One of Beijing's highest priorities is to cut off Taiwan from access to sophisticated military hardware. It has been increasingly successful in doing so. As late as 1991, Taiwan had some 20 countries supplying it with arms. Today, the US is virtually the only remaining supplier.
That creates a dangerous vulnerability for Taiwan -- and, in a more subtle way, for the US as well.
By Yu Sha
Beijing has used maximum diplomatic and economic pressure to dissuade other countries from selling arms to Taiwan. Israel was once a leading supplier but stopped in 1992 when it opened diplomatic relations with the PRC. Indeed, since that time Israel has become an ever more important supplier of cutting-edge military equipment and technology to the mainland, as evidenced by the proposed Phalcon deal that was aborted earlier this year only because of strenuous objections by the US. Germany agreed to stop arms sales to Taiwan in 1993, and France, which had earlier sold the ROC 60 Mirage fighters, followed suit in 1994. The delivery of the last Mirage in 1998 marked the end of that relationship.
Chinese officials make it quite clear to all countries with significant arms industries that friendly relations and lucrative economic ties with the PRC are contingent on the willingness of those countries to end all military sales to Taiwan. Few governments are willing any longer even to contemplate defying Beijing's wishes.
Even the US has responded to the intense pressure. Although the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) specifically obligates Washington to provide Taiwan with defensive weapons, the implementation of that pledge has been erratic. Indeed, in the August 1982 US-PRC communique, the Reagan administration clearly promised to decrease and ultimately eliminate arms sales to Taiwan. US officials both at the time and subsequently have insisted that the pledge was contingent on Beijing's commitment to avoid using force -- or even threatening to use force -- to resolve the Taiwan issue.
PRC leaders, predictably, interpret the communique provision as an ironclad, unconditional US pledge to phase out arms shipments. In recent years, Washington has responded with growing wariness and reluctance to Taipei's arms purchase requests for fear of angering Beijing.
The Clinton administration's decision earlier this year reflected the increasing timidity. Washington did agree to sell a long-range early warning radar system, advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles -- AMRAAMs -- Javelin anti-tank missiles, and Maverick air-to-surface missiles. But most of the items on Taipei's shopping list were rejected. Those included not only the centerpiece of the request, the Arleigh Burke -class Aegis destroyers, but diesel submarines and P-3 Orion patrol aircraft. Indeed, of the top six items on Taipei's list only one -- Maverick missiles -- was approved.
Additional evidence of Washington's timidity was contained in the fine print of the agreements for some of the approved weaponry. For example, even though the AMRAAMs were supposedly sold to Taiwan, the missiles will stay in the US unless Washington releases them in response to an emergency. That provision is akin to a merchant selling a customer a fire extinguisher for his home but then insisting that the extinguisher remain at the store until a fire actually breaks out.
Such timidity plays into the hands of Beijing's strategy to isolate, weaken, and ultimately strangle Taiwan. If Taipei is to deter the PRC from attempting to use coercion on the issue of reunification, it is imperative that Taiwan be able to purchase modern armaments, now and in the future. Beijing has repeatedly asserted that if Taiwan agrees to reunification, the Taiwanese people would be able to retain their own government, economic system, and even their own military for an extended period of time. But the last pledge would be meaningless unless Taiwan had access to a continuing flow of modern weapons. Otherwise, the ROC would be in the same position as Poland in 1939, which had unquestionably the best horse cavalry in Europe. That capability did Polish forces little good when they had to face Nazi Germany's tank divisions. Last spring, an official of the PRC embassy in Washington was notably evasive when I asked if the "two systems" formulation would permit Taipei's ongoing ability to purchase arms.
That does not mean that Washington should automatically approve every request. Taipei's desire for diesel submarines, for example, seems ill-advised as well as a waste of money. (The ROC navy would be better off increasing the number of P-3 aircraft for anti-submarine missions in its next request.) But US officials should approve most weapons systems Taiwan seeks and stop worrying about whether such actions will annoy Beijing. As far as the PRC is concerned, any arms sale to Taiwan is unacceptable.
Even in terms of its own self interest, Washington should be more responsive to Taiwan's arms purchase requests. A well-armed Taiwan is needed to deter Beijing from contemplating the use of force to achieve reunification. Conversely, a Taiwan armed only with increasingly obsolete weaponry may prove an irresistible temptation to hardliners in Beijing. An effective Taiwanese deterrent makes it less likely that the US will ever be called on to rescue Taiwan in the midst of a military crisis. That is definitely in America's best interest.
Ted Galen Carpenter is vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute.
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