Turnabout in Taipei

As China bolsters its forces, Taiwan reduces conscription and adopts an attitude on defense preparedness that can only be described as blasé.

By JULIAN CROCKER, Special Correspondent

The Pentagon’s latest report on China’s military buildup highlights the continuing purchase of weapons that pose a genuine threat to Taiwan’s young democracy. The Peoples’ Republic deploys up to 730 short-range ballistic missiles in garrisons opposite Taiwan, for example, and is adding 100 missiles per year. Its longer-range ballistic missile force also is being revamped with newer, more survivable munitions and, in the future, three new types of ballistic missiles including the submarine-launched JL-2. Its naval forces are being bolstered with new guided-missile destroyers and three additional classes of attack subs, some capable of launching cruise missiles.

The Pentagon describes a buildup that is pervasive across the range of China’s forces. But the mid-July report to Congress is virtually silent on perhaps the most shocking change to the security situation across the Taiwan Strait. As China bolsters its forces and labels the cross-strait situation as “grim” in its 2004 Defense White Paper, Taiwan has adopted an attitude that can only be described as blasé. Defense spending is on a sharp decline, conscription is being reduced and legislative action on an $18.2 billion package of arms to be purchased from the United States has been delayed 26 times in the Legislative Yuan.

This is a dramatic turnabout for a country that as recently as 2000 had made defense a top priority and maintained its security principally with rigorous preparedness and the purchase of advanced weapon systems from the United States.

Some experts believe Taiwan has been lulled into a sense of complacency by the sight in March 1996 of two U.S. carrier battle groups sent near the Taiwan Strait in response to China’s provocative decision to conduct military exercises on the eve of Taiwan’s first popular presidential election. China fired missiles into Taiwan territorial waters near the ports of Keelung and Kaohsiung, and planned a simulated amphibious assault to extend through March 25, one day before the Taiwanese would go to the polls.

Today, the balance of power across the Strait is tilting toward Beijing. China is making a larger place for itself in the world, and Taiwan is embroiled in bitter internal political disputes that have diminished its defense readiness and attracted the wrath of some in the United States who fear the island is becoming a liability.

China’s economy continues to expand at about 9 percent annually, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, and the Financial Times pegs foreign currency reserves at $711 billion. That includes $244 billion of U.S. Treasury bonds, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. In 2003, China became the world’s second largest consumer of oil and Chinese military outlays have been increasing on average by at least 15 percent a year for the last five years.

The Pentagon report, “The Military Power of the People’s Republic of China 2005,” indicates that over 50 years of rhetoric about including Taiwan as a part of “one China” will soon be backed with a credible force projection capability. For example, recent procurements have included 12 Kilo-class submarines, four Sovremenny-class destroyers, 24 navalized Su-30 aircraft for the People’s Liberation Army Naval Air Force and S300 PMU-2 long-range air defense missiles from the Russians. Its next-generation nuclear attack submarine, the Type 093, is expected to enter service this year.

China has been concerned since the 1991 Gulf War about a technology gap between its forces and those of Western nations, and began investing heavily in asymmetric “leap-ahead” technologies that, in the Pentagon’s view, will help China “to close or mitigate this gap.”

Meanwhile, Taiwan appears headed in the opposite direction. Defense spending has declined in real terms by 25 percent in the last five years and the military conscription term will soon drop from its already inadequate 16 months to just 10 months of service, said James Mulvenon, deputy director for Advanced Studies at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis.

Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan has repeatedly delayed approval of a special $18.2 billion arms package that was approved in April 2001 by President George W. Bush to help offset the growing military might of China. The package includes 12 P-3C Orion antisubmarine warfare aircraft, eight diesel electric submarines and six Patriot missile defense batteries with PAC-3 interceptor missiles.

Known in Taiwan as the “special budget,” the arms package has become a central element of the vociferous disagreement within Taiwan over national security requirements, its defense relationship with the United States and the very future of the island.

Given its security situation, analysts are asking: Why Taiwan is not postured as a national security state, like Israel or South Korea? Why party politics are being allowed to trump national security concerns? And why opinion polls of the Taiwanese populace consistently indicate a lack of popular concern about an attack from China?

Some answers to these questions may be found by delving into the complex world of domestic Taiwanese politics, which traditionally is divided along ethnic lines.

Support for the Nationalists (KMT) party led by Lien Chan, is rooted in the mainlander Chinese population, most of whom are descendents of members of Chiang Kai Shek’s Kuomintang army, who make up a large minority on the island. The KMT advocates the “sacred goal” of reunification with China, but not under the present communist government.

The DPP, led by President Chen Shui-bian is the party of the majority native Taiwanese, who, by and large, lean toward more autonomy than the mainlander population, many of whom have strong business and family ties with China.

While few ethnic mainlanders vote for the DPP, a significant number of ethnic Taiwanese identify with the KMT and its Chinese heritage. The DPP advocates a separate Taiwanese identity at home and around the world; hence the party’s unpopularity with China’s leadership. China has refused to deal with Chen.

The DPP rose to power in 2000, ending 51 years of mainlander rule. There is little love lost between the ruling party and the opposition alliance of the KMT, which appears determined to do whatever it takes to make Chen look incapable of ruling the country. Under Lien, the KMT has blocked almost all legislation devised by the DPP.

A factor behind Chen’s victory in 2000 was that KMT member James Soong broke away from the party to run an independent campaign splitting the vote of KMT supporters and allowing Chen to win with just 40 percent of the vote. Chen went on to a shocking victory in the 2004 election against a Pan Blue alliance of the KMT and Soong’s People First Party.

Chen was able to win against a united blue force, with few achievements to point to, because he ran a very effective campaign, said Richard Bush, senior fellow for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institute.

Chen was involved in a dissident movement against the KMT during the 1980s. He joined the opposition DPP when it was legalized in 1987. As president, Chen has fully supported the special budget; and has said that recent back-to-back visits to China by Lien and two other opposition leaders reflected a lack of awareness of Taiwan’s national identity.

Members of Taiwan’s economic and cultural office in Washington repeatedly declined to be interviewed for this article.

Bonnie Glasser, senior associate for the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Seapower that “there are legitimate concerns within the military and the DPP and Pan Blues over whether this is the right package, over priorities, over whether they should be investing in PAC-3s when their effectiveness is limited at short ranges. And there are legitimate concerns over the submarine package.”

However, the ill feeling between the two parties in Taiwan is so pervasive that it almost guarantees an impasse on any DPP legislation, she said.

Taiwan’s backtracking on defense has infuriated many in the United States who have responsibility for political and military support of Taiwan. In the starkest warning yet by the Bush administration to the Legislative Yuan, Richard Lawless, assistant deputy undersecretary of defense for Asian and Pacific affairs, said in October at the U.S.-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference in Phoenix: “We believe that a vote against the [special budget] risks sending the message that Taiwan’s democracy has not matured to the point where national security trumps partisan politics. ... If the [Yuan] does not pass this budget, friends and foes alike may well begin to regard Taiwan as a liability rather than a partner.”

In May, 33 members of the U.S. Congress, including Reps. Robert R. Simmons, R-Conn., Pete Sessions, R-Texas, and Daniel Burton, R-Ind., sent a letter to Lien stating that “failure to pass the special budget has raised concerns … about Taiwan’s ability to defend herself.”

Lien replied with a letter that accused the DPP of incompetence.

Despite its link to delays of the special budget, the KMT won at the polls in December. Mulvenon said responsibility for the apparent public ambivalence about Taiwan’s defense posture and China’s growing military might lies primarily within the Chen administration.

“Many in the president’s office believe that China is a ‘Paper Tiger’… and when the Chinese threat is communicated to the Taiwanese people it is spun in explicitly partisan terms to take shots at the KMT,” he said. This ambivalence, Mulvenon argues, is based on the assumption that Taiwan has a “blank U.S. check” for military assistance in the event of an attack.

Richard Bush and Richard Allen, national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan, share the “blank check” rationale, but note that Taiwanese public confidence in the United States has waned considerably as a result of America’s growing military commitments around the world.

U.S. policy on Taiwan has been one of ambiguity since President Richard M. Nixon’s rapprochement to China in February 1972. Washington does not maintain formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan and the two countries conduct no high-level military exchanges. The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act requires only that the United States supply arms that will enable Taiwan to “maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.” It does not guarantee American protection in the event of a Chinese invasion.

The U.S does not support Taiwanese independence and still adheres to the “One China” principle while calling for peaceful resolution to the dispute over Taiwan’s future. Overall, the U.S. appears content with maintenance of the status quo, virtually forever.

The relationship between the Bush and Chen administrations has been a difficult one. Richard Armitage, former deputy secretary of state, told Seapower the DPP’s radical approach — developed over years of opposition to the KMT’s authoritarian rule — caught the United States off guard. “When they came in, we didn’t understand that they weren’t going to be like the KMT.”

Allen told Seapower that “the underlying thesis behind the U.S. support for ‘One China’ principle is that the bill will never come due. ... Getting the Taiwanese to throttle back from the DPP’s provocative rhetoric toward the mainland, while being firm about defense modernization, are key components [of short-term stability]. … But where does that leave us, say six to eight years into the future … under a different administration?”

Armitage, a strong supporter of the Taiwan Relations Act, said “it is the law of our land, it gives Taiwan some confidence that the United States will pay some attention to them, and it requires us to sell defensive equipment to Taiwan.” But he admits, “unfortunately, it doesn’t require them to buy.”

Some experts believe one way to ensure stability in the Asia-Pacific would be a greater U.S. naval presence in the region. The Pentagon is planning a significant shift of naval capability to the Western Pacific during the next three to five years. The naval base at Guam could serve as a major forward base for the U.S. Navy. The service recently homeported three attack subs at Guam and there has been talk of building a new carrier facility there.

However, Armitage said he believes the United States is not yet prepared for the challenges of the 21st century. “We are fixated on transformation, which is fine, but what we really need to fixate on is how to patrol and guard, and keep safe the lines of communication in Asia,” he said.

It has been less than 10 years since President Bill Clinton ordered two carrier battle groups into Taiwanese waters, but such an act today could involve far higher stakes. In 1996, China shied away from direct military confrontation with the United States, but displayed no such reluctance in April 2001 when it grounded a U.S. spy plane in the same month the special budget was approved by President Bush.

In a June 13 commentary in The Washington Post, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger noted that “the center of gravity of world affairs is shifting from the Atlantic, where it has been lodged for the past three centuries, to the Pacific.” As this shift continues, consideration over how the United States can best position itself as strategic counterweight to China in Asia and around the world is likely to frame one of the defining debates of the next 50 years.

Meanwhile, the political struggles in Taiwan continue. In July, the KMT held a regular election for the chairmanship of the party, the first in history with more than one candidate. The popular mayor of Taipei, Ma Ying-jeou, was victorious.

Ma prides himself on his sense of civic responsibility and might adopt a more flexible approach than that of his predecessor. Looking ahead to the 2008 election, Ma will have to reduce the vulnerability that his status as a mainlander brings and convince the public that the balance he strikes between Taiwan imperatives and China relations is an appropriate one, while convincing the electorate that the DPP’s approach is too anti-China.

The DPP appears destined to move toward the center and claim that the KMT is selling out to China. China will most likely continue to play the waiting game while encouraging more meetings with the KMT leadership as a means to build relationships with the KMT and further alienate the DPP.

But how long will China wait?