Two scholars from Ukraine and the Czech Republic urged Taiwan on Wednesday to prepare for a possible Chinese invasion well ahead of time by stockpiling weapons and training civilians and reservists.
Yurii Poita, head of the Asia-Pacific Section at the Ukraine-based Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies, said at a Taipei security forum that an important lesson from the Russian invasion of Ukraine was that the country’s leadership “didn’t expect a full scale invasion.”
The failure to recognize beforehand that the war could turn into a full scale one instead of the smaller scale conflicts in Crimea or Donbas that it originally anticipated has cost lives in Ukraine, Poita argued.
He praised Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces (TDF) for the crucial supplementary role it has played in assisting its regular armed forces in fending off Russian forces since the war begin in late February, but said those forces were not ready when the conflict began.
The TDF was not very active in preparing in advance because Ukraine’s government did not anticipate a full-scale Russian invasion, he said.
“The actual preparation of the TDF began a few weeks before the invasion, and in terms of equipment training, in terms of logistics, the TDF wasn’t prepared fully.”
With the lack of preparation and related training, TDF forces suffered heavy losses and demoralization when they were sent to the front lines of the war, he said.
“I believe it is very important to prepare this reserve component in advance,” instead of doing so during a war, he said.
Jakub Janda, director of the Prague-based European Values Center for Security Policy, agreed with Poita.
According to the Czech scholar, the United States rightly warned of a looming Russian invasion, and the alert could have saved thousands of Ukrainian lives if only Kyiv had made the necessary preparations in a more timely manner.
“Because in the end, as you know it very well in the case of Taiwan, it’s really about the stocks” of weapons and military equipment, Janda said.
The lack of prior preparation was also manifested in Ukraine’s recruitment of a foreign legion, which happened at the very last minute.
“Obviously this legion will not win the war, but it does actually bring a lot of expertise,” he said, adding that it should have been prepared and launched months before any crisis started.
Meanwhile, Janda also highlighted the importance of the Czech Republic’s ongoing efforts to establish an all-out defense capability.
One cannot win the war by relying on the military only, he said. “You need to have society on your side.”
“But the question is, how much will society be willing to support the military and political leadership? How much struggle and pain will they be willing to suffer?”
In the case of the Czech Republic, it has active reserve forces that are part of the military while taking advantage of civilian forces as well, he noted.
The Czech military has been very open in supporting civilian defense forces as long as they register with the defense ministry. They are given government funding as long as they pass regular government inspections, according to Janda.
Janda stressed that it takes both ammunition and will to fend off an invasion, “because without the will, you can have as much as ammunition as you want, but you will collapse as a society.”
The two scholars made the remarks at the one-day 2022 Taipei Security Dialogue, which was organized by a military-funded think tank, the Institute for National Defense and Security Research.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel