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Training & simulation Tension over Taiwan
As hostilities between China and the US heat up over the future of Taiwan, questions remain on how Taiwan’s allies can best help it prepare for future conflict on its shores. A key case study might well be the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. Nicholas Kenny speaks with Dr Jerad Harper, a retired US Army colonel and associate professor at the US Army
War College, to discuss the impact that Ukrainian training and preparedness has had on the war with Russia, and what Taiwan and China will have learned from this conflict.
hile much of the world’s focus has been firmly fixed on Ukraine over the past year or so, the war against Russia isn’t the only conflict at play between a major world power and a much smaller nation. Located at the junction in the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, Taiwan has seen China’s rhetoric turn increasingly hostile over the past year, even as war in Eastern Europe rages on. Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan on 2 August 2022, back when she was still US Speaker of the House, served to enflame tensions further, seeing an end to China-US cooperation on key issues like the climate crisis, anti-drug efforts and military talks. In response, Taiwan has taken decisive action. On 27 December 2022, President Tsai Ing-wen increased mandatory military service for the nation’s male population from four months to one year – and, crucially, directed her defence officials to embrace the training methods used by the US. As Dr Jerad Harper notes, it’s not enough to just obtain the best military systems they can get from the West – Taiwan needs to be able to use them effectively.
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An associate professor at the US Army War College and retired US Army colonel, Harper sees these types of measures as vital steps forward for the Taiwan’s deterrence efforts. Year-long conscription, which will begin in 2024, will increase the size of the nation’s
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active military force – currently some 170,000 strong – by 60–70,000 annually by 2027. That could be a key year, as a number of military experts believe China will launch an invasion by this point, including retired US Admiral Philip Davidson, the former commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command. Training, however, will play just as much a role as increased manpower, and Taiwan has long been desperately in need of overhauling its systems in this area.
Lessons from Europe However, if Taiwan is to overhaul its training efforts, then it needs to learn some key lessons from other nations in similar positions, Harper points out – most notably from the way in which the US and its Nato allies worked to build multinational training cooperation with Ukraine ahead of the current conflict, and with the Baltic nations before it.
Back in the ‘90s, the Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – had just shed the Soviet yoke and were looking to build their own militaries, which made them very receptive to US and Nato entreaties. They entered the world with the existential threat of Russian expansion on their borders from day one, and they had to build from the ground up. It was immediately apparent, however, that their focus couldn’t just be on purchasing weapons systems from the west – due the
Defence & Security Systems International /
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