TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Two American security experts believe US military aid should be provided to Taiwan only if it boosts defense spending and reforms.

In a Foreign Policy article titled “The Taiwan Fixation” published Tuesday, scholars Jennifer Kavanagh and Stephen Wertheim surveyed the political and economic consequences for the US of allowing Taiwan to come under Beijing’s control. They urged US leaders to create a plan that enables Taiwan’s self-defense while allowing the US to assist “from a distance,” and maintain its position in Asia regardless of a cross-strait conflict’s result.

Kavanagh and Wertheim wrote that this should be done by making US aid conditional on Taiwan’s defense spending and military reforms. They said Taiwan should be required to increase defense spending to 4% of GDP by 2030, and that US President Donald Trump should encourage Taiwan to increase military conscription to two “more intense” years.

President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) has committed to increasing defense spending to 3% of GDP this year and extended military conscription began last year. The opposition-led 2025 government budget cuts defense spending, however, the US remains bound to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself under the Taiwan Relations Act.

Kavanagh and Wertheim wrote that the US’s second condition for military aid should be for Taiwan to develop an “asymmetric denial defense” strategy by boosting anti-ship missiles, sea mines, air defense systems, and cheap drones. They said these systems would make Taiwan better able to defend itself without direct US intervention, compared to the current strategy that prioritizes tanks, fighter jets, submarines, and other large defense assets.

Taiwan announced a plan in 2022 to counter a potential invasion with thousands of drones and plans to increase investment in US drones, which the military will train conscripts on. Lai and Defense Minister Wellington Koo (顧立雄) have both said drone development is key to Taiwan’s asymmetric warfare strategy, while Koo added in June that more than 3,200 military drones would be purchased by 2027.

Taiwanese defense experts have also said tanks improve Taiwan’s ability to counter new Chinese invasion strategies and that Taiwan’s domestic submarine construction program can secure potential invasion sites. Meanwhile, Institute for National Policy Research Deputy Director Kuo Yu-jen (郭育仁) said in February that buying defense systems like fighter jets does not conflict with asymmetric warfare strategy.

Kavanagh and Wertheim also said the cost of preserving Taiwan’s de facto independence was not worth a US-China war. “The United States’ vital interest lies in preventing China from attaining untrammeled regional hegemony in Asia,” the authors wrote.

The authors said Trump should take a stance on cross-strait relations that is “less provocative” than his predecessor. Washington should consistently apply the policy of strategic ambiguity and “shore up the ‘one China’ policy,” they wrote.

Kavanagh and Wertheim also made recommendations to US policymakers on domestic messaging regarding Taiwan and military strategy in other parts of Asia. They said all the recommendations in the article were made to “preserve an open and balanced Indo-Pacific, regardless of what happens in the Taiwan Strait.”