The real reason why
Taiwan should not purchase more defensive weapons from the United
States is that right now no weapon would be able to truly effectively
defend this island, if China really wants to launch a vicious attack.
An island located just about 100 miles off the southeast coast
of China, Taiwan is just way too close to the mainland to be
defended. It is extremely vulnerable to all kinds of
devastating attack from the mainland. The expensive weapons
Taiwanese military leaders trying to acquire would be white elephants
once war broke out.
One of the biggest
fallacies of those who believe that purchasing more sophisticated
defensive weapons from the United States could help defend this
island, is that most of them tend to assume automatically that if
there is a war on Taiwan strait, China would send its most
technologically advanced weapons such as newly developed fighter jets
and the navy's guided missile destroyers to the war zones in order to
defeat Taiwanese air force and navy, therefore, Taiwan needs new
weapons to counterbalance what PLA has or even counterattack if a war
broke out. More often than not they failed to recognize that the
Chinese decision makers are not a group of idiots. If they really
want to solve Taiwan issue by taking military actions, then there
will be plenty of options available on the table, why do they have to
take the risk having its expensive fighter jets or destroyers do the
job in the first wave of attack?
Because of the
geographical location, China definitely would consider choosing the
strategies with the lowest risk and the highest reward to attack
Taiwan. For example, recently China has successfully developed a
long-range rocket which could attack targets 100+ miles away.
With that long range, the rockets could attack almost every inch of
this island. Sure the accuracy of the long-range rockets is
certainly not as good as that of the ballistic missiles. But these
long-range rockets are much, much cheaper than ballistic missiles and
can be made massively in short period of time. If launched in huge
quantity, these rockets would cause unbelievably enormous damage of
the targets they attacked. With this low cost, low risk and high
reward way of attacking option available, China has no reason to
consider picking any other options to get the job done.
Suppose in the
first wave of attack, China fired countless long-range rockets to
attack Taiwan's power plants, petroleum refinery plants, major ports,
major airports, and air bases in order to paralyze the island's most
important infrastructure, then what measures Taiwan could take to
stop these rockets from attacking the island's lifelines? The
answer to that question is nothing. If Taiwan's power plants and
petroleum plants got destroyed in the first wave of attack, then
everything in Taiwan would stop functioning immediately. The whole
island would be in a huge,huge chaos. Even if Taiwan has over 1000
sophisticated fight jets such as F-16 C/D or even more expensive
F-15, 5000 M1A2 Abrams battle tanks, 2000 Apache attack helicopter as
well as the most advanced anti-ballistic missile systems, and so
what? These weapons would look like the most costly white
elephants.
In the past five
decades, China was just about a mid-sized country in terms of its
economy and its military strength, if not counting its nuclear strike
capability. The 100-mile-wide Taiwan strait has become a natural
barrier to keep the Chinese troops from crossing since 1949. Under
the U.S. protection, Taiwan was lucky enough to take advantage of
this opportunity to smoothly develop its own economy. During that
period of time, other than some skirmishes, there was not much China
could do to launch a major war to successfully attack and seize
Taiwan, therefore, the weapons Taiwanese troops acquired mainly from
the U.S. were seemingly sufficient to defend this island.
But the situation
in the 21th century obviously has changed. On the one
hand, the relative power of the U.S. to do whatever it wants is
clearly diminished. The U.S. global influence, accordingly, is on
the decline. Whether the Americans are still able to protect Taiwan like
they did in the past 50 years is absolutely questionable. On the other hand, with its overall
strength continuing to rise dramatically, China has been financially
and technologically capable of modernizing its armed forces by leaps
and bounds and could attack and seize Taiwan in many, many ways. It
shouldn't be difficult for most people in Taiwan to figure out that
it's not an issue of whether or not they are capable of doing that.
It's an issue of when and how will they do that to take Taiwan back.
Now, whether or not
Taiwan should buy very expensive defensive weapons from the United
States should no longer focus on whether these new weapons could be
used to help defend this island from China's attack. Because they
couldn't. It should, instead, focus on whether the new weapons
could make Taiwanese soldiers feel safer and more comfortable than
ever before when operating them. If outdated weapons could lead to
big safety or health or environment issues to Taiwanese troops and
people living on this island, then I wouldn't disagree to buy some
new weapons to replace the old ones to help save lives.
Besides, if the
Taiwanese government is under a certain amount of pressure,
purchasing some of these weapons could make the American government
and American arms dealers happy, then we can sit down and talk about
it and see what we can do to “help them out”. Under this
scenario, I also would agree to buy some selected items of weapons to
keep them quiet a little bit. But if those who insist that buying these
expensive arms could help defend the attack from the mainland, then
let's forget about it. It's a joke. It's farce. It's all BS,
because no weapon can help defend Taiwan, if the attack is from
China. Keep in mind that other than the very, very scary and brutal
long-range rocket attack, the leaders in Beijing still could figure
out many other ways to attack and seize this island, if they really
want to do so.
--雙楡
字體：小 中 大
