Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs --
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Abstract
Taiwan stands at the center of great-power rivalry, confronting an increasingly belligerent China while navigating a security relationship with the United States. Yet amid the drumbeat of the People’s Liberation Army’s territorial incursions and Washington’s strategic hedging, Taiwan’s own defense policies remain an underexamined variable in the Indo-Pacific equation. This article dissects the island’s evolving military posture in recent decades, tracing its transformation from a Cold War–era force to one struggling to modernize and transform itself in the face of a growing Chinese military threat. It scrutinizes the conscription debate, the struggle to reconcile conventional and irregular defense postures, and the bureaucratic inertia that stymies many efforts at reform. It also addresses the gaps in threat perception between many in Taiwan’s defense establishment on the one hand, and foreign critics of Taiwan’s defense policies on the other, which fuel the competing arguments for either a more conventional or more asymmetric defense posture.
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China has grown increasingly aggressive toward Taiwan over the past five years, using both hostile rhetoric and menacing military activity, most notably large-scale and provocative exercises around the island. As a result, many international observers have focused attention on the growing capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Debate has also intensified over whether the United States should adjust its Taiwan policy in response to China’s actions, and whether the United States and other countries should support Taiwan in the event of a military attack.
Despite this extensive commentary, far less attention has been given to military developments and policy debates within Taiwan itself. Amid the changing threat environment in the Asia-Pacific region, the Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan) government and armed forces have themselves been engaged in an ongoing, iterative series of changes in defense policy—which have major implications for the island’s ability to mount an effective defense in the face of PRC aggression. This article provides an overview of the evolution of Taiwan’s own defense policy in recent years, highlighting ongoing and significant debates regarding the island’s defense strategy—which in turn inform vital decisions made by Taiwan’s civilian and military decision-makers regarding budgets, personnel policy, and force structure.
Legacy Trends in ROC Defense Policy
The Republic of China (ROC) armed forces, historically dominated by the ROC Army, emerged from the legacy of the Kuomintang (中國國民黨, KMT) party-state, with the ROC armed forces organized as a KMT party-army. This continued in the decades past the KMT regime’s retreat to Taiwan in 1949, with the officer corps of the military tied to the ruling party. The armed forces also played a direct political role, with the Taiwan Garrison Command (臺灣警備總司令部)—a military-controlled security and secret police agency—enforcing martial law, conducting surveillance on native Taiwanese, and suppressing dissidents.
Although martial law ended in 1987 and Taiwan transitioned to democracy in the late 1980s and 1990s, this history left a complicated legacy for civil-military relations. Tensions persist, particularly between the ROC armed forces and the Democratic Progressive Party (民主進步黨, DPP), whose founding members—many of them human rights activists and Taiwan independence supporters—were frequently targeted during the martial law era. These tensions worsened in 2018 when the DPP-led Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) administration, backed by the party’s Legislative Yuan majority, reduced military pension benefits.
The ROC armed forces also face legacy issues with an outdated organizational structure, originally shaped by heavy US influence during the early Cold War. Whether this structure was ever optimal for Taiwan’s defense remains debatable, and today, its effectiveness faces renewed scrutiny. Some critics have argued that Taiwan’s military should give a greater role to territorial defense and civil defense organizations, rather than adhering solely to legacy conventional force models.
The historical legacies of the ROC armed forces have also been the subject of criticism (including from this author) on the grounds of hide-bound command structures and unrealistic training. Despite adopting many outward aspects of US military structure, Taiwan’s armed forces have failed to integrate key elements of organizational culture—such as decentralized decision making and lower-echelon initiative—that make the US and Israeli militaries tactically superior. Instead, Taiwan’s command system remains rigid, more akin to the hierarchical, top-down structures seen in Russia and many Arab states.
Defense Policies Under the Chen and Ma Administrations
The early twenty-first century brought major changes to the ROC military’s force structure. Both the DPP-led Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) administration (2000–2008) and the KMT-led Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration (2008–2016) sought to reduce the size of the armed forces. Their motivations differed—Chen’s administration harbored distrust of the military’s KMT legacy, while Ma prioritized closer ties with Beijing—but both pursued a transition to an all-volunteer force and a smaller military. The KMT, however, pushed for a faster shift than the DPP.
During this period, Taiwan steadily reduced conscription, cutting mandatory service for young men—always deeply unpopular— from two years to one, and then from a year down to four months. The government also emphasized transferring primary operational duties to the active-duty force while integrating conscription more closely with the reserve system. This idea was captured in a slogan from the Chen administration: “The first-line force will rely on recruited troops; the reserve force will rely on conscripts” (常備部隊以募兵為主, 後備部隊以徵兵為主).
Chen’s defense policy also introduced the controversial “Decisive Battle Offshore” (决戰境外) strategy, which shifted emphasis away from ground forces in favor of air and naval power. This approach also encouraged the development of longer-range indigenous missile systems, and sparked unofficial discussions about striking Chinese military bases in the event of a conflict—or even targeting major infrastructure sites like the Three Gorges Dam as a deterrent strategy.
Ma’s administration rejected Chen’s doctrine in favor of what became widely known—at least in US defense policy circles—as the “Hard ROC” concept. This framework, as articulated by US Naval War College professor William Murray, emphasized “the asymmetrical advantage of being the defender” and championed a “porcupine strategy” to resist a Chinese attack:
Taiwan must rethink its defense strategies. Rather than trying to destroy incoming ballistic missiles with costly [surface-to-air missiles], Taiwan should harden key facilities and build redundancies into critical infrastructure and processes so that it could absorb and survive a long-range precision bombardment. Rather than relying on its navy and air force (neither of which is likely to survive such an attack) to destroy an invasion force, Taiwan should concentrate on development of a professional standing army armed with mobile, short-range, defensive weapons. To withstand a prolonged blockade, Taiwan should stockpile critical supplies and build infrastructure that would allow it to attend to the needs of its citizens unassisted for an extended period. Finally, Taiwan should eschew destabilizing offensive capabilities, which could include, in their extreme form, tactical nuclear weapons employed in a countervalue manner, or less alarmingly, long-range conventional weapons aimed against such iconic targets as the Three Gorges Dam.
Figure 1. Then-President Ma Ying-jeou meeting with personnel of the ROC Air Force 601st Brigade at a 2010 Lunar New Year reception, 13 February 2010. (Source: ROC Presidential Office, “中文（臺灣）：總統（馬英九）與陸軍航空601旅官兵代表會餐,”Wikimedia Commons, 13 February 2010, https://commons.wikimedia.org/.)
The Ma administration’s interpretation of the “Hard ROC” concept accelerated efforts to downsize the ROC armed forces and transition to an all-volunteer military. Under the “Courageous and Steadfast Program” (勇固案), the government aimed to cut nearly 100,000 personnel, targeting an end strength of 170,000 to 190,000 personnel. Plans also included streamlining command structures by reducing the number of flag-level officers (generals and admirals) while increasing pay and benefits. However, legislative resistance, and the higher costs of recruiting and maintaining an all-volunteer force, stalled many of these initiatives.
Both the Chen and Ma administrations also faced persistent challenges in relations with the United States, particularly over arms sales. The United States, then as now, remained Taiwan’s sole major arms supplier, despite intense pressure from Beijing to sever military ties. Political considerations frequently disrupted arms transfers, and the Bush and Obama administrations both delayed or withheld sales out of concern for the impact on relations with the PRC. The Bush Administration had a particularly frosty relationship with the Chen Administration, with the former sometimes viewing the latter as taking needlessly provocative actions in the cross-Strait realm. Furthermore, Taiwan’s own Legislative Yuan at times refused to fund purchases agreed upon by the executive branch.
Throughout this period, the absence of official diplomatic relations between the ROC and the United States compounded these issues. With much of US-Taiwan bilateral engagement centered on arms sales, strategic dialogue between the two remained limited—further deepening misalignments in defense policy at a time of mounting Chinese military threats.
Defense Policies under the Tsai Administration
The Tsai administration (2016–2024) implemented significant changes in defense policy amid escalating tensions with the PRC. Beijing labeled the Tsai administration—and the DPP more broadly—as “separatist” and severed official cross-Strait dialogues with Taiwan’s government. The PRC also intensified coercive military pressure against Taiwan, with 2020 and 2022 marking particularly significant benchmarks in such escalations.
In this environment, the Tsai administration prioritized strengthening unofficial relations with the United States—including closer defense ties—and with other Western countries, often invoking shared ideological values and promoting Taiwan’s status as part of the international democratic community. The administration benefited from a DPP majority in the Legislative Yuan, avoiding legislative gridlock that had hindered defense policy changes in prior administrations.
Tsai’s administration pursued measured but steady improvements in Taiwan’s military capabilities. The most significant developments occurred in three areas: defense budgets, conscription policies, and indigenous weapons production, as discussed below.
Increases in the Defense Budget
Taiwan’s annual defense budgets remained relatively stable from 2008 to 2019, dipping slightly in the early years of the Tsai administration in 2017–2018. However, defense spending rose considerably in 2020—a year marked both by the start of Tsai’s second term and by significantly increased pressure from the PRC. From 2019 to 2023, defense spending grew at an average estimated rate of nearly 5 percent per year, raising expenditures from 2 percent to 2.5 percent of GDP.
The baseline defense budget (主管預算) for 2024, announced in August 2023, totaled NTD 440.6 billion (approximately USD 13.8 billion)—a 7.7 percent increase from the 2023 budget and the seventh consecutive year of growth in defense spending. When including expenditures from supplemental defense budgets (特別預算), the overall planned budget for 2024 rose to NTD 606.8 billion (approximately USD 19.1 billion).
Figure 2. ROC Premier Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) (fifth from left, center) and other officials hold a press conference in Taipei (24 August 2023) to discuss the Tsai administration’s proposed budget for 2024. In the displayed pie chart, military expenditures (國防支) represent 15 percent of the overall government budget. (Source: “Taiwan's defense spending to reach record NTD$606.8 billion in 2024,” Focus Taiwan, 24 August 2023, https://focustaiwan.tw/.)
The Increase in Conscripted Military Service Obligations—and the Problem of Military Manpower
The issue of conscription has always been controversial in Taiwan, and the program of universal compulsory conscription for young men has long been unpopular. The previously mandated two-year period of military service was gradually reduced, ultimately shrinking to four months during the Ma administration. This abbreviated service became widely derided as a “summer camp” experience, offering little meaningful training and perceived as a waste of time for those who experienced it. Following this brief term of service, reservists were only required to attend five to seven days of refresher training every other year—a program broadly criticized as inadequate, and with deferments readily available. The absence of a robust conscription and reserve force management system fueled both domestic and foreign criticism, reinforcing the perception that Taiwan was not serious about its own defense.
In December 2022, the Tsai administration announced a policy to restore the length of male conscripted service to one year, effective in 2024. (This announcement, made ahead of an election year, proved controversial and may have cost the DPP support among young voters in the January 2024 elections—though the exact impact remains difficult to quantify.) The program commenced in January 2024, with plans to train 9,127 recruits over the year, with the majority (7,514) intended for service in the ROC Army. Interviews conducted by the author with interlocutors in Taiwan in late 2024 confirmed that approximately 9,000 conscripts had entered training that year. This relatively low figure, compared to the available pool of manpower, reflects the continued prevalence of deferments, particularly for higher education.
Announcements by the Ministry of National Defense (MND) in December 2022 and January 2024 emphasized that conscripted soldiers would primarily serve as “garrison troops” (守備部隊)—as distinct from the “main battle troops” (主戰部隊) of the volunteer force—and would focus on infrastructure protection and territorial defense. This division of roles echoes the Chen administration’s earlier slogan: “The first-line force will rely on recruited troops; the reserve force will rely on conscripts.” The messaging clearly aimed to reassure the public that conscripted soldiers would be assigned to less demanding or dangerous roles.
Despite these changes, the adjustments to conscription policies, though necessary and overdue, are unlikely to resolve the military’s chronic undermanning problem. As of 2023, Taiwan’s armed forces were authorized 215,000 personnel billets, but only about 169,000 had been filled by volunteer troops. An MND report to the legislature in May 2024 revealed that the armed forces’ staffing rate stood at 89 percent in 2020 and 88% in 2021, but fell to 80 percent in both 2022 and 2023. Some commentators suspect that the shortfall is even more severe within the “main battle troops” combat units, which would bear the brunt of any conflict.
This manpower shortage poses a quiet but serious crisis for the ROC armed forces, especially as the threat from the PRC continues to grow. While Taiwan’s low birthrate contributes to the problem, a deeper cultural issue exacerbates it: the military’s low social status and the general lack of enthusiasm among Taiwan’s youth for military service. Addressing these underlying perceptions remains a formidable challenge for Taiwan’s defense establishment.
Figure 3. “Good Men Fight Together to Protect Our Home”—a 2023 government-produced graphic promoting the new one-year conscription policy. The graphic lists the four broad categorizations of service for military personnel under the new plan: “main battle troops” (for the volunteer, active-duty force), “garrison troops” (one-year service conscripts), the “reserve system,” and the “civil defense system.” (Source: Image source: ROC Executive Yuan, 16 January 2023, https://www.ey.gov.tw/.)
Indigenous Weapons Production and Shipbuilding
Taiwan remains dependent on the United States as its sole supplier for several advanced weapons systems. This dependency has complicated Taiwan’s defense planning in recent decades, particularly when proposed purchases were either denied or delayed due to political considerations in both Washington and Taipei—a pattern evident during the Chen and Ma administrations. Although many of these political obstacles eased during the Tsai and Trump administrations, with more open arms sales policies continuing under the Biden administration, a significant backlog remains. As of April 2024, the estimated value of undelivered US weapons to Taiwan stood at $19.7 billion, including major items such as the delivery of 66 F-16V fighter aircraft.
While US arms sales have continued, the Tsai administration’s military budgets and procurement plans accelerated a shift toward greater indigenous production. One of the most notable examples was a special budget allocation—separate from the baseline defense budget—introduced in autumn 2021. The “Sea-Air Combat Power Improvement Plan Purchase Special Regulations” (海空戰力提升計畫採購特別條例), presented to the Legislative Yuan in October 2021, provided for a five-year supplemental budget of NTD 240 billion (approximately USD 8.6 billion). This amount was slightly more than half the projected baseline defense budget of NTD 471.7 billion (USD 16.9 billion) for 2022. Most of the supplemental budget supported the production of indigenous antiship and antiaircraft missile systems, as well as domestic naval shipbuilding.
Indigenous shipbuilding has also become a major focus of Taiwan’s defense planning in recent years. The most prominent effort has been Taiwan’s accelerated program to produce domestically manufactured diesel submarines under the “Hai Chang Program” (海昌計畫), launched in 2016. The prototype vessel’s manufacturer estimated its cost at NTD 49.3 billion (approximately USD 1.6 billion), with the Hai Kun (海鯤) intended as the first of eight planned submarines. The Hai Kun was launched in early 2024, with sea trials expected to begin in April 2025.
However, this high-profile—and costly—program is only one part of Taiwan’s broader domestic shipbuilding initiatives for the ROC Navy. Less publicized but equally significant are ongoing efforts to produce smaller, more mobile surface combatants. This includes the production of the Tuo Chiang (沱江) class of 685-ton guided missile patrol craft (PGGs), designed to counter larger vessels with indigenously developed Hsiung Feng (HF, 雄風) HF-II and HF-III antiship cruise missiles (ASCM). As of autumn 2024, six Tuo Chiang-class vessels had entered service, with a total of 11 scheduled for delivery by 2026.
Figure 4. Then-President Tsai Ing-wen poses with shipbuilding personnel and ROC Navy personnel of the newly-formed 256th Submarine Squadron crew to commemorate the launch of Taiwan’s first indigenously-built submarine, the Hai Kun, 28 September 2023. (Source: Image source: ROC Presidential Office, “總統主持「潛艦國造原型艦命名暨下水典禮」,” Wikimedia Commons, 28 September 2023, https://commons.wikimedia.org/. For discussion of the 256th Submarine Squadron, see: “Navy Forms Unit for New Sub: Source,” Taipei Times, 13 July 2023, https://www.taipeitimes.com/.)
The Direction of Defense Policy under Lai Ching-te
While it is too early to fully assess the defense policies of the Lai Ching-te (賴清德) administration, which took office in May 2024, significant continuity with the preceding eight years of the Tsai administration appears likely. At the same time, the Lai administration has shown a reformist streak, exemplified by the appointment of Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄). As a civilian—an encouraging sign for reform in a position historically dominated by retired generals—Koo announced plans in early June to modernize training practices, including the elimination of archaic legacy practices such as bayonet drills and goose-step marching for recruits and military cadets.
The Lai administration’s first year in defense policy has largely focused on two major issues. The first is an emphasis on civil defense and efforts to enhance coordination between government agencies and civil society groups, particularly in areas such as logistical support and emergency medical care. This focus materialized most visibly in the creation of the “Whole of Society Defense Resilience Committee” (全社會防衛韌性委員會, WSDRC) under the National Security Council (國家安全會議). The WSDRC aims to “serve as a platform for social participation, a bridge for social communication, and an engine for policy effectiveness” by fostering collaboration between government and civil society. Comprising 27 representatives from both government agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGO), the committee has convened twice so far—in September and December 2024.
Figure 5. Taiwan’s current president, Lai Ching-te (himself a former doctor), takes part in a civil society disaster response drill (November 24, 2024). The Lai administration has emphasized civil defense preparedness as a significant element of its overall national security policy. (Source: Image source: TaiwanPlus News, “President Lai Attends Taiwan Civil Defense Training Amid Threats from China,” YouTube, 24 November 2024, https://www.youtube.com/.)
President Lai has invested considerable political capital in the WSDRC and the broader push for civil society preparedness, even making personal appearances at civil defense and disaster relief training events. Despite these efforts, the initiative remains in its early stages and faces considerable challenges. Those familiar with the WSDRC’s initial meetings have noted only limited progress in improving government–NGO coordination. Nonetheless, the effort represents a critical step toward leveraging civil society’s capabilities to support government responses in the event of an invasion or other major crisis—a concept inspired, in part, by the effective mobilization of civil society in Ukraine following the Russian invasion.
The second major issue has been the ongoing controversy surrounding the defense budget. Following the Tsai administration’s pattern of steadily increasing defense spending, President Lai has called for further budgetary expansion. At a press conference on 14 February 2025, Lai pledged to raise Taiwan’s defense spending from approximately 2.5 percent to more than 3 percent of GDP, stating that his administration would “prioritize special budget allocations” to achieve this goal. This language suggests a willingness to pursue supplemental budgets—similar to the Tsai administration’s “Sea-Air Combat Power Improvement Plan Purchase Special Regulations” of autumn 2021—rather than relying solely on the standard defense budget process.
However, as of late February 2025, the defense budget—and the broader government budget—remains stalled due to a political standoff between the Lai administration and the legislature. Unlike the Tsai administration, which benefited from a DPP majority in the legislature, the Lai administration now faces an opposition-controlled legislature. Following the January 2024 elections, an alliance between the KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party holds a majority and has rejected the administration’s proposed budget. The opposition has instead pushed a plan to reallocate significant funds from the central government to local administrations—a move that would severely constrain defense spending. The future direction of the Lai administration’s defense policies will depend heavily on its ability to negotiate a budget agreement with the opposition. For now, the path forward remains uncertain.
Continuing Controversies and Challenges in Taiwan’s Defense Orientation
Amid ongoing debates over defense policy, Taiwan’s defense establishment continues to face criticism from both international and domestic observers, who argue that the country’s defense preparations remain insufficient given the threat posed by the PRC. These critiques unfold against the backdrop of increasingly provocative “gray zone” military operations conducted by the PRC—actions that have, in turn, sharpened debates over Taiwan’s optimal defense strategy, driven by differing assessments of its most urgent security challenges.
Debates over Defense Strategy and Force Structure
Taiwan’s defense establishment has faced sustained criticism for several years, particularly from foreign observers—primarily in the United States—who argue that the island has neither allocated resources commensurate with the threat posed by the PRC, nor applied those resources effectively. Critics contend that Taiwan has overinvested in traditional, big-ticket conventional systems—such as ships, tanks, and aircraft—at the expense of more “asymmetric” capabilities, like highly mobile antiship missile systems, that could more effectively disrupt a hostile invasion force.
The case for a dramatic shift in Taiwan’s defense posture was advanced by former ROC Chief of General Staff Admiral Lee Hsi-min (李喜明), who served from 2017 to 2019. Lee promoted the “Overall Defense Concept” (ODC, 整體防禦概念) as a framework for Taiwan’s military strategy. The ODC emphasized force preservation, prioritized warfare in the littoral zone—the sea lanes leading to Taiwan, and its landing beaches—and called for the development of asymmetric capabilities to offset the ROC military’s growing resource disadvantages relative to the PLA. Central to this approach was a focus on smaller, dispersible, and more mobile platforms—implicitly advocating less reliance on larger, more vulnerable systems that might not survive a sustained PLA strike campaign. After his retirement, Lee went even further, proposing the creation of a militia-like territorial defense force for Taiwan.
These ideas have gained considerable traction in US defense policy circles but have encountered strong resistance within Taiwan’s defense establishment. The ODC’s proposals clash with long-standing institutional culture, bureaucratic interests, and prevailing threat perceptions regarding the most significant dangers to Taiwan’s security. Following Lee’s departure, the ODC quickly lost momentum, and more traditional concepts returned to the MND’s policy documents and official discourse.
The MND’s current officially articulated military strategy, as outlined in the 2021 edition of Taiwan’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR, 四年期國防總檢討), is “Resolute Defense and Multi-Domain Deterrence” (防衛固守，重層嚇阻). According to the English edition of the QDR, “resolute defense” seeks to “ensure the security of our [command and control] nodes, critical assets, and critical information infrastructure, and improve our force protection and preservation.” “Multi-domain deterrence,” the second pillar of the strategy, employs “joint capabilities to deter the enemy’s aggression in multiple domains. . . . If the enemy launched [an] attack to invade Taiwan, our guiding principles [are] to ‘resist the enemy on the opposite shore, attack it at sea, destroy it in the littoral area, and annihilate it on the beachhead’ . . . so as to ultimately defeat its aggression.”
Figure 6. A graphic displaying areas for Taiwan’s armed forces to engage in “strengthening resilience of resolute defense” and “enhancing multi-domain deterrence,” as depicted in a graphic from the ROC National Defense Report 2023. (Source: ROC National Defense Report 2023 [Taipei: ROC Ministry of National Defense, September 2023], 64, https://www.mnd.gov.tw/.)
To foreign critics of this strategy—including this author—“Resolute Defense and Multi-Domain Deterrence” is too vague and all-encompassing a strategy, lacking clear prioritization. It seems to advocate confronting the PLA across all domains without a focused allocation of effort or resources. This approach risks violating the principle famously articulated by Frederick the Great: “He who defends everything, defends nothing.”
Differing Perspectives in Threat Perception
Differences in institutional culture and interests account for much of the gap in attitudes between Taiwan’s defense planners and foreign critics pressing for rapid change. However, a significant factor underlying these contrasting views—particularly regarding the push for asymmetry versus a more conventional approach—lies in differing threat perceptions. Much of the US defense discourse on Taiwan (which dominates foreign commentary) focuses on the threat of a full-scale invasion. In such a scenario, Taiwan’s conventional force structure could face swift destruction, making mobile and survivable asymmetric forces—as well as a citizen militia defense force—appear more practical than investing in larger platforms like ships and planes.
Conversely, both Taiwan’s official defense documents and discussions with defense officials highlight a greater concern with PRC actions short of outright invasion. These concerns encompass gray-zone (灰色地帶) operations, “cognitive warfare” (認知戰) aimed at undermining public morale, and the threat of a blockade. For instance, the ROC National Defense Report 2021 (中華民國110年國防報告書)—a biennial publication by the MND that assesses Taiwan’s threat environment and defense strategies—articulates these priorities, reflecting a defense posture shaped by a broader spectrum of PRC coercive tactics:
In recent years, the gray zone threats frequently posed by the PRC on us are highly diversified and orchestrated generally through [both] military and non-military approaches. The military approaches can be explained by PRC military planes’ frequent intrusions into the southwestern corner of our Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ)… while the non-military approaches [are] PRC speedboats’ ramming our coast guard vessels and its sand pump dredgers’ illegal operations in our neighboring waters. These approaches have normally exploited the limbo between peace and war… The PRC is… gradually escalat[ing] the threat level by manipulating these salami tactics, and is using its political and military power to shape a posture to its advantage… [with intent] to alter or challenge the status quo in the Taiwan Strait to ultimately achieve its goal of “seizing Taiwan without a fight.”
Similarly, the 2023 edition of the ROC National Defense Report places greater emphasis on these problems than it does to an invasion—devoting, for example, eight pages to the issues of “normalized harassment and incursions” and cognitive warfare conducted by the PRC. These concerns differ fundamentally from the prospect of a full-scale cross-channel invasion, which has typically shaped the primary focus of defense policy analysts in Washington. This divergence in thinking between Washington and Taipei is crucial: if an invasion by a more powerful adversary constitutes the primary threat, then a mobile, asymmetrically oriented force is necessary; however, if territorial gray-zone incursions pose the primary threat, then a more conventionally oriented force capable of competing in that territorial space makes more sense.
Conclusions: A Shift Toward a Hybrid Defense Strategy for Taiwan?
However, some signs indicate a gradual convergence between the two perspectives. This shift has occurred as foreign audiences develop a deeper understanding of the PRC’s coercive gray-zone operations and subversive political warfare against Taiwan, and as audiences in Taiwan have grown more attentive to the prospect of an actual invasion following Russia’s 2022 attack on Ukraine. ROC Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim reflected this concern in June 2024 remarks at Chatham House, stating, “We are learning from Ukraine’s defence, where smaller combat forces have proven nimble and adaptable.”
This gradual shift is also evident in MND documents. For example, the 2023 edition of the ROC National Defense Report includes a section titled “Achieving Multi-Domain Deterrence Through Applying the Thinking of Asymmetrical Operations,” which states:
Based on concept of Taiwan defense operation [sic] and lessons learned from the Russo-Ukraine war, the Armed Forces will ensure command, control, surveillance and reconnaissance functions and fighting capabilities with enhanced mobility, dispersion, concealment, redundant and decentralized command during the course of operation[s]. Using [an] “eluding its strength and exploiting its weakness” asymmetric approach, it will monitor obvious indicators of enemy invasion and preemptively strike its mobilizing invasion forces and centers [of] gravity to disrupt its operational tempo and delay its actions… During [the] enemy’s most vulnerable straitcrossing phase, helped by Taiwan Strait geographical advantages, [we] will further reduce enemy strength by attack it [sic] with “mobile, long-range, precision” sea-tolerant high performance naval vessels, mobile anti-ship missile launchers and unmanned vehicles.
While still somewhat broad and vague, this concept of operations appears to shift further toward the asymmetric approach advocated by both foreign critics and domestic mavericks such as Admiral Lee. A move toward a hybrid strategy—one that balances a force-on-force conventional posture with a David-versus-Goliath asymmetric approach—is also evident in Taiwan’s indigenous naval production of submarines and light, mobile surface combatants. However, many questions remain about how these platforms and concepts might be operationalized in concrete terms, and to what extent aspirational statements of doctrine must contend with bureaucratic interests and inertia.
As Taiwan faces an escalating threat from a revanchist and imperialistic PRC, the choices it makes in shaping its force structure and defense strategy will be critical to the survival of both its de facto independence and its democratic society. A robust debate on these issues has taken place within Taiwan itself, and defense officials in the United States and elsewhere would do well to develop a deeper understanding of these trends and competing ideas as they formulate their own policies to promote peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region.
John Dotson
Mr. Dotson is the deputy director at the Global Taiwan Institute in Washington, DC. He has served previously as a US Navy officer, as a staff member of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, and as an editor of the Jamestown Foundation’s publication China Brief. John has performed extensive writing and research on a range of political and national security issues related to US policy in East Asia, including Chinese propaganda and united front work, elite politics within the Chinese Communist Party, military-civil fusion efforts within the People’s Liberation Army, and Taiwan defense policy. He is a proficient Mandarin linguist, who has performed extensive original research in indigenous Chinese language sources. John holds an MA in National Security Studies (with “highest distinction”) from the US Naval War College, and a Master of International Public Policy from Johns Hopkins–SAIS.
Notes