taipei:
Taiwan’s military strategists have studied Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the country’s resistance to the island’s own combat strategy should its giant neighbor China ever live up to its threat to take them by force.
While the Taiwanese government has not reported any unusual activity by the military in China, which considers the island its own territory, Taipei has raised its alert level.
Russia’s use of precision missiles and Ukraine’s tactically astute resistance, despite being too quick and outsmart, are being closely watched in security circles in Taiwan, whose own forces are also dwarfed by China’s. .
Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen has championed the idea of ”asymmetric warfare,” to make his troops more mobile and more difficult to attack, using vehicle-mounted missiles, for example.
Ma Cheng-Kun, director of the Graduate Institute of China Military Affairs Studies at Taiwan’s National Defense University, said Ukraine had used the same concept with mobile weapons to thwart Russian troops.
“The Ukrainian military has made full use of asymmetric warfare, very effectively, and so far successfully stopped Russia’s advance,” added Ma, a government adviser on China policy.
“That’s exactly what our armed forces have been proactively developing,” he said, pointing to weapons such as the lightweight and domestically developed Kestrel shoulder-launched anti-armor missile designed for close-quarters warfare.
“Ukraine’s performance makes us even more confident in our own performance.”
Taiwan has developed other missiles that can reach far into China.
Last week, the Defense Ministry said it plans to more than double its annual production capacity for missiles to nearly 500 this year, including the upgraded version of the Hsiung Feng IIE missile, the longer-range Hsiung Sheng land attack missile. is able to hit targets further inland in China.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry says it “barely understands” the international security situation and is working hard to “continuously improve its armaments and national defensive combat capability”, but that the military is “not provocative”.
NATURAL BARRIRE
However, there are major differences between the positions of Taiwan and Ukraine that have offered reassurance.
For example, the government of Taiwan has repeatedly pointed to the natural barrier of the Taiwan Strait that separates it from China. Ukraine has a long land border with Russia.
Strategists say Taiwan can also easily detect signs of Chinese military movement and prepare for an invasion that would require China to mobilize hundreds of thousands of soldiers and equipment such as ships, which could be easily attacked by Taiwanese missiles.
Getting boots to the ground would require China to cross the strait, “so it’s a much higher risk” to China, said Su Tzu-yun, an associate research fellow at Taiwan’s top military think tank, the Institute for National Defense. and Security Research .
It’s not just about hardware.
In the background looms the perennial debate – given new focus by the war in Ukraine – about whether US troops would come to the rescue of Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack. Washington practices “strategic ambiguity” on the subject and does not give a clear answer anyway.
Lo Chih-cheng, a senior lawmaker from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party who sits on the parliament’s defense and foreign affairs committee, said the Biden administration sent a team of former top officials to Taiwan last week, shortly after Ukraine was invaded. , should dispel the idea that the United States cannot be trusted.
“At this point, it sent a message across the strait, to the Taiwanese people, that the United States is a trustworthy country,” he told a party podcast on Tuesday.
Taiwan, a major semiconductor producer, hopes its geographic and supply chain importance will differentiate it from Ukraine.
But the Biden administration has repeatedly ruled out sending troops to Ukraine, causing unrest among some in Taiwan.
“Do people in Taiwan really think the West and the United States will come to our rescue?” said Chao Chien-min, a former deputy head of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council now at the Chinese Culture University in Taiwan.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)