AIT's Raymond Greene Points To Israel As A Model For Taiwan's Shrinking Military Manpower

American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Taipei Office Director Raymond Greene has, for the first time in a public setting, pointed to Israel as a model Taiwan could draw on to keep its military properly staffed as its birth rate continues to fall. Both countries, he said, are small nations with limited populations, and Israel's approach, building its military around a large reserve force that forms the backbone of national defense and can be mobilized quickly when needed, offers a template Taiwan could adapt to its own demographics.

Greene also highlighted women as an underused source of manpower for Taiwan's armed forces, noting that the share of women in Taiwan's military already exceeds that of Japan and South Korea and is now closing in on the United States.

Speaking on Wednesday, September 9, at the 2026 Taipei Security Dialogue, co-hosted by the Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR) and Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, Greene said Taiwan has already made real progress reforming its conscription system. He acknowledged concerns that boosting the defense budget without enough personnel to operate newly purchased equipment would be self-defeating, but argued Taiwan's answer lies in using its reserve force more effectively, including extending mandatory military service from four months to one year starting in 2024, a change he said is reshaping the size and readiness of Taiwan's ground forces.

He noted that starting in 2027, more than 3,000 well-trained reservists equipped with modern gear will begin entering Taiwan's force structure each year as a result. If Taiwan keeps pushing this policy forward, Greene said, it can build the manpower and expertise its military needs even as demographic pressure persists. "Israel offers an inspiring model here, a country with a smaller population that treats its reserve force as the backbone of national defense, capable of mobilizing a large, rapid-response force when needed," he said. "Taiwan has every opportunity to apply that same logic to its own demographic structure. To get the full benefit, Taiwan should keep extending the length of annual reservist training and make sure reserve skills line up precisely with military needs."

Greene is far from the only figure in Washington's national security and think tank circles who has pointed to the Israeli model in recent years. Matt Pottinger, former U.S. deputy national security advisor, made a similar case when he visited Taiwan in 2024 to launch his book "The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan." He said the United States has been, and will remain, Taiwan's most important military partner, but that the U.S. military itself is "not the right model" for Taiwan to build its own defense around.

Pottinger argued that Taiwan should instead study small countries that face powerful adversaries, naming Finland, Lithuania, Estonia and Ukraine, and to some extent Singapore. But he stressed that the country Taiwan has the most to learn from is Israel.

According to "The Boiling Moat," Israel's population is less than half of Taiwan's, at close to 10 million people according to the Times of Israel, and the country lacks the natural barriers of open sea or mountainous terrain that Taiwan has. Yet up until the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, Israel had won every war it fought for 50 straight years, successfully repelling threats ranging from neighboring Arab states to more advanced militaries such as Iran's.

The book argues that Israel's ability to convert the strength of its entire population into effective deterrence comes down to culture, or more specifically, military culture. "In Israel, every young man and woman turning 18 must serve, men for 32 months and women for 24 months, and even after transitioning to the reserves, the frequency and intensity of training does not meaningfully drop off from active duty," the book states. "After leaving active service, Israelis continue training for years within the same reserve unit, which builds tight-knit combat units that can be mobilized quickly when a crisis hits."

In his remarks, Greene also said Taiwan's female population represents a large and largely untapped pool of military talent, calling it another advantage for the island. "Taiwan's rate of women serving in the military has already surpassed Japan and South Korea, and is now on par with the United States, showing the depth and resilience Taiwan's forces have already built," he said. "Women also make up the overwhelming majority of participants in Taiwan's civil defense courses, and they are eager to contribute."

According to publicly available figures, women who are volunteer service members make up nearly 17 percent of Taiwan's armed forces, compared with about 9 percent of Japan's Self-Defense Forces, roughly 11 percent of South Korea's military officer corps, and 17 to 18 percent of the U.S. military.

While praising Taiwan's progress on defense reform and buildup, Greene also urged Taiwan not to lose sight of the lessons from the war in Ukraine. "I want to close by recognizing the remarkable progress Taiwan has made since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Faced with unprecedented provocations, Taiwan has taken decisive action to strengthen itself. We saw this progress on full display during the recent Han Kuang exercise, with Patriot missile batteries and armored brigades moving through streets in ways that would once have been unimaginable. This is not incremental change. It reflects a fundamental shift in how seriously Taiwan takes its own defense, and it deserves recognition," he said.

"Neither we nor Taiwan can afford to rest on past successes. We are constantly drawing new, and often difficult, lessons from Ukraine and the Middle East, and folding those lessons into how Taiwan prepares for war, precisely so those lessons never have to be applied in an actual war," Greene said. "That is a goal we all share globally: not winning a conflict, but preventing one from happening at all. That is a future within all of our reach."

Original Article in Chinese

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