US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg said on Thursday that the decision to sell 66 F-16 C/D fighter planes to Taiwan would be made solely on the basis of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA).
He strongly indicated that the decision had not yet been made and that pressure from China to stop the sale would not be taken into consideration.
An Asian military analyst said later, however, that it meant the sale would only go through if US military experts believed the aircraft were essential for Taiwan’s defense.
It’s a controversial issue, with some in the Pentagon arguing that in the case of an attack, China could readily destroy or ground the planes with an initial missile bombardment and that Taiwan would be better off investing in more anti-ship missiles.
In a major Washington speech, made at the launch of a new study on China by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), Steinberg said that the administration of US President Barack Obama was “encouraged” by the positive dialogue between China and Taiwan.
“We encourage both China and Taiwan to export confidence- building steps that will lead to closer ties and greater stability across the Taiwan Strait,” he said.
“As China’s economy has grown and its global interests have expanded, its military standing has quite naturally increased and its capabilities have been expanded at sea, in the air and in space. In some cases it has caused the United States and China’s neighbors to question China’s intentions. While China, like any nation, has a right to provide for its security, its capabilities and its actions also heighten its responsibility to reassure others that this buildup does not present a threat,” Steinberg said.
“That we have restarted high level military-to-military dialogue is a positive step and hopefully this will allow us to resolve some of China’s intentions, for example with respect to the South China Sea. We also urge China to increase military transparency in order to reassure all of the countries in the rest of Asia about its intentions,” he said.
Earlier at the Washington event, Michael Green, a top National Security Council official in the administration of former US president George W. Bush, said that the sale of the F-16s was the most “politically sensitive” part of the Taiwan arms sales package.
He said that it was unlikely that a decision on the sale would be announced this year.
Green, who said that he thought Bush should have approved the sale, said that he hoped the delay in making a decision did not indicate a “weakening” on the part of the Obama administration.
“I hope not, I don’t think so but if we get to the point where it is continually inconvenient to provide defensive equipment to Taiwan, based on the Taiwan Relations Act, and it just keeps getting rolled back because it is inconvenient, then we will have a problem,” Green said.
Robert Kaplan, a senior fellow at CNAS, said that in the distant future people might look back on this era and decide that the US was so focused on Iraq and Afghanistan that it had taken its eye off the ball.
He said they might see that this was the time that China gradually, but inexorably, “gained military leverage over Taiwan.”
“There comes a point where it will be too militarily inconvenient for the United States to intervene in a crisis,” Kaplan said.
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