He said the decision was made before last Christmas at the highest level of the administration.
“And, indeed, by the president himself,” he said.
Hammond-Chambers, whose organization includes the major US defense contractors who supply the lion’s share of US weapons sold to Taiwan, said that Washington is not just “playing team ball,” or reacting to Taipei’s request. He felt that Ma’s government has not ruled out future arms purchases, but just fears a public announcement coming at an embarrassing time could hurt his efforts to improve relations with Beijing.
Hammond-Chambers said that the items in question were far from the stage in the process where they will go to Congress for the 30-day review. Only after that review would the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency make the planned sale public. And that’s the time that China traditionally raises a verbal stink.
“But we are a way of a way from that, so why did the Bush administration stop so early on?” he said. “If they were playing team ball, surely they would walk this process all the way up to the 30-day notification period and then hold back.”
As a result, Hammond-Chambers is critical of the Bush administration.
In recent years, he noted, there has been “an extremely ugly battle [in the legislature over the arms issue] and it has hurt US-Taiwan relations in a very profound way. To not bag this now jeopardizes all that we’ve gone through to reach a point now where we’re finally able to tie this down. And, for the US to undermine that is highly questionable, it’s more than disappointing, it’s counterproductive and hypocritical.”
Tkacik blames the Ma administration.
“Taiwan is making a decision to transfer responsibility for its security from the United States to Beijing,” he told reporters, reasoning that Ma sees no need for new weapons if there is no danger of a Chinese invasion and that he is confident that China will not invade as long as Taiwan does not declare independence.
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