Administrations come, administrations go, but the permanent bureaucracy drives seamlessly forward in its delusion that the already-defeated Anglo-American “empire” can crush Russia, China, and everybody else. This is displayed in all its glory in a Dec. 1 Washington Post op-ed proclaiming that success is in sight in the U.S. project to build up Taiwan’s military forces, so it can defend its independence from China. The authors were both former Assistant Secretaries of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs: Randall Shriver during Trump’s first administration; Ely Ratner on Biden’s team.
“As former Assistant Secretaries of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs … we have each pressed Taipei to act with greater urgency” on its own defense, they write, and that is now happening. “Taiwan is making leaps in military spending. Its new combination of regular and special defense budgets would drive total spending beyond 5% of GDP—3.3% for `core defense’ and another 2.1% for `defense related’ programs, using NATO standards…. More increases can be expected in the years ahead…. With the right mix of people, training and weapons, Taiwan can help deter and, if necessary, block China’s aggression.”
That is a fraud. Anyone with a brain can recognize that Taiwan, with its population of fewer than 24 million people living on an island 36,000 sq. km in size, cannot defeat nuclear-armed China, with over 1.4 billion people, 9.6 million sq. km of territory, arguably the strongest productive economy in the world. U.S. policy actually is to build Taiwan up to serve as the platform for a U.S.-led, NATO attack on China, the way that Ukraine was built up against Russia.
“Taipei has also absorbed key lessons from Ukraine, where unmanned systems have transformed modern warfare,” the Biden-Trumpers assert. It is “prioritizing small, mobile and lethal systems optimized for asymmetrical defense: drones, networked air defense, mobile rocket artillery and anti-ship missiles. These investments will help Taiwan contribute to the kind of congested, lethal `hellscape’ across the Taiwan Strait envisioned by Adm. Samuel Paparo, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.” This “asymmetrical strategy” of defense must not exclude “the conventional aircraft, ships and sensors needed to respond to daily provocations.”
