The fall of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s regime last week has been another reminder that the global order and security situation are in flux, with taken-for-granted constellations of power being degraded or atrophying as big states overextend themselves — such as Syria’s backers Iran and Russia — and new constellations of power form.
Particularly evident is liberal democracies banding together to maximize their strengths, and implementing domestic reforms to enhance societal resilience to weather potential storms.
For example, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Sweden and Finland overturned decades of traditional foreign policy by ending their neutrality and applying to join NATO.
In East Asia, Japan woke up to the China threat more than a decade ago, implementing transformational defense reforms and boosting cooperation with like-minded nations. As a result of its reforms, not only has the Japan-US alliance never been stronger, but Tokyo has become a net security provider in East and Southeast Asia, a partner of choice for nations looking for an alternative to China’s vision of the world order, which helps to defend the liberal order.
However, in Taiwan, waking up to the new reality has not been uniform across the political divide. While the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has recognized the structural changes China’s rise has brought to the international system, the threat that the Chinese Communist Party poses to Taiwan’s security and way of life, and the need to make significant policy adjustments, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) prefers to keep its head in the sand, maintaining its failed line that Taiwan’s security would be enhanced if it pursued the cross-strait policies of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
Before he was elected, Ma promised that enhancing exchanges with China would improve Taiwan’s security situation. He also promised to get Beijing to remove its missiles targeting Taiwan. However, by the end of Ma’s two terms, not only were the missiles not removed (the number had been increased), but because Beijing continued to bolster its military while Taiwan did not, Taiwan’s security situation was more precarious than ever. Ma’s cross-strait policy failed, and the lesson is Taiwan cannot have faith that appeasing China would improve national security.
Former president Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration worked hard to address the damage that Ma’s negligent policies wrought on national security, and defense spending has increased 80.47 percent over the past eight years. It is also planned to be boosted by 5 percent next year.
However, Tsai had a DPP majority in the legislature to implement her agenda, which is something President William Lai (賴清德) does not have. KMT legislators Ma Wen-chun (馬文君), Huang Jen (黃仁) and Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯) last month proposed cuts to the domestic submarine program, with Ma Wen-chun and Hsu proposing to cut the budget entirely.
Hsu has also proposed amendments to the Civil Defense Act (民防法) to exclude military operations support from the scope of civilian defense efforts, amendments that would seriously hobble Lai’s Whole-of-Society Defense Resilience Committee.
These actions not only damage Taiwan’s ability to defend itself, but they put the nation out of step with other liberal democracies who are working hard to bolster their defenses in a more turbulent world.
It is time the KMT moves on from Ma’s naive policy that Taiwan’s security would be enhanced if it reduced its defense preparedness and enhanced exchanges. The opposite happened during Ma’s presidency. Ma’s confidence-building measures did not affect Beijing’s military reforms to prepare for an invasion of Taiwan, and to pursue them now would place Taiwan’s defenses in a more precarious situation. Exchanges are a net good, but they must not come at the expense of boosting national defense.
