Why Taiwanese Leaders Put Political Symbolism Above Military Power

If you spend any time studying Taiwan defense issues you quickly realize something has gone wrong. Almost every single American defense expert who comes to the island agrees on a rough picture of what the Taiwanese military needs to do if they want to deter a Chinese invasion force. They will have disagreements on the margins—some will be for that weapons system here, or against that one there—but the big picture is always the same. The people drawing this picture are a coterie of think tankers, war college professors, military reporters, military intelligence officers, and defense bureaucrats. Their consensus has been summarized in numerous interviews, congressional testimonies, open-editorials, think tank reports, and policy briefs.[1] It has been communicated to the Taiwanese in innumerable track-1 and track-2 discussions. Throughout it all, American analysts are insistent that Taiwan’s defense is not hopeless. If Taiwan is willing to change, it can be saved.

It is a great message. There is only one problem: the Taiwanese do not want to hear it.

I have a new piece out in Foreign Affairs that takes a stab at explaining why this is so. Here is my summary of the kind of changes American defense thinkers who have taken the time to analyze Taiwan’s situation in depth tend to advocate:

In light of these advantages, a broad consensus has emerged among U.S. defense analysts who have visited the island: Taiwan can successfully deter a Chinese invasion—but only if it radically retools its military. Instead of allocating its limited defense budget on expensive equipment such as stealth fighters, tanks or submarines, the Taiwanese military should invest in cheap, expendable, mass-produced weapons systems that can be easily moved, disguised, and deployed against an amphibious invasion force. In practical terms, this means a navy composed of missile patrol boats, mine-laying ships, small semi-submersibles, and underwater drones; an air defense component reliant on mobile surface-to-air missile batteries; ground forces armed to the teeth with aerial drones, land mines, and antiship and antiarmor guided missiles; a reserve force and civilian population fluent in guerilla tactics; and an industrial policy focused on developing breakthroughs in missile and drone technologies.

…In the eyes of many U.S. defense analysts, Taiwanese leaders face what should be an easy choice: They can ensure their nation’s survival through the mass production or procurement of low-cost, low-profile armaments. Or they can continue to waste their resources on what the analysts Colin Carroll and Rebecca Friedman Lissner have called “‘prestige’ capabilities … with no tangible benefit in deterrence or war.” [2]

You only need to look at the Persian Gulf to understand the logic behind the American arguments. America has had her wealth exhausted fighting multi-year insurgencies against poorly armed insurgent forces in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. The Iranian military has shot down American drones and hijacked international shipping, yet has successfully scared the United States away from armed retaliation with exactly the sort of weapons mentioned above: with fast attack craft, drones, short range ballistic missiles, and SAMS. This very week some combination of Iranian missiles and drones  was able to half Saudi Arabia’s oil output.[3] 

That is the basic idea here. Build a force optimized towards destroying as much of an invasion force as possible, and if that fails, one that can drag China into weeks, months, and perhaps even years of costly military operations. In an earlier era, when Taiwanese technology and training were superior to what the PLA could muster, the Taiwanese could afford to match strength with strength. Now they cannot. Instead of trying to beat Communists in an arms race they cannot possibly win, the wise choice for Taiwan is to opt of the race entirely. This is what Iran has decided to do with America. For them it has been enormously successful. It is what the Estonians, Latvians, and Poles are doing with Russia.

But the Taiwanese have different plans:

On June 6, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense announced a $2.25 billion arms purchase from the United States.  package was broken down into two parts: $250 million for a consignment of Stinger missiles, and $2 billion for 108 main battle tanks. The first part of the package fits well enough within a distributed “anti-access” defense posture. The second purchase does not.  

Taiwan is a piebald of jungle-covered mountains, muddy rice paddies, and densely populated urban cores—terrain that frustrates tank maneuver. The most likely use for tanks like these would be in formation near beaches for counter-landing operations, where they would be extremely vulnerable to attack from the air. As Chinese commanders would never land an invasion force unless they first secure air superiority, these tanks will never amount to anything more than 108 very expensive sitting ducks.
The purchase fits a longstanding Taiwanese pattern: prioritizing high-prestige platforms over people. The Ministry of National Defense has cut military pensions and failed to pay volunteer soldiers a competitive wage or provide them with necessary benefits, and it doesn’t have enough bullets on hand for conscripts to practice riflery more than a few times in their entire course of duty.  

Yet in addition to buying the tanks, President Tsai Ing-wen’s administration has promised to find $8 billion—equivalent to 70 percent of Taiwan’s 2019 military budget—to purchase 66 new F-16 fighter jets (even though in the event of a conflict with China most of these would be destroyed by PLA missiles while still on their runways). The Taiwanese navy  also regularly promotes plans for an indigenously constructed helicopter carrier and Aegis-style destroyer. Billions have been poured into developing indigenous jet engines and fighters. Most disastrous of all, around one-tenth of the defense budget has been earmarked for the development of Taiwan’s indigenous submarine program. According to the wildly optimistic government projections, the very first of these submarines will be seaworthy in 2025. Only a few more could be built before the decade’s close, at an estimated $1 billion per ship.[4]

So what is going on here? Why are the Taiwanese committing themselves to an arms race they cannot win? Why the rush to buy platforms that will be of limited utility in time of war?

But there is a different lens through which to view these purchases, one that few U.S. observers consider in their analyses.  Within the context of Taiwan’s hyper-partisan political and media environment, Taiwanese leaders’ defense priorities make a perverse sort of sense…. 

The Taiwanese are isolated on the international stage, not officially recognized by any of their most critical economic and defense partners, and constantly subjected to a crippling Chinese propaganda campaign designed to undermine public confidence in Taiwan’s diplomatic standing and military strength. As a result, any international incident—anything that could be seen to diminish Taiwan’s position in the world—is an opportunity to score political points against the party in power.  

Consider Taiwan’s competition with China for official diplomatic recognition. Whether small countries officially recognize Taiwan has no material effect on the country’s economy or security. The impact is psychological and political. When El Salvador severed ties with Taipei in 2018 and transferred recognition to Beijing, a spokesperson for the Kuomintang (KMT), the main opposition party in Taiwan, accused the ruling Democratic Progressive Party of cultivating disaster: “The DPP must take full responsibility for Taiwan’s isolation and apologize to our people,” the spokesperson thundered. “I would like to personally ask Tsai Ing-wen: Just where is it you are leading the Republic of China to?”  

Military mistakes trigger similar media firestorms. One scandal began in 2016, when an antiship missile was accidentally launched at a Taiwanese fishing boat, killing its captain. Within a day, KMT spokesmen were calling the incident a “national security crisis” and demanding that Tsai cancel her planned trip to the United States. Tsai shifted the blame downward, accusing the military of “utter contempt of discipline and a complete lack of competency.” The subsequent media bonanza followed the normal Taiwanese pattern, with forced apologies up and down the Taiwanese chain of command providing fodder for days of outrage on Taiwanese television.  

This is the context in which Taiwanese procurement strategy must be understood. Taiwanese leaders have a powerful political incentive to raise Taiwan’s stature on the international stage and publicly resist Chinese attempts to cut it away from its allies. Similarly, they are incentivized to show that under their leadership, the Taiwanese military remains a world-class fighting force. Purchasing fancy military equipment makes little strategic sense, but it accomplishes both of these objectives. 

In an anonymous interview, one DPP official told me why he believed the purchase of the tanks was so important: “The purchase is a signal that the DPP can lead on defense. It will give the people more confidence that we are not being outclassed by the Chinese. And most important, that Tsai’s good relationship with the Americans is the reason for that.” A senior official interviewed by a Center for Security Policy Studies research team justified Taiwanese requests for F-35 fighter jets, rather than less expensive drones, with similar logic: “You can’t create a hero pilot of a UAV.” The CSPS team concluded that for most of the Taiwanese officials they interviewed, “buying advanced aircraft from the United States was at least as much about assuring the public as it was about improving war-fighting capability.” 

This is especially important given Taiwan’s lack of a formal alliance with the United States. For Taiwanese leaders, weapons sales are one of the few metrics available to judge the U.S. commitment to their cause. Taiwanese leaders can trumpet their purchase of American-made weapons systems as something their party has done to raise Taiwan’s international stature. A tank or fighter jet is prized not for its practical utility but its symbolic value.[5]

While this frustrates me, I cannot say I particularly blame the Taiwanese leaders for doing what they need to do to stay in power. It is important for Americans to understand that no number of op-eds or think tank presentations will change their behavior. Incentives matter more here than ideas do. If Washington wants Taiwan to take its defense more seriously, than it needs to change the incentives Taipei politicians and generals face.

There are lots of ways to do this. In this piece I suggest just one. Joint military training:

The easiest way to do this would be to channel the Taiwanese desires for prestige away from procurement and toward military training. The U.S. Department of Defense should establish joint military exercises with the Taiwanese air force, army, and navy. These exercises should be regular, well publicized, and at least initially, held on U.S. soil.[6]

You can read the full piece to see some of the examples of the kind of joint training exercises we might invite the Taiwanese to. Inviting Taiwanese units—and importantly, it must be full units, not individuals—to join training exercises would give military leaders the face they need, politicians the signs of American commitment they crave, and would allow us to train these soldiers in the sort of fighting the ROC Armed Forces actually need. Joint training would be the sort of symbolic boost Taiwan needs—and having attained it, Taiwanese leaders may be less inclined to waste their nation’s resources on symbolic weapon purchases that will do them little good once war begins.

[1] This strand of thought began in 2008 with William  S. Murray’s article, “Revisiting Taiwan’s Defense  Strategy,” Naval War College Review, Vol. 61, no 3 (Summer 2008). Several dozen reports, testimonies, op-eds, etc. have been written on the same theme since then. For a selection of recent examples, see J. Michael Cole, “How Taiwan Can Defend Its Coastline Against China,” The National Interest (30 June 2019); Colin Carrol and Rebecca Friedman Lissner, “Forget the Subs: What Taipei Can Learn From Tehran About Asymetric Defense,” War on the Rocks (6 April 2019); Drew Thompson, “Hope on the Horizon: Taiwan’s Radical New Defense Concept,” War on the Rocks (2 October 2018); Michael A. Hunzeker, Alexander Lanoszka, Brian Davis, Matthew Fay, Erik Goepner, Joseph Petrucelli and Erica Seng-White. A Question of Time: Enhancing Taiwan’s Conventional Deterrence Posture (Arlington, VA: Center for Security Policy Studies, 2018), pp. 63-105; Michael Bekely, “The Emerging Military Balance in East Asia: How China’s Neighbors Can Check Chinese Naval Expansion,” International Security, vol 42 , iss 2 (2017) pp.78-119; Ian Easton, Mark Stokes, Cortez A. Cooper III, Arthur Chan,  Transformation of Taiwan’s Reserve Force (Santa Monica: RAND, 2017), pp. 55-59; Michael J. Lostumbo, David R. Frelinger, James Williams, Barry Wilson, Air Defense Options for Taiwan: An Assessment of Relative Costs and Operational Benefits (Santa Monica: RAND, 2016), 73-91.

[2] Tanner Greer, “Taiwan’s Defense Strategy Doesn’t Make Military Sense,” Foreign Affairs (17 September 2019).

[3] It is not yet clear whether these weapons were launched from Yemen or from Iran. But whether Houthis or Revolutionary Guards fired these weapons, Iran was clearly their original source. 

[4] Greer, “Taiwan’s Defense Strategy,”

[5] ibid.

[6] ibid.