The US government may adjust its arms sales policy toward Taiwan because of fears of unification with China, defense sources in both the US and Taiwan have said.
A US Pentagon analysis indicates that it may be unwise for the US to sell any more advanced weapons to Taiwan from this year onward.
A debate is now going on in the Pentagon over the policy change, with pro-China officials seeming to gain the upper-hand.
The pro-China Pentagon officials are often dubbed as the "red team," while those friendly to Taiwan are called the "blue team."
The red team envisions an integration of Taiwan and China economically and then politically.
A former Pentagon official -- who Bill Gertz of the Washington Times associates with the red team in his book The China Threat -- is expected to deliver two separate speeches to the local and foreign press in Taipei today.
Former rear admiral Erick McVadon, who retired as a defense attache at the US embassy in Beijing in 1992, bases his analysis on current developments in the Taiwan Strait.
Considering the likelihood of integration, he argues the US must make preparations for the change as soon as possible.
One response will be to stop selling high-tech weapons to Taiwan and prevent these weapons from falling into China's hands.
The US is doubly worried about this issue because China is thought to have built up its military by stealing military technology from foreign countries, especially the US.
As highlighted in the Christoper Cox report, China's latest nuclear warhead technology is suspected to have been stolen from the US, via ethnic Chinese scientists at major US scientific laboratories.
"This year may be the last year that the US will sell significant weapons to Taiwan. The writing is already on the wall," said a US defense source.
High-end weapon systems such as AEGIS-equipped destroyers are to be denied to Taiwan for an indefinite period, no matter how strongly Taiwan wants to get them, he said.
"If Taiwan does not do something to show that it is serious in resisting the trend of being integrated into China, the US has no choice but to protect its own interests," the source said.
"A simpler way to put it is that Taiwan has to choose between unification with China and independence. If Taiwan chooses independence and shows its determination toward this goal, it will persuade our government leaders to continue their support for Taiwan," he said.
Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense said it had no knowledge of the development and believes the US will follow the 1979 Taiwan Relations Action and continue providing defensive weapons to Taiwan.
A defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Taipei Times that US concerns about having its high-tech weapons obtained by China were real.
"As far as we know, the US has implemented self-destructive devices in some, maybe not all, of the weapons it sold to us. We know where the device is but were told not to touch it," the official said.
"We are not happy about it. We paid for all these expensive weapons, but we just do not have the right to use them in our own ways," he said.
Erich Shih (
"I have never heard of such devices. But if the US does not want China to acquire its weapons in Taiwan, there are many other ways to do it," Shih said.
He admitted, however, that some computer programs for some state-of-the-art weapons that the US sold to Taiwan might have been tampered with before delivery.
Another defense analyst, who asked not to be identified, said the most likely scenario in the event of Taiwan being forcefully unified with China was that the US would urge its allies in the region to shelter US-made fighter planes or warships escaping from Taiwan.
"We do not need to name the allies. They are in the neighborhood of Taiwan," he said.
"Our F-16 fighters or Knox-class frigates do not need to travel far to find a shelter in those countries.
"But we will never get them back if that really happens," the analyst said.
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