Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Lai Ching-te/Facebook
AN OP-ED IN the Washington Post by Lai Ching-te published yesterday emphasized plans to increase the military budget to 40 billion USD, which would be 3.3% of the GDP next year and 5% by 2030.
The article itself revealed few new details, with Lai touting plans to boost Taiwan’s air defense through the construction of a T-Dome, efforts to strengthen civil defense, and describing increased aggression toward Taiwan by China. Likewise, although much attention has gone to the scale of Lai’s planned defense build-up, it appears that this amount will be spread across the next eight years, which is in line with what Lai has stated in the past and what was already known.
Nevertheless, Lai’s op-ed would be a means of throwing down the gauntlet at a time when the US has increasingly sought to pressure Taiwan on its defense spending. The Trump administration has lashed out at Taiwan numerous times with the claim that Taiwan does not do enough for its own defense, so it may not warrant US support. Individuals who expressed sentiments along these lines range from high-ranking and influential figures such as Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby to Trump himself. Some US politicians have since expressed support for Lai over his op-ed.
Lai’s choice of publication in the Washington Post itself is notable. Despite the Washington Post’s reputation–deserved or not–as a liberal publication, Lai’s op-ed references both Trump and Ronald Reagan positively.
One recalls when a Substack article by former Trump administration official Christian Whiton made waves in policy circles earlier this year because of its claims that Taiwan had lost the support of the Trump administration. In particular, one of the article’s grievances was Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim publishing in the Washington Post–an act perceived as disloyal to the Trump administration, in spite of the fact that Lai administration officials have published many times more in conservative outlets such as the Washington Times. As such, even if the attempt is to reassure the Trump administration of a commitment to increase the defense budget with its publication of the article, the choice of venue for publication is somewhat surprising.
Even so, it is a question whether Lai will truly be able to increase the defense budget, as he claims he will, given that the KMT controls the legislature. Earlier this year saw controversy over the KMT and its ally, the TPP, pushing for the largest set of budget cuts in Taiwanese history–cutting one-third of all government expenses and targeting flagship defense programs, including the domestic submarine program. Current moves by the pan-Blue camp in the legislature indicate that the KMT and TPP will continue to try and stymie the DPP when it comes to the national budget.
At the same time, this may precisely be Lai’s intention–to force the KMT into attacking the defense budget in a way that drives up concerns about the KMT undermining national security. If so, this would lead to backlash against the KMT that could benefit it in the upcoming elections. After all, one notes that the KMT’s budget cuts earlier this year led to the eruption of the Great Recall Movement, which, even if unsuccessful, was a social movement without any precedent in the history of Taiwanese politics.
Certainly, all indications are that the KMT already intends to go on the attack about these plans. The KMT has already lashed out at Lai’s plans as “astronomical”. Though some KMT politicians have stated that they are not inherently opposed to budget cuts, there have also been suggestions from KMT legislators as Hsu Chiao-hsin that Lai intends to slash spending on social programs and education to pay for defense, never mind that this is precisely what the KMT did with its budget cuts earlier this year.
It is to be seen how the Lai administration intends to deal with challenges from the KMT on this front. Nevertheless, it should be clear that Lai intends to make defense spending a battleground issue with the KMT.
Indeed, Lai’s framing of the matter may be intended to create a sense of crisis among the Taiwanese public, for the purposes of political mobilization. In a Facebook post that reflected his Washington Post op-ed, Lai also framed the 2027 “Davidson Window”–the time when China is thought to have the military capacity to conduct an invasion of Taiwan–as the date that China would most definitely seek to take Taiwan by.
Yet despite the fact that this rhetoric has proven politically effective in mobilizing partisans, as seen in the Great Recall Movement, it is unclear whether such rhetoric will be effective with the general public. After all, the DPP’s missteps in past votes have sometimes appeared to be the result of the public being tired of rhetoric focused narrowly on cross-strait relations and which failed to address domestic discontents regarding the economy and cost of living.