Is Taiwan Acquiring an Offensive Capability?

July 28, 2004

By David M. Lampton

Very recently, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was in Beijing for tough talks with Beijing’s leaders about Taiwan, among other things.  China’s continued force modernization, military exercises and buildup of missiles beyond the 500-plus already near the island is an undeniable problem.  Debate over how to address this threat is underway on the island and in the United States.  One option is for Taipei to move toward its own offensive capability designed to “deter” Beijing from attacking the island. 

In its late-May 2004 “Report to Congress on PRC Military Power,” the Pentagon notes the call of Taipei’s political and military leaders for the creation of  “credible threats to China’s urban population or high-value targets, such as the Three Gorges Dam,” to deter Chinese military coercion against the island.  At another point the report says, “Asymmetric capabilities that Taiwan possesses or is acquiring could deter a Chinese attack by making it unacceptably costly,” giving rise to questions about the Pentagon’s actual attitude, which seems somewhere between unclear and encouraging by default.  Nowhere in the report does the DOD disassociate itself from these views.

Offensive deterrence is a terrible idea for Taiwan and the United States should explicitly disassociate itself from this approach.  Were Taipei to launch such an attack on the mainland, it would lead almost assuredly to the destruction of the island as we know it.  Moreover, the acquisition of such capabilities by Taiwan would diminish stability in crises and increase the odds that actions would be taken that would embroil the United States in conflict.  Most fundamentally, this approach is entirely inconsistent with the rest of the Bush Administration’s effort to deescalate cross-Strait tensions.

I was in Taiwan recently, spoke with various high-level officials and came away believing that there is debate over whether or not to acquire the ability to take Chinese cities and high-value targets hostage.  Indeed, elements of such a policy may already have been adopted.  Some Taiwan officials with whom I spoke mentioned “fighting a war without mercy” and the need to “cost-effectively deter” the PRC from coercing the island.  Other more sober analysts realized that, given the PRC’s enormity, any conventional strike by Taiwan would only infuriate a nuclear Beijing and rain terror down upon the island.  China is a very large sponge for any such attacks by Taiwan, while the island’s ability to absorb even conventional strikes is relatively small.  Whatever Taiwan’s offensive capabilities may be, they are far less than the PRC’s—and the disparity will grow over time.  Moreover, such a strategy puts a hair trigger on an already delicate situation and will fuel more rapid PRC force acquisition.  As one former senior Taiwan official recently put it to me, “This is the worst, to talk about an offensive strategy that inflames Beijing when you don’t have the capacity to implement it.”

Why is Taiwan seemingly moving in such a potentially dangerous direction?  It is doing so because China is building the capacity to deliver a quick military stroke to the island before the United States could respond effectively; Taiwan’s land army still inappropriately dominates the island’s defense in a naval, air force and missile age; Taiwan’s military services are insufficiently coordinated with one another; and, the island’s citizens and leaders do not wish to spend the necessary resources on their own defense, at the same time they refuse to accept Beijing’s “one-China principle” as a basis for negotiation.  In short, those advocating offensive deterrence are seeking the cheap way to seem to be doing something while avoiding making hard budgetary or political decisions.  They jeopardize the island’s survival and increase the odds of conflict that could embroil America.  Indeed, in moving in offensive directions, Taipei could well provide Beijing a pretext for preemption.

It is a fair question to ask, “If acquiring an offensive deterrent is such a bad idea, what do you recommend?”  A first step would be to promote better civilian defense, harden command and control sites and better protect aircraft that are exposed on the ground in sheds with no doors (as I recently saw in Hualien, Taiwan).  This would be relatively inexpensive and at least buy the island additional time for the United States to respond, assuming that Washington decided to do so.  In the longer run, however, Taiwan needs to come to terms with the reality that it has bet its economic future on integration with the mainland Chinese economy in the globalization process at the same time that it is pursuing a political strategy that estranges the island from Beijing in very dangerous ways.  The fact is that, with a high degree of economic interdependence with the mainland, Beijing will have numerous ways to destabilize the island, short of an outright assault to occupy the island—if Beijing is willing to pay the associated economic and international political costs.

Instead of leaving ambiguous its attitude toward an offensive deterrent approach, the Pentagon should have been explicit in distancing the United States from such a strategy.  Moreover, a more offensive based deterrent approach runs counter to the logic of the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act that mandates that only defensive weapons be transferred to Taipei by the United States.  By not explicitly distancing itself from an offensive deterrent approach, the Pentagon raises further questions about what actually is occurring in its non-transparent military-to-military cooperation with Taipei.

In turn, this raises a more general set of questions about the role of President Bush, the effectiveness of the National Security Council and the degree to which the Pentagon tends to move in its own policy directions.  In this case, as so many others, we see that President Bush is so preoccupied with the war in Iraq that he lets other problems fester.  We see a president that is ineffective controlling the Pentagon and a National Security Council that does not adequately coordinate policy.  The ambiguity of the Pentagon’s position on an issue of such centrality to China’s interests will not foster Beijing’s cooperation in the war on terror or other key issues such as North Korea.  Where is the National Security Council as the guarantor of consistency and where is the president as guardian of his own policy?  President Bush needs to assert himself with a Pentagon that will only follow his China policy if explicitly ordered to do so.

David M. Lampton is Hyman professor and director of China Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and director of Chinese Studies at The Nixon Center.

An earlier version of this article originally appeared in The Straits Times on July 26, 2004.