CIAO DATE: 09/2009
August 2009
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Taiwan is a great success story. It is a prosperous, thriving democracy living at peace--and it wants to remain at peace. A recent poll shows that more than 90 percent of Taiwanese support maintaining the "status quo," meaning principally that an overwhelming majority of the island's citizens wants to avoid a conflict with the mainland if at all possible while retaining their de facto sovereignty.[1] But in order to maintain that peace, Taipei will have to build a military strong enough to make the use of force against Taiwan unlikely. The Republic of China (ROC) faces one of the world's most daunting security challenges. Over the past thirty years, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has gone from being an impoverished, technologically backward state to a nation of increasing wealth, power, and international stature. The PRC's stated ambition to unify Taiwan with China has neither changed nor slackened. As highlighted in the March 2009 Department of Defense annual report to Congress on China's military, "China's armed forces are rapidly developing coercive capabilities . . . [that] could in the future be used to pressure Taiwan toward a settlement of the cross-Strait dispute on Beijing's terms while simultaneously attempting to deter, delay, or deny any possible U.S. support for the island in case of conflict."[2] Even though cross-Strait tensions have been significantly reduced under the Ma Ying-jeou administration, the ROC's defense establishment continues to fulfill a vital role in allowing the people on Taiwan to make their own choices about the island's future. And indeed, arguably, relations between the PRC and the ROC are likely to be more peaceful and productive if the ROC is not perceived as being in a position of military weakness.
Resource link: Deter, Defend, Repel, and Partner: A Defense Strategy for Taiwan [PDF] - 92K