Taiwan friend criticizes Chen's remarks on China

A fervent Taiwan supporter in Washington Monday criticized President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) Aug. 3 remarks about "one country on each side" of the Taiwan Strait, adding another voice to what has become a chorus of Taiwan supporters who feel uneasy about Chen's remarks and the way they were delivered.

Ross Munro, director of Asian Studies for the Center for Security Studies, hit out at Chen's remarks as "inflammatory and inappropriate" at a symposium held by the libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute, on China's military modernization.

Munro was answering a question about Taiwan's ability and willingness to defend itself against an attack from China, when he interjected his comments about Chen.

"President Chen's remarks, which he made recently, were very inflammatory and inappropriate," Munro said. While conceding that "Taiwan has the democracy that in the final analysis shows the right of self-determination, it appears that Chen was making provocative comments for political purposes."

He indicated that the subsequent visit to Washington by Mainland Affairs Council Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) did little to change the minds of many Washington scholars and policy makers. "A lot of people like myself, when we talked to Taiwan emissaries who came over here to paper this over, we were all saying the same thing: that this was really inappropriate," Munro said.

Munro and another panelist, David Cole, an associate dean of the Pentagon's National War College, raised questions about Taiwan's defense capabilities and its "will" to defend against a Chinese attack. Both criticized the Legislative Yuan and the Chen government for failing to increase resources for military preparedness, and voiced concern over whether that would impede any US effort to come to Taiwan's defense in the case of hostilities with China.

"Taiwan leaders believe that, until 2005, they would be able by themselves to defend against some sort of attack by the PLA, and certainly with US military intervention" Cole said. "The question is not matching [the PLA] ship for ship or airplane for airplane, the question is one of will on the part of Taiwan," he said.

"I look at the continued reluctance, at the refusal by the legislature in Taipei and the Taiwan government to increase defense funding significantly," Cole said. Despite the George W. Bush administration's decision to "expand significantly" the number of weapons it would sell to Taiwan, Taipei has not made a decision yet to buy any of those weapons, he noted.

"Certainly, the Taiwan military wants to buy various things, such as the Kidd and diesel-electric submarines and it has the desire to re-arm the Air Force in Taiwan, but the government has yet to allocate the resources to do that," he said.

He was referring to Bush's decision in April last year to make available to Taiwan up to four Kidd-class destroyers and up to eight diesel submarines.

Cole also noted Taiwan's lack of an emergency petroleum reserve as evidence of the government's lack of will to prepare the nation for any Chinese military action. In 1998, an old supertanker was moored off the shore of Taiwan and contained 30-60 days worth of petroleum supplies for the nation. Now, that is down to only a few days' supply and may soon be exhausted, he said.

"If Taiwan so strongly feels a military threat from the mainland, I'm a bit surprised they don't do something like maintain an emergency fuel supply," or devote more resources to military preparedness, he said.