COLIN CLARK
WASHINGTON: Should America bang out a treaty clearly and unequivocally committing it to the defense of Taiwan? Will Japan, Australia and other allies come to America’s aid should China invade Taiwan? Should the US provide money to help Taiwan buy weapons that the island currently buys from US firms? What is a “porcupine defense,” anyway, and is it the right approach for Taiwan?
Those were among the top issues hammered out Wednesday by a former special assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and professor at the National War College, a former top international security official at the Pentagon and an Asia expert at the American Enterprise Institute.
Basically, the three experts agreed that Taiwan needed to beef up its own defense. They agreed that the United States had to exercise caution in how it shaped its deterrence so as not to back China into a corner, leading it to the conclusion it has to act or fail. And they agreed that Taiwan is, ultimately, more important to deterring China than is the US.
“Taiwan needs to establish what sometimes is called an effective ‘porcupine defense,’ a defense that will allow it to defend against an adversary force until support from others would be available,” Frank Kramer, former assistant defense secretary for international security affairs and now an Atlantic Council expert, said in a briefing on how to secure the Taiwan Strait. “Taiwan actually needs to do better than it has done historically; it is improving recently.”
A porcupine defense would allow Taiwan to resist Chinese military coercion with a mix of stockpiled supplies, resilient facilities, sea mines and reliable, shorter-range weapons for a prolonged period without requiring US intervention.
In terms of the proportion of GDP spent on defense, in terms of the professionalization of its reserve forces and in terms of the weapons Taipei bought, “I think it is fair to say that Taiwan is nowhere near to where it needs to be,” said Michael Mazarr, a former National War College, professor and special assistant to the JCS chair now at the RAND Corporation.
Key to bolstering Taiwan’s defenses is securing critical infrastructure such as fuel, water and energy from cyber attacks and other supply chain interference, Kramer said. And that goes for both Taiwan and the United States, he made clear, since Taiwan must hold until US and allied forces can come to its aid in the event of a serious attempt by China to take the island.
Of course, all this is part of deterrence — discouraging China from invading in the first place.
“In the context of Taiwan key critical enhancements to deterrence will also include military, diplomatic, economic, and digital actions,” Mazarr argued. “The key variable in governing deterrence outcomes is aggressor motivation: how motivated is the aggressor; how urgently do they feel like they have to take action?” The single biggest cause of a failure in deterrence is “when a potential aggressor sees an urgent need to act.” That often happens, he said, when the aggressor perceives that it must act or face effective defeat.
The trick will be, the RAND expert said, to avoid “a situation in which China believes that it has no alternative but to act because when it reaches that moment, in my view, it becomes essentially undetectable, no matter how many military systems we bought in the meantime.”
And that calculus grows more complex because of China’s actions, he said. “China has already begun a process of coercion, and as that continues, the next actions they take may not — and I think likely would not — be an all outright invasion of Taiwan. It might include anything from a blockade to increased cyber harassment, to seizure of the islands in between China and Taiwan.
“They could take some of those actions and kind of flip the deterrence script by taking a partial action and then attempting to deter us from responding or escalating.”
Updating Security Assistance
To increase Taiwan’s chances of creating an effective enough porcupine defense, Michael Mazza, an Asia expert at the American Enterprise Institute, believes the US should consider changing the conditions on the American arms Taiwan buys.
“We think it’s time to rethink the Pentagon security assistance program for Taiwan. Right now, Taiwan pays for every defense article the United States transfers to it. But going forward, we should consider whether we can use the prospect of military aid as a means to encourage Taiwan to invest more in its own defense, in particular in certain capabilities where they may be under invested,” Mazza said. For example, the US could pledge that, if Taiwan were to expand its munition stockpile by some set percentage, then the US would provide more aid.
In the meantime, “China is seeking to undermine faith in Taiwan’s democratic institutions virtually every day. Taiwan is a main target of hostile PRC cyber operations,” Mazza noted. “Taiwan faces daily military intimidation. The United States can and should do more to help Taiwan resist this type of coercion, and deter China from continuing to use these tools so aggressively.”
To help counter those gray zone attacks, the US, its NATO allies, Japan, Australia and other countries must embrace Taiwan’s status as a vibrant and high-tech democracy. Mazarr said, and “increase economic, cultural, political and other kinds of ties.”
The one area where there was significant disagreement among the experts was whether Taiwan’s status as a democracy should obligate the United States to commit to defend the island state.
Kramer’s position was that democracy makes Taiwan worth defending , but was cautious about the level of outright commitment America should make: “We always have to take into account the degree of harm that might be caused by adhering to the principle without evaluating context. But I do think that it’s important, and I think it’s important to discuss with the American people. whether or not supporting democracy in this instance is something the American people want to do.”
Mazarr tried to refute Kramer’s argument. “I also disagree that ‘democracy’ is something that we should be prepared to use military forces to intervene and promote, or fight wars and defend. I think it is a very important value for the United States, and there are a lot of means we can use to promote it,” he said. “I particularly believe that worldwide democracy is not an interlinked sort of organism; that its failure in one place will cause failures in other others.”
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