In fact, the US and China have had long-standing disagreements over weapons sales to Taiwan, human rights, trade, missile and nuclear weapons exports, and mutual trust mechanisms in the military sphere. New issues have been added to this list recently -- the dramatic increase in China's military budget, the Theater Missile Defense and National Missile Defense (NMD) systems, and so on.
The sale of weapons to Taiwan is an issue on which the US can control all the bargaining chips and pressure Beijing. The issue is linked to the questions of whether Beijing can accept the NMD and whether it will exercise restraint in missile deployments against Taiwan.
In fact, the people of Taiwan should not worry too much about the weapons sales because China's missile deployments are the real cause of the problem. As long as this threat exists, the US government has the obligation to provide Taiwan with the weapons systems it needs to deal with it.
In essence, we do not believe the arms sales talks in late April will result in a falling-out. Taiwan will not be a loser even if it does not secure the AEGIS sales. First of all, not getting the ships this year does not mean Taiwan won't get them next year.
Taiwan also has other alternatives, such as leasing the ships, or obtaining a smaller number of them first. Basically put, there is no single, simple answer to whether or not Taiwan will secure the AEGIS sales. Nor is any particular answer a fatal blow to Taiwan's security. For Beijing, the US-Taiwan military links implicit in any AEGIS deal have far more political than military significance.
But the development of US-Taiwan military relations cannot be judged from one single item on Taiwan's shopping list. For Taiwan, countermeasures against China's missile threat are not the only way out, and AEGIS is not the only way to counter the missile threat. In fact, a nationwide panic over the prospects of obtaining the ships could pose the greatest threat to national security.
Joseph Wu is deputy director of the Institute of International Relations, National Chengchi University. Hsu Szu-chien is an associate research fellow at the institute.
Translated by Francis Huang
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