Taiwan's Maritime Security (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Taiwan's Maritime Security Steven E. Phillips (bio) Martin Edmonds and Michael M. Tsai, editors. Taiwan's Maritime Security. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. xxiii, 184 pp. Hardcover $114.95, ISBN 0-415-29736-2. Due to the increasing militancy of Taiwan's leaders, the growing impatience of China's rulers, and the improving capabilities of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), understanding the military balance and scenarios for armed conflict in the Taiwan Strait becomes more important each day. The problem is not discovering the facts or finding analysis that fits one's predisposition, but rather separating the wheat from the chaff in this extremely active field. Taiwan's Maritime Security, edited by Michael M. Tsai and Martin Edmonds, offers both hard data and insight into a key aspect of the possible war between Taipei and Beijing. Along with two other volumes edited by Tsai and Edmonds, Defending Taiwan: The Future Vision of Taiwan's Defense Policy and Military Strategy and Taiwan's Security and Air Power, the present volume represents the intersection of academic analysis, expert opinion, party politics, and policy advocacy.1 Tsai, a Democratic Progressive Party member who served in the National Legislature and then became the Deputy Representative at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States, is credited with organizing the conferences that resulted in two of the three volumes. Both editors and many of the authors are actively involved with Taiwan Defense Affairs (Guofang zhengce pinglun ), a recently established bilingual journal from the Institute for Taiwan Defense and Strategic Studies. Tang Yiau-Ming, Taiwan's Minister of Defense, lays out the agenda of the volume: "I hope the publication of this book will prompt the Taiwanese people to attach greater importance to the island's national security and sea power development, while rendering even more support and encouragement to the ROC Armed Forces" (p. xiii). Two questions unify these essays: to what extent can the Republic of China (ROC) resist a PLA attack or blockade today, and can the ROC keep pace with the mainland's naval modernization program? The four brief chapters of part 1 focus on the PLA Navy (PLAN). Chen Te-Men, Director of the Research and Publishing Office at Taiwan's National Defense University, begins with an overview of PLAN modernization, which seeks to transform the force from a brown-water to a green-and eventually a blue-water navy capable of deterring if not defeating the United States. He also introduces the weapon systems and vessels of this naval-modernization effort. Part 1 also has a very brief article by prolific scholar Andrew Scobell on "China's Strategy toward the South China Sea." He characterizes the PRC strategy in the context of a "slow intensity conflict" where the Chinese gradually move from asserting sovereignty to physical control over the course of decades. Such a description reflects the [End Page 330] ideas in his well-received recent book examining case studies of PLA war fighting, China's Use of Military Force: Beyond the Great Wall and the Long March.2 Next is a broad overview on the impact of PLAN modernization on regional security by Sam Bateman and Chris Rahman of the Centre for Maritime Policy at the University of Wollongong in Australia. This chapter points out that security issues involve more than warships and also "include a large global shipping fleet, vast shipbuilding capacity, and a major role in the management of regional oceans and seas and their resources" (p. 15). Bernard D. Cole evaluates the impact of PLAN modernization on Taiwan's security. Cole, author of The Great Wall at Sea: China's Navy Enters the Twenty-First Century,3 paints a less than glowing picture of PLAN capabilities, but posits that "the future promises a degree of Chinese air superiority that may cancel out any Taiwan naval superiority" (p. 72 ). The conclusions drawn in the Bateman-Rahman and Cole chapters suggest that the three volumes edited by Tsai and Edmonds should be read (or, better yet, published) together in order to highlight the multidimensional nature of the cross-Strait military balance. Given the backgrounds of these authors, part 2, which...