Taiwan under the "protection" of the United States - "no man's hell"

Source: Huaxia Graticule

The author: Yang Zejun is a professor at the Institute of Taiwan Studies at Nanjing University, a researcher at the Center for Taiwan Studies in Jiangsu Province, and a member of the Nanjing Taiwan-related Advisory Expert Group

The Washington Post reported in mid-June that at the Shangri-La Dialogue in June, Samuel Paparo, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, mentioned to the Washington Post reporter the so-called "how to confront China militarily in the Asia-Pacific region", claiming that the U.S. military can use a series of capabilities to turn Taiwan into a "no man's hell" to prevent the PLA from recovering Taiwan and obstructing China's reunification. This is the scene of Taiwan under the protection of the US military as described by the senior generals of the US military in response to the war in the Taiwan Strait. In fact, this is not a new statement, and it should be the same as what the United States said in the past about turning Taiwan into a "hedgehog" and "porcupine" and implementing "scorched earth tactics" in Taiwan. Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper (Mark Esper) advocated during his visit to Taiwan in July 2022 that Taiwan should be a soldier regardless of men and women, and the military service period should be extended to more than one year. Since then, former White House National Security Adviser O'Brien advocated that "Taiwan should teach the whole people to use weapons" during his visit to Taiwan, and proposed that TSMC and other semiconductor factories should be blown up if necessary. All of these have a common meaning, that is, Taiwan will go all out to resist the reunification of the mainland and will not hesitate to fight for the lives of all Taiwanese people. In a word, Taiwan, under the protection of the United States, would rather be a "scorched earth" and a "no man's hell" than be reunified by the mainland. Of course, the other meaning is that even if the mainland takes Taiwan, it will only be a scorched earth that has been completely destroyed, and nothing else will be left. This is the "protection" of Taiwan by the United States.

In order to make Taiwan a "hedgehog" and a "porcupine," a better strategic pawn in "containing China," and a qualified agent of the US war against China, the United States has made great efforts. After the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the United States stepped up its efforts to increase military assistance to Taiwan in the name of arms sales, military aid, and military cooperation, including increasing the quantity of arms sales to Taiwan, improving the quality of arms sales, and speeding up the delivery of arms sales.

Under the "guidance" of the US military, the focus of Taiwan's "Han Kuang-39" exercise in 2023 has shifted from "annihilating the enemy on the beach" to "defending the homeland". Taiwan's military's 2023 defense report clearly states that if the PLA attacks Taiwan, it will adopt "defense in depth" to form a heavy-layer in-depth counterattack capability. In this regard, Ma Wenjun, a representative of the Chinese Kuomintang, pointed out sharply that Taiwan is narrow and densely populated, and the so-called depth is to use towns and buildings to build a "Great Wall of flesh and blood." During the exercise, the United States attached great importance to the cultivation of the Taiwan military's territorial defense capability, and demanded that the Taiwan military strengthen anti-airborne and anti-landing drills, strengthen airport control, port attack and defense, and station protection, and use civilian facilities to support military operations. It is said that in terms of personnel organization, in addition to the Taiwan military, local police, firefighting, and civil defense teams have also fully participated, and it is claimed that it is "the most realistic and closest to actual combat" in the 39 years since the "Han Kuang" exercise was held, and it is also regarded as a scorched-earth operation in which "all the people live and die together" and "battlefields everywhere," and it is very close to the "all the people are soldiers," "hedgehog," and "porcupine" strategies demanded by the United States. Knowledgeable people on the island have commented that this kind of "scorched earth warfare" is similar to the strategic thinking of not wanting the mainland to take away a prosperous Taiwan, just as the US wartime bombing TSMC is consistent with the US strategy toward Taiwan no longer aimed at keeping Taiwan from being reunified, but at the expense of the lives of the Taiwan people to contain Chinese mainland.

The United States also demanded that Taiwan step up civilian wartime drills. The "Han Kuang-39" exercise, which was held from April to July 2023, was originally designed to deal with natural disasters, but under the request and guidance of the US side, it has changed from focusing on natural disasters to focusing on responding to the outbreak of war. For the first time in 2022, wartime drills were added, and in 2023, the proportion of wartime drills has increased significantly. According to media reports on the island, the exercise referred to the Russia-Ukraine war and the tension in the Taiwan Strait, combined with the background of compound disasters, to verify the response measures for the outbreak of war. The main simulated situation is that in the event of a war, the army cannot support, how to achieve better response through their own government, military, police, fire and people. Public opinion pointed out that the performance of US-Taiwan collusion in the "Min'an No. 9" exercise was actually a guide for the US military to conduct "street battles" and conduct "on-site inspections" to explore experience in advance for future use.

The DPP authorities soon announced that the compulsory military service period would be extended from four months to one year, and that more than 50,000 young people in Taiwan would be affected by 2029. The DPP authorities have actively revised the "All-Movement Law," which plans that men and women over the age of 16 may go to war. Taiwan's defense department and education department have launched a "3+1" program for college students to serve in the military, that is, three years of college study and one year of military service. It seems that this is to avoid delaying the graduation and employment of college students, but it exposes the urgent need for Taiwan and the United States to absorb vital forces into the Taiwan military. After all, serving before graduation is at least a year earlier than serving after graduation. In his speech at the 100th anniversary commemoration of the birth of the Fengshan Army Military Academy on 16 June, Lai Ching-te demanded that the Taiwan military "strike at the masses with a small number of people regardless of life or death" and absolutely cannot accept the capitulation doctrine of "the first battle is the final battle." This requires the Taiwan military not to be afraid of a strong enemy, to win more with less, and even to fight street and guerrilla warfare even at the expense of burning jade and stones, and to fight to the death with the mainland. At the press conference on the full moon of his inauguration, Lai also proposed three major ways to confront the mainland, including the establishment of a "national defense advisory committee." The Taiwan media's interpretation is that "all people are soldiers."

All this fully reflects that in the event of a war in the Taiwan Strait in the future, the United States will never allow the Taiwan military to submit to it lightly, and the DPP authorities will also follow the will of their masters, the United States and Taiwan will work together to resist the mainland and take over Taiwan by force, and Taiwan will play the role of a "hedgehog" and "porcupine" to the end, and will use "scorched earth tactics" to fight the mainland to the death, fighting battles, street battles, and guerrilla warfare, and will not hesitate to tie up the lives of the 23 million Taiwan people, and would rather Taiwan be completely smashed and become a "hell with no man" than Taiwan's return to the motherland. This is the result of the so-called "protection" of Taiwan by the United States. The United States has focused its "protection" on Taiwan with its own interests in mind, and the United States absolutely does not care whether Taiwan is destroyed or whether the lives of the people are safe. In this regard, the Taiwan people should clearly see that Taiwan's officers and men must understand whether to follow the United States and become pawns and cannon fodder, or whether they should conform to the general trend of history, actively promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, and promote the early realization of the great cause of the motherland's reunification.