Adam Kozloski
Over the past few years, discussions on Taiwan’s military readiness have honed in on the long delays in processing and delivering US weapon systems to Taiwan while China’s capabilities are rapidly growing—putting deterrence at risk. However, delivery is just one step in the process of integrating weapons within Taiwan’s armed forces. The full integration process extends beyond the weapons arriving on the island’s shores.
The period between delivery and integration is often invisible to the public, but it is a danger that I covered during my time as a foreign policy advisor in the US Senate. It is driving a strategic risk of failure for Taiwan’s porcupine strategy of signaling that the island is too costly a meal for China to digest, and Washington and Taipei must urgently address this issue before Beijing moves to take advantage of the delay with military aggression.
Defining the problem
The timeline for integrating weapon systems has remained largely hidden in part because the US Department of Defense uses vague and often subjective terms to define a country’s ability to integrate systems. Like any recipient country, Taiwan is reluctant to advertise weapon integration delays to its adversaries. Despite these challenges, the US Department of State and US Department of Defense are required by statute to certify to Congress that a country can integrate a weapon system being delivered. This is enumerated as a country’s “ability to absorb” within major weapon sales notices to the appropriate congressional committees and later to the public.
No comments:
Post a Comment