In a Washington Post op-ed last November, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te committed his country to raising defense spending from roughly 2.4 percent to 3.3 percent of GDP in the next year and to 5 percent by 2030. Lai also announced a $40 billion supplementary defense budget that will fund “significant new arms acquisitions” and enhance “asymmetrical capabilities.”
To partners in Washington, Tokyo, and beyond, those are welcome numbers that suggest Taipei is beginning to shoulder more of the deterrence burden against Beijing’s accelerating military buildup and coercive pressure. They sound like long-awaited proof that Taipei is finally putting real money behind deterrence. But on its own, the pledge is ironically cheap talk: big figures without a clear system to turn them into measurable gains for Taiwan’s military readiness.
Though Lai’s stated commitment is dense with programs and platforms, it is thin on answers to the basic management questions that will decide whether these promises matter: Who is on the hook this year for delivering which outcomes, on what timeline, and with which resources? Money without discipline is just a press release, not a plan.
Taiwan’s military problems—whether readiness, reserve mobilization, or munitions stockpiles and backlogs—don’t stem from a lack of intent but execution drift. In recent years, Taipei has shown a willingness to make big political decisions: extending conscription to one year, increasing defense outlays, and prioritizing asymmetrical capabilities. Yet these top-level decisions soon splinter because of slow budget cycles, industrial constraints, and uneven local implementation.
The gap between rhetoric and results is not accidental but structural. Taiwan’s top-level strategy document is the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which is linked to election cycles rather than operational reality. Four years is a lifetime in today’s threat environment. Instead, Taiwan needs a steering document that is short, disciplined, and focused on deliverables.
To match the urgency and significance of Lai’s spending announcement, Taiwan should replace the QDR with an annual National Defense Strategy (NDS) that would set goals in quarter one, fund them in the budget, and report progress before year’s end. Do that every year, regardless of who occupies the presidential office, and the result would be transformative.
The core problem with a quadrennial review is that it is inevitably late. A strategy written for an administration’s first year becomes stale as the Chinese People’s Liberation Army rolls out new platforms, refines its coercion strategies, and uncovers Taiwan’s vulnerabilities. In the years between QDRs, ministries are forced to improvise around the last text with ad hoc fixes, uncoordinated pilot programs, and “urgent” buys, which nibble at the edges of force design without changing outcomes.
Taiwan’s biennial National Defense Report helps inform the public what the Ministry of National Defense is doing, but it is not designed as a management tool. It does not assign responsible departments and offices, lock in timelines, or move money. Between the biennial report and the QDR, a more consistent deliverable is needed.
An annual NDS would do what the QDR cannot by putting accountability on a clock. Published before or alongside the executive budget, it would tie strategy directly to funding—with line-by-line traceability between goals and appropriations. Instead of aspirational language, an NDS would set a compact list of 12-month objectives, each with a designated lead office, a budget line, and clear metrics that the Legislative Yuan and the general public can understand.
An NDS would turn pledges into benchmarks with key performance indicators that are difficult to spin, such as launcher availability, on-hand fuel supply, and reserve call-up response times. Just as importantly, it would discipline planning across time horizons by requiring major initiatives to spell out their immediate impact, development milestones, and five-year payoffs to the overall defense of Taiwan. That prevents today’s money from disappearing into either distant aspirations or short-term fixes.
Strategic clarity will signal seriousness not only to adversaries but, more importantly, to allies in the United States, Japan, and Europe—who decide how closely to share technology, train troops, and mobilize industry in coordination with Taiwan. Domestically, an annual NDS would provide a common planning rhythm for industry and civil society. It would translate national priorities into concrete annual targets for defense production, supply chain diversification, and critical infrastructure resilience. For example, firms could plan capital investments and supplier shifts against stable procurement signals, while state and municipal governments could sequence grid hardening, port upgrades, and logistics investments around the same planning cycle.
Every quarter that Taiwan’s reforms slip, the balance of risk shifts in the wrong direction. An annual NDS would lock in momentum and prevent fragmented planning where each service and ministry pursues its own priorities but no one is accountable for mobilization, sustainment, or joint performance. It would knit together what Taiwan already produces—the National Defense Report, policy speeches, programmatic updates—into one coherent management cycle.
Critics might argue that annual strategies risk politicizing defense, bloating bureaucracy, or subjecting the services to abrupt and contradictory guidance every other year. They could point out that Taiwan already has a QDR and a National Defense Report for these purposes and that China would relish knowing more about the trajectory of Taiwan’s defense policy.
The answer to each concern is a matter of design. Politicization can be controlled by standardization: Cap the length, use a classified annex for sensitive material, and require every administration to report against the same metrics. Bureaucracy can be avoided by keeping the NDS short—refreshed rather than reinvented each year—and focused on collecting metrics and enforcing clarity. Whiplash can be prevented by locking a multiyear force design “spine” while adjusting only annual milestones, resourcing, and near-term readiness actions.
To be sure, the QDR and the National Defense Report have value, but neither provides year-by-year steering with assigned responsibility, aligned funding, or firm timelines. Finally, though Taiwan should never publish operational secrets, a selective, nonsensitive metrics dashboard would reveal little new information to China—which has already infiltrated the Taiwanese armed forces—while reassuring partners abroad and citizens at home.
Making the shift to an annual report can be done quickly, as long as Taiwan treats it as a governance problem and not a grand strategy exercise. The president, acting in coordination with the Legislative Yuan, should amend the statute that anchors the QDR’s cadence and mandate an annual NDS delivered early each year, with an unclassified summary and a classified annex.
The strategy must be formally linked to the budget, and each objective should cite the relevant program elements in the forthcoming fiscal bill. There should be a standing annual Legislative Yuan defense committee hearing focused on progress and trade-offs, not theatrics. Finally, the transition should be staged rather than disruptive. Use the last QDR as context and publish the first annual NDS within months, setting 12-month goals and 24- and 36-month markers.
An annual NDS that aligns money and reports results is the best answer Taiwan can give to the question that never quite goes away in Washington: Is Taipei serious? In a climate dominated by headline optics and sticker-shock narratives, it will demonstrate to the United States, Japan, and Europe that Taiwan can absorb aid coherently while also boosting its own defense spending and offering its domestic industry direction.
At home, the NDS would shift the defense conversation from vague slogans such as “resilience” and “resolute defense and … deterrence” to specific action. Citizens who are called to serve deserve to see how their army’s readiness is improving and where gaps remain. Transparency builds legitimacy, which is a form of national power.
Quadrennial reviews are speeches, while annual strategies are scorecards. Taiwan doesn’t need grander prose but a rhythm that turns political will into military effect, again and again. Make the NDS annual, tie it to the budget, measure what matters, and report results. If the danger is moving on a real-time clock, Taiwan’s strategy can’t be stuck on a four-year one.