Taiwan Has a Trump Problem

Donald Trump was right when he warned at the Republican National Convention in July that China is “circling Taiwan” and that a “growing specter of conflict” hangs over the island. But his supposed concern hasn’t stopped him from signaling to Beijing that he might not intervene militarily if China launches an invasion. “Taiwan should pay us for defense,” he said in June, sounding less like the potential leader of the free world than a mafioso running a protection racket.

Trump’s rhetoric shows how his reelection could undo the central promise sustaining the post–World War II order: that the United States will act as an international cavalry, riding to the rescue of allies, or at least seeking to deter autocratic aggressors. That guarantee, explicit or implicit, has led countries within the American alliance network to stake their national security on U.S. commitments. In Asia, for example, Japan has not developed a nuclear arsenal, even as Chinese leaders expand theirs, because the country is already under the American nuclear umbrella. But if the U.S. loses the will to uphold its promise under a second Trump presidency, or if other governments simply perceive that it has, the entire system of international security could unravel, potentially encouraging regional arms races, nuclear proliferation, and armed conflict—especially over Taiwan.

[ Michael Schuman: Trump signals weakness to Xi Jinping ]

“On national defense, we must rely on ourselves,” Taiwan’s foreign minister said in response to Trump’s comments this summer, because “we have stood alone against China’s threat”—which, he noted, has been true for decades. But Taiwan very likely could not defend itself from a full-scale invasion on its own. The nation, which Beijing still considers to be part of China, isn’t just outnumbered and outgunned. More troubling, its armed forces are plagued by poor planning and training, insufficient stockpiles, a sclerotic command system, and weaponry that may be ill-suited to defend against an invasion.

Taiwan’s forces are “not capable of any of the things that we would typically associate with a military that is taking a threat as determined and capable and proximate as China seriously,” Michael Hunzeker, a professor at George Mason University who specializes in military reform, told me. Kitsch Liao, an assistant director at the Atlantic Council, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., made the point more succinctly: “Taiwan’s military, in a word, is incompetent.”

The need for reform is more urgent than ever. China has significantly strengthened its military over the past decade, whereas Taiwan’s defense budget essentially flatlined from 2000 to 2018. Overhauling its forces would, at the very least, help Taiwan survive long enough for the U.S. to mobilize—a process that could take weeks, if not months—and bring international pressure to bear on China. Better still, it might deter Beijing from invading at all.

Without reform, Taiwan’s military deficiencies would practically compel the U.S. to intervene during a conflict if it wants to preserve American power in Asia, given the vital strategic link that Taiwan provides to the region. That could entail fighting a war on a scale unseen since World War II, at a time when much of the American public no longer supports U.S. engagements overseas, even in much smaller forays.

Washington has long pursued a policy of “strategic ambiguity” toward Taiwan, withholding any firm commitment to defend it in the belief that the mere possibility of American intervention will be sufficient to deter Chinese military action to claim the island. But escalating tensions between China and Taiwan have shaken that belief. The Chinese leader Xi Jinping has taken a more hostile stance toward the government in Taipei since the Democratic Progressive Party won the presidency in 2016. Worried that Taiwanese authorities are preparing to declare formal independence, Beijing has tried to intimidate them by sending jets buzzing near their airspace and, as recently as this month, conducting military drills off the Taiwanese coast. China’s aggression has heightened concerns in Washington that Xi is preparing to take Taiwan by force.

In response, President Joe Biden has tried to shore up American deterrence by stating that the U.S. would defend the island. Trump is now suggesting the opposite. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal last week, Trump said he wouldn’t have to use force to protect Taiwan from a Chinese blockade because, he claimed, Xi “respects me.” Instead, he would impose high tariffs on China if Beijing tried to attack Taiwan—which, he seems to believe, would be sufficient deterrence.

[ Michael Schuman: No more ‘strategic ambiguity’ on Taiwan ]

Taiwan’s apparent inability to defend itself is a puzzle. Small states have a long record of military overachievement. Ukraine has been able to stand its ground against a much larger invading Russian army for nearly three years, albeit with large amounts of Western aid. Israel has combined advanced technology with a motivated citizen army to secure an advantage over several foes at once.

But Taiwan’s military has a troubled history. After the Kuomintang—the political party that ruled Taiwan for decades—came to the island from the Chinese mainland in 1949, its army served as an appendage of its leadership. Following decades of martial law, democracy came in the 1990s. Many Taiwanese perceived the military as a tool of repression and feared that its officers would intervene in politics, so the new elected leadership scaled back the armed forces. “But the cuts went too far,” Ian Easton, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute, told me. Certain crucial units, such as marines, logistical support, and combat engineers, “appear to be far below the levels that would be ideal to defeat an invasion,” he added.

Taiwan’s political and military leaders may also suffer from a feeling of fatalism—perhaps inadvertently fostered by American policy. The Taiwanese military has “existed for 70 years in a security bubble largely guaranteed by the United States, and it has created all sorts of moral hazard,” George Mason’s Hunzeker argued. The leadership sees a potential war as “either a clash of the titans, or we lose quickly,” he said, creating a belief that if an invasion comes, “it’s either America or nothing.”

Such defeatism might be misplaced. China would likely have enough difficulty taking Taiwan by force that the West and its allies would have time to complicate the attack. As Liao, the Atlantic Council director, told me, a Chinese invasion across the Taiwan Strait would be the “largest amphibious campaign in human history.” Taiwan’s coastline has few easy places for Chinese troops to land, and if they did manage to gain a beachhead, they would face fierce resistance. Such a bloody, protracted, and costly struggle could become unpopular in China and politically risky for its leaders. As a result, military analysts believe that Beijing won’t attempt to invade without first trying to sap Taiwan’s morale and resources by launching cyberattacks, imposing blockades, and seeding internal political dissent.

Still, critics contend that Taiwan won’t have the proper weapon systems to defend itself in the event of an invasion. The military relies heavily on advanced and expensive surface vessels, fighter jets, and other conventional hardware. But China will likely be able to quickly target and destroy these weapons. That’s why some military experts advocate for Taiwan to overhaul its armed forces and invest in what Hunzeker calls “large numbers of cheap, mobile, and lethal” resources, including drones, short-range missiles, and small boats, which would be harder for China to locate and eliminate, and would inflict tremendous damage on Chinese invaders. Taiwan could also develop a territorial defense force—a citizen militia that would contest Chinese troops at every town and street. The goal behind these reforms is to transform Taiwan into a military “porcupine,” able to deter aggressors by promising to inflict substantial pain if they attack.

But that strategy is controversial in Taiwan. Alexander Huang, a professor of strategic studies at Tamkang University in Taiwan, argues that the island’s armed forces require conventional weapons to confront Chinese jet incursions and protect crucial shipping in the event of a blockade. “A porcupine may be hard to chew, but it could be starved to death,” he told me. Moreover, Huang believes that a territorial defense force would be “almost impossible” to create in Taiwan. “Urban warfare, township by township, and jump into the meat grinder—it’s very Hollywood, it’s very Ukraine,” he said. But, he continued, Taiwanese society is not “psychologically ready” for such a conflict.

Taiwan’s government has been instituting some changes—boosting conscription, increasing military spending, investing in drones and mobile missiles. But critics fear that such measures fall far short of the comprehensive reform Taiwan’s military needs to stand a chance against China. More optimistically, Huang asserts that Taiwan is “on the right track” but needs “at least five to 10 years of peace and stability so we can transform our military.”

Whether Beijing will allow Taiwan that time is an open question. The shortcomings of Taiwan’s military lend some validity to Trump’s complaint that America’s allies don’t pay enough for their own defense and dump too much of the responsibility onto the United States—a burden that a second Trump administration might not be committed to bear.

If the U.S. won’t uphold the global security system, it can’t expect its partners to do so on their own. The international order will weaken, a development Xi will be ready to exploit. Perhaps America’s best hope is that he will find the decision to attack Taiwan just as painful as Trump seems to find the thought of defending it.