Strategic Implications of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy Report for Taiwan’s National Security Strategy
2019.07.19
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By William Chih-Tung Chung
1. Introduction
The United States, on June 1, 2019, released its first-ever Indo-Pacific Strategy Report (IPSR), a vital document issued by the Department of Defense (DOD). It sketches the Donald J. Trump administration’s strategic roadmap in the Indo-Pacific region, where it is regarded as “the single most consequential region for America’s future.” The strategic document was introduced in the same day when the then U.S. Acting Secretary of Defense, Patrick M. Shanahan, made his speech in Singapore at 2019 Shangri-La Dialogue. Shanahan deliberately avoided calling China out by name in his Singapore speech, but he seriously criticized “some in our region” for using a “toolkit of coercion” to undermine and destabilize the rules-based international order that represents “the greatest long-term threat” in the region.[1]

An F-35B aircraft attached to the Avengers of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 21 takes off from the flight deck of the amphibious assault ship USS Essex (LHD 2). (Source: The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command)
In the IPSR, however, Shanahan explicitly pointed out China, “under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party…seeks to reorder the region to its advantages by leveraging military modernization, influence operations, and predatory economics to coerce other nations.”[2] Least surprisingly, the IPSR’s perspective of China’s threat corresponds to the 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) and 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS), which both regard China as “a strategic competitor.” Nevertheless, China is the prioritized strategic competitor in the IPSR, because “inter-state strategic competition is the primary concern for U.S. national security” and China is the only competing state being mentioned in the “message from the Secretary of Defense” of the IPSR. That China appears on a central theme of the IPSR is echoed in Shanahan’s first full day on the job as the acting Secretary of Defense when he imposingly called up senior leaders at the Pentagon to “remember China, China, China,” this should be the top issue for DOD to focus.[3]
Taiwan is affirmed as a “reliable, capable, and natural partner of the United States” in the Indo-Pacific Strategy Report.
While the U.S. endeavors to counter China’s challenges in a variety of areas in the Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan is affirmed as a “reliable, capable, and natural partner of the United States” in the IPSR. It is worth noting that the IPSR surprisingly refers Taiwan as a “country” with no mention of the “Republic of China.” Consequently, the IPSR perhaps has been the first-ever U.S. official strategic document explicitly calling Taiwan as a country since Washington terminated its diplomatic relations with Taipei in 1979. The IPSR emphasizes the essentiality of the U.S. commitment to upholding the provisions of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) that is “part of a broader [U.S.] commitment to the security and stability of the Indo-Pacific.” The IPSR states that a “strong, prosperous, and democratic Taiwan” is included in Washington’s strategic blueprint in the region to pursue “the rules-based international order,” which is the vital interest of the United States. Given China’s continued pressure campaigns against Taiwan, the IPSR expresses the necessity of U.S.-Taiwan partnership for Taiwan to counter China’s threats. As Beijing has never renounced the use of military force to annex Taiwan, the report’s section on “Taiwan” highlights the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, Randall G. Schriver’s remarks, to demonstrate Washington’s policy on the cross-Strait relations, that “a strong and secure Taiwan can deter aggression, defend the Taiwan people and hard-won democracy, and engage on its own terms with the PRC.” Amid the American-Sino escalated competitive relations, that the President Trump’s Indo-Pacific strategy clearly recognizes and emphasizes Taiwan as an important strategic state-partner presents Taipei a rare strategic opportunity to craft an asymmetric diplomacy against Beijing’s strategy that undermines Taipei’s sovereign status and coerces Taiwan into unification.

The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Bertholf (WMSL 750) is on patrol of the Western Pacific Ocean on Jan. 22, 2019. (Source: The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command)
2. Three Strategic Pillars of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy
Being compared to the 2017 NSS, using only three pages outlining a relative new concept of “Indo-Pacific” strategy and its related “priority actions” (“political,” “economic,” and “military and security”), the 55-page IPSR presents a new, detailed, and clearer blueprint of the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy, which enabled Shanahan to claim “We have more than a strategy. We have a plan” at the 2019 Shangri-La Dialogue. The subtitles of the IPSR, three interrelated “efforts,” namely “preparedness,” “partnerships,” “promotion of a networked region,” construct a strategic triangle arrangement to pursue Washington’s overall strategic goal in the Indo-Pacific: “sustain American influence in the region to ensure favorable balances of power and safeguard the free and open international order.”[4]
Preparedness
According to the IPSR, preparedness, firstly, is defined as “to increase lethality,” which is referred to as “a Joint Force” that “is prepared to win any conflict from its onset.” Efforts of preparedness are about resources, which are pursued and employed to construct the “lethality, resilience, agility, and readiness” of the Joint Force. This also requires “experimentation and exercises” to test evolving war-fighting concepts and capabilities that will help to create a virtuous cycle inspiring additional ideas and innovations to meet the demands of high-ended competition for the Joint Force. Furthermore, preparedness involves “defense posture,” which is a “visible manifestation of U.S. national interests” and makes up “the network of U.S. forces and capabilities that are forward-deployed in the region.” In short, preparedness represents an advantage of military hard power to deter, fight, and if necessary, to neutralize competitors’ actions, which try to advance their goals through forces.
Partnerships
Secondly, partnerships are about constructing the U.S. bilateral security relationships with other states in the region. Based on the extent of their relations with the U.S., partnerships of the IPSR have been classified as allies, partners, and aspiring partners within seven categories: “modernizing alliances,” “strengthening partnerships,” “expanding partnerships in the Indian Ocean region,” “expanding partnerships in Southeast Asia,” “sustaining engagements, strengthening foundations,” “revitalizing engagement in the Pacific islands,” and “engagements with other allies.” Accordingly, the central theme of partnerships is about “interoperability,” which refers to cooperation and reciprocity together for establishing equitable burden-sharing relations, to deal with day-to-day competition, crisis, and conflict. Through a means of foreign military sales, information-sharing programs, regular military exercises, coast guard collaboration, and other security arrangements, partnerships are designed to connect allies and partners as “a multiplier force” to more effectively achieve peace, deterrence, and interoperable war-fighting capability for countries who share common values, e.g. respecting sovereignty, fair trade and rule of law, with the U.S.
A Networked Region
Thirdly, promotion of a networked region, or “a networked security architecture,” is a mission-oriented scheme to pursue an American-centered multilateral security mechanism. It is designed by a means of augmenting Washington’s bilateral partnerships with trilateral and multilateral arrangements, strengthening regional institutions through multilateral engagement, and cultivating intra-Asian security relationships. As the Indo-Pacific is a large and interconnected region involving different countries and issues, the networked region needs to provide a common ground to coordinate these regional state agents. The solution for this by the IPSR is rested on an idea of “partnerships with purpose” for the multilateral security mechanism, which allows allies and partners to work closely with the U.S. as a whole for assigned missions. The IPSR shows three examples of the networked region, namely the Enforcement Coordination Cell (ECC) to enforce the United Nations Security Council resolution (UNSCR) sanctions, DOD’s Indo-Pacific Maritime Security Initiative (MSI) to build partners’ maritime capacity, and the U.S. Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI) to improve partner’s capacity to support the U.N. peace operations. According to the IPSR, the networked region works to deter aggression, maintain stability, and ensure free access to common domains, and hence upholds the international rules-based order.
The strategic triangle arrangement illustrates the vital role of allies and partners, along with the U.S. military presence, in the IPSR. The DOD’s strategic document with diplomatic characters is unusual, but this does show Washington noting and exploiting a main weakness of the “Chinese dream,” the pursuit of China’s rising international influence, which significantly lacks allies and partners amid the U.S.-Sino competition. This explains why the IPSR claims the U.S. “long-standing security alliances and partners” as the “bedrock” of Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy that provides “a durable, asymmetric strategic advantage that no competitor or rival can match.”
3. Strategic Implications of the IPSR for Taiwan
While 24 countries are enlisted in the “line of effort: partnerships” section of the IPSR, Taiwan has been highlighted along with other three countries, including Singapore, New Zealand, and Mongolia, which are “reliable, capable, and natural partners of the United States” and contribute “to U.S. missions around the world and are actively taking steps to uphold a free and open international order.”[5] Amid Beijing’s comprehensive threats against Taipei, the IPSR reaffirms Washington’s commitment to “faithfully implement the Taiwan Relations Act” and states the objective of the U.S.-Taiwan defense engagement being “to ensure that Taiwan remains secure, confident, free from coercion, and able to peacefully and productively engage the mainland on its own terms.”[6] Strategic implications of these statements to Taiwan are most remarkable for their clarity, in terms of China’s revisionist threat, Taiwan’s strategic role, and advancing Taiwan’s pragmatic diplomacy.
Affirming the China Threat
The subject of escalated U.S.-China competition is in the front and center of the IPSR. The military document openly affirms that China is the primary security concern for the U.S. national security with regard to the “inter-state competition,” which is defined by “geopolitical rivalry between free and repressive world order visions.” The document then declares China as a “revisionist power,” with a bold headline in the chapter of “Indo-Pacific strategic landscape: trends and challenges.” The posture comes in the wake of China recasting the regional order, coercing other nations, and leveraging economic means to advance its strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific. In the case of cross-Strait relations, the IPSR alleges Beijing’s preparation for contingencies to unify Taiwan with the mainland either by military force or other forms of coercion. This accordingly will change the status quo in the Indo-Pacific fundamentally. The IPSR makes China a revisionist threat clearly that “as China continues its economic and military advance, it seeks Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the near-term and, ultimately global preeminence in the long-term.”[7] With regard to Washington’s accusation as “the revisionist power,” Beijing responded that it was “groundless accusation” and “totally unacceptable,” and raised a counterattack calling Washington “practicing unilateralism, protectionism and bullyism.”[8] As Taipei regards Beijing as the most serious threat of its national security, Washington’s assertion of China as a revisionist threat and its primary security concern enables Taiwan to connect with the U.S. national security strategy fundamentally.
Identifying Taiwan’s Strategic Role
Amid China’s revisionist threat and the salience of “allies and partners,” the IPSR underscores Taiwan’s strategic role within the U.S. national security strategy and does it in the way more clearly than the previous strategy documents released by the Trump administration. For the first time, since the termination of Washington-Taipei diplomatic relations in 1979, the U.S. military strategic document pays considerable attention to associate the partner-role of Taiwan to the U.S. vital national interest, namely “upholding the rules-based international order.” The IPSR states the U.S. commitment to Taiwan, which is indispensable to the security and stability of the Indo-Pacific. And the report goes further to acclaim Taiwan as an example of “strong partner” country and hopes to “replicate in our new and burgeoning relationships in the Indo-Pacific.” This echoes Schriver’s statement at a public seminar that “the president’s [Trump] vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific suggests that there should be a key role for Taiwan.”[9] From a geostrategic point of view, the distinctive geographic position of Taiwan in the first island chain not only can constrain China’s access beyond the Western Pacific during crisis or war but can associate a significant role to China’s future development during peace period. Obviously, there are numerous common strategic interests between Washington and Taipei, and Taiwan can surely be a decisive factor, which is regarded as the most sensitive issue as far as Beijing’s concern, for Washington’s decision-makers in the case of U.S.-Sino competition as well as confrontation.
Advancing Taiwan’s Pragmatic Diplomacy
The initiative of “a networked region” by the IPSR provides a precious access and opportunity for diplomatically isolated Taiwan to increase its participation in the international society. The networked region notably promotes an idea of “partnerships with purpose” to associate allies and partners to develop interconnected security relationships. As the Indo-Pacific becomes the priority theater of the U.S. national security strategy, Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-Wen has proposed “three core principles,” namely “democracy, regional prosperity, and collective security,” as Taiwan’s approach to join the Indo-Pacific community effectively. [10] The “three principles” of President Tsai’s approach enable Taiwan to connect with the U.S. by the shared values and interests of democracy, prosperity, and security under the IPSR’s grand design of a networked security mechanism. Putting it into practice, for example, Taiwan was able to hold a regional workshop for “Anti-Corruption in Public and Private Sectors,” which is part of the Global Cooperation and Training Framework (GCTF). This was notable and important for Taipei’s pragmatic diplomacy because Taiwan, for the first time, along with the U.S. and Japan jointly and publicly held the security workshop in the region.[11] While Washington expresses special concern on Taiwan’s diplomatic isolation in the IPSR, this is truly a new and positive development for Taipei to advance its pragmatic diplomacy, rested on substantial relations with purpose, against Beijing’s isolation by a means of Washington’s initiative of “a networked security architecture.”
4. Conclusion
The IPSR represents the most detailed U.S. strategic document of its kind in the region and reflects the incorporation of the Trump administration’s global strategy to “make America great again.” Taiwan, for the first time, has been explicitly described as a trusted security partner “country,” which involves a significant role within Washington’s prioritized strategic theater, the Indo-Pacific region. In fact, the development of Taipei’s national security strategy, since 1949, has constantly taken account of the strategic environment which has primarily been affected by the dynamics of Sino-American relations. And, like it or not in dealing with the cross-Strait confrontation, Taiwan’s grand strategy has constantly been influenced by and to some extent subordinated to America’s global strategy. As such, governed by the strategy of others, Taiwan’s national security strategy has shown that Taipei only has limited room to make its strategic manoeuvre; indeed, its national security strategy has always been gauged in terms of the specific strategic environment in which it was operating. This explains, for example, why President Tsai Ing-Wen’s administration has been keen to associate Taipei’s national security strategy with Trump’s Indo-Pacific strategy to increase its strategic options by a means of strengthening strategic relations with Washington against Beijing’s annexation threat. Clearly, this is one of Taipei’s most important strategic decisions amid the escalated Sino-American rivalry under Trump’s administration. It must, however, also be noted that Taipei has achieved a reasonable security link to America, even at the height of Sino-American strategic cooperation in the 1970s and 1980s, not least by identifying common strategic interests with Washington and exploiting every opportunity arising from the conflicts and competition in US-China relations. Given the latest statement of Washington’s national strategic mindset by the IPSR, it is a prudent choice for Taipei to proclaim maintaining the status quo between Taiwan and China across Taiwan Strait that shall surely incorporate with Washington to preserve the existing favorable regional order to sustain American influence in the Indo-Pacific.
Dr. William Chih-Tung Chung is a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of National Security and Decision-Making of the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, Taiwan. Dr. Chung holds a PhD degree from the Department of International Relations of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
[1] “Acting Secretary Shanahan’s Remarks at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue 2019,” U.S. Department of Defense, June 1, 2019, https://dod.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/1871584/ acting-secretary-shanahans-remarks-at-the-iiss-shangri-la-dialogue-2019/
[2] “Message from the Secretary of Defense” of “The Indo-Pacific Strategy Report,” U.S. Department of Defense, June 1, 2019, https://media.defense.gov/2019/May/31/2002139210/-1/-1/1/DOD_INDO_PACIFIC_STRATEGY_REPORT_JUNE_2019.PDF
[3] Ryan Browne, “New Acting Secretary of Defense Tells Pentagon ‘to Remember China, China, China’,” CNN, January 2, 2019, https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/02/politics/shanahan-pentagon-first-day-china/index.html
[4] “The Indo-Pacific Strategy Report,” U.S. Department of Defense, June 1, 2019, https://media.defense.gov/2019/May/31/2002139210/-1/-1/1/
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] “Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang's Regular Press Conference”, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), June 3, 2019, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_ 665401/2511_665403/t1669120.shtml
[9] Russell Hsiao and David An, “Taiwan Is Ready to Serve as an Indo-Pacific Partner,” The National Interest, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/taiwan-ready-serve-indo-pacific-partner-23936.
[10] "President Tsai Attends Videoconference with U.S. Heritage Foundation," Office of the President, the Republic of China (Taiwan), March 28, 2019, https://english.president.gov.tw/News/5692
[11] "Japan co-hosts a Taiwan-U.S. training workshop for the first time," Focus Taiwan, March 26, 2019, http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201903260007.aspx