The Rising East
Taiwanese armed forces
travel a long journey
toward opennessA careful reading of Taiwan's Defense Report 2002, which was published several days ago without attracting much attention, turns up subtle but revealing changes in the evolution of that nation's armed forces.
In marked contrast to their role under the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, Taiwan's armed forces today are expected to pledge their allegiance to the nation, to accept civilian control and remain politically neutral, and to seek transparency before the citizens of Taiwan and the world.
The Defense Report, issued by Minister of Defense Tang Yiau-ming, a former general and chief of the general staff, calls on the armed forces "to live by the principles of democracy," "to pledge loyalty to the nation and care for the people," and to "remain neutral and concentrate on its duties."
Since Taiwan has become a democracy in recent years, the Defense Report asserts that the military budget, which is the basic document setting out military strategy and policy, must "satisfy the people's right to know." The portion of secret provisions in that document has dropped to 18 percent from 61 percent 10 years ago, the report says.
On a more traditional note, the defense report included a plea for greater military spending to ward off the threat of invasion from China. The Bush administration, which has been more supportive of Taiwan than any American administration in the last 30 years, has encouraged that spending to deter the growing military power of mainland China 120 miles away across the Taiwan Strait.
DEFENSE REPORT 2002, MINISTRY OF NATIONAL DEFENSE OF TAIWAN
Taiwanese military officers display weapons to reporters in a new effort toward openness about the military's budget, policy and strategy.
Military spending took 48 percent of the government's budget in 1989, but has plummeted since then and is down to 18 percent this year.
Under the rule of the Kuomintang, Taiwan's armed forces were expected to be loyal to the party and particularly to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, the president who died in 1975. In that, the military forces of Taiwan resembled the People's Liberation Army of mainland China, whose loyalty is explicitly to the Communist Party, not to the nation or government. In the United States and most democratic nations, the armed forces swear allegiance to the nation or, in the case of the United States, to the Constitution.
Moreover, Taiwan's armed forces under Chiang were highly politicized and were the final arbiter of power. They were repressive, secretive and often more concerned with keeping the Kuomintang and Chiang in power than in defending the nation.
Immediately after the end of World War II in 1945, Chiang's Nationalist army took Taiwan back from Japan, to which it had been ceded in 1895 after Japan had defeated China in a war. The Nationalists, however, acted more like a conquering than a liberating army and generated much resistance.
That erupted into a riot on Feb. 28, 1947, which the Nationalist army put down brutally, killing an estimated 10,000 or more civilians. From then on, military oppression and martial law continued until after Chiang's death.
His son, Chiang Ching-kuo, who became president in 1978, began easing Taiwan toward a less autocratic regime, lifting martial law in 1987. After he died in 1988, Vice President Lee Teng-hui, a native-born Taiwanese, succeeded to the presidency and had adopted new laws providing for better civilian control over the armed forces in 2000, just before he left office.
President Chen Shui-bian, of what had been the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, was inaugurated in May 2000. Defense Report 2002 is the first analysis issued since he became president and reflects his thinking on the role of the military forces in a democratic Taiwan.
National security, Chen said in a book published before he become president, "outranks all other issues in importance." He wrote that Taiwan must forge a "deep-level defense" with better reconnaissance, assessments of Chinese military deployments and intelligence exchanges with nations in the region.
More recently, the president told military officers in a training session that China "has continued to bolster its war capability against Taiwan," the Associated Press reported. He said he would seek more advanced weapons for defense and was quoted as saying: "We must engage in a self-defensive act to prevent and deter a war."
Richard Halloran is a former correspondent
for The New York Times in Asia and a former editorial
director of the Star-Bulletin. His column appears Sundays.
He can be reached by e-mail at rhalloran@starbulletin.com
