Written by Eric Setzekorn.
Image credit: Republic of China (Taiwan), Ministry of National Defence
Today, the Taiwan Strait is widely seen as one of the most dangerous flashpoints in the world, with increasingly capable PLA forces seeking to intimidate and threaten the democratic political system and pluralistic culture of Taiwan. The new book On the Brink: A Military History of Taiwan examines Taiwan from 1949 to 2024 and brings into focus issues related to U.S. foreign policy, Taiwan’s history, international relations, and the role of the military in a democratic society. It concludes that despite rapid advances in Chinese weapons technology and increasingly aggressive PLA behaviour, the threats Taiwan faces remain largely unchanged for seventy-five years, and generations of Taiwanese have collaborated with their American partners to deter China and maintain a capable military on the island. While adaptation and change are never easy, Taiwan’s modern military is radically different from the conservative, “party-army” of the Cold War, and it possesses the intellectual, political, and social capital needed to secure Taiwan’s future well into the 2030s.
New Insights and New Perspectives
There are three primary reasons that the military history of Taiwan has importance and relevance for larger currents of history, international affairs, and military policy. First, since 1949, Taiwan has been engaged in ongoing deterrence operations and occasionally direct conflict with the PRC for seventy-five years. With rising tensions in East Asia due to increasingly aggressive Chinese behaviour and territorial disputes, Taiwan’s historical experience provides valuable insights on how to successfully deter Chinese action. There are numerous lessons and specific examples that can be drawn from Taiwan’s experience in navigating multiple periods of crisis with China and the long-term changes to sustaining a military with limited resources. Moreover, since 1949, Taiwan’s military, with American support, has adapted and adjusted to changing PRC threats despite being faced with major financial, technological, and diplomatic constraints, which is a fascinating and important story.
Second, Taiwan’s military has been a powerful element in Taiwanese society, with policies such as military conscription and veterans’ benefits entrenching military influence in every family in Taiwan. Changes in Taiwan’s military, such as the introduction of women into the military, have been important drivers of cultural change. As Taiwan democratised in the 1980s, the military remained a critical element in Taiwan’s society, and in the 1990s, for example, Taiwan’s military healthcare and veterans’ administration served as the foundation for a system of universal healthcare. Since the 2010s, the difficulties Taiwan has faced in moving from conscription to a volunteer military have further demonstrated the salience of military affairs in Taiwan’s political and social fabric. Perhaps most importantly, the role of the military throughout Taiwan’s successful transition from an authoritarian one-party state dominated by one family (Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo) for 38 years to an inclusive democracy is absolutely central to modern Taiwanese history. Readers interested in Taiwan’s political evolution and social changes will be able to better understand modern Taiwanese history by integrating the military into the overall historical narrative.
Lastly, since 1949, Taiwan has been an essential element of the international system because, both during the Cold War and today, Taiwan’s military has played a vital role in engaging the United States and other world powers. Today, Taiwanese students attend all the major U.S. military academies (such as Annapolis) and train at U.S. military bases. Since 1949, Taiwan has received or purchased tens of billions of dollars of American military equipment, and despite large-scale American ground forces never being deployed to Taiwan, Taiwan has been able to deter China. In contrast to American difficulties with equipping, training, and coordinating with Afghan, Iraqi, or South Vietnamese forces, the military relationship between the United States and Taiwan has been effective and incredibly useful to both sides for seventy-five years. In an era where the United States is increasingly seeking to support and develop the military abilities of allies, rather than deploy American combat troops, the military relationship with Taiwan is a rare success story.
Enduring Challenges
A major enduring challenge revealed by Taiwan’s military history is that while American military and political support has been strong since 1949 (with several notable exceptions), the level of engagement has been uneven. The United States is a global power, and it is perfectly natural and appropriate that it will need to focus and shift attention to different issues or regions of the world as conditions change. When these shifts occur, it is important that lower-level, day-to-day connections be maintained to ensure the continued effectiveness of military cooperation programs, but also to provide a solid foundation in the event that a crisis situation requires the United States to reengage. Effective, ongoing military cooperation is also critical because it allows for the efficient use of time to develop procedures and military capabilities.
The military relationship in the 1950s, which included large-scale weapons transfers to Taiwan’s military forces and the deployment of thousands of American military personnel to Taiwan, fulfilled the goals of policymakers in Taipei and Washington because it was effective in both providing security for Taiwan and integrating Taiwan into the U.S. strategic system in East Asia. In the 1960s and 1970s, military connections between Taiwan and the United States atrophied. The Carter administration had a particularly short-sighted and poorly considered approach to Taiwan, and the military partnership that had been built over decades was largely undone within a couple of years. While the Reagan and Bush administrations continued to support commercial military sales to Taiwan in the 1980s and 1990s, it was only after the 1996 Taiwan Straits Crisis that military engagement was revitalised. In 1996, senior leaders in Taipei and Washington had little knowledge of each other, and their militaries had been almost completely separated for 16 years. If a Chinese missile had struck a critical target in 1996, it is doubtful if operational U.S. and Taiwanese units in the area would have been able to talk to each other, let alone coordinate a response.
Forward-thinking policies since 1996 have significantly improved military engagement between the United States and Taiwan through semi-official conferences and expanded communications programs. However, these activities mostly occur at senior leader levels, rather than with operational commanders. Despite this progress, U.S. engagement can still be uneven, and the most notable example of this issue was the Obama administration’s nearly four-year hold on all weapons sales to Taiwan, which was designed as a gesture of goodwill to China, but which caused important acquisition programmes in Taiwan to be significantly delayed.
Looking Forward
In the mid-2020s, Taiwan’s military challenges are growing, as the tempo and assertiveness of Chinese military actions increase in the Taiwan Strait, but a broader, more long-term perspective suggests that while dangers are great, Taiwan’s underlying military strengths are also growing. It would be easy to see the late 1950s as the peak of Taiwan’s military strength, with over 500,000 military personnel, extensive American support, and modern weapons, but these factors obscure the extremely brittle nature of Taiwan’s political system and international partnerships in the 1950s. In a potential large-scale conflict in the Taiwan Straits, Taiwan’s military might have been effective for a time, but it was built on an unstable foundation, and while it probably would have been highly capable in a few roles, in a long-term conflict or ambiguous military situation, it was likely to be an extremely brittle force.
Despite current challenges, Taiwan’s military is now more balanced, adaptable and sustainable than at any period in the past seventy-five years, and in the mid-2020s, Taiwan and the United States share a commitment to democratic institutions and liberal, pluralistic societies, and their military forces reflect these norms and values. The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that even when severely challenged by larger foreign powers or asymmetric threats, democratic and inclusive societies can be incredibly resilient, and their military forces can be tremendously adaptable. The failure of the Russian attack on Ukraine in 2022 and the ensuing conflict has been extensively studied by Taiwanese and American military analysts, and the Ukrainian experience illustrates that even a much smaller military force can leverage new technology such as drones, use the initiative of junior officers, and leverage operational flexibility to frustrate a seemingly much more powerful military opponent. While Taiwan’s military is much smaller than it was in the 1950s, the quality of training and doctrine reflects a military ethos that is now focused on skills rather than ideology. Today, Taiwan’s military is built on a solid foundation that utilises the talents, skills, and loyalty of Taiwan’s population to create a much more robust and durable basis for military power.
Eric Setzekorn is a historian and author of four books, including On the Brink: A Military History of Taiwan, which was published in August 2026. He has published over two dozen academic articles in publications such as Parameters, the Journal of American-East Asian Relations, and the Journal of Military and Strategic Studies. The views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defence or the U.S. government.