As the world waits to see if President Trump can deliver abiding peace in Ukraine, a core lesson of that conflict is the importance of deterring another awful war a continent away. So note that Taiwan is now planning to spend more on its defense and reach 5% of GDP by 2030.
President Lai Ching-te has proposed a defense budget for next year that’s a little over 3.3% of the economy, up from roughly 2.5% in 2024.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies this summer released a war game with 26 iterations of a Taiwan blockade. “Almost all scenarios entail casualties,” it said. Taiwan ran out of natural gas in about 10 days. Some scenarios resulted in a shooting war and “the United States lost hundreds of aircraft and dozens of warships.”
There’s room to improve. The backlog of U.S. weapons sold to Taiwan but not yet delivered is more than $20 billion, according to a summer tally by George Mason University. Retired U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery estimates Taiwan might easily reach 4% of GDP on defense if the U.S. could fix its process for foreign military sales to deliver more weapons each year.
Det er vanskeligere for Kina å innvadere Taiwan enn det var for Russland å innvadere Ukraina, men det er mye lettere for dem å stoppe alle forsyninger til Taiwan. Når jeg skriver dette, så tenker jeg at et kinesisk angrep vil starte med en lang blokade for å se om det utløser noen reaksjon. Hvis det ikke gjør det, så antar jeg de vil angripe.
