Author: Meng Kit Tang

Guest Contributor

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Introduction

Deterrence debates often focus on budgets, weapons systems, and alliances. In Taiwan, the conversation has increasingly emphasized societal resilience. Officials highlight rising defense spending, expanded civil-defense programs, and polls indicating public willingness to resist coercion. The narrative is reassuring: Taiwan is not only arming itself but also awakening as a society prepared to defend itself.

A more critical indicator is the ability of the all-volunteer force (AVF) to recruit and retain trained personnel, which reveals persistent institutional challenges. Between 2021 and 2024, Taiwan recruited 52,674 volunteer soldiers. Of these, 12,884 (24.47%) exited early, incurring penalties totaling nearly NT$896 million (US$28.29 million). By November 2025, the overall personnel fill rate had reached 79.2 percent. This marks an improvement from earlier lows, but it remains below sustainable thresholds for many frontline units, particularly in infantry and armor.

The Ministry of National Defense (MND) has responded with incentive policies, including pay adjustments, signing bonuses, campus recruitment drives, and a 10-point personnel plan. Certain 2025 recruitment phases exceeded targets, achieving 109 percent in one instance, while volunteer numbers rose by more than 2,000 since 2024, and active-duty personnel reached nearly 230,000 (an increase of approximately 10,000 since 2021). Retention rates have also improved, averaging around 86.7 percent and surpassing the MND’s 76 percent benchmark.

Nevertheless, early-exit trends and uneven staffing in combat units indicate that deeper structural issues remain. A credible deterrent requires a professional backbone of adequately staffed, trained, and cohesive units ready before any crisis. When retention falters, consequences begin to accumulate: heavier rotations, thinner institutional knowledge, accelerated burnout, and reduced capacity for sustained operations. These effects shape deterrence credibility more profoundly than optimistic rhetoric alone.

Taiwan, therefore, confronts two parallel realities. Societal willingness to defend the island appears to be strengthening, yet the AVF tasked with executing that defense continues to face retention pressures. The gap between inspirational messaging and professional force capacity must be addressed if deterrence is to rest on firm foundations.

The Data: Retention as Revealed Preference

From Recruitment Shortfalls to Early-Exit Surge

Manpower figures rarely capture public imagination, yet they offer one of the clearest windows into institutional health. Taiwan’s AVF has not collapsed, but the trend lines point to persistent strain. Between 2021 and mid-2024, volunteer strength declined from roughly 164,000 to just under 153,000, representing an approximate 7 percent drop.

Recruitment incentives introduced in 2025 have produced modest stabilization and occasional over-target results in specific quarters. Nevertheless, these measures have not reversed the underlying dynamic: the system continues to lose trained personnel at the back end.

Aggregate fill rates illustrate the tension. By November 2025, staffing reached 79.2 percent, approaching the MND’s 80 percent target. On paper, this suggests gradual recovery. In practice, it obscures uneven distribution. While manageable in peacetime, such shortfalls complicate sustained operations once training cycles, rotations, and specialist roles are considered.

Early-discharge data reinforces the pattern. Applications to terminate contracts before completion have surged over the past several years. Of the 52,674 volunteers recruited between 2021 and 2024, just under 13,000 (roughly 24 percent) chose to exit early, collectively owing nearly NT$896 million in penalties. The years 2023 and 2024 alone saw 1,104 and 1,072 early exits, respectively, generating NT$244.72 million and NT$259.28 million in compensation payments.

The willingness to absorb financial costs is striking. These are not conscripts compelled by obligation; they are self-selected professionals who decided the opportunity cost of staying exceeded the penalty for leaving. In this sense, retention functions as a form of revealed preference. Surveys may measure attitudes, and recruitment campaigns may capture intent, but retention reflects lived experience. A recruit who signs a contract expresses optimism; a soldier who completes it signals satisfaction. Conversely, the one who pays to leave delivers a blunt assessment. The growing number of early exits suggests that the military’s internal conditions, rather than public sentiment, drive manpower outcomes.

Similar pressures appear in other professional militaries. In the United States, for example, service members frequently cite rigid hierarchies, limited autonomy, unpredictable schedules, and work-life balance challenges as significant drivers of attrition, even among those with strong abstract commitment to service. 

These parallels indicate that Taiwan’s retention difficulties reflect broader tensions between traditional military structures and the expectations of personnel in modern, high-skill economies.

Why They Pay to Leave 

Official breakdowns of exit reasons from the Ministry of National Defense point to two dominant factors. The first is economic competition. Taiwan’s civilian economic sector, particularly in technology and manufacturing, offers wages and career trajectories that outpace military compensation, even after recent pay adjustments. For technically trained personnel, the gap is more than financial: civilian positions often promise clearer advancement pathways, specialized skill development, and greater geographic flexibility. When these options emerge, the decision to leave becomes less an expression of dissatisfaction and more a rational recalculation.

The second factor concerns institutional culture. Many departing volunteers cite difficulty adapting to rigid schedules, extended duty cycles, and limited autonomy. These rigid, repetitive routines, often interrupted by last-minute training changes, night sentry rotations, and constrained leave policies, create a pervasive sense of both monotony and unpredictability that clashes with expectations shaped by modern civilian workplaces. Younger recruits tend to view professional fulfillment through the lens of balance and purpose. When daily routines feel repetitive or disconnected from meaningful mission preparation, morale erodes.

This tension is compounded by leadership culture. Traditional command styles in the Taiwanese military remain heavily top-down and compliance-oriented, a legacy of the conscript era. It is noted that this approach often lacks the mentorship, constructive feedback, and decentralized decision-making common in modern professional forces. Promotion criteria can appear opaque, and opportunities for junior leaders to exercise initiative are limited. For a generation raised in a dynamic, high-trust civilian environment, this style frequently feels demotivating and outdated.

When daily routines feel repetitive, disconnected from meaningful combat preparation, and burdened by inconsistent leadership, morale erodes. Over time, these small but persistent frictions add up to a decisive reason to leave. The result is rarely public protest, but rather a quiet departure, often accompanied by a willingness to pay significant financial penalties.

Retention data, therefore, reveals more than numerical shortfalls. It exposes the friction between institutional design and societal change. Taiwan’s volunteer force competes in a labor market that rewards flexibility and specialization, while operating within a framework built for stability and uniformity.

Polls vs. Behavior: The “Willing to Fight” Illusion

Public opinion surveys often appear reassuring. Across multiple waves from an Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR) and Academia Sinica poll (2024–March 2026), a clear majority of respondents, typically 60–70 percent, say they are willing to defend Taiwan in the event of conflict.

A March 2026 Academia Sinica “American Portrait” survey found that 58.7 percent of respondents would “resist at all costs” even without direct U.S. military intervention, with only a modest drop to 56.5 percent if the U.S. did intervene. At first glance, these results suggest a society psychologically prepared for a crisis. Political leaders cite them as evidence of resolve, and analysts sometimes treat them as a proxy for deterrence.

Yet willingness expressed in abstraction is not the same as commitment demonstrated in practice. More concrete questions erode the apparent consensus.

When respondents are asked whether each person should “pay any price, including sacrificing lives,” support drops sharply. An October 2025 My Formosa poll found only 40.8 percent willing to accept such costs, with 52.2 percent unwilling, reluctance being highest among younger cohorts.

This shift does not necessarily signal apathy; it reflects specificity. The closer a survey moves from principle to personal consequence, the more respondents weigh risks, tradeoffs, and opportunity costs. Social-desirability bias further amplifies the gap: in an environment where defending the island is the morally expected answer, respondents are inclined to signal commitment even when their private calculus is more conditional.

Behavioral data tells a quieter but more grounded story. The decision to leave a voluntary military contract early, often involving significant financial penalties, represents a costly signal untethered from hypothetical framing or patriotic rhetoric. It reflects daily experience: workload, leadership, career prospects, and perceived purpose.

When roughly one in four volunteers chooses to exit despite penalties, it suggests that abstract willingness to fight does not automatically translate into sustained participation in the institutions responsible for fighting. 

Comparisons with Ukraine and South Korea illustrate the distinction between abstract resolve and sustained institutional capacity in peacetime. Pre-invasion surveys in Ukraine showed moderate willingness to resist, yet prolonged conflict later revealed manpower strains. South Korea exhibits strong public support for defense alongside acute retention problems in its professional ranks, with notable shortfalls in NCO staffing and overall active-duty strength. Like Taiwan, high abstract resolve coexists with concrete shortfalls driven by better civilian opportunities, heavy workloads, and cultural mismatches. Peacetime institutional realities often lag behind societal sentiment.

The persistence of high “willingness-to-fight” polling alongside measurable retention strain shows that public sentiment and institutional capacity often move on parallel tracks. One reflects identity and values; the other reflects lived experience. Deterrence depends on both, but only one produces staffed, cohesive units ready before conflict begins.

Rhetoric and Societal Resilience

Taiwan’s defense conversation has grown louder, more confident, and more culturally visible. Speeches, civil-society initiatives, and dramatized depictions converge on a shared message: society is ready, unified, and resilient. This narrative carries substance as defense spending is set to reach 3.32 percent of GDP in the 2026 budget, reflecting a real commitment amid heightened threats.

President Lai Ching-te has framed defense as a “whole-of-society” project, linking extended conscription, reserve reform, and civil-defense training into a storyline of democratic resolve. This framing broadens ownership of national security and normalizes defense discussions.

Grassroots initiatives reinforce this momentum. The Kuma Academy, co-founded by legislator Puma Shen and supported by Robert Tsao’s pledge to train “black bear warriors,” has drawn tens of thousands of participants, around 80,000 by 2025, with about 70 percent women. Training in first aid, disinformation awareness, and emergency response reflects genuine civic interest in preparedness.

This energy matters. It signals a willingness among citizens to invest in self-reliance. Yet it operates in a different domain from professional military service. Civilian training can broaden resilience, but it does not produce deployable units, technical specialization, or sustained command capacity.

Cultural products echo this optimism. The television drama Zero Day Attack portrays small-unit heroism and cohesion as decisive in repelling PLA forces. Its narrative is compelling and clearly intended to inspire. Produced with National Army cooperation and public funding, the series dramatizes an idealized stand that critics labeled a “world military miracle” for largely ignoring drones, precision strikes, electronic warfare, attrition, and combined-arms realities.

Taken together, high-level speeches, civic initiatives, and cultural narratives cultivate a powerful sense of readiness. They shape public morale, normalize defense discourse, and widen participation. These are valuable outcomes in their own right.

However, when these elements prioritize inspirational perception over institutional realities, confidence can grow even as the professional backbone continues to face retention pressures. The contrast remains subtle: a society increasingly convinced of its resilience, and a volunteer force still negotiating whether long-term service feels sustainable.

Institutional Shortcomings and Macro Misnomers

The persistence of Taiwan’s manpower gap points less to a shortage of patriotism than to structural weaknesses in the all-volunteer force. The 2010s transition from conscription assumed that market incentives and improved pay would naturally attract and retain talent. That assumption underestimated how sharply Taiwan’s high-tech economy would outpace military compensation and lifestyle. Many volunteers ultimately calculate that the opportunity cost of staying exceeds the financial penalty for leaving.

The MND’s introduction of a 10-point personnel plan features campus recruitment, transition support, and new allowances. Volunteer numbers rose modestly by more than 2,000 since 2024, with some phases exceeding targets. Understrength units compound strain in concrete ways. Staffing below 80 percent disrupts collective training, limiting battalion- and brigade-level exercises. Non-commissioned officer (NCO) development weakens under heavier workloads and rapid turnover, eroding institutional knowledge. Specialists are spread thin, degrading technical proficiency, while reserve integration suffers as units lack the time and experienced cadre to train part-time forces. In a prolonged crisis, these pressures compound: rotations intensify, burnout rises, continuity frays, and the capacity to absorb attrition or sustain high-tempo operations declines. Peacetime understrength, in short, translates directly into wartime fragility.

These issues endure partly because of several misnomers in the defense debate. First, strong polling on “willingness to fight” is often treated as proof of manpower resilience, even though surveys mainly capture hypothetical sentiment rather than sustained commitment. Second, challenges are frequently blamed on generational attitudes or declining patriotism rather than institutional design. Third, civil-defense enthusiasm exemplified by Kuma Academy is viewed as a sufficient substitute for a healthy professional force. Civilian preparedness strengthens societal resilience, but it cannot replace trained, cohesive units ready for sustained operations.

Taiwan’s manpower problem is ultimately not about motivating citizens, but about aligning incentives, culture, and career pathways with the realities of a modern volunteer military. Deterrence depends on individuals who choose to remain in uniform long enough to become proficient. When they quietly depart, they erode the institutional memory and cohesion that rhetorical confidence alone cannot restore.

Policy Implications and Path Forward

Treating retention as a secondary personnel issue rather than a core deterrence variable distorts Taiwan’s defense debate. Although the MND’s 10-point personnel plan and 2025 recruitment incentives have produced modest stabilization, these efforts have not reversed persistent early exits or lifted overall fill rates above 79.2 percent as of late 2025. If the professional backbone remains understrength, new platforms, asymmetric concepts, and civil-defense enthusiasm rest on a fragile foundation.

The first priority must be conceptual: retention should become a primary readiness metric, reported transparently alongside budgets and procurement. Unit-level dashboards that track fill rates, reenlistment, and early-exit patterns would shift focus from narrative optimism to institutional reality.

Workload reform offers the highest immediate return. Many early departures stem from cumulative strain: unpredictable schedules, limited leave, and uneven rotations. Operational tempo audits in high-attrition combat units, paired with pilot programs for predictable rest cycles and flexible leave, could reduce burnout more effectively than repeated recruitment bonuses.

Compensation and career structures also require rethinking. Taiwan’s high-tech economy outpaces military pay and offers clearer advancement. Expanding technical career tracks in cyber, unmanned systems, and logistics—backed by civilian-recognized certifications—and tying retention bonuses to milestone achievements rather than initial enlistment would position service as a genuine professional investment.

Cultural change remains essential. Anonymized exit interviews and leadership training emphasizing small-unit management and feedback mechanisms could modernize hierarchical practices without weakening discipline. These adjustments would better align the force with the expectations of today’s volunteer recruits.

Civil-society energy should be harnessed, not romanticized. Integrating programs such as Kuma Academy more closely with official reserve pipelines would reduce duplication and strengthen, but not bypass, the professional core.

Allies, too, must adjust their approach. Security assistance should incorporate independent audits of fill rates and early-exit trends as benchmarks, ensuring that hardware support aligns with sustainable manpower levels.

Ultimately, deterrence credibility is built not on declarations of resolve or dramatized heroism, but on the quiet stability of institutions. A force that consistently retains its volunteers signals something deeper than willingness to fight: confidence that the organization itself is worth defending.

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