It is going to take “Herculean” efforts to persuade US President Barack Obama and his closest advisers to sell F-16C/D fighters to Taiwan, US-Taiwan Business Council president Rupert Hammond-Chambers said on Wednesday.
He said he believed the US administration would agree to “retrofit” Taiwan’s fleet of 145 F16s, but sounded very doubtful about the future sale of new fighters.
Taipei has asked to buy 66 new F16s and the request is “under consideration” by the White House.
Recently published Pentagon studies show that the balance of power across the Taiwan Strait has tilted solidly in China’s favor and that Taiwan’s air force is in desperate need of new fighters.
Addressing a forum on “China Policy Challenges for the New Congress” on Capitol Hill, Hammond-Chambers said that the Obama administration seemed to be increasingly “risk adverse” when it came to selling arms to Taiwan.
Given Beijing’s forceful opposition to the sale of F16s to Taiwan, he said it was going to be particularly difficult to secure the sale.
Hammond-Chambers told the forum, organized by the International Assessment and Strategy Center, that the military threat from China was the single most important dynamic of those issues that define what it means to be Taiwanese.
He said there was a deep-rooted and ever-increasing suspicion about China’s intentions for Taiwan.
Hammond-Chambers said he could not remember a period in which there had been less ambition for the bilateral relationship.
“There is little ambition to take advantage of reconciliation across the Strait or to seize this as an opportunity to improve our relationship. Taipei and Washington seem distracted with their relationship with Beijing and that is unfortunate,” he said.
Senior US officials were spending the bulk of their time reassuring allies in East Asia and looking for ways to “beef up” security relationships with those allies, he said.
However, he did not believe this would spill over into the US’ relationship with Taiwan.
“I don’t see the commensurate adjustment in the US-Taiwan security relationship that we are seeing with [South] Korea, Japan, Australia and others,” he said.
US Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a member of the House of Representatives’ Committee on Foreign Affairs, said China was governed by a regime of “tyrants and gangsters.”
He said that Taiwan had elected a government that believed in “acquiescing” and taking a “soft approach” to Beijing.
Rohrabacher said Taiwan was “petting” the Chinese dragon even though it knew the dragon was full of teeth and fire and blood.
North Korea was China’s “puppet and lap dog,” he said, adding that China was using the North to try to intimidate Japan.
“They are trying to make the people of Japan cower in the same way that the people of Taiwan have decided to cower, but they are not going to succeed,” he said. “The Japanese people are tough and courageous.”
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
An inauguration ceremony was held yesterday for the Danjiang Bridge, the world’s longest single-mast asymmetric cable-stayed bridge, ahead of its official opening to traffic on Tuesday, marking a major milestone after nearly three decades of planning and construction. At the ceremony in New Taipei City attended by President William Lai (賴清德), Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) and New Taipei City Mayor Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜), the bridge was hailed as both an engineering landmark and a long-awaited regional transport link connecting Tamsui (淡水) and Bali (八里)
RSS