A Special Commissioned Report of Real Context News Intelligence (PDF version here)

by Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content, my Linktree with all his public links/profiles); contact Brian with your own requests about any topic to have your own custom reports produced

August 29, 2023

1. Some Context of the U.S. Relationships with Taiwan and China

Unlike arms sales to all other foreign “entities” (a term used in large part because Taiwan receives much in U.S. arms sales but is not formally recognized as a an independent country by the U.S.), arms sales to Taiwan are uniquely not covered by The Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) of 1961 and The Arms Export Control Act (AECA) of 1976, most of those handled through the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program—in which the U.S. acts as an intermediary between vendors and foreign recipients and handles the sale and delivery of entire weapons systems and full support packages—and Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) licenses—in which U.S. vendors sell directly to  foreign recipients.  There are some other less common options, such as coming from existing Department of Defense stockpiles through Excess Defense Articles (EDA) provisions and Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), the latter increasingly common in the current emergency climate and available to FMS-eligible entities.  But all Taiwan arms sales are regulated by the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, which explicitly states that “the United States will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability” and restricts the factors that can play into the decision-making process of what to send Taiwan and when: “The President and the Congress shall determine the nature and quantity of such defense articles and services based solely upon their judgment of the needs of Taiwan, in accordance with procedures established by law” (emphasis added).[1]

All this means that Taiwan is a special case when it comes to U.S. arms sales.

And the reasons for this are easy to understand: China is essentially the second most powerful nation on earth, thus overtly recognizing Taiwan as a fully independent, separate legal state from China could carry severe consequences.[2]  As the last bastion of World War II-U.S.-ally Nationalist China, Taiwan held onto China’s seat on the United Nations Security Council even after it lost the Chinese Civil War in 1949, as the U.S. did not recognize the Chinese Communist Party-led People’s Republic of China’s government in Beijing, but the Nationalist government in Taipei, Taiwan, as the legitimate Chinese government.  But in the wake of The United Nations General Assembly installing the People’s Republic of China in China’s United Nations seats in the General Assembly and the Security Council in 1971 and around the time of Nixon’s breakthrough visit to Mao’s China in 1972, what would become known as the “one China” policy would emerge and come to be official U.S. policy of the Nixon Administration and every administration since.[3]  Following the emergence of that policy, the Carter Administration began to lay the groundwork in 1978 for formal U.S. diplomatic recognition of the Communist People’s Republic of China as “China” in place of Taiwan on January 1, 1979.[4]  In response, Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) later in 1979 to assure Taiwan that while it was recognizing the communist mainland Chinese government, it was not abandoning Taiwan and would empower the government in Taipei to defend itself from a military takeover at the hands of the government in Beijing with “defense articles and defense services” (e.g., arms).  After a bit of wrangling, during the summer of 1982, the Reagan Administration would broaden and deepen the general “one-China” framework to include six general “assurances”:

1. In relation to specific language from an earlier Reagan Administration communique the same year stating a vague plan to eventually reduce and end arms sales to Taiwan with the culmination of a “peaceful,” “final resolution” between Beijing and Taipei, it was stated that the U.S. had not agreed to set any specific date for ending arms sales to Taiwan.
2. The U.S. had not agreed to consult the government in Beijing on any of these arms sales to the government in Taipei.
3. The U.S. would not attempt to play any mediating role between Beijing and Taipei.
4. The U.S. had not agreed to revise the TRA.
5. The deliberately ambiguous assertion that U.S. had not changed its stance on sovereignty over Taiwan.
6. The U.S. would not pressure the government in Taipei to negotiate with the government in Beijing.

These six assurances, the TRA, and three sets of communiques—two the circumstances of which were touched on above in 1972 (Nixon Administration) and 1978 (Carter Administration) and a third in 1982 (Reagan Administration) stating U.S. policy was to support a “peaceful reunification” between Beijing and Taipei—are what the Biden Administration regards as its and America’s main guidance for the “one China” policy, with the text of the “Six Assurances” clarified by Congress during the Obama Administration in 2016.[5]

Short of formally legally recognizing Taiwan as a fully independent country, Washington has had considerable freedom of action for decades, though as China has risen considerably in power and stature in recent years and seeks to be more assertive on the world stage, there is growing concern that, above all other issues, Taiwan may propel the U.S. and China onto a collision course resulting in war between the two most powerful countries on earth.  Among the most prominent individuals who share this concern is noted scholar Graham Allison, renown for decades for his now textbook analysis of the Cuban Missile Crisis; Graham’s famous analysis first appears in 1968 as a RAND Corporation paper, then in 1969 in The American Political Science Review, then in 1971 in a much-expanded book version, Essence of Decision, itself reworked in a new edition in 1999 once significant amounts of information on the event were declassified.[6]

Graham popularized what is now known as the Thucydides trap.  The name of this trap refers to the fifth-century BCE ancient Greek historian Thucydides, considered the founder of the so-called “realist” international relations theory framework and who has become one of the great historians in human history for his chronicling of the great war between rising power Athens and established power Sparta (“The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable” [1.23]).[7]  In this vein, a “Thucydides trap” refers to a situation where the rise of one power is confronted by a more established power and results in a direct war between the two powers, which Allison very much sees will be the case with China and the U.S.[8]

Not everyone is on board with the degree of concern broadcast by Allison, who is convinced war will happen unless there are “more radical changes in attitudes and actions, by leaders and publics alike, than anyone has yet imagined.”[9]  While I would hardly dismiss his concerns, I find the likelihood far less: for me, it is hard to see or the U.S. or China gaining much from such a conflict but it is easy to see both losing much and their economies and, indeed, societies, are terribly intertwined even if their militaries and political systems are not.

Still, while the latest caches of arms going to Taiwan from the U.S. will hardly improve, and, indeed, will at least ostensibly harm Sino-American relations, even if there will hardly be a diplomatic break or a halting of trade, this latest arms transfers between Taiwan and the U.S. are worth looking into in some detail.  But it can be confusing where to start.  If a sale is announced, it may literally be years before it arrives.  What about gifts that are not sales that will arrive in Taiwan far earlier than sales that happened earlier?  Or financial grants for Taiwan to purchase weapons?  What about training and support services?  I was confused by all this myself, hence my longer-than-anticipated report on the variety of military support the U.S. is offering Taiwan, any of which could be counted among the “latest” arms or intended/future U.S. arms transfer to Taiwan.

To understand the latest transfers, it is important to understand that there are both sales and other types of assistance going to Taiwan.  To start, we will begin with the sales.

2. U.S. Arms Sales to Taiwan and Their Implications

The Biden Administration announced it intended to seek $1.1 billion in Foreign Military Sales of U.S. arms and support services in early September 2022.  The packages announcement came at a time of heightened tension with China shortly after then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan a month earlier, which resulted in angry denunciations from Beijing and aggressive military training exercises violating Taiwanese waters and airspace, the largest military exercises in China’s history.[10]  While a number or public figures condemned Pelosi’s act as irresponsibly provocative, I felt China’s reaction was more kabuki performance-theater (or xiqu, if you will) than anything else: was much ado about very little, but Chinese President Xi Jinping felt compelled to make a very public, “strong” reaction.  Still, the fact that China reacted so theatrically and so symbolically (but not in any substantive, far-reaching ways) to the peaceful visit of a senior civilian legislator who was then an eighty-two-year-old woman to me hardly projected strength, but, rather, insecurity.  In any event, over a year later there still have not been any far-reaching consequences from Pelosi’s visit.[11]

The more than $1.1 billion in arms was the largest yet proposed by the Biden Administration and included up to 60 anti-ship Harpoon missiles for $355 million, up to 100 Sidewinder AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missiles for $85 million, and $655 million in logistical support for Taiwan’s early-warning air-defense radar surveillance systems.[12]

As Taiwan is an island China can only attack from air and sea, such a package would greatly increase the cost of any assault against Taiwan for Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and Air Force (PLAAF), to say the least.  With the Japan-and-South-Korea-allied U.S. Navy protecting the waters nearby and with China having only three aircraft carriers and only several dozens or the larger types of ships (cruisers, frigates, corvettes, destroyers., and amphibious landing ships) so essential for any major amphibious assault given those U.S and its allies’ navies nearby, even after a rapid buildup, the untested navy of China’s that has not seen any combat in decades (over forty-four years ago it had a border war in 1979 that was a loss to Vietnam, besides that there was just a small skirmish since then in 1988) remains vulnerable.  This is especially the case after seeing the damage that Ukraine—which barely has a navy of its own—has been able to do to the Russian Navy with relatively inexpensive anti-ship missiles (the same type as or similar to the ones the West is supplying to Taiwan) and drones, Russian vulnerability I was keen and early to point out in April, 2022.[13]  That is not to say PLAN is just like the Russian Navy: the Chinese ships are far newer than Russia’s, yet have not been tested in combat.  In any situation, though, the overall U.S. capabilities are far ahead of China’s, factoring the interrelated systems each can deploy (China’s larger number of ships is hardly the be all and end all), and that does not even get into how much some of the major U.S. allies in the region—especially Japan, South Korea, and to a degree France and even Australia—are also considerable naval powers in the region; even the U.K. plans to send a carrier strike group to the region soon, in 2025.[14]  And do not not forget all these sales and transfer are for Taiwan itself, which is also engaging in a rapid, impressive military buildup of its own, punching far above its weight in key areas, with rough ratios of 1 to 4 in fighter aircraft (set to increase), 1 to 2 in trainer aircraft (particularly important for producing high quality pilots), and 1 to 3 in attack helicopters against a China that is just shy of sixty times more populous and with a GDP nearly 24.5 times larger![15]

After this the package announcement in September, in early December the State Department announced that it intended to allow another package with the FMS sale of $428 million in U.S. military aircraft spare parts—especially for F-16s and C-130 transports—and equipment especially as Taiwan’s military aircraft have seen heavy use with in patrolling all the aggressive Chinese military exercises nearby.[16]  To me, this sends a clear signal that the China cannot expect to wear out Taiwan’s aircraft through its aggressive exercises.

That announcement was followed upon at the end of the month by another of a $180 million FMS sales package of Volcano anti-tank mine-laying systems and training, ammunition, and services for those systems.^[17]  I feel this is a way of reminding China that even if it were to land troops on Taiwan, the fight would definitely continue on land at a cost to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

2023 saw the Biden Administration begin by announcing in early March that it intended to sell 200 medium air-to-air AMRAAM missiles and 100 AGM-88B HARM ground-radar-targeting missiles in a $619 million FMS package.[18]  This would bolster both offense and defense for Taiwan’s combat jets.

Another FMS sales package for over $440 million was announced late in June, including $332 million in Bushmaster autocannon 30mm ammunition for some of Taiwan’s CM-34 wheeled infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) as well as $108 million in spare parts for vehicles, small arms, and support systems and services.[19]  The way I see this package, if the Volcano package was a reminder that Chinese armor may pay a price, this is a reminder that the Taiwanese infantry and their support vehicles would be well-equipped and well-supplied.

Finally, just last week, yet another FMS arms package was announced by the Biden Administration, this one $500 million to equip Taiwan F-16s with infrared search tracking systems and related spare parts and equipment.[20]  This is an added reminder that Chinese aircraft may pay a dear price in any attack on Taiwan.  Just days after this sales package was announced and just days ago, China responded by sending dozens of combat jets towards Taiwan, with many violating Taiwan’s airspace and causing Taiwan to scramble its own fighter jets to intercept.[21]

This year-long-period’s worth of packages worth well over $3.2 billion demonstrates to China that its forces at sea, in the air, and on land will potentially face a steep price as all three vectors are receiving substantial boosts from U.S. military arms and equipment sales to Taiwan.

3. Delays in Delivery of Sales to Taiwan

Unfortunately for Taiwan, supply-chain and manufacturing issues have led to a backlog for some $19 billion in weapons deliveries of previous U.S. arms sales packages for Taiwan—including 66 F-16s, a proportionally major increase (see above graphic), HIMARS, and some 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles and 100 Harpoon Coastal Defense Systems—and that was before all but one arms sales packages discussed above.  Ukraine is also playing a role in somewhat competing for attention with Taiwan, but it is not playing the role that some like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) are claiming (see note 30 and discussion in IV).  For the most part, the idea that FMS weapons sales to Taiwan are being affected by PDA transfers to Ukraine is a red herring: they are coming from two entirely different sources—U.S. private sector manufacturers producing orders for Taiwan and existing U.S. defense stockpiles for Ukraine, respectively, with only one recent existing stockpile PDA having been authorized for Taiwan, the first of this type for Taiwan—so they are not coming from the same pot and are therefore not in immediate competition with each other.  That is why Ukraine has been able to quickly receive various weapons systems and Taiwan is facing a $19 billion backlog, as the manufacturers are suffering from a number of production and supply-chain issues but the U.S. already has its stockpiles.  Indeed, before Russia’s February 2022 escalatory further invasion of Ukraine, the Taiwan arms sales delivery backlog was still a whopping $14 billion, and most of the delayed items were purchased from 2015 to 2019.  As Jennifer Kavanagh and Jordan Cohen noted in War on the Rocks:

Across U.S. arms deliveries to all clients completed between 2012 and 2021, the average time between sale and delivery was about four years for air defense systems, 3.5 years for aircraft, and 2.5 years for missiles.  Sometimes these delays stretch up to almost 10 years. Taiwan’s delays are in line with these figures.  Notably, while clients of major U.S. adversaries like Russia and China often receive faster arms deliveries in general, they face similarly lengthy backlogs when it comes to more high-end systems.

The same authors outline a number of major reasons for this:

1. The U.S. industrial base has been unable to keep up with increasing demand
2. Defense business sector consolidation has meant a smaller number of production lines and suppliers
3. The supply chains are long and production methods are complex, vulnerable to geopolitical, weather, and economic disruptions
4. The political instability in the U.S., particularly the budgeting shenanigans that have increasingly become a reckless norm, means contract authorizations are delayed and defense-contractors are becoming more averse to long-term investment (I will add my own thoughts to this later and name the perpetrators)
5. We are still recovering from the issues in supply chain upheavals and production halts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic
6. Inefficiencies in the long process from sale to delivery are increasing because of increasing U.S. global arms sales, leading to the prioritization of bigger, more expensive systems being moved faster than some of Taiwan’s more “asymmetric” items
7. An outdated Department of Defense process for allocating funds for FMS is also slowing things down
8. Delays from export controls can even occur after the deal is done, a result of byzantine legal rules that can slow things down
9. (The authors also note a ninth general reason that has not that been the case with Taiwan: congressional committees can further put informal yet indefinite holds on delivery until the sitting administration addresses their concerns) 

Numbers 6.) and 7.) are also affecting PDA transfers that until recently Ukraine benefited from and Taiwan did not (and number 9.) while not affecting Taiwan, is definitely affecting Turkey as Sen. Bob Mendez (D-NJ), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has put a hold on the Biden Administration’s sale of F-16s there).  As more and more PDA packages are considered for both Ukraine and Taiwan, there will be an issue of direct competition for resources from the same pot, but those have yet to truly present themselves in any significant way and that simply is not the case with the $19 billion backlog for Taiwan.  There are some other bandwidth issues related to Ukraine, and those will be discussed in section IV, but those are also unrelated to Taiwan’s arms sales delivery delays.  Thankfully, the Biden Administration and Congress are moving to mitigate some of these issues, including throwing substantial funding into shoring up and further developing and expanding many aspects of the industrial defense sector.  Additionally, both the Department of State and Department of Defense are well aware of the problems and have announced specific plans to combat them in May and June of this year, respectively.  While results generally remain to be seen, the Biden Administration has already opened and recently used the Presidential Drawdown Authority to speed up new transfers of weapons to Taiwan, and those betting against this administration when it puts its mind to something have often been objectively and severely guilty of underestimating it.[22]

4. U.S. Arms Grants, Loans, Other Military Aid for Taiwan in an Era of Political Dysfunction

There are instances when Congress authorizes acts and appropriates money for them separately.  Overall, there are three types of spending in Congress: mandatory, discretionary, and interest.  That last one involves interest payments on the national debt, and mandatory spending involves programs that are budgeted for in their laws establishing them (healthcare costs and social security together account for 77% of mandatory spending in 2023).  But discretionary spending involves programs established by law that are not funded for in their enacting legislation and that must be funded by one of twelve separate appropriations bills put together by House and Senate Appropriations Committees and Subcommittees, but some or all of those bills are often combined into omnibus bills (defense spending accounts for nearly half of discretionary spending this year).[23] What makes this year’s non-sales Taiwan arms package interesting is that it is part of discretionary spending and there has thus far been more authorized in its enacting legislation than has been appropriated in the appropriations legislation due to a complicated debate and set of circumstances.

The Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act (TERA), sponsored by the aforementioned Sen. Menendez, was approved by Congress as part of the the $858 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2022 and signed into law by U.S. President Joe Biden at the end of 2022.[24]  TERA included up to $10 billion in grants for military purchases—up to $2 billion per year for fiscal years 2024-2027—and $2 billion per year in loans for the same over the same period.  It represents the first time Title 22 Foreign Military Financing (FMF) run by the State Department is being authorized for Taiwan.  The bill also authorized deeper military training and collaboration between the U.S. and Taiwan, created a regional weapons stockpile, and fast-tracks weapons disbursement to Taiwan—allowing the same type of methods being used to deliver much of the U.S. weaponry going to Ukraine that permits disbursement from existing U.S. stockpiles, in this case, up to an additional $1 billion in arms per year for Taiwan.  The bill goes further to authorize the setup of a fast-track FMS method to get Taiwan arms it has purchased more rapidly than it currently receives them.[25]

As this was all discretionary spending, though, the funding was appropriated separately from the authorization in the $1.7 trillion omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023.  And that bill did not include the $10 billion in grants that would come from the State Department’s FMF program.  During the negotiations, the Senate leaders on the appropriations committee handling the State Department, Chairman Chris Coons (D-DE) and Ranking Member Lindsey Graham (R-SC), agreed that this large amount of $10 billion might end up coming from other duly authorized military grants and humanitarian aid programs, as the State Department’s entire funding level for FY 2023 was only set at $59.7 billion.  The $2 billion per-year is no small amount, then, and other top FMF program recipients—Israel ($3.3 billion) and especially Egypt ($1.3 billion) and Jordan ($425 million) all have much lower GDPs than Israel, with Taiwan has increasing its defense spending 13.9% in 2023 to $18.3 billion.  The two senators formed a strange bipartisan combination and faced other strange bedfellow sharing bipartisan concern for their bipartisan opposition to the grants, but especially with serious a serious global hunger crisis and the war in Ukraine, Coons, Graham, and others wanted to make sure other urgently needed aid is not impacted.  The bill did include the $2-billion-a-year in loan offers, but Taiwan has since stated is it not interested in taking out U.S.-offered loans.[26]

But the bill with TERA has since resulted in the first of the Presidential Drawdown Authority disbursements, one worth $345 million out of the $1 billion authorized by the late December 2022 legislation.  This drawdown from existing U.S. stocks was announced at the end of July, is expected to arrive in Taiwan fart faster than the previous FMS purchases, and is supposed to include missiles, firearms, MANPADS portable air defense systems, intelligence and surveillance equipment, training, and education.[27]  And, according to Politico quoting one unnamed official, it is to include MQ-9 Reaper drones, though the details are being kept quiet from official, public channels for now because of “sensitivities” involving China.[28] If those drones are actually included, Col. Cedric Leighton, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)—who is one of CNN’s go-to military analysts—wrote that this would be “noteworthy” in a Twitter direct message to me.  He continued: “So far, only the U.S., U.K., France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the Dominican Republic fly this…so if Taiwan were to receive this system as part of this package it would immeasurably enhance its aerial surveillance capabilities.”  He further explained that “the system Taiwan would receive is the unarmed reconnaissance and surveillance version.”  When it comes to the reaction from the other side, the former Air Force colonel commented that “China would undoubtedly find the addition of the MQ-9 to the Taiwan battlespace highly provocative, but it would serve to better integrate Taiwan’s intelligence capabilities with those of the U.S.”  For Col. Leighton: “These systems would greatly enhance Taiwan’s ability to defend itself.  There’s been no confirmation that Taiwan will actually receive four MQ-9As, but it’s difficult to fight today’s battles without such capabilities.”

My own analysis is that this is a big deal more symbolically than anything else, in that this represents a new way to get Taiwan military support in a way that bypasses the deeply backlogged FMS system.  The $345 million package is not game-changing as to the substance, but it does get Taiwan its first Reapers in its hands soon, and the point is that this new PDA method is important because the U.S. will keep sending smaller amounts of military weapons, ammunition, hardware, and training programs that will slowly but surely add up over time and amount to quite a lot over the course of the next several years.  As Taiwan is not expected to be invaded in the next few years, the priority will be Ukraine in its current hot war, but even drops will eventually fill a bucket and make a large difference over a longer timespan.  So few details of this package are known so far, and that will likely be the case with the next several that will very likely be announced for Taiwan.  Breaking them up is also sound strategy: China is almost certainly not invading next year or the year after, and keeping the packages small traps China into looking ridiculous if it overreacts.

Going back to the gaps in the two late-2022 bills, to make matters a bit confusing, a top Pentagon official—Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner—reiterated the Department of Defense’s position that all NDAA authorizations should be appropriated for after Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman had demurred to committing to requesting funding for those FMF grants, her State Department being the body overseeing FMF and not the Department of Defense; those grants were not requested in the State Department’s budget request for 2023 and have not been included in 2014 but were added by the TERA legislation for 2023 within the NDAA for 2023.  So there are dueling committees in Congress, one inserting authorization for grant funding and the other declining to include appropriations for that grant funding, which the Department of State oversees but has not explicitly asked for and seems not inclined to push for but which the Department of Defense supports as a result of its authorization.[29]

But now it is time to talk about the Republican Party.  In my own view (though I am hardly alone), there is something of an issue in the Republican Party, with many in the extreme right even being pro-Russia or anti-Ukrainian and anti-foreign humanitarian aid, some of those folks contrasting that with their staunchly anti-communist, anti-Chinese views; there is an effort on the part of some of these Republicans (Sen. Hawley just being one example) to divert money from Ukraine to Taiwan, as opposed to Democrats in general or Republicans like Sen. Graham who want to forcefully support both Ukraine and Taiwan, just the latter more once the Ukraine situation is much improved or even after Ukraine wins.[30]  With recent budget brinksmanship flirting with a shutdown, there is almost certainly concern that there could be a faction of Republicans who would push for funding for Taiwan now and then not ensure the U.S. had enough funding to meet obligations for Ukraine or humanitarian aid elsewhere.  The language of both Sens. Graham and Coon from the first few months of the year suggests that it is not so much that they oppose grants to Taiwan but want to seek additional funding to ensure those grants would not impact other programs and would be properly appropriated in concurrent legislation.  Ukraine faces a far more immediate threat in a hot war at the moment, China’s attack (if it comes) is not expected in the immediate future, and the U.S. has demonstrated an ability to move air defense systems and other equipment relatively quickly once it decides to do so.  So Ukraine for now will remain a more immediate priority and in later 2022, those grants for Taiwan were set aside to give funding to more pressing needs elsewhere.  Yet Taiwan still is getting a substantial boost in aid, especially for a wealthy country.  There is also the simple fact that the different sections within the State Department that are coming up with their own policies and priorities that are not currently exactly the same as the committee that drafted all the details of TERA, and then you have the Department of Defense commenting on FMF funding that is not its responsibility.  Some of this just seems to be bureaucratic complications, as the State Department staff working on FMF and the Defense Department Indo-Pacific Security Affairs staff are, by design and the natural bureaucratic way of things, not generally working together but with others in their own departments, with policy being approved up the chain to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin up at the top, respectively, and then with senior national security staff in the White House.  There was the whole political mess in which the legislation was also, simply, rushed at “the eleventh-hour to avoid a government shutdown, very much increasing the likelihood of disconnect and incidents like this one.  If anything, then, this issue really would seem to be the product of the political brinksmanship on the part of Republicans departing from normal procedural and political practice, manufacturing crises and leaving officials and lawmakers without enough time to smooth over details that take time, meetings, and long negotiations to review and finalize (this is me naming names as to who is responsible item 4. from the earlier War on the Rocks list; Republicans are far more to blame for the climate of current delays than Ukraine aid has had any affect by far).  Normal procedure was not the case of the process at all with the bills passed at the end of 2022, and we are seeing here its implications for national security policy and why Fitch downgraded the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+ first and foremost because of an “erosion of governance.”[31]

But the situation geopolitically and politically is, nevertheless, complex.  Ukraine is not only a situation competing with Taiwan for U.S officials’ and lawmakers’ attention as well as weapons, but it is also competing for attention among U.S. media outlets and analysts.  Very little discussion of some aspects of this legislation and weapons transfers situation has appeared until the past few months even though the bills were signed into law in December 2022.  Between the war in Ukraine, the 2024 election cycle, extreme weather events, and, perhaps most of all, the first federal and state indictments—four thus far–of a former president of the United States for crimes related to cheating or overturning an election, obstruction of constitutional procedure and justice, and trying to maintain presidential authority over classified documents after leaving office, all on top of the declining business environment for many media outlets, there is just not much bandwidth left to cover many stories in their proper context and giving them their proper depth.  The author of this very report found it challenging to put all this information together and had to find bits and pieces spread out over a great many months of coverage just to ascertain the exact provisions and ramifications of two major bills passed at the end of 2022.[32]

5. The Current Pending Legislation Enmeshed in an Epic Culture War Showdown

The House and the Senate each passed their National Defense Authorization Acts for Fiscal Year 2024 this July, both for $886 trillion.  And yet, there is perhaps an even more absurd form of brinksmanship (hard to imagine in other times but not these) than that of last year occurring in the context of the differences between the two chambers’ bills that will have to be resolved in conference committee—a committee of members from both the House and Senate that will have to agree on a single version to be presented back for approval to both chambers (last year, the House and Senate approved their versions in July and June, respectively, and issues were forebodingly not resolved until December). [33]

When it came to Taiwan, there are yet again some differences.  Senate appropriators are pushing for much more funding for Taiwan than House appropriators, meaning “the Senate’s move…again puts Republican defense hawks at odds with deficit hawks in their own party.”  The Senate appropriators want $1.1 billion for FY 2024 to replenish stockpiles that would be transferred to Taiwan under PDA, but as to the previously authorized $2 billion in FMF grants (the late December 2022 NDAA did this for 2023-2027), Sens. Graham and Coons only relented from no FMF funding for Taiwan to just $113 million in the current appropriations framework, incidentally or perhaps purposefully, the same amount the State Department has requested for all FMF grants worldwide.  Those opposing larger FMF grants to Taiwan in the Senate are doing so in the context of House Republicans on the appropriations side, who ironically are seeking to appropriate $500 million for Taiwan from the FMF grants but are trying to overall drastically cut the State Department budget from where that FMF funding would come from by 24% from what the Biden Administration requested on top of cutting the foreign aid budget and domestic spending, so any and all funding shifts or cuts will carry risk and drama.[34]  The NDAA committees in both chambers have also been working on steps to address a number of factors crippling the speed of arms delivery, but it will remain to be seen what makes into the final bill that goes to conference.[35]

Yet in the end, all the NDAA and appropriations bills are in doubt because of deeper divisions in the never-ending all-out culture war consuming American politics these days: the House FDAA only narrowly passed as extremist Republican elements succeeded in removing abortion access, transgender care, and diversity training for military personnel, utter brinksmanship conflating deeply controversial issues with defense and international security authorizations.[36]  Sadly, while more extreme than any time in my life, the politicization of national security by Republicans is not a new trend, but, as I have noted before, one that began just after the end of Cold War.[37]

Then there is the issue of the first PDA transfer from the Biden Administration to Taiwan.  As discussed, TERA as passed with the NDAA for 2023 opened this drawdown as an option for Ukraine.  This is the first drawdown from stocks that would also be available for Ukraine, the first time where there is hard, direct competition in immediately available stockpiles.[38]

At the same time, the drawdown is not that large and the priority is currently Ukraine, so it seems likely Ukraine will keep getting more and larger drawdown transfers than Taiwan, with a minimal loss or perhaps none at all to Taiwan if more funding is appropriated, whereas given the Ukraine situation, Taiwan’s wealthier status compared to Ukraine, and that Taiwan has now a well-over-$19-billion-in-sales-delivery backlog that will eventually make its way to Taiwan, Taiwan will not be “losing” much if anything in the end to Ukraine, since the PDA arms going to Taiwan are primarily being rationalized as a temporary stopgap (at least for now) to address the FMS delays and speed up delivery of weapons for Taiwan in this massive backlog context.  As noted, some have misleadingly attempted to portray things in a zero-sum way, but the less dramatic reality is what I have outlined herein.  And the numbers being talked about are not terribly large when it comes to PDA numbers for Taiwan—$1 billion authorized for FY 2023, $1.1 billion in reimbursement to replenish stockpiles related to potential Taiwan PDA transfers for FY 2024—that it is more so the unwillingness of many House Republicans to further fund Ukraine or the State Department—the budget of the latter from which FMF money comes—that is the real issue.  But if there is one thing the House Republicans under Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in the era of Trump excel at, it is creating hurricanes of drama out trivial matters or manufactured issues.

6. Concluding Analysis

As we have seen with the war between Ukraine and Russia, single shots from modern Western anti-air/air defense (e.g., Stingers and NASAMS), anti-ship (e.g., Harpoons), anti-tank weapons (e.g., Javelins), and rocket artillery (e.g., HIMARS) paired with modern effective targeting systems can effectively destroy or severely limit the use far more expensive and larger planes, ships, and ground vehicles of all types, even the most advanced Russian surface warships and jet aircraft.  Compared to the Russians, Ukraine makes every shell count far more, and a similar edge may end up with Taiwan against Chinese weapons untested in any heavy-use, sustained combat operations.  That is not to say I am an expert or up to speed on the military hardware of China, but at least against Russia, we have seen the huge edge Western weapons have over their Russian counterparts, and their ability to perform well under heavy use and with proper maintenance is not in dispute.  If anything, Taiwan will be able to benefit from lessons learned from similar weapons or even the same as being used in Russia’s imperialist war against Ukraine.  As Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, U.S Army (Ret.) noted about a year ago, “Make no mistake, China is watching” Russia’s performance in Ukraine with consideration for Taiwan.[39]  And it is not just the battlefield there that should worry China: Russia’s performance on the battlefield has left Putin’s position at home not just weak, but in a state of near-certain doom over time, if not sooner, no matter who Putin shoots down in a plane flying on the outskirts of Moscow.[40]

A concern for Taiwan and Ukraine has to be the political brinksmanship and dysfunction of the American political system, much as it been for the Fitch credit rating agency.  At least the ridiculous backlog Taiwan has been going through has received enough attention that wheels are in motion undertake some serious reform aimed at speeding up its related processes.  China, to be sure, is a threat, but it seems almost certain China will not invade this year or next and there is time to get not just the $19 billion of arms sales that is backlogged to Taiwan, but the several billion offered since then and some stocks that PDA would access in the meantime, in addition to billions more that will be authorized in the future.  By the time all this equipment arrives, Taiwan will be substantially better equipped with substantially more arms of the very types that have proven so effective in Ukraine in essentially destroy the Russian Military 1.0 that was arrayed against Ukraine in February 2022.  Very little of that force still exists, with Russia dragging half-century old tanks and century-old rifles out of storage and handing them to raw recruits that are getting slaughtered on the battlefield.

China will be better equipped that Russia, to be sure, but they have less combat experience now than the Russian military did in February 2022 and far less than that losing Russian military has now.  A military fighting on the offensive against a well-equipped, well-trained enemy fighting for his home on his home turf is a nightmare for any invading army.  To do so across the sea or by air against an island nation with a significant mountain chain tunning down the length of its island through the middle, where artillery can easily be entrenched in mountain bunker positions that can have the whole coast facing China easily covered is one thing.  But to do so while the U.S. arming that county with anti-ship missiles that can make any amphibious landing a nightmare, with anti-air missiles and air defenses that can make airstrikes and air support a nightmare, and with mines and anti-tank missiles that will make it difficult for any troops that survive the crossing or the jump out of the plane to advance further inland or even survive on a beachhead, well, that is, to paraphrase the U.S. Civil War Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, “hell.”  China would need to spend a lot of time trying to soften up positions before landing or its troops would get slaughtered (and they may even after).  And that time buys time for the U.S. and others, maybe even the powerful militaries of Japan and South Korea, to come Taiwan’s aid and for world diplomatic pressure to come down hard on China and severely damage its economy and other interests.  And that does not even account for the small Taiwanese-controlled Islands between the main Island of Formosa and the Chinese mainland—the Penghu islands near Formosa and the Kinmen islands near the Chinese coast—also being major obstacles to any invasion and serving as early warning stations.  China would likely need to neutralize them first and that only prolongs the time between the beginning of hostilities and getting large numbers of troops to land on Formosa.  There is a reason why Mao and China after the end of the Chinese Civil War neve tried to outright take Taiwan by force.

The large number relatively inexpensive, proven-effective weapons that the U.S. and other Western partners have flooded into Ukraine partnered with some smaller numbers of more expensive systems have dashed Russia’s hopes of imperial revanchism for all the world to see, and, at a smaller pace and over time, the U.S. is doing the same flooding, if at a smaller scale or at least a slower pace, in Taiwan (indeed, has been doing this for many years before Russia’s escalatory 2022 further invasion).  The costs for China could be incredibly severe should they opt for an invasion and there is hardly any guarantee of victory.  Just ask Russia.

Thus, the arms the arms packages—sales and the first of the Presidential Drawdown Authority releases—laid out here may just be a bit over $3.6 billion in military aid in the span of a year, but they include incredibly effective weapons with significant amounts of ammunition, support equipment, servicing, and training to ensure they can remain operable over time, and this is not an end, but just another drop in a bucket of years of support from the past and years to come in the future, with more than $19 billion in backlogged equipment on its way.  To use just one example, if we go back to that Deutsche Welle infographic, currently, China outnumbers Taiwan in fighter jets about 4.2 to 1—1199 to 285.  But Taiwan has 66 F-16s on order, already paid for: once they arrive, that ratio drops to about 3.4 to 1, an advantage for China that decreases by about 19% with that one order and that increases the number of Taiwan’s fighter jets by 23%.  And, again, this is just the effect of one delivery of one weapons system.  There are so many more that came before and will yet come.  China is not the only one building up, and the U.S. has been careful to offer full-spectrum support: air, land, sea, ammunition, surveillance, support equipment, training, and logistics.  Thus, the $3.6 billion in specific packages are a microcosm of the steady support of the U.S. in augmenting Taiwan’s ability to defend itself, and other U.S. efforts to fix its own supply chain, delivery, and manufacturing issues represent a desire and ability to do better.  That the U.S. still keeps trying to find more and better ways to stand by Taiwan even amidst serious dysfunction at home and while supporting Ukraine with a major active war in Europe that is the largest on that continent since World War II speaks to the strength, rather than the weakness, of the American commitment to Taiwan’s defense.

[1] Christina L. Arabia, Michael J. Vassalotti, and Nathan J. Lucas, Transfer of Defense Articles: U.S. Sale and Export of U.S.-Made Arms to Foreign Entities (Congressional Research Service [CRS], 2023); “The U.S. arms sale mode of ‘Direct Commercial Sale’ influence on Taiwan Military Industry development (paper presented at International Studies Association Global South Caucus [GSCIS] Singapore, January 2015); Foreign Military Sales FAQ (Defense Security Cooperation Agency, n.d.).

[2] For a discussion of Russia’s power relative to China and the U.S., see my article: Brian E. Frydenborg, “The Post-Putin World Will Be So Much Better than This One,” Real Context News, February 28, 2023.  

[3] The Learning Network, “Oct. 25, 1971 | People’s Republic of China In, Taiwan Out, at U.N,” The New York Times, October 25, 2011;  Name redacted, China/Taiwan: Evolution of the “One China” Policy—Key Statements from Washington, Beijing, and Taipei (Congressional Research Service [CRS], 2015); Winston Lord, Oriana Skylar Mastro, Timothy Naftali, and Douglas G. Brinkley, President Nixon’s Trip to China: Fifty Years Later (Council on Foreign Relations, 2022); David Shambaugh and Robert Sutter, “50 Years Later: Richard Nixon’s Historic Visit to China,” GW Today, March 22, 2022.

[4] Stephen Orlins, “Lessons We Can Learn Today From President Carter’s Legacy on China,” The Diplomat, March 11, 2023.

[5] Susan V. Lawrence, President Reagan’s Six Assurances to Taiwan (Congressional Research Service [CRS], 2023); Caitlin Campbell, Taiwan: Defense and Military Issues (Congressional Research Service [CRS], 2023).

[6] For his Cuban Missile Crisis analyses, see Graham T. Allison: Conceptual Models of the Cuban Missile Crisis: Rational Policy, Organization Process, and Bureaucratic Politics (RAND Corporation, 1968);  “Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” 63, no. 3 (September 1969): 689-718; Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis(Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1971); and Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, 2^nd ed. (Reading: Longman, 1999).

[7] Probably the best edition of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War is The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to The Peloponnesian War, ed. Robert B. Strassler, trans. Richard Crawley (New York: Free Press, 1996).  For Thucydides as the father of realist international relations theory, see Gregory Crane “Truest Causes and Thucydidean Realisms,” in his Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity: The Limits of Political Realism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).

[8] See Graham Allison, “The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?,” The Atlantic, September 24, 2015 and his much expanded argument in his book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) along with Harvard University’s Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs companion website, including case studies throughout history of other Thucydides traps (12 of 16 examples in the last 500 years have led to war) and many additional insights from Allison and various collaborators.

[9] While a whole separate briefing could be written on this subject, for larger discussions of Graham’s views on this and the U.S.-China Thucydides trap in general, see Alan Greeley Misenheimer, Thucydides’ Other “Traps” The United States, China, and the Prospect of “Inevitable” War, National War College (Washington: National Defense University Press, 2019); Richard Hanania, “Graham Allison and the Thucydides Trap Myth,” Strategic Studies Quarterly, 15, no. 4 (Winter 2021): 13-24; Michael Desch, War Is a Choice, Not a Trap: The Right Lessons from Thucydides (Defense Priorities, 2022); Michael A. Peters, Benjamin Green, Chunxiao Mou, Stephanie Hollings, Moses Oladele Ogunniran, and Fazal Rizvi, “US–China Rivalry and ‘Thucydides’ Trap’: Why this is a misleading account,” Educational Philosophy and Theory, 54, no. 10 (2022): 1501-1512; Yanzhong Huang, “The Four Traps China May Fall Into,” Council on Foreign Relations, October 30, 2017; Jonathan Marcus, “Could an ancient Greek have predicted a US-China conflict?,” BBC, March 25, 2019; Win McCormack, “The Thucydides Trap: Can the United States and China avoid military conflict?,” The New Republic, March 17, 2023.  The quote is from Allison’s Atlantic article, cited earlier.

[10] Oriana Skylar Mastro, “China’s huge exercises around Taiwan were a rehearsal, not a signal, says Oriana Skylar Mastro,” The Economist, August 10, 2022; Lily Kuo, “China’s military extends drills near Taiwan after Pelosi trip,” Lily Kuo,” The Washington Post, August 8, 2022.

[11] Jennifer Hansler, “Biden administration approves more than $1.1B in arms sales to Taiwan,” CNN, September 2, 2022; U.S. Arms Sales to Taiwan (Forum on the Arms Trade, 2023); For more views of Pelosi’s visit, see Thomas L. Friedman, “Why Pelosi’s Visit to Taiwan Is Utterly Reckless,” The New York Times, August 1, 202;, Jonathan Guyer, “The drama over Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan travel plans, briefly explained,” Vox, August 4, 2022; and Isaac Chotiner, “The Provocative Politics of Nancy Pelosi’s Trip to Taiwan What is the House Speaker’s high-profile visit really about?,” The New Yorker, August 4, 2022.

[12]Matthew Lee, “US OKs $1B arms sale to Taiwan as tensions rise with China,” Associated Press (AP), September 2, 2022; and Hansler.

[13] On China’s last non-minor battle in 1979 and skirmish in 1988, see Derek Grossman, “Vietnam Is the Chinese Military’s Preferred Warm-Up Fight,” The Rand Blog, May 15, 2019.  On the numbers behind China’s naval buildup, see China Power Project: How Is Chona Modernizing Its Navy? (Center for Strategic and International Studies [CSIS], 2022) for a very useful graphical representation of China’s and all major global naval powers’ fleets and recent histories.  On my own prescient take on anti-ship missiles being a huge threat to a very vulnerable Russian Navy, in particular the Black Sea Fleet flagship and Slava-class cruiser Moskva, which now sits at the bottom of the Black Sea, see Brian E. Frydenborg, “Ukraine Will Easily Destroy or Sideline Russia’s Navy with Game-Changing Anti-Ship Missiles,” Real Context News, April 10, 2022.  For a detailed albeit slightly outdated visual representation of the military strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. relative to each other overall as well as the rapid increase in China’s military capabilities, see Project Air Force: An Interactive Look at the U.S.-China Military Scorecard (RAND Corporation, 2017).  For a much more recent report on China’s naval buildup relative to the U.S., see Ronald O’Rourke, China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities—Background and Issues for Congress (Congressional Research Service [CRS], 2023).

[14] Mike Yeo, “Britain, Germany give update on future Indo-Pacific naval deployments,” Defense News, June 5, 2023.

[15]William Yang, How prepared is Taiwan for a potential Chinese attack?, Deutsche Welle, May 12, 2023; author calculations using data from: International Database (IDB), China and Taiwan selection, U.S. Census Bureau, 2023; and World GP Ranking 2022, Knoema (2022).

[16] “U.S. to boost Taiwan’s stretched air force with $428 mln in spare parts,” Reuters, December 6, 2022; Kayleigh Madjar, “Taiwan thanks US for military sales,” Taipei Times, December 8, 2022; Forum on the Arms Trade, 2023.

[17] Kapil Kajal, “US approves sale of Volcano anti-tank systems to Taiwan,” Jane’s, January 2, 2023; Forum on the Arms Trade, 2023.

[18] Ben Blanchard “Taiwan military to get $619 million U.S. arms boost as China keeps up pressure,” Reuters, March 6, 2023; Forum on the Arms Trade, 2023.

[19] Jon Grevatt, “US approves 30 mm ammunition sale to Taiwan,” Jane’s, June 30; Forum on the Arms Trade, 2023.

[20] Matthew Lee, “US approves new $500M arms sale to Taiwan as tension from China intensifies,” Associated Press (AP), August 23, 2023; Forum on the Arms Trade, 2023.

[21] “China sends aircraft and vessels toward Taiwan days after US approves $500-million arms sale,” Associated Press (AP), August 26, 2023.  

[22] Jennifer Kavanagh and Jordan Cohen, “The Real Reasons for Taiwan’s Arms Backlog — And How to Help Fill It,” War on the Rocks, January 13, 2023; Joe Gould, “Slow arms deliveries to Taiwan blamed on US production bottlenecks,” Defense News, February 24, 2023; Nick Wilson, “Ratner: Taiwan weapons transfers delayed by systemic industrial base issues,” inside Defense,July 20, 2023; Jack Detsch and Robbie Gramer, “Taiwan Faces No Trade-Offs With Ukraine But Taipei is also getting tired of supply chain issues,” Foreign Policy, June 1, 2023; John Grady, “U.S. Needs to Clear $19B in Arms Sale Backlog to Taiwan, says HASC member,” USNI News, December 14, 2022; Patricia Zengerle, “US Senator Menendez says he has not changed opposition to Turkey F-16 sale,” Reuters, July 27, 2023; U.S. Department of State Office of the Spokesperson, “FMS 2023: Retooling Foreign Military Sales for An Age of Strategic Competition,” May 18, 2023; U.S. Department of Defense, “Department of Defense Unveils Comprehensive Recommendations to Strengthen Foreign Military Sales June 13, 2023.  On the chronic underestimation of the Biden Administration, see my own thoughts in several Real Context News articles: “A BIG F**KING DEAL: Biden’s Infrastructure Bill in Historical Perspective,” November 15, 2021; “Media Keeps Portraying Democrats and Biden as a Mess, Ignoring Data Proving that Could Not Be Further from Truth,” July 11, 2022; and “Biden’s and Democrats’ Historic Awesomeness Cannot Be Denied: Midterms Edition,” January 6, 2023.

[23]James V. Saturno and Megan S. Lynch, The Appropriations Process: A Brief Overview (Congressional Research Service [CRS], 2023); Policy Basics: Introduction to the Federal Budget Process(Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2022); Budget Basics: Spending (Peter G. Peterson Foundation, 2023; Budget Process (Peter G. Peterson Foundation, n.d.).

[24] Maegan Vazquez, “Biden signs vital $858 billion defense bill into law, nixing military’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate,” CNN, December 23, 2022; Patricia Zengerle, “U.S. military bill features up to $10 billion to boost Taiwan,” Reuters, December 8, 2022.

[25] Tami Luhby, “Here’s what’s in the $858 billion defense bill,” CNN, December 15, 2022; Mark F. Cancian and Bonny Lin, A New Mechanism for an Old Policy: The United States Uses Drawdown Authority to Support Taiwan (Center for Strategic and International Studies [CSIS], 2023); Cambell, Taiwan CRS; Bryant Harris, “Pentagon to use new Taiwan arms transfer authority, similar to Ukraine,” Defense News, April 6, 2023.

[26] Bryant Harris, “Congress forgoes $2 billion Taiwan security grants in favor of loans,” Defense News, Dec 21, 2022; Bryant Harris and Joe Gould, “Congress clashes on loans vs. grants for Taiwan military aid,” Defense News, December 15, 2022; Joe Gould and Bryant Harris “Congress wants to arm Taiwan, but hasn’t figured out how to pay for it,” Defense News, December 1, 2022; Russell Hsiao, “The Security Assistance for Taiwan Debate: FMF Loans versus Grants,” Global Taiwan Brief, 8, no. 5 (March 2023): 1-3 [this source is a useful discussion but seems to be confused about the FMF aid being set up possibly as loans, but the text of the TERA section of NDAA bill is clear that there is FMF aid set separately as both loans and grants]; Patricia Zengerle and Michael Martina, “Analysis: How a U.S. budget dispute imperils funding for Taiwan weapons,” Reuters, February 22, 2023; Campbell, 2023. 

[27] Nomaan Merchant, Ellen Knickmeyer, Zeke Miller, and Tara Copp, “US announces $345 million military aid package for Taiwan, July 29, 2023; Forum on the Arms Trade, 2023.

[28] Lara Seligman, “U.S. announces $345M weapons package for Taiwan,” Politico, July 28, 2023.

[29] Evaluating U.S-China Policy in the era of Strategic Competition, 118 Cong. (2023) (statements of Ely Ratner, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, and Wendy Sherman, Deputy Secretary of State, February 9, 2023).

[30] For a prominent example an either-or thinking wanting to divert Ukraine aid to Taiwan, see the Dec. 6, 2022, letter from extremist Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) to Sec. of State Blinken.

[31] Ali Zaslav, Ted Barrett, and Clare Foran, “Senate passes $1.7 trillion government funding bill to avert shutdown,” CNN, December 22, 2022; Fitch, “Fitch Downgrades the United States’ Long-Term Ratings to ‘AA+’ from ‘AAA’; Outlook Stable,” August 1, 2023.

[32] As an example of the delays, the Cancian and Lin CSIS briefing did not come out until August 2023.  The relatively lesser-known Defense News covered this well throughout, and I have relied on it for some of the details, but there was little major news or major institutional coverage until more recently.  On the general crisis of the U.S. news media, see State of the News Media (Project), Pew, n.d.; Lauren Harris, “Five big findings from the Journalism Crisis Project,” Columbia Journalism Review, March 3, 2021; and Penelope Muse Abernathy and Tim Franklin, The State of Local News 2022 Expanding News Deserts, Growing Gaps, Emerging Models The State of Local News 2022 (Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communication, 2022).  Currently, there are very few reporters covering the details about Taiwan in the current NDAA and appropriations fights, so my regrettable overreliance on Harris of Defense News (who is usually solid, but it is always regrettable to rely so much on one source and corroboration of his details are few and far between in other sources).  Perhaps the more confusing current coverage is a result of resources being spread thin among so many outlets/institutions covering major stories happening at once at a time of shrinking newsrooms and resources.  It would take a lot more time for me, writing this report, to go into more detail on this subtopic in large part because of this.

[33] Patricia Zengerle, US Senate backs sweeping defense policy bill, sets up clash with House bill,” Reuters, July 27, 2023; “Actions Overview: H.R.7776 – James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023,” U.S. Congress, 2022; Fareed Zakaria, U.S.’s political madness takes place against a backdrop of astonishing strength,” The Washington Post, 26, 2023; Julia Horowitz, Denmark has a debt ceiling, too. It’s never been a problem Julia Horowitz,” CNN, May 10, 2023.

[34] Quote from Bryant Harris and Leo Shane III, “Senators rally to boost defense spending, with $1 billion for Taiwan,” Defense News, July 27; Bryant Harris, “Taiwan military aid granted by once-reluctant appropriators, Defense News, June 22, 2023; Bryant Harris, “House narrowly passes defense bill after Dems defect over abortion,” Defense News, July 14, 2023;   Various sources present different numbers for the NDAA bill totals, which is odd; for examples, Roll Call, extremely reliable on Congressional matters, has the Senate NDAA at $874 billion and relatively deep-diver Harris for Breaking Defense had $874 billion for the House NDAA; but CNN, Washington Post, and New York Timeshad $886 billion for both House and Senate, so I went with that number.  Some of the confusion may be due to differences between what relevant committees passed before the full chambers approved the NDAAs.  The lack of detailed coverage and conflicting numbers suggest a news media spread thin as much as anything else considering how big these bills are along with the fact that most detailed discussions of the two large bills passed in late 2022 did not occur until months later.  But it also a cry for this basic information to be clearly presented within the bills in question, perhaps a total figure broken down into components at the top or bottom, Congress?

[35] Bryant Harris, “Congress aims for faster arms sales with defense bills and task force,” Defense News, June 28, 2023.

[36] Justin Katz, “Ducking the culture wars, Senate passes NDAA 86-11,” Breaking Defense, July 27, 2023; Karoun Demirjian, “Senate Passes Bipartisan Defense Bill, Setting Up a Clash With the House,” The New York Times, July 27, 2023; Dan Balz, “House Republicans wage ‘woke’ culture wars with the military,” The Washington Post, July 15, 2023.

[37] See my piece: Brian E. Frydenborg, “9/11 Marked Continuation, Not Beginning, of Politicization of Foreign Policy & National Security,” LinkedIn Pulse, September 15, 2016.

[38] Cancian and Bonny, New Mechanism CSIS; Kavanagh and Cohen, Real Reasons for Backlog.

[39] Mark Hertling @MarkHertling “Make No Mistake, China is Watching“, Twitter, August 4, 2022, 10:54 A.M.

[40] See my Russia-Ukraine war articles at Real Context News: “Russia’s Defeat in Ukraine May Take Some Time, But It’s Coming and Sooner Than You Think,” July 30, 2022; “Russia’s Pyrrhic Advances at Soledar Near Bakhmut Setting Up Ukrainian Counteroffensive, Not Russian Victory,” January 13, 2023; “Why Putin Has Doomed Himself with His Ukraine Fiasco,” September 27, 2022; “Putin’s (and Russia’s) Naked Weakness,” June 28, 2023.

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse October 18, 2017

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981) October 18th, 2017

AP Photo/Hank Walker

AMMAN — I’m 35 years old and I can’t remember ever seeing anything so alarming in relation to the Korean Peninsula as what has been happening in the toddler-months of the painfully birthed Trump Administration. Obviously, there has always been a tremendous amount of tension there since the Korean War ceasefire was reached in 1953 (that’s right, just a ceasefire: the war never formally ended and is still technically ongoing even in 2017). But things are happening so fast since Trump took office, and the main actors so comfortable with hyperbole and brinksmanship, that we can safely say that we are now in more danger of having war erupt on the Korean Peninsula than at any time in decades.

But to understand where we are today, and where we may be going, it’s imperative to understand some history, and far more and far earlier than the start of the Korean War in 1950.

Imperial Entanglements

Koreans as something of a distinct people go back thousands of years, and from quite early in their history, being on an isolated peninsula and in relatively inhospitable parts of Manchuria and Siberia, they tended to absorb and reinvent culture (an ability/trait that would become very Korean) from the neighboring Chinese. In the first century B.C.E., three major kingdoms emerged, and by the mid-seventh century C.E., one of the kingdoms emerged to defeat the others with the help of China, then turned on China to drive its forces out of Korea.

The following centuries were generally filled with disorder and rebellion until a new kingdom reunified Korea in the tenth century, but it would eventually come into brutal and devastating conflict with the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century C.E. Koreans put up quite a fight but eventually came to vassal terms with the Mongols, retaining formal independence for their efforts, unlike many others. 

A new dynasty took over in just before the fifteenth century, but would suffer a depopulating cataclysmic invasion at the hands of the Japanese and the end of the sixteenth century, one they were able to pyrrhically beat back, but only several decades later they were defeated by the Chinese Qing dynasty, and though they retained independence, the Koreans were forced to become part of China’s international tributary state system and give China control over its foreign policy; a resentful peace ensued in which Korea seldom had contact with the outside world and because of this isolation, Korea became known as the “Hermit Kingdom” from this period onward.

By the late nineteenth century, with Qing China in decline and coming under Western pressure, and with ambitious Russia and Japan eyeing Korea, the days of conflict were about to return to Korea. 

Like Korea, Japan was forced to pay tribute to China for centuries, but did so less consistently and did not suffer the full vassal status that surrendered foreign policy control to China that Korea did. Like all Asian nations at the time, Japan was forced in the mid-1850s to contend with encroaching, predatory Western powers and was forced to “open” itself to Western trade and influence; this caused a great deal of unrest that culminated in the Meiji Restoration/Revolution of 1868, from which point Japan would start its rapid rise in power and modernization that would culminate in ill-fated war with Western powers in WWII. 

Especially after 1868, Japan’s leaders, scornfully observing its nominal overlord China suffer humiliation at the hands of Western powers, sought to emphatically alter the balance of power that had been the political reality in Asia for centuries, with China as the unquestioned center of power. Caught in the middle would be Korea, over which Japan sought to extend its power and influence (especially as Russia was encroaching on Korea’s northern border), even though technically both Japan and Korea were part of the subservient China tribute system. Among other reasons for targeting Korea, Japan felt Korea’s geographic proximity was a major security risk to its homeland, while the traditionalist Koreans looked with disgust on Japan’s Westernizing ways and as to ancient regional values and identity.

Japan would take aggressive actions to alter the status quo and to open Korea to its trade, just as the U.S. and other Western powers did with Japan years earlier, but Japan’s diplomatic efforts could not sway the stubborn Koreans. By 1871, though, Japan had begun a formal diplomatic process of redefining its relationship with China, itself facing the brunt of Western pressure in East Asia. Korea’s stubbornness made many Japanese leaders feel it deserved to be punished with an invasion, and this idea was even encouraged by America’s representative to Japan. Though divided, Japan’s leadership decided to bide its time rather than invade Korea, instead opting for a strike against the weaker and more isolated island of Taiwan, nominally under Chinese control, in 1874, a step that further highlighted the rise of Japan at the expense of China. After a series of confrontational incidents, in 1876, Japan was able to extract from Korea an “unequal treaty” of the kind imposed by Western nations on Japan and China, in which Japan was clearly given better terms and the prying away of Korea from China’s traditional sphere of control and influence was firmly begun.

Finally realizing that their traditional vassal-state empire was disintegrating before their very eyes, China’s leaders belatedly decided to reassert China’s influence on the Korean Peninsula. Over the next two decades, China and Japan would seek ways to outdo each other’s trade advantages, power, and influence when it came to Korea, which, in turn, seemed to accept the necessity of modernization, though Koreans were deeply divided as to how to go about it; infighting only made the Koreans weaker, even as China now found itself competing in a Korea where it had just recently enjoyed centuries of unquestioned dominance; the more traditional Korean royal court favored China but younger reformers favored Japan. As tensions mounted, both China and Japan moved troops into Korea, with war nearly breaking out over a coup attempt in 1884, but in 1894, mounting tensions and a peasant rebellion would finally spark war between China and Korea; Japan’s more modern military easily defeated the larger Chinese forces and by 1895, a humiliated China was asking for peace from a Japan that had invaded mainland China and had secured sea lanes to Beijing and islands near Taiwan; in the peace treaty that followed, China ceded Taiwan to Japan and rescinded any claim of formal authority over Korea, allowing the Japanese to conquer the former and to dominate the latter.

Japan would trounce Russia in 1904-1905’s Russo-Japanese War, keeping another major power out of East Asia and making clear to all that Japan would now be the dominant power in East Asia, one that, significantly, could also take on Western powers. American President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt even mediated an end to the war, and though he publicly maintained neutrality, unbeknownst to the world at the time, he undertook this mediation at the secret request of the Japanese. In fact, Roosevelt privately very much favored the Japanese, wrote “I should like to see Japan have Korea,” and even desired that Japan would become a hemispheric hegemon just as the U.S. had become in its hemisphere. Still, he publicly kept up a neutral stance to the degree that the Japanese were frustrated by the U.S. negotiated-treaty, which denied Japan an indemnity from Russia and left the Japanese wanting more.

Korea had been sold out by the U.S. and was formally annexed by Japan in 1910, which began a period of brutal colonial Imperial Japanese rule that would not end until Japan’s defeat in WWII in 1945; the Japanese were hated when they left and still are very much hated in Korea today.

The Long Shadow of WWII Over Korea

Starting in 1931, Japan would use its base in Korea to begin expanding into Chinese territory in a conflict that would merge into WWII. Strangely enough, Japan’s puppet state in Chinese Manchuria would become a well-planted garden of future East Asian politics. During that war, a Korean named Kim Il-sung fought under Chinese Communist and Soviet leadership as the Japanese in Japanese-occupied Chinese Manchuria and distinguished himself greatly. Koreans actually formed the bulk of the anti-Japanese in Manchuria, and one of the main Japanese figures in Manchuria, against whom Kim fought, was Kishi Nobosuke, who served as Japan’s prime minister from 1957-1960; his grandson is Abe Shinzo, Japan’s current Prime Minister, so, yes, that means Kim Jong-Un’s grandfather fought against Abe’s grandfather. Additionally, the Korean Park Chung-hee fought for the Japanese occupiers in Manchuria and specifically against guerillas like Kim while wearing a Japanese uniform; he would overthrow South Korea’s democracy in 1961 and install a military dictatorship (one that relied heavily on other Korean collaborators with Japan from WWII) that would last until his assassination in 1979, only to be replaced by a new dictatorship that would last until 1987; his daughter, Park Geun was president of South Korea from 2013 until her impeachment and imprisonment earlier this year.

As for Kim, while Chinese communists returned to prioritizing fighting the Chinese Nationalist government after WWII, Kim and a cadre of other Koreans who had fought as guerillas came back to Korea under the patronage of the Soviet Union. There was no clear specific Allied plan for Korea after Japan surrendered, but the Americans proposed to the Soviets dividing Korea into occupation zones at the 38th parallel and the Soviets agreed. Soviet forces had already made their way into a sliver of northeastern Korea, and the Americans would belatedly make their way into the south. With all the division and confusion, neither appeared eager to have full responsibility, but once assigned a formal zone, the Soviets quickly established control and order, while the Americans did anything but, engaging in what was perhaps the most poorly planned and executed occupation until the launch of George W. Bush’s Iraq misadventure in 2003. The Americans did not even feel that Koreans were ready for self-rule, soon came to view them as enemies that needed to treated as a surrendered (rather than “liberated”) people, and avoided using the divided, preexisting political groups (ones that that had already started on the path to self-rule) to form any kind of Korean government, though the Americans did favor conservatives since they were anti-communist even though the environment was one in which the long-oppressed (by both Japanese and Korean overlords) Korean masses favored leftist candidates; since America’s main reason for being in Korea was to contain Soviet expansion, it was hardly eager to set up a democracy that would be ideologically disposed towards the Soviet Union; in fact, they even kept many of the hated Japanese in low-level bureaucratic and security positions, while the Soviets were quick to sweep away Japan’s colonial structures in the north. Though Americans and Soviets were publicly committed to trying to forge a single national Korean government, the American zone only became more fractious internally and the Americans increasingly favored un-representative rightists and those who had collaborated with the Japanese, while by February 1946—after some initial atrocious behavior by Soviet troops who were then replaced by more disciplined, restrained troops—the Soviet had stifled dissent and seen to it that Kim and the Communist Party were leading a proto-government; clearly, prospects for a unified government were dim. Also at this time, Western-Soviet relations were rapidly deteriorating; by the fall of 1947, it was clear the U.S. and Soviets would not come together on Korea and that Korea would be divided. Later in 1948, a new U.S.-backed Republic of Korea (ROK, a.k.a. South Korea) emerged south of the 38th parallel and a Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, a.k.a. North Korea) emerged north of the 38th parallel, each with clearly stated designs on ruling the entirety of the Korean Peninsula.

The Soviets were confident enough in what they had built that they fully withdrew their occupation forces from DPRK in 1948, well before the U.S. had fully withdrawn their occupation forces from ROK in mid-1949; both sides, though, left military advisors.

Kim would be in firm control of DPRK while his counterpart could hardly claim the same for the south after several years of inept U.S. policy, and while each side sought to unify the Peninsula under its own control, only Kim and his DPRK were in a position to do so as ROK was destabilized and fractured within its own borders, but that didn’t stop Syngman Rhee, ROK’s leader, from devising his own plans to take over the whole of Korea just as Kim was doing the same. Their American and Soviet patrons were not as eager for war and sought to restrain their clients’ offensive ambitions. In particular, Kim almost nagged Stalin for permission to invade the south, but Stalin repeatedly declined to give his assent. By the end of 1949, the Soviet Union had conducted its first nuclear test and mainland China was then firmly under the control of Mao’s Chinese Communists, who trounced the American-supported Nationalists and drove them to Taiwan, meaning the U.S. would be nervous about further communist gains in Korea during 1950. Likewise, Stalin and Kim were nervous that, with U.S. aid, ROK (and perhaps the strongly anti-communist Japan and Nationalist Taiwan) would eventually be much more powerful and seek to unify Korea under ROK control, just as Rhee was threatening, and South Korean forces actually crossed the 38th parallel repeatedly to conduct operations in North Korean territory not long before the Korean War erupted in 1950. 

In January 1950, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson gave a speech that would later become infamous, with many later blaming it for the start of the war. In that speech, South Korea was conspicuously not included in what was defined as U.S. vital national interests, meaning there was no U.S. guarantee of military protection and defense in the event it was attacked by communists. It was thought that this essentially gave a green light to Stalin and Mao to do as they please in Korea and that this was why Stalin gave his blessing to Kim in April for an invasion. Such was the conventional wisdom, anyway, until Soviet archives later painted a much more complicated picture…

North and South Korea, Seeking War 

Both before and after Acheson’s speech, Stalin was concerned that the U.S. would intervene directly into the conflict if North Korea attacked South Korea, even right up until the outbreak of the war, and wanted above all to not risk a major confrontation that could erupt in war between his Soviet Union and the United States. In other words, Stalin feared U.S. intervention on the Korean Peninsula regardless of Acheson’s 1950 and even rejected a formal defensive alliance with DRPK in 1949.

Acheson himself didn’t see the speech as a “green light” to communist attacks on ROK, but regardless of his intent, rhetorically his speech did anything but convey a clear American commitment to ROK’s security or that the U.S. was prepared to counter DPRK, Soviet, or Chinese actions towards ROK. The incompetence here mirrored the same incompetence of the U.S. occupation of southern Korea, and the communists wouldn’t have been irrational to interpret the speech as conceding Korea if it came to a war. Despite a general picture from the West of Stalin being hell-bent on world domination, then, it was a cautious Stalin who refrained from taking that speech as a “green light.” Quite strangely, an incorrect report in The New York Times actually convinced DPRK that South Korea was within the U.S. military protection guarantee.

By the middle of 1949, both the Soviets and the DPRK were apprehensive of the military buildup in the south and an American-supported invasion of the north from there, but Stalin was firmly against Kim’s plan to invade the south. Mao and the Chinese were more generally supportive but repeatedly stressed that the timing was too early, especially as they were still fighting their civil war, though they did pledge to come to Kim’s aid if he needed help; in other words, the Chinese wouldn’t be there from the beginning, but if things went badly enough, they would intervene on Kim’s behalf. Kim’s overtures to Mao made Stalin more nervous about the outbreak of war, and just before the Americans withdrew from the south, he resolved on a policy of supporting Kim enough to discourage an attack from the south but not enough to encourage Kim to attack from the north. So it was that over and over and over again, Stalin told Kim an emphatic “no” when it came to invading the south. And when DPRK forces initiated clashes with ROK forces along the border late in the year, Stalin was furious. At the same time, Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic of China as he was routing Nationalist Chinese forces from most of China and taking over the country. This made Stalin even more cautious, as he wanted to assess the situation with a newer, additional center of communist gravity in Mao’s China. Thus, as 1950 dawned with Mao’s Chinese Communists firmly in control of mainland China, Stalin took a more passive approach to Korea. Hardly a fool, Stalin would have realized how China had long regarded Korea as under its influence, and either may not have wanted to alienate the only other major Communist power in the area by asserting too much of a role in Korea or may have hoped, nervous of an eventual conflict anyway, that the Chinese would intervene to the degree that they would prevent the need for a massive Soviet intervention to support DPRK. Whatever Stalin’s calculation in this regard, Kim engaged in a policy that still defines North Korean policy today: playing Soviets/Russians against the Chinese to try and get more out of each.

Of course, the Nationalists being driven from mainland China raised alarm bells in the minds of American planners. And they had reason to be alarmed: where the Soviets quickly installed Kim Il-sung as a leader in the local, dominant communist party, the Americans dithered, stumbled, and nurtured instability and division in the South. There was so much unrest and brutal fighting among factions in the south even before 1950 that research indicates between 100,000 200,000 people were killed in political violence by either ROK forces or U.S. occupation forces in the years before the war, and once war broke out, a further 300,000 were killed or “disappeared” at the hands of the ROK government in just the first few months of the conflict. Much as was the case with South Vietnam years later, in South Korea the U.S. was supporting a government that was highly oppressive to its own people and hardly worth fighting for, a tragic situation that was far less forgiving in the Vietnamese case.

In the months after Acheson’s speech, Stalin would make preparations for war alongside DPRK, in particular sending specialists, advisors, and technical assistance without actually endorsing war or invasion as a course of action, further reflecting his caution. He would also continue to demonstrate concerns about possible American intervention in the following months. And yet, he also became more comfortable with the idea of a northern invasion of the south after the victory of Mao in mainland China and his agreeing to a new treaty with the Soviets. Stalin also felt more secure as the Soviet Union had only just recently conducted its first successful nuclear weapons test, ending the American monopoly on that technology and creating a nuclear club of two. Stalin’s fear that American and even Japanese troops would invade the Soviet Union, after all these considerations, must have seemed much less of a possibility, yet even when Stalin finally approved in April Kim’s request to be able to invade the south that summer, he did so only on the condition that Mao also approved the plan, which Mao later did, though reluctantly.  Furthermore, Stalin had only approved a limited offensive, only reluctantly assenting to a full-scale invasion mere days before the planned invasion and the start of the war amid reports of a buildup of South Korean forces on the border, in part because the thinking was that if the North won a quick war, it would keep the U.S. out, but that a long war would draw the U.S. into the conflict and a stronger offensive was more likely to achieve a quicker victory.

In the end, it was Stalin’s fear that the U.S. would support a South Korean struggle against North Korea that held back his approval of Kim’s desired invasion for so long, and his fear that the U.S. would eventually support a South Korean takeover of North Korea that led to his to the same invasion and its expansion.

The Terrible Cost of War

It turns out Stalin’s concerns about U.S. interference had been correct: when DPRK forces overran Seoul, ROK’s capital, just days after the invasion and continued pushing South Korean forces south, the U.S., mustering the support of United Nations (the USSR was boycotting it at the time because the UN would not seat Mao’s representative in China’s seat), deployed to fight alongside ROK against the DPRK invasion, but even so, they kept losing ground and were in danger of being annihilated at the bottom edge of the Korean Peninsula; the U.S. then launched a counterattack that involved an amphibious landing behind North Korean lines, and in the ensuing counterattack, the mainly-U.S.-and-South Korean- forces pushed North Korean forces all the way to the Chinese border in October, which only invited a massive Chinese counterattack that, by the middle of 1951, had resulted in a stalemate back along the 38th parallel.

TES.com

It is important to note that both the U.S. and China only directly intervened when the situation was dire for each of their clients.

Gamma-Keystone via Getty

The war was terrible for Koreans. Atrocities were common on both sides, American forces included. About three million Koreans died, one in ten people on the Korean Peninsula, but far more died in the north, where 12-15 percent of the whole population died. The U.S. ran a brutal air war against North Korea, one which resulted in probably the most utter and complete destruction of any single nation’s infrastructure, cities, towns, and villages since the times of the great Mongol massacres and perhaps, arguably, of any period in history. In the early months of the war, the North Koreans were essentially defenseless against U.S. air attacks (as were many of the South Korean civilians unlucky enough to be mixed in with occupying North Korean forces). And yet, there was a degree of American restraint in the bombings as U.S President Harry Truman did not want to provoke a wider ground war with Soviet or Chinese forces, which had not entered the conflict; this relative restraint vanished after Chinese ground forces entered the war. In fact, more bombs were dropped by the United States during the Korean War than Americans dropped in the entire Pacific War during WWII, including nearly twice as many tons of napalm, which only during the Korean War had reached a level of high appreciation on the part of senior U.S. military planners, setting the stage for its far greater future use in Vietnam.

Targets even included livestock and farming essentials, and the population that survived was driven down to underground facilities. By the fall of 1952, bombing had been so successful that virtually no targets remained. Eventually, targeting expanded to include major dams, with catastrophic results for the population. By the end of the war, nearly every man-made structure in North Korea had been destroyed by U.S. bombing raids, and, apparently, “only two modern buildings remained standing in Pyongyang” when the fighting stopped; this level of destruction was well understood by those involved at the time.

The war dragged on until July, 1953 (and, had it not been for Stalin’s death in March 1953, it might have dragged on longer, but the Soviets who took over after Stalin died had no desire to continue supporting the war effort in Korea), resulting in a cease-fire—not a peace treaty—which has been in place to this day, signed between U.S.-led UN forces, North Korean forces, and Chinese forces; conspicuously not among the parties that signed the treaty were the South Korean forces. Thus, the agreement was more of a cessation of war between various military forces than anything resembling a political agreement representing any kind of deeper understanding.

A Scarred Nation

From a psychological standpoint, this destruction understandably was something that shaped North Korean culture, mentalities, and worldviews into one of anxiety and fear when it came to America and the outside world in general, and even though North Korea was remarkably rebuilt rapidly and impressively during one of the few true brotherly and inspiring moments of the international socialist movement, with generous aid and on-the-ground assistance coming from the world’s other socialist countries, the sense of vulnerability and fear engendered by the U.S. bombing campaign is still a hallmark of the North Korea’s collective mentality to this day; indeed, hatred of America runs deep in today’s DPRK.

And though North Korea received substantive help from China, the Soviet Union, and other socialist countries, it never allowed itself to be controlled by any of these other powers or to become a pawn. And Kim would not forget that at the beginning of the war, support from both China and Russia came reluctantly. Kim would forge North Korea into a nation that would plot its own path its own way, accepting help while never submitting to foreign control or domination at the hands of far larger powers that had sought, for centuries, to exert their influence and domination over the Korean Peninsula.

While North Korea led South Korea in terms of per capita GNP as late as 1973, today democratic South Korea’s economy dwarfs North Korea’s, whose per capita GDP was less than 4.5% of South Korea’s in 2016 even though North Korea’s population is just under half of South Korea’s; furthermore, even today North Korea is facing mass starvation and may very well be the most oppressive, horrible nations in which to live in the entire world, where anyone can end up imprisoned in Soviet-style gulag labor camps or worse. Photos from space of North Korea at night show a country with virtually no electrical power, making it easy to mistake it for the black of the ocean, a jungle, or a desert uninhabited by humans. And Christopher Hitchens is hardly the only person to remark that the North Korean state has perpetuated—what must be regarded for all intents and purposes—a state religion centered around of the Kim family, nationalism, and Stalinist communism. He also poignantly noted the sad state of the North Korean people: hostages of the Kim “crime family”-sponsored high-stakes blackmail scheme, run against the rest of collective civilization:

Another version of our complicity with the Dear Leader is to be found with his oppression and starvation of his “own” people. It is felt that we cannot just watch them die, so we send food aid in return for an ever-receding prospect of good behavior in respect of the Dear Leader’s nuclear program. The ratchet effect is all one way: Nuclear tests become ever more flagrant and the emaciation of the North Korean people ever more pitiful. We have unwittingly become members of the guard force that patrols the concentration camp that is the northern half of the peninsula.

NASA/ISS

All-in-all, North Koreas’s past history has been a nightmare, one that extends into the present and will certainly extend into the future for at least the foreseeable future.

Old Grudges, New Weapons

Thus, in many ways, the shadow of the bitter, bloody rivalries of the late-nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth-century that consumed East Asia in war through 1953 cast a long shadow over the politics and current crises in the region, especially the North Korean conundrum. It was perhaps fitting that Kim the First, in the weeks before his death in 1994 and after such a long career defined by conflict, desired to improve relations with South Korea. While he had seen and suffered much through occupation, exile, revolution, resistance, and war, the same cannot be said of his disturbingly odd son and successor, Kim Jong-il, or his son and North Korea’s current leader, the deceptively-rotundly-jolly-appearing Kim Jong-un. 

After Kim Il-sung’s death in 1994, Kim Jong-il did not take long converting to reality his father’s long-held dream of turning DPRK into a nuclear-weapons power (American leaders throughout the Korean War had hinted at potential nuclear weapons use against North Korea and, bluff or not, these threats had an effect, one that was lasting). In particular, George W. Bush’s first State of the Union (the “axis of evil”) speech in 2002, seems to have really struck fear into the heart of the Kim Jong-il and his regime, pushing them to think then more than ever that the possession of a nuclear weapon would be their only true safeguard against a U.S. attack. Not long after the speech, North Korea removed International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors from its territory and in January, 2003—just months before Bush invaded Iraq and with a clear U.S. military buildup occurring on Iraq’s borders—withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), giving signals as clear as any that it was working on building nuclear bombs, the first of which it finally tested on October 8th, 2006, despite severe warnings from the U.S. and the international community. Since that initial test, five more nuclear tests have been conducted by DPRK, with the largest bomb by far the one that was tested just last month, in early September, and four of which have been conducted by Kim Jong-un, who took over when his father, Kim Jong-il, died late in 2011.

 CNN/CNS/NTI

Hand-in-hand with these efforts were efforts to increase North Korea’s missile capability, and the implication was lost on no one: the North Koreans were going to make sure it could hit the U.S. with nuclear missiles as the ultimate deterrent to any military action that the U.S. could take against them. As with the nuclear tests, it is under Kim Jong-Un that the most missile tests have been conducted and the most progress in the technology and capability reached: by 2015 not even four full years into his reign, Kim Jong-Un had tested more strategic missiles than his grandfather (15) and his father (16) had combined in the 28 years of their strategic missile tests; through today, Kim Jong-un has conducted 85 total missile tests including a record 24 in 2016 and another 22 so far this year since President Trump’s inauguration, with North Korea being on pace in 2017 to break the previous 2016 record. 2017 saw the DPRK’s first tests of missiles that could strike the U.S. (the 50 U.S. states, anyway), including, pointedly, a test on July 4th—not coincidentally America’s Independence Day—of North Korea’s first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the Hwasong-14, the first missile which could which could strike the 48-contiguous U.S. states, including the cities of Los Angeles, Chicago, and perhaps even New York. Thus, it’s not only the rhetoric between the unstable Kim and the unstable Trump that has been heating upsince Trump became president. And with a long history of DPRK/ROK border-area incidents (any of which could have quickly escalated an always tense situation into nuclear war), with Kim Jong-un increasingly willing to violently gamble with provocative and violent border actions, and with Trump personally calling for an end to diplomacy, the likelihood of war erupting on the Korean Peninsula is higher today than any time in decades, a time when one misunderstanding can spiral out of control before there is any chance of stopping war.

*****

Reuters/Kevin Lamarque; Reuters/KCNA

Some key points need to be made here, taking all this into account:

1.)   China is no silver bullet to solving the North Korea problem, and it does not have a magic wand with which it can control Kim Jong-un or his regime

China probably finds North Korea as frustrating as the United States, probably even more so. DPRK’s extreme self-reliance (juche) was also at the core of Kim Il-sung’s governing ethos: no matter what help he was able to gain from the Soviet Union, Communist China, and other communist states, Kim was careful to limit the influence of any state on North Korea as much as possible, warily trusting the Chinese, Russians, or anyone. His children are most certainly carrying on this tradition. The ability of any outside power to force major changes in North Korean behavior peacefully should, at best, be regarded as limited. Thus, Trump’s constant assertions that China can “solve the North Korean problem” are more fantasy than reality.

2.)   China is definitely not looking to have history repeat itself

China’s current leadership will most certainly not want to repeat the mistakes or results of the Qing Dynasty. China enjoyed a centuries-long relationship with a subservient Korea under undisputed Chinese hegemony until Western powers weakened China to the point where Japan felt comfortable enough to challenge China’s sphere of influence in Korea starting in 1876 and then totally pushing China out in a war with China that left Japan in 1895 occupying the status in relation to Korea that China had occupied for hundreds of years, but with even more direct control and influence. This gave Japan a foothold on continental Asia from which to expand aggressively against China in a devastating war that began in 1931 and merged into WWII, a conflict in which only the Soviet Union more death and devastation absolutely than China. China then lost Taiwan because of U.S. support for the Nationalists who fled the Chinese mainland in the face of victorious Chinese Communists during 1949 in the closing chapter of the Chinese Civil War, and then had to accept a Korean Peninsula partitioned into two less than a decade later, where China only retained major influence over North Korea (and only after tremendous sacrifice) and the United States had a clearly dominant position in South Korea when the ceasefire of 1953 came into place. With its long-view of history, China would see any Western military action in North Korea as a disaster, a lost to its prestige and a stage-setting for further aggression and weakening of China, as was the case far too many times for China’s liking between 1876-1953. It certainly does not help that the U.S. is so strongly allied with Japan, the perpetrator of such much aggression against China from the late nineteenth-century through WWII.

When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, two of the major neighbors sharing Iraq’s borders—Iran and Syria—did not share the aims of the United States in Iraq and actively worked against the U.S. succeeding in these aims. If the U.S. attacks North Korea without the support of China and/or Russia (hell, even U.S. ally South Korea is warning the U.S. not to strike North Korea), this dramatically reduces that the outcome in the long-running will resemble what American leaders hope it will. Even this year, Chinese trade with North Korea increased dramatically in the first half of 2017, while Russia is actively undermining anti-North Korean sanctions. If these two major UN-veto wielding powers work to undermine U.S. actions or any arrangements the U.S. would now take/make in regard to North Korea, the success of those U.S. moves would very much be in doubt.

3.)   North Korea is probably less responsive to international pressure than any other nation on Earth

As already mentioned, DPRK embodies an extreme form of self-reliance () that is deep-seated, meaning it has been and is prepared to go it alone with little or no help from the outside world. Its leadership uses the humanitarian concerns others have for the welfare of its own people to gain concessions from those and uses the threat of war and chaos to get what it needs from a nervous China and others eager to not rock the boat. Its regime cares not about the welfare of its own people, only its own survival, and has glorified itself and brainwashed its own isolated people from near-birth to hate America to such a degree that many will genuinely gladly sacrifice themselves in to preserve a leadership that treats them as mere resources to be utilized. At best, North Korea will respond far less than other countries to conventional methods of exerting pressure, at worst, not at all in a helpful way. This makes dealing with the nation as an adversary miserable, forcing foreign leaders to choose between risky and ineffective diplomacy and catastrophic war. 

North Korea’s entire history has been defined by its resistance to foreign domination (whether imperialism or colonialism) and it has only bent to foreign powers when forced and after great cost and sacrifice; as of now, there is a long way to go before Kim and North Korea will simply bow to the Trump Administration’s demands.

This means there is little room for incompetence or error, two things at which the Trump Administration unfortunately excels. As of now, it is incredulously and unjustifiably undermining the very Iran nuclear agreement (against which there is no logical argument, as I have noted) reached between Iran, the U.S., and other the major world powers only a few years ago, destroying America’s own credibility as a nuclear negotiator at the precise moment when it needs to convince North Korea that the U.S. is a credible negotiating partner, destroying most of whatever hope exists that North Korea would trust any new nuclear agreement the U.S. would offer or abide by it if an agreement were to be made.

4.)   A terrible status quo is not always the worst option

The status quo may seem bad, but as many people who understand the current standoff have warned, open war against North Korea—which has the world’s fourth-largest military—would be an unimaginable horror compared to any recent conflict, a bloodbath of a scale not seen anywhere in decades that would kill tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions in just days or weeks and would likely see Seoul, South Korea’s capital and the world’s fourth-largest city, obliterated… And that doesn’t even get into the fact that South Korea is currently the world’s 11th-largest economy and, of course, this does not even get into potential damage to Japan, China, Russia, or other nations that may be drawn into the conflict.

And oh, we haven’t even mentioned the use of nuclear weapons. We have never seen a military attempt by a foreign nation to disarm the nuclear capabilities of a nuclear-weapons power. Let’s hope we never do.

****

When it comes to North Korea, the history is a nightmare, the present is a nightmare, and the future is a nightmare, but even that does not mean that the nightmare cannot be mitigated, its worst outcomes prevented, and improvements made. President Trump and anyone now advising him that doesn’t consider the above history and points will be doing Americans and Koreans both an unforgivable disservice. Terrifyingly, at this point, the fate of millions of people in one of the world’s worst historical flashpoints rests with the decisions of Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. If anyone is comforted by that thought, that, too, is a nightmare. 

© 2017 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

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