The Biden administration’s push for Taiwan to order missiles and smaller arms for asymmetric warfare has gained urgency since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Biden administration is quietly pressing the Taiwanese government to order American-made weapons that would help its small military repel a seaborne invasion by China rather than weapons designed for conventional set-piece warfare, current and former U.S. and Taiwanese officials say. The U.S. campaign to shape Taiwan’s defenses has grown in urgency since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine ordered in late February by President Vladimir V. Putin. The war has convinced Washington and Taipei that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in the coming years is now a potential danger — and that a smaller military with the right weapons that has adopted a strategy of asymmetric warfare, in which it focuses on mobility and precision attacks, can beat back a larger foe. American officials are re-examining the capabilities of the Taiwanese military to determine whether it can fight off an invasion, as Ukrainian forces have been doing. President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan is trying to orient the country’s military toward asymmetric warfare and has moved to buy a large number of mobile, lethal weapons that are difficult to target and counter. But some Taiwanese defense officials are resistant. And U.S. officials have decided that certain weapons systems the Taiwanese Defense Ministry has tried to order — the MH-60R Seahawk helicopter made by Lockheed Martin, for example — are not suited for warfare against the Chinese military. The U.S. officials have warned their Taiwanese counterparts that the State Department would reject such requests. They have also told American weapons makers to refrain from asking U.S. agencies to approve Taiwanese orders of certain arms. The procurement process is complex, with many parties weighing in. On Tuesday, Lt. Gen. Scott D. Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said at a Senate hearing that Taiwanese officials were learning lessons from the Ukraine war, including the importance of “effective training with the right weapons systems, and what those systems with the right people would be able to do to thwart that.” He said partner nations in Asia and the U.S. Defense Department could further mine the Ukraine war for suggestions for Taiwan and “help them understand what this conflict has been about, what lessons they can learn and where they should be focusing their dollars on their defense and their training.” The push by the Biden administration has broadened and accelerated similar efforts by officials in the Trump and Obama administrations. Democratic and Republican officials and lawmakers say one lesson of the Ukraine war is the United States must help transform Taiwan into a “porcupine” to deter potential attacks from China. The nine current and former American and Taiwanese officials familiar with the discussions spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations. “I sense there has been a shift,” said Bonnie S. Glaser, an East Asia analyst at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “It started before the invasion of Ukraine, but I think it has really, really solidified since then. There has been this wake-up call in the Pentagon to make sure Taiwan is serious, and we need to get serious too.” State Department and Pentagon officials have been involved in the discussions with the Taiwanese government.
