Brennan Deveraux and Kyle Marcrum
Prior to 2022, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense boasted of its Overall Defense Concept, a plan for “force protection, decisive battle in littoral zone, and destruction of enemy at landing beach.”3 Taiwan claimed the concept applied “ ‘innovative/asymmetric’ operational thinking,” but the concept was a symmetric plan to fight the People’s Liberation Army head-to-head in a final, decisive battle at the beach on which Chinese forces landed.4 Despite talk about reforming the defense concept, and against the recommendations of retired admirals, Taiwan seemed to make little progress.5
The progress on reforms accelerated after a few key events. The 2019–20 deployment of the People’s Armed Police in Hong Kong signaled the end of “one country-two systems” and the viability of this concept for Taiwan.6 The deployment was followed by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and China’s reaction to the former speaker of the US House of Representatives’ 2022 visit to Taiwan. Taiwan realized major theater combat had not gone away, and China was readying for a cross-strait invasion.
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