Why settle for cast-offs?
Charles Snyder reports that Taiwan is coming under increasing pressure to produce the finances for its annual military hardware wish list ("Plug defense gaps, Pentagon warns," Feb. 16, page 1). The annual rounds of talks that traditionally precede the final bulletin of what the country will and will not buy for the military, is an opportunity for China watchers and the international community alike to see what the current climate is between Washington and Taipei.
Taiwan has in the past had to be grateful for the offcuts and oddments, white elephants and antiques that the Pentagon would authorize the armaments industries to supply. Now it is being told to hurry along with the financing of the latest list as US military contractors are becoming "frustrated."
These views were aired by William Cohen, chairman of the US-Taiwan business council. This is the same Cohen, who, in the Clinton administration continually stymied Taipei's arms-procurement efforts in his capacity as secretary of defense.
Now free from political constraints and representing the very companies he once regulated, he is pressuring Taipei to purchase military hardware that he would certainly have vetoed the sale of when he was in office on the grounds of US national security. As the corporate spokesperson for the US arms industry, Cohen surely must reflect on the hesitation and delay that played such a determining role in his former position.
The pending war in the Gulf further highlights the fact that soon the US military will have to re-arm with the latest generation of sophisticated weaponry. There is no doubt that such re-armament will not include Kidd-class destroyers or P-3C aircraft of the vintage currently on offer to Taipei.
The US arms industry has a burgeoning inventory of stock that is nearing its the end of its shelf-life and who better to off-load them to than Taiwan with the usual tired rhetoric and caveats designed to appease those both in government and commerce that understand that this country is becoming an irrelevant against the backdrop of America's hunger for the Chinese market and cheap Chinese labor.
Tony Wilkinson
Taichung County
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