A virtual gale of support is blowing through Washington this week to boost Taiwan’s request to buy F-16C/D aircraft.
However, despite the pressure, there is no indication that US President Barack Obama’s administration would sell the fighter aircraft anytime soon.
White House insiders said not to expect any decisions until well after a visit next month by People’s Liberation Army Chief of General Staff Chen Bingde (陳炳德).
The visit is aimed at strengthening high-level defense contacts and military ties between Washington and Beijing.
Pentagon sources said that nothing was more likely to undermine such ties and lead to another suspension of contacts than new arms sales to Taiwan.
Obama is known to have closer military ties with China near the top of his foreign policy agenda.
Nevertheless, Republican Senator Richard Lugar, a member of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, wrote to US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton earlier this month urging the administration to proceed with the F-16 sale.
“Taiwan has legitimate defense needs and its existing capabilities are decaying,” he said.
Unless Obama approves the sale soon, Lugar said, Taiwan will have “no credible air-to-air capability” when it retires its existing fighter jets in the next decade.
The US would have to decide this year to approve the F-16 sale to produce the jets in time for delivery by 2015.
Clinton has yet to reply to Lugar’s letter.
Voicing his support for the the fighter jet’s sale, US-Taiwan Business Council president Rupert Hammond-Chambers said: “In the coming several years, the pressure on Taiwan to engage with China — not only on economic issues, but with political and military talks as well — will quickly rise.”
“If Taiwan lacks a credible defense and China calculates that the US lacks resolve, the possibilities for miscalculations soar and tensions in the [Taiwan] Strait will rise dramatically,” he said.
“While arms sales may cause short-term difficulties in bilateral relations with China, they have always returned again to a solid baseline. If America succumbs to the short-term expediency of not providing Taiwan with much needed and meaningful capabilities, the chance of Chinese adventurism rises,” Hammond-Chambers said.
“Taiwan’s request for the sale of some 150 additional F-16C/Ds has been languishing unanswered somewhere in the halls of the State Department,” Daniel Goure, a former US Department of Defense official now with the Lexington Institute, wrote in a paper on the subject published this week.
“At a time when the US is still engaged in two wars and finding it difficult not to become engaged in other regional conflicts and crises, it makes eminent sense to do whatever it can to build the ability of friends and allies, our partners in regional security, to defend themselves better,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ed Ross, former principal director for operations at the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, said that Taiwan must “improve its military capabilities and negotiate from a position of strength to deter Chinese aggression and coercion.”
“The US must continue to push the envelope on arms sales to Taiwan, providing Taiwan what it truly needs to maintain a sufficient defense capability, not what it believes Beijing will tolerate,” he wrote in an opinion piece in Defense News.
“If we are willing to defend civilian life and liberty in Libya, we should be willing to do what’s necessary to give Taiwan the ability to defend itself. The time has come for a broader, more inclusive debate on Taiwan and US China-Taiwan policy,” Ross said.
Nipah virus infection is to be officially listed as a category 5 notifiable infectious disease in Taiwan in March, while clinical treatment guidelines are being formulated, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. With Nipah infections being reported in other countries and considering its relatively high fatality rate, the centers on Jan. 16 announced that it would be listed as a notifiable infectious disease to bolster the nation’s systematic early warning system and increase public awareness, the CDC said. Bangladesh reported four fatal cases last year in separate districts, with three linked to raw date palm sap consumption, CDC Epidemic Intelligence
The manufacture of the remaining 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taiwan purchased from the US has recently been completed, and they are expected to be delivered within the next one to two months, a source said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense is arranging cargo ships to transport the tanks to Taiwan as soon as possible, said the source, who is familiar with the matter. The estimated arrival time ranges from late this month to early next month, the source said. The 28 Abrams tanks make up the third and final batch of a total of 108 tanks, valued at about NT$40.5 billion
Two Taiwanese prosecutors were questioned by Chinese security personnel at their hotel during a trip to China’s Henan Province this month, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. The officers had personal information on the prosecutors, including “when they were assigned to their posts, their work locations and job titles,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said. On top of asking about their agencies and positions, the officers also questioned the prosecutors about the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement, a pact that serves as the framework for Taiwan-China cooperation on combating crime and providing judicial assistance, Liang
A group from the Taiwanese Designers in Australia association yesterday represented Taiwan at the Midsumma Pride March in Melbourne. The march, held in the St. Kilda suburb, is the city’s largest LGBTQIA+ parade and the flagship event of the annual Midsumma Festival. It attracted more than 45,000 spectators who supported the 400 groups and 10,000 marchers that participated this year, the association said. Taiwanese Designers said they organized a team to march for Taiwan this year, joining politicians, government agencies, professionals and community organizations in showing support for LGBTQIA+ people and diverse communities. As the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex
RSS