?????? Taiwan begins to take action: extends military service

The?Ukraine war?has shown that the unthinkable is perfectly feasible. In fact, in October 2022?Mike Gilday, Chief of US Naval Operations, warned that China may be preparing to?invade Taiwan before 2024.

Even though these forecasts may be?overly alarmist,?the?fact is that the tension continues to grow. For this reason, Taipei is beginning to work seriously on strategies to dissuade a possible invasion attempt.

In December, a US military delegation arrived in Taiwan to conduct a comprehensive assessment of Taiwan's armed forces and to?study how to improve?the?island'sdeterrence capabilities.

In recent years the People's Liberation Army has been greatly improving its capabilities, especially in all those areas it would need to invade Taiwan. There is growing concern in Washington that Xi Jinping's obsession is to?make Taiwan the jewel of his political legacy.

And the problem is that the balance of power is?terribly unequal. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in?2021, China's military spending (US$ 270 billion) was 21 times that of Taiwan.

For the time being, 2023 has begun with the announcement by?Tsai-Ing Wen, the Taiwanese president, that?compulsory military service for men will increase from four months to one year?as of 2024. In addition, its training program will be updated. It?will be designed by the United States?and will include training in the use of weapons such as the?Stinger and Javelin missiles.

However, this is only a stopgap.?Taiwan has been out of the military race for years?and its readiness is relatively low. This is because Taiwan's politicians have long?assumed that growing economic and political ties might be enough?to contain Beijing's ambition. Moreover, the military remains unpopular because of its?authoritarian past, while many of the older senior officers have a very different culture and outlook from that emanating from civilian society: for example, they?maintain the one-China view and are much less sympathetic to Washington.

All this explains why the defense of the island has not really been a priority for recent governments. In fact since 1990, despite the ever-increasing Chinese threat,?the size of the military has been reduced by less than half. Today Taiwan has barely 170,000 soldiers and its military spending effort in 2022 was?2.2% of GDP.

"I have long urged them (the government) to build a territorial defense force, a force that could function as an urban guerrilla force under a more decentralized command, but it's very clear from this plan that they don't want to adopt that concept [...] They are not adopting the example of Ukraine or the Baltic states."?– Lee Hsi-ming, former Chief of Staff of the Taiwan Armed Forces

Will we see changes from now on? At the moment Washington is pushing very hard for that. So it is very likely that we will see?major changes in Taiwan's military policy?in 2023.

PS: In her annual New Year's address on 1 January,?Tsai referred exclusively to the country as "Taiwan" and not as the "Republic of China,"?a?departure from her speeches in previous years, when she used both terms.