INTRODUCTION
In January 2024, Taiwan extended compulsory military training to 12 months. At first glance, this should be a much-improved conscription program compared to the previous version.[1] However, and notwithstanding the fact that the first cohort of conscripts is yet to graduate, the new program lacks a key element that has to do with the formation of quality reservists: military education. Asymmetric strategic defense cannot be achieved, when facing superior rival numbers, if these superior numbers are not matched by the superior quality of combat-readiness. As is the case with other countries in the same situation – most notably Israel – Taiwan has no choice but to match the PLA’s superior numbers by introducing military education at the lowest level of warfighting combat formation: conscription. In this article, I will engage a series of questions concerning why military education needs to be introduced to the current conscription program if quality development of conscripts and reservists is to be achieved.
I will begin by looking at quality as a problematic. With asymmetric warfare always being a dynamic problem, nothing remains equal, which is to say, quality military training requires the ongoing development of one’s strategic response to the challenge faced. I follow with a reflection on Col. John R. Boyd’s thinking on how people, ideas and technology should be addressed in relation to creating combat-readiness. I then highlight why intrinsic and extrinsic motivations need to be integrative in their relationship. This is followed by a discussion on why conscripts and reservists will not be protected from warfighting during combat. This later reality is then used to highlight the imperative that military education should be introduced to conscription, for reason that the battle fought must be thought at all levels, including by conscripts. Finally, I will conclude by offering some recommendations for how the problem of introducing military education could be approached.
Before beginning, we should highlight that military education here refers to acquisition skills in critical thinking, decision-making, and problem-solving.[2] The development of these leadership attributes is not currently part of Taiwan’s conscription program, as they are in other militaries in small developed democracies facing much larger rivals.
QUALITY PREPARATION AS A PROBLEMATIC
The discussion begins by considering the fact that Taiwan’s Armed Forces will never match the PLA in the numbers game. The only way to gain parity, when outnumbered, is to meet the superior numbers of one’s rival with a force of superior quality. If Taiwan can train its conscripts to go toe-to-toe with the PLA, then the ratio could be reduced from 13:1[3] to 2:1.[4] However, this reduction in ratio is only possible if Taiwan’s conscripts are trained like no other conscripts on Earth – meaning they are trained to their optimal potential and in a manner that recognises the specificsituation of this theatre. Individual contribution in this setting will only be marked by quality if Taiwan’s combatants have been trained with an accent on thinking for themselves; a quality that is acquired during military education. Anything less and Taiwan’s Armed Forces will not achieve the strategic competitiveness required.[5]
PEOPLE, IDEAS, TECHNOLOGY
It is important to consider how civil society is valued when committing conscripts to what this serious iteration of military training should look like. John R. Boyd believed that people should come first, then ideas, and then hardware.[6] While not wanting to undermine the importance of firepower, re the value of military armaments, including those technologies used in the grey zone, prioritizing missile defense does not prepare conscripts and civil society for what happens next if the PLA outguns Taiwan’s Armed Forces in any preliminary exchange Taiwan’s civil society and military will then spontaneously understand that the hierarchy of importance, in peace, as in war, should always be ‘people, ideas, technology’ and not the other way around. Only people can create social cohesion, when the military and civil society need to fight together. And this is only possible (1) if conscription is a quality program and (2) if civil society believes, with absolute conviction, in the merit of this program. The onus is on the Ministry of National Defense (MND), as these above objectives are only achieved when the narrative that promotes the new conscription program portrays an experience of absolute relevance and authenticity. If Boyd’s hierarchy of principles is reversed so as to privilege technology over ideas and ideas over people’, then conscription will not produce the outcomes that society is counting on the MND to provide.
INTRINSIC AND EXTRINSIC MOTIVATIONS
A third consideration concerns the question of how large Taiwan’s Reserve Force should be, and the idea that ‘the will to fight’ should come from (1) a relevant and authentic conscription program and (2) that this program should add value to the civil careers of conscripts.[7] The Reserve Force should be able to be drawn from the total sum of conscript graduates. While the Reserve Force might currently be approximately 300,000 of a possible 800,000,[8] the inability to use more of these 800,000 should not be explained away through use of cognitive dissonance. The lack of training facilities; lack of funding for reserve training; lack of weapons and ammunition etc. are not legitimate excuses. These issues, among others, can only be addressed if national defense and security are understood as involving optimal civil and military cooperation exercised in a democratic spirit.
The idea that there are only 300,000 combat-ready reservists is one conditioned by a misjudgement relating to conscript capacity to learn how to learn. (1) If military education adds quality to conscription by adding the relevance and authenticity which conscripts are actually calling for, then the program itself will create willingness to fight across a larger cohort, giving the MND more reservists to draw on. (2) Thinking that ideas come before people must also be upended in relation to what conscripts take away from their conscription experience. We should be looking at how to motivate conscripts, through financial and professional incentivization, so that employers will reward conscript graduates for new knowledge and competencies they bring to civil employment.[9] Once it becomes understood by young men, upon completing conscription, that they have added professional and commercial value to their career trajectories, then they will become motivated by the way their military and civil experiences weave together, creating a growth in individual and collective confidence. As a result, reserve training camps could be thought of as professional development sessions, where training benefitting both civil and military sectors. Such a development will empower the operability of both conscripts and reservists in the asymmetrical environment.[10]
RESPONSIBILITY IN THE THEATRE
The last consideration has to do with the relationship between (1) the leadership of the brigades in the Reserve Force, (2) reservist participation in strategic combat decision-making, and (3) the democratization of participation when using digital platforms. Before proceeding, we should engage with a couple of premises that may easily be overlooked.
Firstly, the demarcation that separates the roles of regulars and reservists – where regulars conduct strikes and reservists defend territory – will not apply once combat has begun. These peacetime semantics become merely theoretical in the theatre of war. The reality is that the Taiwan theatre will see a spontaneous conflation of roles. Taiwan’s densely populated non-mountainous and urban landscape does not provide strategic depth, placing reservists in the action from the beginning. Young Taiwanese who are eligible for conscription surely intuit this, and are therefore logically concerned that their training should be both authentic and relevant.[11]
Secondly, the Taiwan theatre will not be defined by a recognizable ‘front’. With no visible front, reservists will find themselves in exposed positions, despite this not being the original intention and, as such, all reservists will need to be competent combatants in this theatre. If reservists are trained to replace regulars in positions where the responsibility is to strike, then the reservist needs to fulfil the role that the regular was trained to perform. Furthermore, regulars will have no time during combat to train reservists. Reservists will have to learn on their feet – something that is more achievable if conscripts learn how to learn during their military education while doing conscription.
So having made these two simple points, we return to my original consideration. I argue that if people are to be privileged over ideas, and ideas over technology, then the full potential of conscripts needs to be explored and developed during conscription, so as (1) to develop their leadership qualities, (2) to develop situational awareness, problem-solving etc., in order to participate in decision-making, and (3), to develop their understanding of how to collaborate in vertical hierarchies. While these attributes are fundamental to reservists integrating into regular combat units, they are also required if reservists are to be capable of operating in small autonomous units, in street and mountain warfighting.[12]
MILITARY EDUCATION: OPTION OR IMPERATIVE
Military education may be thought of as an option, but the MND has no choice but to introduce it, which is to say that the speed of competent action in the theatre makes military education imperative to the mission. To assume this responsibility now does not mean that program designers need to reinvent the wheel. There are numerous small developed democracies that incorporate military education into their conscription programs, including Singapore, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Singapore; all countries that cannot defend themselves against larger rivals without preparing a superior quality Armed Force.[13]
In rounding out the discussion, I would like to use a couple of examples to highlight the importance of military education and especially in relation to the significance it should have for Taiwan’s young democracy. The first example refers to how the value of military education potentiates the quality of Israel’s military, while the second refers to the how an advanced understanding of democracy facilitates real-time participation of Ukraine’s NCOs in that theatre.
With respect to the first example, the attributes of military education are developed in the Israel Defence Force (IDF) through the development of NCOs during their conscription program.[14] At the outset of this program, more than 75 years ago, the IDF asked itself: “how could such a complex system of expectations [as that which we have outlined above] be applied to a junior officers' training program”, when most conscripts are drafted for fairly short periods of compulsory training? Having already understood the hierarchy of importance that people must come before ideas and technology, the IDF understood that “the deployment of officer potential exists at all class levels”,[15] meaning officer potential is an a priori, and something that is independent of the soldier’s point of entry into the Armed Forces. The IDF understood the limits of privileging ‘the idea over people’, where only commissioned officers would be capable of making strategic decisions. This led the IDF to conclude that they should potentiate critical thinking skills of conscripts in order to enable their combat capabilities in key actions and involve them in decisionmaking and leadership crucial to the mission. As such, the IDF understands that authority should be “delegated down to the lowest ranks” such that “the junior officer will be … [able] to adapt himself to professional thinking from the start of his training”[16] and to “think like a general who has to make critical decisions.”[17]
The second example concerns how the liberal democratic values of “trust, individualism, innovation and entrepreneurial spirit”[18] influence the participation of frontline soldiers in warfighting combat in the Ukrainian theatre. I am talking about mission command[19] and how the use of weapons communication platforms suppose the need for participation of NCOs in real-time decision-making that would have traditionally been the exclusive responsibility of higher ranking officers. Without the participation of NCOs on the frontline, the quality of the decisionmaking (for example, when targeting rival weapon systems) cannot be ensured, as NCOs may be of the only soldiers able to put eyes on the target. Furthermore, the strategic value of speed will be lost.[20] The MND may feel that NCOs formed during conscription will not be qualified to participate in such real-time decision-making but this delegation of responsibility is exactly what Generation Z is asking for when they express their frustration in not having the means to defend the sovereignty of their country.[21] This is a generation ready for democratization of the decisionmaking process in the Armed Forces; something that to Generation Z is logical, given their liberal formation and their valuing of “trust, individualism, innovation and entrepreneurial spirit.” [22]
CONCLUSION
Change, in the form of extending conscription to 12 months, supposes the employment of a hypothesis that would always need further development. It is preferable to think of the 12-month conscription program as the first iteration of an innovation that will need to be modified through a continuous process of evolution, in accordance with the needs of the moment. Implicit in such a process is the need for a feedback loop that informs, through various sources, including that of US Observers, those aspects of the new program that will need further development.
Such an improvement argued for here, is the need for military education to be made a key element of the current conscription program. This initiative will both optimize the performance of the Reserve Force and add value to the post-conscription professional performance of conscripts. Innovation is not a question of beginning with the already perfect model, but beginning with an imperfect model that can beindefinitely improved based on constant experimentation, with constant testing of the current hypothesis.[23] If the current conscription program is seen as a panacea rather than an ongoing experiment, its value will recede in relation the demands that the changing times require.
In drawing these conclusions, one might ask, by what process should the introduction of military education proceed. Here it is suggested that the following steps might be considered: (1) MND conscription designers should look at the value that military education brings to conscriptions programs in other countries (including, but not limited to, Singapore, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Israel). In particular, it should look at what military education during conscription achieves in terms of combat-readiness, the operability of reservists alongside regulars, and NCO leadership. (2) Work needs to be done on how military education should be integrated into the conscription program. This task is less daunting than might be thought, in that the introduction of military education is a solution, not a problem. This solution is more easily understood if we reverse-engineer our image of what the ideal reservist should look like, with the intention of understanding the training and education that this ideal reservist would require. (3) There will need to be professional development of existing teaching resources. First though, there will need to be an examination of how teaching staff in military education programs in other countries teach military education. The human resources to teach could come from the existing conscription instruction cohort, from civilian teachers who teach political warfare in universities, and from the instructor cohort used in Reserve Force training. (4) Finally, improvements in Reserve Force training will need to take into consideration the learning outcomes of the military education component of the conscription program. The congruence of learning outcomes in compulsory military training and reserve training will potentiate the quality of reservists and their capacity to add to the operability to regular combatwarfighting in the Taiwan theatre.
[1]The new 12-month conscription program, which sits with the wider Armed Forces framework, is part of the All-Out Defense Mobilization program. See Ministry of National Defence, “Force Structure Adjustment of All-out Defense,” Ministry of National Defence, January 10, 2023, 2023.01.10-Force-Structure-Adjustment-of-All-out-Defense.pdf (ustaiwandefense.com).
[2]Bar-Or, Col. A, and Col. H. Shay, “Military Education of Israel's Junior Officers: From ‘A Platoon Commander- General’ to A Professional Officer,” Militaire Spectator 174, no. 3 (2005), 109-155.
[3]This ratio refers to the number of active Regulars, excluding the possibility that the PLA is engaged on another front
[4]The Taiwan figure here comprises active Regulars plus Reserve Force components
[5]See Matt Pottinger (ed.), The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan (Stanford: Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, 2024)
[6]Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War (New York: Back Bay Books, 2024), 382.
[7]In an upcoming research project, the author will look at how Military Education increases the confidence of conscripts after they return to the workforce and how this increase in confidence benefits both society and the economy.
[8]Huizhong Wu, “Military Reserves, Civil Defense Worry Taiwan as China Looms,” APNEWS, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-taiwan-china-taipei-0ac81227d1fe37822b8a1d084119e248.
[9]The MND could consider the work done in this area by the Singapore Ministry of Defense.
[10]See Matt Pottinger (ed.), The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan.
[11]See Jimmy Chien, “Conversations with the Taiwanese about Taiwan’s Defense.” Global Taiwan Brief 8, no 20 (November 1 2023): 4-6, https://www.bing.com/search?q=Conversations+with+the+Taiwanese+about+Taiwan’s+Defense&cvid=4a6d80d684bc49628602d2cdb6733ffa&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBBzY2OWowajSoAgKwAgE&FORM=ANAB01&PC=ASTS.
[12]David G Brown, “Reconceiving Taiwan’s Reserve Forces,” Defense Security Brief 9, no. 1 (June 22, 2020): 1-8, https://indsr.org.tw/en/respublicationcon?uid=15&resid=46&pid=1494.
[13]There are countless examples in the history of warfare when a smaller number of quality soldiers have beaten in battle a larger number of soldiers who have not been trained to think for themselves to the same extent. One could begin with the Battle of Thermopylae, when Spartan warriors beat a much larger Persian army. There are a number of more recent examples, the highlight being the 1967 Six-Day War in the Middle East, when the Israel Defense Force fought an army nearly twice the size. Col. A, Bar- Or, and Col. H. Shay’s 2005 article (referenced in this article) provide a detailed discussion on why quality conscripts contribute in the battlefield in a way that enables a smaller force to compete against superior numbers.
[14]Bar-Or, Col. A, and Col. H. Shay, “Military Education of Israel’s Junior Officers: From ‘A Platoon Commander-General’ to A Professional Officer,” 109-155.
[15]Ibid.
[16]Ibid.
[17]Ibid.
[18]“What is Mission Command?,” The Economist, July 25, 2022, What is mission command? (economist.com)
[19]Yurii Piota,“Some Lessons from Command and Control (C2) in the Russian-Ukrainian War,” guo fangqing shite kan [ 國防情勢特刊 National Defense Situation Special Issue] 32 (October 2023): 24-37.
[20]Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War.
[21]See Jimmy Chien, “Conversations with the Taiwanese about Taiwan’s defense,” 4-6.
[22]See Richard Heraud, “The New 12-month Conscription Program in Taiwan as A Catalyst for the Transformation of Civil-military Relations: Military Education and Generation Z,” 2023 Taiwan Fellowship Report (English version with Traditional Chinese translation) (Taipei: Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 2024), 2307-anoeveuaecrnraj.pdf (ncl.edu.tw).
[23]See Michael Schrage, The Innovator’s Hypothesis: How Experiments are Worth More than Good Ideas (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2014).