Taiwan is planning to send more than 100 air force personnel to the U.S. for training as part of Washington and Taipei’s unofficial security relationship. For more on how the U.S. and Taiwan cooperate, we speak to Michael Hunzeker from George Mason University.
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00:00Can you explain how common is it for Taiwan to send military personnel to the United States
00:06for training?
00:07So it's a longstanding practice for the United States that when we sell weapons to another
00:12country as part of the foreign military sales or FMS program, that those weapons come along
00:18with training on how to actually operate the vehicle or the platform.
00:22So this is something the United States has long been doing.
00:25There's nothing particularly unusual or provocative about it.
00:28By way of example, 20 some years ago when I was still on active duty, I was part of
00:34an FMS sale of the amphibious assault vehicle, 50 of those to Taiwan.
00:38And as part of that package, Taiwan would send groups of officers over to the United
00:43States where I would help train them on how the vehicle operated.
00:46And we sent a team of Marines out to Kaohsiung and they spent actually six months in Taiwan
00:51training enlisted personnel how to use the vehicle.
00:53So this is very standard for the course because American weapons can be somewhat complicated
00:57and it would not be helpful to anybody to sell a weapon and then not make sure the partner
01:02knows how to use it.
01:04What would you say is the biggest difference for Taiwan's military in terms of training?
01:10Why should Taiwan make the trip all the way to the United States?
01:13I think there are probably two elements.
01:15The first simply is base.
01:17We have a lot more of it in the United States.
01:20Some of our smallest bases are probably larger in terms of the ability to actually get out
01:24and maneuver than the largest of facilities in Taiwan.
01:27The second piece, which I think does lend itself to change, but the change won't come
01:32quickly is cultural.
01:34There's just a long standing emphasis on decentralized decision-making in the United States, both
01:40in the military, but also culturally writ large.
01:43And one of the reasons I have thought it would make sense to send units to the United States
01:48is that allows these units and these leaders of the units to sort of break out of Taiwanese
01:53military culture, which we all know can be very hierarchical, very top down, and put
01:58them in an environment where they're surrounded by US units.
02:00And the fact that in the US, it is not just common, but actually expected that young officers
02:07and non-commissioned officers are going to make mistakes and mistakes are part of that
02:10learning process.
02:11And if you don't make mistakes, then you can't learn to make decisions on your own.
02:14That's an important piece of modern warfare.
02:17If Taiwan's military saying that it's going to be switching to more asymmetric weapons,
02:21these are smaller, more mobile systems, is Taiwan still going to need to increase its
02:26training?
02:28One of the arguments for asymmetric weapons is that they don't require such large logistics
02:33trains and such large training packages.
02:35And that hopefully would give the United States and Taiwan additional flexibility.
02:40That said, I would always place out the caveat that I am just not yet convinced MND is wholeheartedly
02:45buying into this concept of asymmetry.
02:48And I worry a great deal about absorptive capacity.
02:51The MND just is not that large.
02:53The services in Taiwan aren't that large.
02:55These are large weapons that we've been selling a hundred or so M1A2 Abrams that are arriving
03:00are a prime example.
03:01And so Taiwan is just going to have to divert a lot of personnel and a lot of capacity towards
03:06learning those weapons.
03:07And so are they really going to have the bandwidth left over to also simultaneously really truly
03:12engage in mastering asymmetric warfare?