 From the Asian Review, I'm your host, Bill Sharp. My guest today is Mr. Ian Easton, joining us from Arlington, Virginia, where it's 10 o'clock at night. We really appreciate him going back to his office just to do this interview. Ian is a research institute at, as I mentioned, Project 2049. He recently wrote a book called The Chinese Invasion Threat. Let's put that up on the screen to give everybody a look at it. There we go. It's a really good book, very well researched, and it combines a number of Chinese and English sources. It also has a very, very impressive array of cover endorsements by people that are very well known in the field of Taiwan security affairs. Chip Granksen, a former Marine Corps Lieutenant General, also the Defense Secretary of Defense for East Asian Pacific Affairs, gave a very nice cover endorsement, as did others. OK, well, let's get at it. We've got a lot to talk about here. The sense that I got from your book is that while the PLA talks about its military options to use to force to liberate Taiwan, it very well might not do so for a variety of reasons. What are some of those reasons why China might ultimately not pursue the military option vis-a-vis Taiwan? Well, good evening, Bill. And thanks for having me on your show. That's a very good question. There are a number of very good reasons why it's very unlikely that any general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, of course, that individual is always dual-headed as the chairman of the Central Military Commission and the president of the People's Republic of China. Why that man, it's always been a man until now, why they would ever advocate an invasion and occupation of Taiwan. Certainly no leader in their right mind would do that because of the tremendous risk entailed. If China attempted to invade Taiwan, not only are the Taiwanese likely to put up a very good fight, and certainly they would have a lot of defensive advantages on their side, it's very probable, in fact, you could say it's almost certain that the United States is going to intervene and assist Taiwan in its defense. That's very interesting. I also want to pick up on a point here. Now, it seems to me that in, maybe not so much in this book, but in some of the other things that you've spoken about or written about, you seem to feel, if I recall correctly, very confident that the Japanese would assist the United States in the defense of Taiwan. Do I have that right? Yeah, absolutely. So we have four deployed forces in Okinawa and on the Japanese home islands, and they're there on a permanent basis. And it's really an essential part of our alliance with Japan, and it's understood that in the event that the United States ends up fighting a war on the Korean Peninsula or on the Taiwan Strait, we're going to be in its shoulder to shoulder with the Japanese. Now does this mean, okay, there's different forms of Japanese support? I guess what I'm really getting at is not so much the logistical support, providing the bases to launch airstrikes, perhaps providing refueling support. Are we going to see Japanese destroyers in the Taiwan Strait? Are we going to see any kind of, what you might call, a more aggressive Japanese military support? Well, I think that's a very good question, and it's a question that we really can't answer in peacetime, that there's no way to know what our joint military plans are with the Japanese, and there's certainly no way to know what political decisions would be taken in an emergency situation like that one. Because of course, this would be, you know, if this were to happen in the future, we would now be living in a completely alternative reality. It's almost impossible to guess today what that would look like, because nothing like this has ever happened before would be so incredibly dangerous and stressful that really anything could happen. And that's one of the reasons why defense planners in Washington, Honolulu, Tokyo, and Taipei and elsewhere take this scenario so seriously. How do you think it's safe to say it's kind of a closely guarded but open secret? There is liaison between the Japanese military forces and the Taiwan military. Very low-key, very sort of off the screen. And I suspect there's some intelligence sharing, too. Do you have any ideas on that? Well, I suspect you're right, but I think when it comes to Japan-Taiwan relations, there's a lot of room for improvement. And of course, you could say the same thing about the United States and Taiwan. Sure. At our interactions with Taiwan, far outstrip those of the Japanese or any other country in the world. We're the only country in the world that actually has military attachés posted in Taiwan that conducts regular arms sales to Taiwan and regular defense and security cooperation, including training and visits and a whole range of other activities, including intelligence sharing that go on. There's no other country that even comes close. But even for the United States, there's a tremendous amount of room for improvement, especially in light of China's incredibly rapid military buildup over recent years. OK. Well, you know, another thing just gets me a little bit off of what I had in mind to ask, but it needs to be asked, and needs to be mentioned, is, of course, Taiwan has the big submarine project unfolding. And it looks like they're accounting on support from Japan. And it seems like Japan, especially retired folks from Japanese shipyards, could conceivably render a hand in the construction of the Taiwan submarine prototype. Well, that's certainly possible. The Japanese produce what is probably the world's quietest and most capable diesel electric submarine, which, of course, is the same type of submarine that the Taiwanese are interested in building for themselves. But as I understand it, it's probably going to be the U.S. defense industry that does the lion's share of technical assistance for Taiwan's program. Of course, there could be a very real role for the Japanese, but I think it's probably going to be mostly a U.S.-led effort to support Taiwan's indigenous program. And this is an interesting thing to follow. I'm sure that we all want to follow this in the future. I mean, Taiwan's suddenly putting a big premium on this. Well, it seems that if not an outright military assault or an amphibious operation, there are other methods by which China might try to suborn Taiwan. And I'm thinking in terms of blockading political warfare and other coercive approaches what's your take on that? How likely is it that China would create a blockade? Or it seems to me it's probably involved in political warfare now. I mean, political warfare to me is propaganda and there's something, a lot of that floating back and forth. Yeah, absolutely. So you could make an argument that there's 100% likelihood that this is going to happen in the future because it's already happening now. I mean, in many respects, the Chinese are already blockading Taiwan. They're already limiting Taiwan's international space around the world. They've engaged in dollar diplomacy to remove Taiwanese diplomatic allies. These are the countries around the world that still recognize the Republic of China in Taiwan as the one true China. Those countries are now shrinking. There's 17 left. Just two years ago, there were 22. And so that is an issue. Coercion is a daily event and a daily problem that Taiwan faces. The Chinese are bombarding Taiwan with an average of five pieces of fake news a day, which they spread through social media, Facebook, Line, Twitter, a whole range of different means. And also some of the pro-China media groups in Taiwan. And in fact, some of the media groups in Taiwan that are directly tied to Chinese Communist Party propaganda outlets. So this is a very significant problem that Taiwan faces. And again, it's not just the invasion threat, as you say, Bill. It's also all these other capabilities that the PRC can bring to bear to destabilize the situation. Right. Do you see any cyber counter-attack on the behalf of Taiwan? Is Taiwan launching any kind of cyber offensive on the mainland on China? Well, I couldn't say. Each country guards their cyber capabilities. And in particular, their offensive cyber capabilities very, very closely. I mean, this is up there with nuclear secrets and space warfare secrets and stuff like that. But what we can see is that Taiwanese hackers tend to be some of the most capable folks at what they do in the world. When international hacking conventions are held, when they're convenient in Las Vegas and elsewhere, the Taiwanese are incredibly capable at this type of operation. Taiwan has stood up a fairly large cyber warfare command. It dwarves anything that any of our other allies in Asia have. But of course, it doesn't even come close to what the folks on the other side of the Taiwan Strait have in China. But they do have some very real capabilities. And I think it should be assumed that in the event of conflict, that Taiwan is going to have some ability to hit back at China. But the only question is, will it be enough? And what effects might they have? And there's no way to know that in peacetime. I'm so glad to hear just within the last few days that the United States has changed its policy and the United States will now engage in its own offensive cyber warfare. It's about time. Well, you know, when I first brought up the idea of blockade, you approached that question a little bit differently than maybe I opposed it to. But I was thinking more of a classical blockade. Actually putting Chinese ships in front of the entrance to Taiwan harbors in order to impede the flow, outflow or inflow of goods. Do you see that happening? Absolutely. So there is a scenario. In fact, there's almost a limitless number of different ways that the Chinese could do that in the future. And in fact, they would have to do that if one of two things was true in terms of their strategic objective. If their strategic objective was to quote unquote punish Taiwan for something that Taiwanese did that Beijing interpreted as hostile or provocative, then they would have the option of engaging in a fairly low intensity, intermittent blockade of Taiwan, which would be kind of a prolonged campaign in order to attempt to force the Taiwanese to back down or to come to the negotiating table. At the same time, the Chinese would also blockade Taiwan in a very different way in the event that they intended to actually invade and occupy the island. And in that event, it would be a much shorter duration campaign that would be very, very intense and it would be followed almost immediately by an amphibious assault. I see. Oh, followed by an amphibious assault. Okay, well, I think that's a good place for us to take a break. You're watching Asian Review. I'm your host Bill Sharp. My guest today is Mr. Ian Easton, joining us from Arlington, Virginia, where he has kindly agreed to return to his office at 10 o'clock at night in order to carry out this interview with us way over here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And we're going to be right back in just one minute, so don't go away. More than 100 years, American Humane Association has been teaching kids to be kind to animals. Those in our homes, on the farms, on the silver screen, and wildlife conservation caring for the world's vanishing creatures. But we can't do it alone. Visit kindness100.org to find ways to teach kids how they can make a more caring, compassionate, and humane world for all of us. When I was growing up, I was among the one in six American kids who struggle with hunger and hungry mornings make tired days. Grumpy days. That kind of days. But with the power of breakfast, the kids in your neighborhood can think big and be more. When we're not hungry for breakfast, we're hungry for more. More ideas. More dreams. More fun. When kids aren't hungry for breakfast, they can be hungry for more. Go to hungeris.org and lend your time or your voice to make breakfast happen for kids in your neighborhood. Well, here we are back with the Asian Review. Our host today—our guest today is Mr. Ian Easton, Research Associate of Project 2049, headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, where he is kindly joining us at the late hour of 10 o'clock at night. And we have been talking about the Chinese invasion of threat. In fact, we call the show David versus Goliath. And I think in this scenario, it's pretty obvious who is David and who is Goliath. Well, but David does have some advantages. What are the advantages that David has? We know Goliath has an increasingly large military—military budgets increase every year, but I think it's around 10 percent. But David's got some advantages, too. And maybe we should talk about those for a second or two. You know, it's funny that you should ask, because as you were talking about that analogy, it struck me that David's greatest ally, his greatest strength, was, of course, he had God on his side. And when you think about Taiwan versus China, here you have a democracy, which is an ally, a quasi-ally, but still an ally of the United States of America, which kind of has this godlike military strength all around the world, this global power projection capability, facing a very, very powerful, very brutal, very ruthless, very authoritarian People's Republic of China. So I do think it's an analogy that fits quite well. Great, great. Well, I mean, the Taiwan military is distinctly smaller than the PLA. But I mean, it does have advantages. Some people say that—I've seen studies that say that it's rated as the 15th most competent powerful military in the world. It's not a superpower. It's not a U.S., a China, or Russia. But it's not a win, be there. No, absolutely. The Taiwanese have had their military, the Republic of China, ROC military, has had a very close relationship with the U.S. military since 1950, 51. Even before that, of course, we were allies together in World War II, and we were allied all throughout the Cold War. And we continue to have a very robust military and security relationship. And that has, over time, that has resulted in a very professional, very competent, in many ways very well equipped fighting force. But of course, Taiwan is much smaller. Their resources are much more limited compared to those of China. And so when it comes to quantity, they are at a very real disadvantage. When it comes to technology, in many ways, they're also at a very real disadvantage. And so they have to be smarter than their adversaries. That's a really, really good point. That's a really good point. Well, occasionally, I get invited to lecture at Pekong or attend a conference at the APCSS. And when discussion winds its way around to Taiwan, the question always comes up, what is Taiwan's will to fight? Maybe you'd like to address that. You know, that's not something I've ever worried too much about. I know that there are folks in Taiwan who do worry about that. And I think that stems from Taiwan's history, both its military history in the Chinese Civil War, where there were instances of mass defections from the Nationalist side, Chiang Kai-shek's forces, to the Communist side under Mao Zedong. But if you look at the way Taiwan has evolved over time, it's now a democracy. And because Taiwan and the Taiwanese people enjoy freedom and they enjoy popular sovereignty, it's almost certain that like any other nationalistic, patriotic group of people in the world, and any other ally or partner we have, that if push came to shove, even though they're very peaceful people, if they were attacked with naked acts of aggression like an invasion, then they would certainly fight to the end to defend their homeland and their homes. I'm glad to hear that because sometimes I have to admit this is a bit of a concern to me. I've talked to a reasonable number of Taiwan military specialists, Americans and Taiwanese alike. It seems that the sort of the genesis that I get is that, well, the will to fight in the Air Force and the Navy is probably pretty strong, but the Army is maybe a little bit questionable. And maybe that's because of its dependence on conscription, at least up to this point. But there's something else that bothers me here a little bit, and you and I were talking a bit about it in a couple of the conversations we had leading up to this show. And that's the lack of popular support in Taiwan for the military. In fact, I think this would be a great time to put up that slogan. If we could just put that up on the screen and let everybody have a look at it. And this slogan is actually, you might see in the right side, you'll see a PLA soldier. And I took a picture of this slogan, and I think it was outside of a train station in China, and basically what it says is, look upon the military folks as the Great Wall and treat them as though they're your relatives. And you know, it seems to me there's a lesson here for Taiwan because my perception is that the Taiwan populace doesn't support the military very much. And in lots of ways, talking to military people, retired military officers, they feel as though they're looked down upon by the population. And I think that's a sad set of affairs. Anyway, what's your review on that? I think we're probably pretty much on the same page on this as there could be more popular support for the military in Taiwan. Yeah, I think Taiwanese society in general takes peace for granted. There's a lot of complacency that you see in the Taiwanese media. There's a lot of criticism. Of course, Taiwan has a very dynamic, free media, and so they love to run these investigative journalism pieces to expose any small infraction in the armed forces. You also see that with Taiwan's Congress, they're what they call their legislative yuan, which is their Congress or parliament, where they are constantly holding these hearings, which can be very skating, very critical of the military. And in fact, it's gotten so bad that many officers in the Taiwanese military worry more about the media and their members of Congress than they worry about the enemy. And in fact, in many cases, they have to spend so much time dealing with these kind of opponents, in some cases, that they have in those domains that they have less time for training. So this is a significant problem that Taiwan has. But on the other side of the coin, being under this level of scrutiny has forced Taiwan's military to almost completely eradicate all corruption in the ranks. That's good. And in order to eradicate any kind of bad behavior that you would see in an authoritarian military, one of the reasons why media pundits and academics and others tend to have a bad view of the military is because for a long time, for decades, in fact, up until the 1990s, the military was the armed wing of a Leninist political party, which was oppressing Taiwan. It wasn't until Taiwan became a full-up democracy in the late 1990s, early 2000s, that the military really reformed itself and became much more responsible and much more professional. But I think it's quite understandable that that legacy animosity does continue and it will continue for a number of years ahead. But again, I think it's in many ways an advantage. It's to Taiwan's own advantage and the Taiwanese Defense Authority's own advantage to have that level of scrutiny because, of course, Taiwan's adversaries in the People's Liberation Army, in the Chinese military, they have no scrutiny at all. And so corruption can just run rampant. And it does. And all kinds of problems can get buried, and they are all the time in the PLA. And nobody ever knows anything about it. That's a really good point. That's a really, really good point, a couple of really good points that you just made. Well, you recently wrote an article for the Taipei Times to talk about how should we call it strategic confusion. And there's always this sort of tug-of-war, it seems to be going on between the United States and Taiwan. Taiwan, I think, generally has the view, well, take it to the enemy and take it to China. Be a full-on military. And the U.S. advisors and pundits who say, well, pursue an asymmetrical warfare strategy, pursue a porcupine strategy, which doesn't really seem to go down too well with the Taiwan military establishment. And there's this constant struggle. What's the strategy going to be? You wrote an article about it, so tell us what you said. Well, what I said is generally that there are some outstanding differences of opinion, and that's very natural. That Taiwan faces an existential threat, that its freedom is under threat, its democracy, its future as an independent sovereign country is under threat. I mean, this is an island nation that 10 years from now or 20 years from now, if we're not careful, could turn into a garrison state. If the Chinese were to take Taiwan over, they would turn it into a police state. It would look like Tibet or Xinjiang, it would be an absolutely miserable place to live. Where for the United States, the consequences seem so distant and so removed from us. And we haven't really spent a lot of time as a nation being faced with this kind of crisis or this kind of threat. It's not really upon us. We're much more worried about other crisis situations around the world. We're much more worried about the Korean Peninsula flashpoint, a flashpoint in the South China Sea and elsewhere. And so we've not had to face it and think very seriously about what we would have to do in the event of this kind of active aggression from China. And so I think it's only natural that the United States would kind of in a detached way say, well, it's in our interest for Taiwan just to focus on homeland defense, just to spend a lot more on defense, on its own defense, and focus on holding ground so we can mobilize and then come into the theater and then focus on offensive. It would really be a counter-offensive operation to then roll the enemy back. And this is very comfortable for U.S. defense planners because this is exactly the way we think about doing it with South Korea and with Japan and with others. I mean, it's the classic sword and shield formula where our allies are the shield and they focus just on defense. And the United States is the sword and then we come in. We carry forth the big battle, in other words. Yeah. But of course the problem with Taiwan is we don't have a treaty, we're not treaty allies. Right. We have the Taiwan Relations Act, but that's a poor substitute for the types of political assurances that would be required to get the Taiwanese to accept the sword and the shield model. Okay, Ian, we're down to like 45 seconds. I hate to do this to you like this, but we got to get this point in in 45 seconds, probably 40 now. Reserves, what about the Taiwan Reserve System? A lot of criticism of it. I noticed that in Jim Morarty's comments at the GTI symposium last week, he talked about the U.S. working together with Taiwan to reconstruct the reserve system. 35 seconds, what's your answer? So I would say that it's very positive for the U.S. and for the Taiwanese military to focus on their reserve force because there's a tremendous amount of latent power that the Taiwanese have there, but in many ways it's untapped power. They have a very, very large reserve force. They have the ability to mobilize huge numbers of men, in fact, hundreds of thousands of men in 24 hours to come to the defense of the island. What they lack is a rigorous training schedule, and that's something that I think the United States and Taiwan are going to be working much more closely together on in the years ahead. Okay, that's great. Well, we got it in, but thank you very much. You made a diss within the time parameters. That's great. Well, thank you very much for watching us today. We welcome your viewing, and we want to thank Ian for staying up so late at night and returning to his office at 10 o'clock at night where it's dark on the streets of Arlington, Virginia. And we will see you next week.