Pacific Paradigms

Strategic Vision vol. 8, no. 43 (November, 2019)

Examining Taiwan’s role in Washington’s priorities for Indo-Pacific region

Editorial Board

US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo delivers a speech on the topic of ‘The United States in Asia’ in Bangkok, Thailand on August 2, 2019

photo: US Department of State

For the past year, there has been a noticeable shift in the tenor of US-Taiwan ties, not least because of an awakening realization in Washington that China is not behaving as a strategic partner should, and rather appears to be positioning itself as a competitor and a potential claimant for the title of regional hegemon. Our editorial board weighs in with their thoughts on the new US paradigm on Asia.

The United States Department of Defense Indo-Pacific Strategy Report (IPSR) was officially released on June 1, 2019, coinciding with the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. The report implies that China is harming regional and international systems and order. Not surprisingly, People’s Republic of China (PRC) state councilor and defense minister, General Wei Fenghe, who also attended the dialogue, launched a vocal counter-attack while speaking on the topic of “China and International Security Cooperation” the following day.

From the viewpoint of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the IPSR is the military edition of the US Indo-Pacific strategy. With the removal of its veil, according to a commentary in the Global Times—a newspaper published under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party—the IPSR documented a comprehensive landscape of America’s thoughts and ambitions in the Indo-Pacific region based on its tenacious “China Threat Theory.” The PLA’s key views on the IPSR can be further elaborated as follows.

First, as a measure of making excuses and taking opportunities, the United States is aiming at reinforcing its military strategic deployment in the IndoPacific region.

Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF) coats the flight deck of USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) following a successful test of the flight deck AFFF hose reels.

photo: Zack Guth

In the post-Cold War era, the Indo-Pacific region has been the most secure region, with the world’s fastest economic growth. However, the IPSR depicts this region as an area permeated with transnational security threats such as terrorism, drug trafficking, and illicit weapons sales. The United States has deployed more than 2,000 aircraft, 200 warships and submarines, and 370,000 military personnel in this region, and it will further strengthen its military preparations such as by promoting joint and multi-national operations capabilities, developing and deploying new weapons systems, increasing space war capabilities, and boosting strategic coercive measures in regional countries. The primary aim is to encircle and contain China, according to the commentary.

Second, the United States is seeking to construct a new America-centric Indo-Pacific security order. Existing security regimes in this region are not in America’s interests. The IPSR stresses building an America-centered, tri-lateral military cooperative regimes with Japan and South Korea, as well as Australia and India. This NATO-style alliance, which emphasizes member countries’ equal status, will not be employed in this region by the United States.

Third, with a selfish mindset, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) Indo-Pacific strategy is inflicting a prevailing skepticism among nations in the region. The opaqueness of America’s strategic intentions has increased doubts among regional countries such as Australia. Some countries in the Indo-Pacific region have said that they will not host US intermediate range ballistic missiles on their soil. Constructing a new security order is going to create tremendous and uncertain risks. Allocating and sharing military expenditures might be a key barrier for the realization of the Indo-Pacific strategy.

Fourth, the PLA emphasizes that no approach to regional issues should resort to armed force, nor should they undermine the interests of others. The PLA asserts that the PRC’s core interests and security concerns must be respected. The PRC holds different views than the United States on several issues, and firmly opposes its “wrong” words and actions concerning Taiwan and the South China Sea. The PLA has voiced a clear signal: “if anyone dares to split Taiwan from China, the Chinese military has no choice but to fight at all costs for national unity.”

Furthermore, it stressed that “any underestimation of the PLA’s resolve and will is extremely dangerous.” Over 100,000 passages of ships take place through the South China Sea without any threat each year. Nonetheless, some countries outside the region come and flex their muscles in the name of freedom of navigation operations. This constitutes the real and clear danger which serves to escalate tensions in the South China Sea. Nobody will really benefit from the escalation of confrontation. China’s reclamation efforts on its South China Sea islands and reefs is hardly militarization. China’s defense facilities will be strengthened according to perceived threats from intruders on the basic thought and logic of “where there are threats, there are defenses.” In October 2019, China hosted the 9th Beijing Xiangshan Forum and invited defense and military leaders and scholars from many countries around the world to attend. The forum has tended to be an official counterpart of the Shangri-La Dialogue, hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). There is no doubt that the forum hosted by the PLA will become a new arena for competition and influence in the Indo-Pacific between the United States and the PRC.

Richard Bush of the Brookings Institution meets with President Tsai Ing-wen in Taipei on October 31, 2019.

photo: ROC Presidential Office

The Department of Defense (DoD) of the United States published the Indo-Pacific Strategy Report this past June. This report emphasizes the importance of maintaining the Indo-Pacific as a safe, secure, prosperous and free region given that United States is not only a Pacific nation but also one that is involved in various matters around the Indian Ocean. This report clearly identified China, Russia, and North Korea as the malefactors that intentionally inject instability into the region through economic, political, and military means. Therefore, the Indo-Pacific Strategy is actually a guideline to suppressing the expansion of these three countries by any means.

In order to meet the aim of this Indo-Pacific Strategy, three key pillars; namely Preparedness, Partnership and Promoting a Networked Region, have been proposed, and their measures are explicitly explained in the report. A grand picture of maintaining military superiority, enhancing the relationship with allies, and building a security network to mitigate the impact caused by the actions of the aforementioned malevolent regimes was illustrated in detail in the report. However, several fuzzy implications are noteworthy. First, China is easily identified as the main opponent of the Indo-Pacific Strategy, given that the commonly used term Asia-Pacific has shifted to IndoPacific. Although the precise occasion of this change is not easily identified, the change was in line with the geographic coverage of China’s massive OneBelt-One-Road project, which includes numerous cooperative infrastructure programs. Given that the tremendous economic influence of this project on the countries involved not only imposes great repercussions on national interests but also threaten the US role as global leader, China has been escalated from a strategic competitor to a potential enemy, at least in the eyes of the US DoD.

In addition to the economic leverage it enjoys, the aggressive military activities of China in South China Sea also ramp up the tension in the region. Given that the South China Sea is a critical body of water connecting East-North Pacific to East-South Pacific and the Indian Ocean, the strategic term Asia-Pacific was no longer sufficient to express the strategic needs of the United States, and therefore Washington formulated a new term—Indo-Pacific—to better express the breadth of their strategic vision and to design a new counter strategy against instability caused by China.

A member of Special Operations Command Para-Commandos jumps out of an HC-130J Combat King II aircraft over Nellis AFB, Nevada, Nov. 15, 2019.

photo: Dwane Young

Second, through the strategy’s three pillars, one can identify that the United States is no longer the only dominant super power in the world. Although the first pillar of preparedness claimed that the US DoD will still be the top dominant military power and capable of tackling contingencies caused by their opponents, they have started to ask their allies to invest more in national defense to ease the strain on the US military machine. The corresponding actions were that US President Donald Trump—echoing his message to NATO earlier this year—complained that US allies were not carrying their own weight in the effort to maintain global and regional security, but rather were focusing on growing their own economies while safe under the security umbrella provided by the United States. Trump then directly and publicly requested the US allies to pick up more of the cost of their own security.

Japanese Maritime Self-Defense force members observe operations in the sonar control room aboard the destroyer USS Milius.

photo: Taylor DiMartino

This report implied that the United States is not capable of dealing with these three opponents alone, and their allies need to increase their contributions to maintaining the security environment in their region. The US role is transferred from a powerful safety umbrella to a coordinating hub of the security network, comprised of all countries in the Indo-Pacific area. This transfer explicitly shows that the dominant position of the United States is fading, and it now requires greater support from allies.

Third, Taiwan was also officially listed as a security partner in this Indo-Pacific Strategy. In the Taiwan section, this report illustrated that the security, political, and economic pressure exerted against Taiwan from China is worsening. China has raised the pressure on Taiwan by explicitly showing off its modern military capabilities, reducing Taiwan’s global profile by poaching its diplomatic partners (three in 2018, two in 2019), and restricting Chinese tourists from visiting Taiwan. In order to assist Taiwan in this difficult situation, the United States keeps enhancing Taiwan’s military capabilities by providing military training, selling weapons systems to the island, and conducting personnel exchanges.

In 2019, Washington approved the sale of 66 F-16V to Taiwan for maintaining air superiority in the Taiwan Strait, given that China has demonstrated the capability to field long-distance maritime and air assets. These assets and capabilities explicitly threaten Taiwan’s strategy of using the relative safety of its eastern coast to preserve military assets so that it may sustain the nation for a longer time under Chinese attack. However, the concept of the US military arms sales to Taiwan still remains stuck in the paradigm of selling traditional weapons, without providing the strategy and weapon systems for much-needed asymmetric warfare capabilities.

As a result, these increased military sales are increasingly being seen as more symbolic and for enhancing military ties rather than as a means of increasing practical defense functions. However, in the security field, it is a good sign that Taiwan is officially and publicly listed as a strategic partner of the United States in this region. On the other hand, Taiwan needs to increase its investment in the type of weapons systems conducive to asymmetric warfare on its own, given that even with advanced traditional weapons systems from the United States, the Chinese military still outnumbers and outguns Taiwan. Any plans to take on Chinese forces in a conventional engagement must give way to preparations for an asymmetric defense, which would hopefully be more effective in deterring a successful Chinese military invasion— or at least delaying it long enough for assistance to arrive from allied nations—and at a lower cost and higher effectiveness.

With the election of Donald Trump as US President, speculation was rife that he would make a deal with China and sell-out Taiwan’s interests. However, in the years following his election, Trump has managed to bring USTaiwan defense relations to their best state in decades. Thus far, the Trump administration has firmly supported Taiwan’s defense needs with robust arms sales. In June 2017 it approved a package of weapons including torpedoes, air-to-ground missiles, electronic warfare systems for Taiwan’s navy, and other weapons. In July of 2019, the Trump administration approved the sale of 108 M1A2 main battle tanks to Taiwan. The following month, it approved the sale of 66 Block 70 F-16 fighters. In a sign of further expanding defense relations, the United States and Taiwan held a five-day cyber exercise together in November 2019. The approval of new F-16 sales to Taiwan is arguably the most significant US arms sale to Taiwan since the George H. Bush administration’s decision to sell 150 F-16s to the island in 1992. These arms sales not only boost Taiwan’s defensive capabilities, but they demonstrate continued US resolve to support Taiwan, and sacrifice a good US-China relations at the same time.

In March 2018, Trump signed the Taiwan Travel Act, which was also heavily supported by Congress, and opened the way for high-level meetings between US and ROC civilian and defense officials. Previously, the US had capped officials exchanges to military members at the rank of colonel, and civilian officials at the level of GS-15.

A major motivation for the increased US support to Taiwan has been Washington’s shift in thinking toward the PRC. While previous administrations may have worked under the assumption that China would become more democratic, and therefore more agreeable to the United States, current thinking views the PRC as a major threat to the US and the US-led international order. The 2018 US National Defense Strategy labeled China a strategic competitor: more recently, John Rood, the US undersecretary of defense for policy, asserted that China presented the greatest long-term threat to the US Department of Defense. It appears that attitudes have also hardened against China throughout much of the US bureaucracy, suggesting that recent changes may prove to be a long-term trend.

The Trump administration’s strong support of Taiwan’s defense directly increases the island’s security, and sends a clear message to other allies in the Indo-Pacific region that the United States is determined to support its allies’ defense needs.