Newsham: Taiwan’s Soldiers are Unprepared for a Chinese Attack

“Taiwan is the key to Asia, and China wants it now.” So says China Unscripted, a popular YouTube program providing wide-ranging interviews and original video content on economic, security and cultural issues in China and East Asia.

Center for Security Policy Senior Fellow Grant Newsham joined the program for an extensive interview covering multiple angles of a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

In this excerpt, Newsham explores an often-overlooked but vital aspect of Taiwan’s defense that looks beyond military hardware. What about the condition of the very human soldiers who must put their lives on the line to make Taiwanese deterrence credible? He says:

One you have to have the right hardware which is available… you have to have the right concepts of operation, which means employing your troops, your forces, in the right way. And you also have to pay attention to the people who actually serve in the Taiwanese military. That is maybe the thing they need to start with actually, is the people in Taiwan’s armed forces.

Because they’re treated very badly actually. Salaries are low, terms of services are horrible, there’s nothing like a GI bill, there’s really no long-term benefits, educational, medical housing etc., pension wise, their pensions have gotten cut in fact… so terms of service are terrible.

If you applied the Taiwan military terms of services to the U.S., you could probably reduce the size of U.S. forces by about two-thirds in an afternoon because they’re that bad. As a result, the Taiwan military doesn’t attract enough troops, it’s demoralized to some extent, but it’s just amazing it’s as professional as it is given that the people who do serve who have stuck around are just fine people. These are real patriots.

In the next excerpt, Newsham illuminates a “war without bullets” against Taiwan known as “Gray Zone Warfare.” This consists of attacks that fall just short of provoking a military response from Taiwan, but slowly undermine its strategic position. These can range from Chinese planes and ships buzzing close to Taiwanese territory to cause psychological intimidation, to economic and diplomatic pressure against Taiwan’s allies in the region, slowly degrading Taiwanese morale and will to fight:

Gray Zone activity [by a bad actor] handcuffs the opponent if the opponent believes in rules, international law and civilized behavior, you don’t know quite how to respond to it.

The Chinese have done this very well against the Japanese, next door, which is an interesting dynamic… one classic approach is to send 300-400 fishing boats into Japanese water, around Japanese islands to dare the Japanese to do something about it. Japan’s not going to go to war over fishing boats but they do find that they can’t handle it and it’s psychologically demoralizing… plus the Chinese show that any time we want we can do this again.

For more unique insights, click here to watch the full 1 hour interview. For Grant Newsham’s in-depth analysis of a potential conquest of Taiwan, see The Fall of Taiwan: Asia Goes Red—or at Least “Pinkens,” and to see him discuss these issues with fellow expert and Center Senior Fellow Stephen Bryen, click here.