Explaining Taiwan's response to Chinese military modernization: Alliance dynamics, threat perceptions, and domestic politics

What explains Taiwan's seemingly puzzling response to Chinese military modernization? Traditional approaches to the study of international relations suggest that a country faced with a growing external security threat should respond by improving its own military capabilities or seeking the protection of powerful allies. Taiwan's response to the acceleration of Chinese military modernization since the late 1990s defies these predictions. Despite a decade of double-digit annual increases in Chinese military spending and major improvements in the PLA's operational capabilities, Taiwan's defense spending has declined and some of its defense modernization programs have stalled. Moreover, by repeatedly taking steps toward formal independence, the island's leaders have angered Beijing and risked alienating Washington, where officials are becoming concerned that a combination of military weakness and provocative political behavior may spark a cross-Strait conflict, potentially dragging the United States into an otherwise avoidable war with China.; The key finding of this study is that Taiwan's seemingly puzzling response to Chinese military modernization is a function of three factors: (1) the unofficial U.S.-Taiwan security relationship; (2) Taiwan's evolving threat perceptions; and (3) the island's problematic political institutions and divisive domestic political environment. Since the late 1990s, these three factors have combined to make Taiwan's balancing response much less energetic than many observers expected and contributed to policy decisions that have angered China and irritated the United States. Because Taiwan's major political parties disagree about how best to protect Taiwan's interests and the island's political institutions are not conducive to producing the compromises that make democracy work, divided government has resulted in severe political gridlock and impeded Taiwan's ability to respond adequately to a growing security threat. Moreover, the assumption that U.S. intervention is probable in the event of a cross-Strait conflict and the perception that China is unlikely to use its growing military capabilities to attack Taiwan interact with these domestic political factors to reduce the perceived costs of provoking China, irritating Washington, and failing to devote greater political and economic resources to defense reform and military modernization.