Why Taiwan Prepared for War by Spending Less

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Why has Taiwan’s defense spending hovered at an itty bitty 2% of GDP just $16.9 billion dollars while they face an existential threat 100 miles away? Is that even legal? This is why Defense analysts and US generals are raising the alarmist alarm that Taiwan isn’t spending nearly enough and they’re spending the wrong way top deter China. Some analysts claim Taiwan's military leadership has abandoned their asymmetric warfare plan for an unrealistic strategy that pits them in a head to head with their enemy.

Written by: Chris Cappy and Diego Aceituno
Edited by: Savvy Studios

We’ll soon learn that looking at Taiwan's defense strategy simply through the lens of comparing numbers of tanks and fighter jets is an overly simplistic approach. Because from Taiwan's perspective, diminishing returns and investing money in creative outside the box ideas might just be their best bet for survival. It’s time to don your tropical camo and take a closer look at the Fortress Island of Taiwan’s strategy to keep their people free.

“A person is blessed once but troubles come many at once.” -Taiwan Proverb
The most obvious strategy for you to pick if you were in charge of Taiwan at this point would be to invest everything you have into a conventional defense to deter China right? But instead Taiwan’s leadership long ago decided there was no realistic way they could compete in this realm and they would need to find a different creative solution. So in a weird counter intuitive way, we can see that Taipei's defense spending has steadily decreased from its highest point of 7.6 percent of GDP in 1979 down to its lowest point at 1.6 percent of GDP in 2016.

What are some of the reasons for this? Well, In a paper written by Steven Li for the University of Washington he points out that part of the limitations on defense spending can be attributed to physical geographic considerations. So, Taiwan has an incredibly small land mass of about 36,000 kilometers squared or the same size as the US state of Maryland. What this means is that the island nation will quickly reach a point of saturation when it comes to available space for staging, testing, operating, storing, maintaining and placing military hardware very quickly. Basically at a certain point you can’t practically or physically expect to cram anymore missile defense systems or tanks into one small location.

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sources:
https://digital.lib.washington.edu/re...
https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/tai...
https://www.ustaiwandefense.com/tdnsw...
https://warontherocks.com/2018/10/hop...

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