Is Taiwan's referendum fever bad?

So I've received a few e-mails from concerned readers recently asking about my view of the 'U.N.' referendum situation. Although there was some variation across e-mails, the main thrust of each was essentially: "Now that the U.S. has labelled the referendum a 'mistake,' will Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian go through with it? Is there a chance the Kuomintang will intervene?

The answer to those questions is unfortunately yes and no. President Chen has demonstrated before that he is willing to beat the independence drum to garner votes from the activist wing of his Democratic Progressive Party, even when such actions only wound the cross-strait relationship further. It appears that the DPP leadership will continue to embrace this tactic, as evidenced by the party platform they recently crafted for the 2008 elections.

In terms of KMT intervention, the situation is far more complex. The members of the panel charged with implementing referendum questions are apportioned according to party representation in the Legislative Yuan. Since the KMT leads a coalition that has a legislative majority, they have an procedural veto. They have already used this veto to throw out a more inflammatory referendum question about whether the nation should seek U.N. membership under the name 'Taiwan.'

The problem is that pursuing membership in international organizations, particularly those that do not require de jure sovereignty, is quite popular. KMT leaders understand that they can't not put that issue to a vote now that it has been raise by the DPP. As a result, they moved to water down the language of the referendum question. It currently reads:

Do you agree on Taiwan's using a practical and flexible name to apply for reentering the U.N. as well as joining other international organizations? In other words, do you agree on Taiwan applying for reentering the U.N. and other international organizations under the name of Republic of China, Taiwan, or any other name that would be helpful both to the U.N. bid and to maintaining Taiwan's dignity?

The only way to make that question any more confusing is to offer voters a 'GTFO' option in addition to the more traditional 'Yes' and 'No' choices.

This watered down language will temporarily inflame nationalism on the mainland, strain relations with the United States and increase the political divide between pan-Green and pan-Blue. With a bit of luck, it will only take a few months for the Taiwan situation will drift back into the equilibrium it has occupied off-and-on since 2000.

In the meantime, grey hairs will continue to proliferate at that Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs as things ramp up to the vote in March.

AEGIS to Taiwan, not a stretch

The top story at TaiwanSecurity.org a few days ago was about possible Taiwanese plans to buy AEGIS cruisers of the U.S.:

Taiwan wants to buy at least six Aegis-equipped destroyers from the United States at a cost of more than $4.6 billion, a newspaper said on Monday, a plan sure to anger China which claims the island as its own.

The United Daily News quoted unnamed sources as saying Deputy Defense Minister Ko Cheng-heng and Chief of the General Staff Chen Yung-kang would travel to the United States this month to try to secure the deal.

The defense ministry declined to comment.

The navy could eventually buy an additional two destroyers after the initial six depending on the circumstances, the newspaper said.

The Aegis air defense radar and weapons system is capable of tracking and attacking dozens of missiles, aircraft and ships all at once.

The United States, the island's main arms supplier, in 2001 put off a request from Taipei to buy four Arleigh Burke-class destroyers equipped with the Aegis system, but kept the option open should China pose a sufficient threat.

Sudden announcements of Taiwanese intent to purchase major arms packages from the U.S. is certainly not unheard of. The Armchair Admiral over at Information Dissemination is correct to greet this news with a healthy dose of skepticism. He is also right to point out that the Navy doesn't exactly have surplus Arleigh-Burkes to sell the Taiwanese.

Normally, I would agree with the assessment that this AEGIS announcement is just another example of Taiwanese politicians playing politics with their defense budget. Not on this though. I think the Taiwanese want to get their hands on two of the four U.S. Block I AEGIS cruisers stationed in the Pacific. Armchair Admiral dismisses them because they have been reconfigured for ballistic missile defense, but I would argue that is the core reason for Taiwanese interest in the ships.

What is my basis for defying conventional wisdom? A conversation that emerged during a Presidential Management Fellows job interview I had at the Missile Defense Agency. Here is a rough dramatization of the conversation:

Robot Economist: So what would you think is the major drawback of working for the MDA? The political sensitivity of the work?

Female MDA Official With Too Much Eye Shadow: That is problematic to a certain extent, but right now, I would say being BRAC'd to Huntsville. We've been having trouble keeping young people who want to stay in the DC area.

RE: Are you going to staff any embassies or international field offices? Possibly some in Asia?

FMDAWTMES: Yes, we definitely will. The only one we have planned for the Pacific will be in Taipei.

RE: Wait, you mean Tokyo, right? The Japanese should get one since they are going to be such a big partner.

FMDAWTMES: No, I meant Taipei, in Taiwan.

After stifling a double-take, I let the issue drop -- but as you can imagine, those words have been stuck in the back of my mind for months. I can't find any specific evidence to support this odd conversation, but this March 2006 briefing by MDA chief Lt. General Trey Obering does indicate that Taiwan is on their radar (pardon the pun).

This is one thing that I am definitely going to keep my eye one.

New DoD report on China's military. (Yawn)

The Office of the Secretary of Defense published its 2007 Annual Report to Congress on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China. As you might expect, the report confirms that the People's Liberation Army is still pursuing a standard modernization strategy -- better command and control, more precise and longer range weapons, better space assets, etc. There are also references to PLA interest in asymmetrical capabilities, with the typical mention of cyberwar (i.e. digital attack), as well as a few paragraphs tying January's ASAT test into the Navy's beloved "anti-access" theme.

The report does has have two points that I found particularly interesting:

1. DF-31 goes ITA -- If you're my age, you were in high school when the Intelligence Community developed the idea of "initial threat availability." It was the IC's response to the 1998 Rumsfeld Commission Report's apt criticism that their existent analytical approach to missile threat estimation relied too heavily on past patterns of missile development. As time passed, it appeared that the Rumsfeld Commission's fear of rampant "at any cost" missile proliferation was overblown, so the idea has mostly gathered dust on a self somewhere -- that is until the afternoon of Friday, May 23.

In a bit of classical bureaucratic salami-slicing, the DoD pulled out the term to punt on the question of when China will actually field the DF-31s. According the report implies that the Chinese tested the DF-31 sometime in 2006, but they do not have all of the support equipment, personnel and command systems in place to support the missile. I vaguely remember a missile test in the Ghobi last year, but I can't pinpoint the time frame -- I'll do some digging.

2. Shock and awe is alive and well in Beijing -- It seems that the U.S. military experience in Iraq has done little to tarnish China's interest in cultivating network-centric warfare capabilities. The PLA's book on Joint Space War Campaigns even mentions the idea of "shock and awe" preemption as a form of deterrence (bottom of page 21).

It appears that the U.S. experience in Iraq hasn't caused the Chinese to question the value of either concept. The report even calls this issue out in terms of China's deterrence posture towards Taiwan (box at the top of page 33). What would China do if it couldn't compel the Taiwanese government with its missiles and "non-war" operations? Even if it had the assets to launch a successful amphibious invasion, a native insurgency would grind their land forces up (subtext: especially if it was U.S.-sponsored).

Update: Tequila, Yathrib and a few of my readers have taken issue with my musings about insurgency in a hypothetical post-invasion Taiwan. If one assumes (1) that the invasion is a unilateral move by the mainland and (2) it takes 3-6 months for the PLA to control the entire island, I see the following factors contributing to insurgency:

1. A history of divise sectarian rule -- Taiwan has been a democracy for less than a decade. Before then, it was a repressive, corporatist oligarchy run by mainlander elites. I can see any attempt by the Kuomintang to cozy up with the People's Republic ripping open the social and political wounds between the mainlanders, Fujianese and Hakka that are only now healing. In a sense, the political divisions Tequila mentions would serve a predicate for resistance and potential sectarian violence -- all it would take is another 228.

2. The training and materiel is already there -- True, commercial access to guns and explosives in Taiwan is limited, but then again, I imagine they weren't widely available in Iraq prior to 2003 either. The intervening variable here is Taiwan's 1.3 million reservists and their access to the Taiwanese military's stockpile of weapons and explosives. I am seriously skeptical of the Bush administration's assertion that Iran needs to supply the Iraqi insurgency when 7 million tons of materiel was pilfered from the Iraqi military's depots. The same situation could easily come to fruition in Taiwan, especially when PLA tanks start rolling down the streets of Taipei and Kaohsiung.

3. The PLA's slow invasion -- The PLAN's amphibious assault capabilities are pretty limited, so I doubt they could achieve the same kind of maneuver that got us into Baghdad so quickly. PRC rule on Taiwan would not be a sudden fait accompli for the government, businesses or localities. The government would have time to distribute arms. Failing that, an extended lapse in public security could seriously undermine public confidence in governance like it did in Iraq.

This was merely an intellectual exercise designed to challenge the potential assumptions of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. It is by no means definitive or likely, but I would argue it is strong possibility with significant consequences for the mainland and Taiwan.

Second Update: I doff my hat to Tequila for all of his great comments. I'm glad to see that someone else is still interested in Taiwanese politics and society.

Translation: France provided nuclear assistance to Taiwan in the 1970s, according to secret British document

There was an interesting article in the Nikkei on friday about French involvement in Taiwanese nuclear development. Taiwan began developing nuclear weapons in 1967, just three years after the People's Republic's first successful nuclear test at Lop Nor in 1964. The program apparently continued apace even after Taiwan lost its United Nations Security Council seat and diplomatic recognition around most of the world in 1971. Taipei publicly bowed to U.S. pressure to end their weapons development program in 1976 when Chiang Ching-Guo announced it would stop reprocessing plutonium at Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology's Institute of Nuclear Energy Research (INER). Despite this public statement, the Taiwanese secretly continued nuclear development for another decade. After a high-level defection to the U.S. and being caught violating their safegaurds by the IAEA, Taiwan finally dismantled their only pressurized heavy water reactor in 1988. Since Taiwan did not have the indigenous physical or intellectual resources needed for a nuclear program, it had to go fishing far and wide for assistance. The extent of foreign involvement is pretty well know thanks to the efforts of groups like NTI, FAS, and the National Security Archive, but apparently the British have more to say on the subject: France provided nuclear assistance to Taiwan in the 1970s, according to secret British documents December 29, 2006

Secret documents declassified by the National Archives of the United Kingdom on the 29th of December revealed that France supported Taiwanese facilities used to reprocess nuclear fuel into weapons grade uranium when Taiwan had an active nuclear weapons program in the 1970s. The UK considered the possibility of providing limited assistance to the Taiwanese nuclear program, but ultimately decided against it. Antognized by the advent of Mainland China's nuclear arsenal, Taiwan attempted a crash nuclear weapons program, but the U.S. pressured Taipei into ending the program because of the impact it would have on its relations with China and the cross-strait military balance. Since the U.S. would not provide positive cooperation, there was evidence that the European nuclear powers Britain and France might if their support was sought. [ed. That is one messy passive sentence in Japanese] Although the details of France's support are not known, it was possible for the French to broach the subject because they were not a party to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty at the time (France didn't sign until 1992). [ed. Taiwan was effectively expelled from the NPT when the People's Republic of China took Taipei's seat at the United Nationsin 1971] According to the secret documents, a May 1974 Joint Intelligence Committee meeting of representatives from all of Britain's intelligence agencies drew up a report that expressed its doubts about the Taiwan's nuclear development. Then Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who read this report, asked the Foreign and Commonwealth Office if an offer of materials used for nuclear weapons development would be a violation of the NPT. In a report regarding French support to Taiwan, the FCO response was "The exporting nuclear materials is possible." Prime Minister Wilson reportly conveyed a concen that "Taiwanese acquisition of nuclear weapons would invite the risk of global instability." Then Foreign Secretary James Callaghan said to the Prime Minister in March 1976 that the UK must follow through on Taiwanese expressions of interest in importing British nuclear materials and technology because it was possible to arrange a deal that would not result in proliferation. Wilson responded doubtfully, "Are the Secretary's ideas really prudent?" Soon after, James Callaghan became Prime Minister. In April of 1976, he stated that Britain "should not make any deal with Taiwan that would further their nuclear weapons program in any way," which marked a fundamental shift in his position.

I've been digging around the UK National Archives website , but I haven't had much luck finding the documents that the article references - it may take a while for the documents to be promulgated online. I had a little trouble getting the last sentence in the second to last paragraph to work in English, so I'd like to see if my translation is even close to what actually happened. Interestingly enough, I haven't found analogous articles about this revelation in either British or English-language Taiwanese new sources. If any of my Francophone readers happen to find something in the French media on this topic.