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Link to this study
News Release
December 14, 1999
Contact: Jess Cook
Phone: 310-451-6913
Fax: 310-451-6988
Email: Jess_Cook@rand.org |
RAND
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Memorandum to Editors and Reporters
Taiwan's National Security, Defense Policy, and Weapons Procurement Processes
Political and military tensions between Taiwan and the People's Republic of China
have increased dramatically during the 1990s. This development poses serious implications
for America's commitment to a peaceful, mutually agreed upon resolution of the long-standing
dispute between Taipei and Beijing, as well as its commitment to provide Taiwan with
military assistance to maintain its self-defense capabilities. Indeed, U.S. arms sales
and overall military assistance policy toward Taiwan have emerged as a potential source
of instability in Sino-U.S. relations and as an important factor affecting overall East
Asian peace and stability. Such a situation places a premium on the need for the U.S.
government to better understand the many factors influencing Taiwan's national security
and defense policies and its arms purchase requests, including Taiwan's policy objectives
and priorities, the force requirements implied by Taiwan's defense strategy and threat
assessments, the internal decisionmaking features of Taiwan's weapons procurement process,
and the overall policy role played by senior leadership personalities and bureaucratic
relationships.
RAND's study, Taiwan's National Security,
Defense Policy, and Weapons Procurement
Processes, provides the most comprehensive and detailed analysis in print of these factors.
Author Michael D. Swaine, one of the world's leading China experts, concludes that Taiwan's
national security policy process is poorly coordinated, both within the top levels of the
senior leadership and between the civilian and military elite. As a result, Taiwan lacks a
strategy that can integrate and guide its foreign and defense policies. Swaine also concludes
that Taiwan's defense policy and procurement decisionmaking processes are significantly
influenced by a variety of nonmilitary criteria that complicate efforts to ascertain Taiwan's
motives and objectives in requesting arms from the United States and call into question
Taiwan's ability to effectively absorb such arms.
The author recommends that the United States continue to acquire more and better information
about Taiwan's strengths and weaknesses in these areas and to more accurately assess Taiwan's
requests for military sales from the United States. He also recommends that the United States:
- Avoid providing arms and assistance to Taiwan in ways that provoke greater tension with
China without appreciably improving Taiwan's defense capabilities.
- Continue to strengthen contacts with the ROC military but avoid interacting with the
Taiwan armed forces in a way that suggests the establishment of joint U.S.-Taiwan operational
capabilities.
- Develop and maintain close contacts with Taiwan's key decisionmakers.
Sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the study was conducted in RAND's
National Defense Research Institute. RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve
policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis.
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