PICTURED: President of Taiwain, Tsai Ing-wen reviews a Marine Corps battalion in Kaohsiung in July 2020. PC: Presidential office, Taiwan. CC 2.0.

Story at a glance…

• Calls for Taiwan attendance at the UN increases tensions between the U.S. and China.

• Despite repeating “rock solid” commitment to defending Taiwan against China, Taiwan remains unwilling to defend itself.

• Statistics on its understaffing and “anemic” budgetary commitments in the military, and reporting from its members shows extreme apathy among the ranks.
  

TAIPEI, Taiwan. October 27th, 2021. Confirmations that for the first time since 1979, a Taiwanese leader confirmed the presence of U.S. troops on the island to train the military were met on the same day by calls from Sec. of State Antony Blinken for all UN member states to support “robust” participation by Taiwan in the UN system.

These come after public statements by the presidents of both countries, that the U.S. has a “commitment” to defend Taiwan in the case of a Chinese invasion, and that Taiwan has “faith” the U.S. will go to war with China on their behalf.

This position has swept like wildlife through Capitol Hill, with Democrats attempting to offload their constitutional responsibility for sending the nation’s sons and daughters to fight by bestowing Biden with exclusive authority to declare war, and thus nuclear war, on China.

But what is the character of the nation the U.S. is so thoroughly committed to defending? Recent reports from foreign policy experts reveal that, like the Taliban entering Kabul, the reality of a Chinese invasion of Taipei would look similar.

That is because the Taiwanese military is woefully equipped, undertrained, understaffed, unmotivated, outgunned, and outmaneuvered.

The “Fall of Taipei moment”

In the months, and then the short weeks, leading up to the collapse of the Afghanistan national government, U.S. leaders like Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Mark Milley, Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin, and Biden himself, assured world media that as the U.S. had spent a trillion of dollars and more than a decade outfitting and training the Afghan National Security Forces to stand on their own two feet, they were confidant any gains the Taliban seemed to be making at the time were merely temporary.

In what amounted to a shock to the world and a tragic, yet obvious inevitability to many analysts and journalists, the Afghan Security Forces, like the Iraqi Army in 2014, or the South Vietnamese Army in 1975, which were also equipped and trained by the U.S., simply melted away and dissolved, the former in the face of the Taliban, the latters in the face of the Islamic State and the North Vietnamese.

There’s every chance that like these three propped up combat forces, the military of Taiwan would simply melt away in the face of a concerted Chinese invasion. At 110 miles from the Chinese mainland, a response to such an act of aggression would have to be extremely fast, disciplined, and well thought-out, yet reporting from Doug Bandow, senior foreign policy analyst at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and retired Army Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis, should be enough to sober up any hopeful defense planners.

Beginning with Bandow, he found Congressional testimony by a George Mason Univ. School of Policy professor, Michael Hunzeker, state that Taiwan’s military was not “optimally manned, trained, equipped and motivated to defend against an attack”.

Furthermore, Prof. Hunzeker reported to America’s elected officials that the defense doctrine of Taiwan is, under conditions of full-scale invasion, to launch a “symmetric response,” counterattacking against the invaders and the mainland. This requires, as Hunzeker put it, weapon systems that are “high on prestige but of limited utility in an actual conflict”.

“Yet Taipei does not even need to defeat the PRC, rather, the Taiwanese need to convince China that they would exact a fearsome price in any invasion, and that the struggle would continue even if organized resistance was quelled,” writes Bandow. “Today Taiwanese appear to prefer surrender to conflict, which almost guarantees Beijing’s success even if the United States is prepared to intervene”.

Over before it begins

Lieutenant Col. Davis, who fought in the Battle of 73 Easting in the Gulf War under then-Captain H.R. McMaster, had similar warnings.

Davis, who was an ardent 10-year critic of the Afghan War, and was completely correct regarding his predictions of how it would end, noted that staffing issues place the personnel of the front-line Taiwan forces at 60% capacity, with operational staff positions at 80%.

The Taipei Times found that “apathetic toward the military and averse to service, young Taiwanese question the idea of national defense as duty, complicating plans for an all-volunteer force”. The Times would add a quote from one soldier who said “my time in the army was a complete waste, I wish I could get those four months back”.

Another soldier, looking towards the big picture said “what use are Marines against China’s economic power? How are our tanks and planes supposed to fight their renminbi?”

Davis notes that 1,000 reservists were recently punished for “dodging mandatory training,” and quotes a Taiwanese marine who spoke to Reuters saying, “I think it’s unlikely that we will go to war. If there’s no real enemy to fight against, I don’t know why military training is necessary”.

Davis cites the fact that Taiwan spends 1.6% of GDP on defense, lower even than some NATO countries who enjoy the mutual projection of almost the entire Western Hemisphere.

“If the government of Taiwan is not willing to adequately fund its military, if the Taiwanese men and women whose lives would be on the line in a war with China aren’t willing to fight for their country, it would frankly be immoral to force American men and women to die in their place for Taiwan’s defense,” he writes.

Yet among thinktanks in Washington, such as the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), there’s still a belief that Washington and Taipei can work together, and rope regional partners like Japan and the Philippines into some kind of coordinated strategy to deter an attack against a nation that has no will to defend itself.

In the “Gaming Lab” CNAS staff found that “the United States and Taiwan should prepare to implement coordinated, whole-of-government deterrent measures quickly and ensure immediate consequences for Chinese coercion or aggression short of war,” as part of something called the “Poison Frog Strategy”.

With the White House, Pentagon, and associated thinktanks doing almost everything within the power of the pen to start or prepare for a conflict with China, someone must look back at the last three national militaries the U.S. has built, trained, and financed, and see that irrespective of how much money was sent into them, vital, Sun Tzu-era questions, about who, and why, remained unasked, and unanswered.

Fortunately as the Taipei Times detailed, their country’s soldiers are answering those question: many aren’t willing to fight or die for Taiwan, and that should be enough for Biden.

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