A retired admiral from the U.S. Navy made an extraordinary intervention in Taiwan’s political and military debate today, excoriating delays to military preparedness.
Mark Montgomery is back in Taiwan, participating in a tabletop wargame that simulates Chinese pressure on Taiwan. In an audience question-and-answer session before the games started, he asked a panel that included senior Taiwanese leaders whether Taiwan is prepared to make the necessary sacrifices needed to reform its military reserves.
Chen Yeong-kang (陳永康), a sitting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, former head of the Taiwanese navy, and the organizer of the wargame, and Alexander Huang (黃介正), the former director of international affairs for the KMT, discussed among other issues the legal challenges to reform.
That was when Montgomery fired back from the floor.
“You’re fiddling while Rome burns,” he said.
Montgomery is no stranger to Taiwan. He participated in the same table top wargame last year and frequently meets with senior leaders, including the president. He was a key contributor to “The Boiling Moat,” a book that laid out a pathway for Taiwan to improve its military position versus China.
Montgomery’s question to the panel laid out three challenges that Taiwan faces if it wants to effectively reform the reserves.
- Can Taiwan find 200,000 citizens who are prepared to sacrifice one weekend a month and two to three weeks each summer for training?
- Can Taiwanese companies honor and support the people being gone that long without any punishment?
- Is the Taiwanese army prepared to sacrifice two active duty brigades, freeing up the personnel to train 20 effective reserve brigades?
In his answer, Chen raised the issues of Taiwan’s low birth rate not providing enough young men for the reserves, and a problem of the military generally lacking sufficient English capability to operate newly purchased U.S. weapons. Then, he said that Taiwan would need to modify the law to allow more training time.
Huang developed the point. To gain time, Taiwan needs to “amend the law, deal with the legal system and deal with the brain cells of politicians.” He added that Taiwan only has one level of reserve mobilization, he said, all-out mobilization. There is no ability to partially mobilize in response to a developing crisis, and companies and government departments are not going to do anything unless legally required.
This was when Montgomery raised his hand and delivered his “Fiddling while Rome burns” blow. Finland and Estonia are not talking about esoteric legal issues, he said, they are taking action. He questioned whether Taiwanese children think about military service in the same way that Israelis or Finns do.
There’s only one country prepared to sacrifice its children for your independence, Montgomery said, and it was unclear whether he was addressing the speakers, the room at large or the entirety of Taiwan.
Then he issued a pretty stark warning: “This is not a party issue. This is a societal issue. And if you don’t attack it aggressively in a bipartisan, together, national way, you’re going to find the one ally you have left is not excited or motivated.”
It’s the second time in two weeks that Montgomery has spoken up. At a Future Maritime Defense Symposium at the Legislative Yuan on April 7, he said that U.S President Donald Trump could “collectively punish” Taiwan for not raising defense spending to 5% of GDP in the next few years. He explained that Trump doesn’t care about Taiwanese domestic politics and won’t make allowances for budgets having been blocked by the opposition. “Trump wouldn’t know the DDP [the governing Democratic Progressive Party] from the KMT if his life depended on it,” he said.
I asked Montgomery why he seemed a bit punchier on this visit to Taiwan. “It’s one year closer,” he said. Not to 2027 specifically, but one year closer to Chinese leader Xi Jinping (習近平) making a decision to move, perhaps with economic coercion rather than militarily. “The defense budget becoming a political football is completely unacceptable,” he added.
Taiwan’s reserves are not in an acceptable state, Montgomery reiterated. “I’m not going to say they’re a joke, but they’re extremely unprepared and unaligned for the mission they need to have.”
Taiwan launched reforms to its reserve system under former President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) that are still being implemented. The conscription period has increased from four months to one year, and there is more training for advanced weapons. But because most conscripts defer their service until after university, they are still under the old regime. Most were still only doing four months last year.
It shouldn’t be difficult to amend the rules on mobilization, Huang told me, but the government needs to communicate much better about security to explain to the Taiwanese people. There are lower level changes that can be made by presidential order without bipartisan support, he added.
Montgomery sees a lot of work that needs to be done, and neither of Taiwan’s two main political parties working on it. “When you ask questions, you get these kind of answers, you know, ‘We have legislative and legal issues,’” he told me.
“Fix them.”
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