Ukraine from Taiwan's view
differences, similarities, and vietnamisation
President Vlodomir Zelenskyy returns to Kyiv likely more dubious than he hoped after the United Nations' General Assembly speech and a tour of Washington. The latter part of his journey contrasted markedly from his December 2022 appearance with American lawmakers who lauded him, as Americans do so well, for fighting so doggedly as the underdog against Vlad the Impaler. We allowed him to address a joint session of Congress and offered him aid and arms.
From this trip he is getting aid to the tune of $325 million in weapons and associated costs, the fourth tranche of assistance. It’s not an inconsequential amount but it is not what the Ukrainian hoped the Biden administration is demurring on long-range missiles with cluster bombs. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy denied the Ukrainian leader’s request to speak before the joint session of the legislature. Many of those giving the Speaker fits are in his most conservative party faction, the same ones exasperated with aid to the embattled central European state.
Zelenskyy must be disappointed but Taiwan’s leadership and its presidential candidates for the early 2024 election must be alarmed. Ukraine is far from having universal support in its war to oust Putin’s forces from national territory but much of the world—particularly those with arms and aid—support Kyiv in this struggle.
Taiwan is in a far different boat with only a dozen nations, all of which are small, which even recognise the Republic of China as a sovereign state. That puts Taipei’s plight in far worse terms should Beijing actually attack the island.
Taiwan’s supporters, especially in the United States, are keen to protect the entrenched democracy while also showing determination against any Chinese aggression. The anti-Chinese feelings so strong among current Republican lawmakers are the one clear advantage the island a hundred miles off the mainland has over Ukraine right now.
More importantly, however, Taiwan and Ukraine both pose long-term commitments for massive assistance. That is the rub for both countries. Americans have a history of initial enthusiasm for any victimised nation, preferring to defend the vulnerable over some other larger aggressor. Beyond the initial period, however, American support fades as our citizens tire of the on-going costs, physical and financial. We have been involved in too many places for too long over the past seventy-five years. We tire of long conflicts, even is they truly contribute to our own security.
Adversaries count on this occurring. U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq all provide relevant case studies: the public wearied of requests from and about embattled leaders. Those without family members in the armed forces began to question greater infusions of cash, arms, and attention for these other conflicts. The seemingly unending wars lead to public tune out because victory, frequently not discussed in detail to show what it will require for success, appears elusive.
We are not talking about U.S. men and women in uniform defending Ukraine as some lawmakers advocate for Taiwan. Ukraine carries the burden of its own defense in the face of its extended border with Russia and her troops already occupying slices of national territory.
Taiwan is an island of just about 24 million folks confronting an adversary with five times as many people and a modernising military built because of vastly greater economic resources. Taiwan has long hoped the United States and other Asian neighbours would actively help defend it against Beijing’s likely military moves to force reunification. That remains an open question as the official U.S. policy under both political parties doesn’t affirm positively that we would do so. Our law demands we provide arms of a defensive nature to Taiwan, not military personnel. Many analysts, as I heard just day before yesterday yet again at an U.S. Naval Institute session, assume no U.S. president would dare abandon Taiwan’s citizens to a Communist-led Chinese military.
I think it depends on circumstances.
Asians are aware of Beijing’s military might because the Middle Kingdom is so much of Asia, having a land border with many states and important maritime disputes with those surrounding the South China Sea, Japan, and even potentially Korea. While both the Japanese Self Defense Forces and the Republic of Korea militaries are quite able, the remainder of the region is far lesser in its prowess until one reaches Australia or perhaps India. Several of these other states have strong mil-to-mil ties with Beijing although the Biden presidency has focused mightily on supplanting Beijing’s ties with U.S. links instead. We don’t know how that would play in actual armed conflict. In other words, allies and partners matter but Washington overwhelmingly likely would play the greatest role in a decidedly different type of Taiwan defense than Ukraine is experiencing.
War games about a likely military scenario appear several times annually in the United States with predictable outcomes relevant to the assumptions made. That is altogether unsurprising.
What I have never seen is any gaming on how the political will of these partner or allies would be in a Taiwan military contingency. Again, I suspect how it occurred might play a role. I hear lots of assertions that Japan, for example, is shifting towards Taipei under Prime Minister Kishida’s leadership as Tokyo increases it spending in the face of Beijing’s actions. Japan is a parliamentary system, however, meaning that Kishida and any other government could fall if popular support fell.
Japan suffered the effects of war on its territory in the 1940s, albeit due to their own provocations in World War II. That generation is largely passing into history so their war experiences are also dying out. Would younger Japanese really support a long-term conflict over Taiwan?
The Republic of Korea also suffered through a massive conflict on its peninsula less than seventy-five years ago and is daily prepared for an unpredictable regime north of the Demilitarised Zone which could attack in instant. Would that society support a long-term military deployment to Taiwan should a conflict break out between the island and the mainland? Would that be worth Beijing’s wrath over siding with Taiwan? Korean pride in its role in deterring the DPRK is well known but would that pride and grit similarly apply to fighting for Taiwan where a long-term commitment could make the island a protectorate?
By coincidence, I attended a panel at the McMullen HIstory Symposium at the Naval Academy this afternoon on Vietnamization Fifty Years hence. While the papers were interesting, I could not help but notice where Taiwan could raise this prospect yet again. The topic of Vietnamisation harkens back to several conflicts originally massively and sincerely supported in the initial weeks and months. The Vietnamisation concept, of course, means to turn the military activities and associated civilian tasks from U.S. responsibility to that of the affected governmen—and we are not stranger to that fall back position.
President Richard Nixon turned over the war effort in Vietnam to the Saigon government beginning about 1969. It was his ‘secret plan’ campaigned upon in 1968. Its activities occurred as U.S. ground troops fought side by side with Vietnamese forces and Henry Kissinger covertly negotiated with Hanoi (and ultimately Beijing). A peace agreement emerged in 1973 after which U.S. ground forces departed after the 1973 Paris Peace accord but the less-militarised, more civilianised Vietnamisation continued with no success until the Republic of Vietnam’s collapse on 30 April 1975.
The Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations all encouraged one form or another of the same shift from our lead responisbility to ‘home country’ responsibility in Afghanistan and Iraq between the mid-2000s and roughly 2011 in Iraq and 2021’s spectacular Taliban takeover in Kabul. One can argue that relinquishing responsibility to the Iraqis was successful in that Baghdad today as a functioning government under its own power but it’s far from a model democracy such as that Taiwan has.
Afghanistan, on the other hand, proved a massive disappointment. President Biden repeated claimed in mid-summer of 2021 that no evidence existed that the Afghani troops could not step up to defend their country. The collapse in Afghanistan’s armed forces before the end of August was both spectacular and decisive. After hundreds billions of dollars in assistance, Afghanistan returned to the hands of the Taliban just short of twenty years from the U.S. arrival. Plenty of blame for plenty of leaders still ricochets around the world.
Too often, ‘Vietnamisation’ fails because the U.S. support is not enduring as we rush to relinquish our roles in these societies when U.S. public opinion wavers, if not turns outright hostile to the entire enterprise. Additionally, the objectives set forth for democratic, sovereign governments representing their own people may be futile in concept.
Discussing Vietnamisation puts the cart well before the horse on Taiwan where this is not active conflict. There are not massive U.S. military deployments because the current context does not merit that. However, U.S. involvement in foreign states often follow a similar path of worrying about the underdog we can uniquely, we believe, assist.
Ukraine never requested, to my knowledge, U.S. troops of any service, preferred to fight its own conflict for its own sovereignty. The arms and assistance Zelenskyy seeks is integral to that continuing struggle. I personally know people I assume are providing some technical assistance but they are not active duty military personnel.
The Republic of China has relied on U.S. assistance and arms since World War II. Taiwan’s civilian leadership since 1996 waited far too long to begin addressing what seems a potentially existential threat of a modernising People’s Liberation Army.
Today, Taiwan officials acknowledge the problem but may be adding to their defense budget far too little too late. Just this week a report notes the Taipei government will raise defense spending 7.7% this year. But, Americans should not think that will make much of a difference short term in Taiwan’s readiness nor will it provide arms that will alter the military balance across the straight in a meaningful measure. Taiwan’s modernisation must be sustained and drastic but they must decide as a fully functioning democracy.
Americans and Taiwans need cognisance of the long-term impatience arising historically among the U,S. body politic over several struggles. While we have retained ground troops in Korea since 1950 and in Germany or the Middle East for decades, these are not active conflicts where Americans are dying regularly to defend a regime confronted by internal or foreign threats. These forces are deterrent in nature.
Would U.S. troops be effective as a deterrent in Taiwan? Possibly but not necessarily. China views Taiwan’s status as the last unsolved issue of the Chinese civil war. We simply don’t know—with due respect to all of those who think they have an eye on Xi Jinping’s calendar entries—how seriously the CCP leadership believes it must bring that civil war finally to a close.
These are complicated and expensive days on the world scene. Yet each conflict is also sui generis because each nation’s history is unique. It provides challenges for planners and strategists while employment for historians and think tankers.
Thank you for reading Actions Create Consequences. I write this entirely with you in mind. I appreciate your time and I am so honoured by those who subscribe financially.
Have a restful, satisfying weekend. Be well and be safe. FIN
John Dotson, ‘Taiwan Announces an Increased Defense budget for 2024’, GlobalTaiwanInstitute.org, 20 September 2023, retrieved at https://globaltaiwan.org/2023/09/taiwan-announces-an-increased-defense-budget-for-2024/
Clyde Hughes, ‘In meeting with Zelensky, Biden announces arms package, continued Ukraine Support’, UPI.com, 21 September 2023, retrieved at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/in-meeting-with-zelensky-biden-announces-arms-package-continued-ukraine-support/ar-AA1h3GTOCl
Brent Sadler of the Heritage Foundation, 20 September 2023.