Looking at Taiwan’s Security Strategy in Light of Mullen’s Beijing Speech

In his speech at Renmin University of China during his visit to Beijing, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, emphasized that China, “is no longer a rising power. It has, in fact, arrived as a world power.” He said that, “the United States is changing as well,” and as such, U.S.-China relations are changing accordingly, establishing a more substantial relationship.

The America in the midst of change of which Mullen speaks must be the same America that newly appointed U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta described in his inaugural speech. Panetta explained that within his term, while reducing the military budget, the U.S. Army would maintain its leadership status. His theory is the same as that of former Secretary Gates. Not long before his departure, Gates, in a public speech, advocated that henceforth it would not be suitable for the Pentagon to continue to suggest the large scale deployment of ground troops to do battle in Asia, Africa or the Middle East, and that the role of the U.S. military and the distribution of its budget should change. The words of three former U.S. military chiefs follow the same vein, and while this does not really mean that the U.S. is declaring itself anti-war, the reality is that the U.S. is shrinking its military budget and adjusting its deployment strategy overseas.

The White House announced that starting July of this year, it will successively withdraw troops from Afghanistan. Although it was forced into this situation, this has also become the layout of the new global strategy. Soon after taking office, President Obama made the decision to send 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, and, as a result, now faces up to hundreds of billions of dollars in annual military expenditures as well as an endless war.

Nowadays, the U.S. has fallen ill to two worsening deficits: a sluggish economic recovery with an ever increasing unemployment rate and the difficulty of a growing anti-war movement. Especially with both parties revving up for next year’s presidential elections, Obama is under pressure to hurry up and make good on his promise to bring the troops home. The killing of al-Qaida leader bin Laden by U.S. Special Forces gave Obama an excuse to withdraw troops, and he took advantage of it. Moreover, the Pew Research Center recently announced the results of an opinion poll, stating that nearly 60 percent of Americans surveyed support withdrawing troops from Afghanistan as soon as possible.

Overall, President Obama’s announcement to withdraw troops is mainly focused on changes in the domestic political landscape. As for whether the U.S. will really not send more ground troops abroad, this not only depends on economic circumstances and financial strength but also on the layout of America’s global or regional strategic security needs. As the U.S. henceforth strengthens its preventative foreign policy, confrontations in East Asia or the Gulf or Africa could erupt into war. In places where U.S. involvement is limited to the Air Force and the Navy, it tries to prevent regional conflicts from expanding to a level where intervention by U.S. ground troops becomes necessary.

At a joint U.S. Military conference last spring, Chairman Mullen issued a series of statements on the role and function of the U.S. Military in U.S. foreign policy. When analyzing the U.S. Military’s involvement in the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars over the past ten years, he expounded in detail on the three major principals for deploying troops overseas that the White House will follow from now on. First, military might cannot become the president’s ultimate method of resolving problems; if it is necessary to use the military, it should be paired with the nation’s other tactics and should encourage international participation. Secondly, the U.S. can only use military force in keeping with humanitarianism. In other words, if the U.S. military were to engage in the willful slaughter of innocent people in wars overseas, it would both infuriate the nation’s citizens and delay the achievement of the strategic goal by months or even years. Lastly, in a rapidly changing security environment, the U.S. needs to make timely adjustments to its strategy and its policy: If military action does not have a clear strategy, its rate of success is much lower.

America’s withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq has, in fact, caused the U.S. government and all levels of society to reflect upon and review the country’s foreign policy over the past ten years. If the U.S. holds on to its role as a global leader in the future, will there be a need for it to increase (or decrease) the frequency with which it intervenes in international affairs? Is it necessary to readjust the U.S. Military’s role in interventions? Two months ago, the United Nations Security Council reached a resolution to establish a no-fly zone over Libya, and thus the U.S. adjusted its old way of thinking about military intervention, emphasizing that it would not send in ground troops and would place most of the responsibility for air raids on NATO. In a few of Obama’s speeches, he also mentioned that the U.S. would not send a single soldier to set foot on Libyan territory, which shows that though it was not Obama’s top strategic choice, military intervention ensured international security.

Panetta proclaimed that even as the U.S. shrank its military budget, it would continue to preserve the U.S. Military’s leading status. If we look at the changes in the East Asian security situation from last year up until now, Panetta’s words reflect the fact that America’s strategy will gradually shift from the “Greater Middle East” and “Greater Central Asia” toward East Asia. The U.S. troops withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq will thus readjust their combat goals. This year, Gates asserted in an article in the periodical Foreign Affairs that, in the future, the U.S. military would not duplicate another mission like the one in Afghanistan and that its future wars would be fought against traditional national armies. Gates’ reference to a “traditional nation” alluded to the army of some great power as the imaginary enemy.

Last year the U.S. pledged to “return to Asia” and “maintain its leadership status in East Asia.” This year, with the start of troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, all indications show that American strategic goals are set on East Asia. America’s meticulous guarding of East Asia arises from the fact that it sees itself as a counterweight. Yet it is at once confronting the difficulties of its weakening its military might, troop structure and overseas responsibilities as a result of a shrinking defense budget. This cannot be convenient, especially given that East Asia’s skies are no longer solely dominated by U.S. forces. These strategies are at odds with one another and are sure to give rise to a lose-lose result.

America often makes mistakes in its overseas strategic arrangements due to short-sightedness. During the Vietnam War in the 1970s, the U.S. sent in nearly 500,000 soldiers, and in the end, nearly 60,000 troops went to their graves. In the ten years of the anti-terrorism war in Afghanistan, over 1,600 U.S. troops have lost their lives on the battlefield; yet from neither of these wars has the U.S. emerged victorious. Gates’ comment that “U.S. troops are exhausted and the American people are weary,”* might mean that in the short term public opinion will turn against sending troops to fight in wars overseas. But, on the principle that the U.S. military maintains its status as global leader, will the U.S. forget history’s lesson and send its troops into yet another overseas nightmare? That, perhaps, no one can predict.

Simply put, how will Mullen’s “global powers” view the U.S. military’s new global role, and how will they react to the changing overall global strategic situation? Can Taiwan’s security still hang its hopes on an American aircraft carrier and Navy? Or, in light of this new situation, must it change its old way of thinking?

*Editor’s Note: Quotes, while accurately translated, were unable to be verified.