are the motivations, what are they likely to respond to? My guess is clarity of words and following clear words with action – an invasion of Crimea meant a military response from the West, for example.

So, the main question for President Biden and leaders of the free world, based on lessons learned from our failures in Ukraine, is how to best convince the dictator of China that a war they initiate would guarantee the end of their dictatorship? Not chest-thumping, not military adventurism, in many cases, the options are not military – but creative ways for the US and the free world to recognize Taiwan’s democratic sovereignty while stating clearly that any attempt by China to start a war would end the Chinese communist dictatorship. Without that clarity, the lesson from Putin is that a dictator will always be tempted by war. 11.6.2024

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01/06/2024 · 11:07 AM

“美空軍逾2400億JDAM套件增產購案由波音得標 US Air Force is ordering $7.5 billion in additional JDAM kits,” 上報 Up Media. Geostrategery and world history classrooms.

“美空軍逾2400億JDAM套件增產購案由波音得標 US Air Force is ordering $7.5 billion in additional JDAM kits,” 上報 Up Media. Geostrategery and world history classrooms. The mighty US Air Force is spending 7.5 billion on additional JDAM ‘smart-ish” bomb kits. Plain speaking may be considered too harsh — reality as best I can tell is this — during a China war there will be so many targets that even if all of the allies double or triple their national debts, there is not enough cash on this planet to pay for high-end munitions like cruise and ballistic missiles. Hence, a strategic and tactical set of logistical and financial plans is needed now on prioritizing targets – from high-intensity priority targets — command and control nodes, leadership bunkers, and ways to paralyze military and civilian logistical flows in China — versus middling and lesser but still require hitting targets (bridges, transportation hubs, power grids, fuel depots, munition storage, etc.) A student asked me recently how I am assessing where we are now, and I told her this: in 2022 when I started my Taiwan “long-stay” I thought the probability of a China war was low-ish. By 2024, if we go by what the American and allied militaries are doing — reinforcing military bases, stocking up on munitions, scoping out key areas of combat (Taiwan’s northeast/Japan’s southwest; Philippines’ northeast/Taiwan’s southeast) with actual forces, then I’d say the militaries, whatever intelligence and guesses they have, are preparing for a real war. Again, I think the most likely place where this thing starts is in the South Sea, and likely caused by an incompetent Chinese officer making a dreadful, stupid move to spark the whole thing. Thereafter, look, calling this the nucular age is not just for fun — the likelihood of a nucular exchange is not low.

© 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.

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30/05/2024 · 8:00 AM

海軍重啟「新一代飛彈巡防艦」 6000噸以上+AN/SPY-7主動相列雷達 Taiwanese Navy to pursue 6000 ton+ Next Generation AEGIS Frigates  – 自由時報 Liberty Times. Geostrategery and Taiwan Republic 台灣国 classrooms.

海軍重啟「新一代飛彈巡防艦」 6000噸以上+AN/SPY-7主動相列雷達 Taiwanese Navy to pursue 6000 ton+ Next Generation AEGIS Frigates  – 自由時報 Liberty Times. Geostrategery and Taiwan Republic 台灣国 classrooms. For an island democratic nation facing a gigantic authoritarian continental enemy, one would think Taiwan Republic’s navy would be a top priority. History and politics can distort such commonsensical approaches. Taiwan’s navy is a legacy brought to Taiwan by the China KMT when it lost the latest Chinese Civil War in 1949. The China KMT’s dictator Chiang Kai-shek was an army man, and the navy never had priority. Even during the democracy era, Taiwan has yet to decolonize its Chinese-imposed mentality as a continental civilization and embrace its maritime reality. This goes a long way in explaining how it is possible for an island nation, in 2024, to be the only nation in a neighborhood made super dangerous by the Chinese, to not have AEGIS-VLS in its naval forces. 

Other major contributors to this mess. Decades of wrong and dangerous US policy – even now there are policy mandarins in DC pretending that American policy regarding this region is a “double deterrence” – i.e., to prevent both sides of the Taiwan Strait from escalating tensions, as if both sides are equally dangerous. Ignoring the reality that since 1979 the US and the rest of the Free World have funneled trillions in cash and technological know-how to the Chinese communists, creating a vast military imbalance in the region that makes this equivalency dangerously mistaken. During the 1990s Taiwan sought submarines and AEGIS/VLS Arleigh Burke destroyers from the US – and the US (as it has done in Ukraine) managed its way ass-backward into this mess. 

Other problems have been domestic. The dark eight years of surrender monkey Ma certainly plays a role. More so decades of China KMT military dictatorship have created a vacuum of civilian national security leaders who are also pro-democracy. Taiwan’s military CSIST, for example, has claimed it can duplicate AEGIS/VLS technology for decades without delivering tangible results – lacking competent and powerful civilian arbitration, this impasse dragged on. For a smaller nation with limited research and development resources, should the CSIST insist on trying to develop so many items for all branches of the Taiwanese military? That is another national security policy worth debating among Taiwan’s democratically elected civilian leaders. 

And a final, decades-long problem stemming from the cult-like “strategic ambiguity” policy of the US. While some American think tankers complain about Taiwan not doing enough and not spending enough on its own defense, they almost always conveniently leave out the deep-seated problem created by American ambiguity. If Taiwan knows US and allied forces will cover long-range strategic strikes against China during the war, then it makes sense for DC to insist Taiwan focus its limited resources on their beloved porcupine defense. If America is ambivalent – then could any responsible Taiwanese leader pursue a porcupine policy (Stingers and Javelins), look at what’s happened to Ukraine (US and NATO policy thus far being – the aggressor Russia can pummel any part of Ukraine and commit war crimes; yet Ukraine cannot be allowed to pummel Russian territory)? My point is: in a world where so-called realists are actually looking at this world for real, then we can dispense with the illusion that the Chinese imperialists can be reasoned with. The only way to deter a Chinese invasion is to make it abundantly clear to the Chinese that starting a war will be the end of their dictatorship. With that clarity, then it would make sense for Taiwan to leave the high seas to larger regional and global powers, give up on the expensive AEGIS/VLS warships, and focus on smaller coastal crafts and submarines. These are policy choices reasonable people can argue and disagree over. They are impossible to debate without clarity from all parties – especially a global power as important as the United States. 

【小神盾艦】海軍啟動新一代飛彈巡防艦計劃　赴美評估採購AN/SPY-7相列雷達 

https://www.upmedia.mg/news_info.php?Type=1&SerialNo=202431

【小神盾艦】中科院研發不符作戰需求　迅聯系統與尖兵無人機出局

https://www.upmedia.mg/news_info.php?Type=1&SerialNo=202497

© 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.

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