US General Wallace Gregson, assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs, said that President Barack Obama’s administration “will not waver in its commitment to provide those defense articles and services necessary for Taiwan’s self-defense.”
But he stopped well short of telling the US-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference in Charlottesville, Virginia, this week just what specific weapons systems would be offered.
Gregson didn’t mention the 66 F-16C/Ds that the Taiwanese military is anxious to buy from Washington. The closest he came to addressing the issue was to offer the generalized “commitment” promise.
“I’m sure many of you here tonight are quite eager to know more about what our administration considers to be the right tools for Taiwan,” he said.
Gregson, who went out of his way to emphasize the word “right,” said that he was not going to deal with the issue in detail.
“True and lasting security cannot be achieved simply by purchasing the next gleaming piece of advanced hardware. A defense strategy is most effectively implemented when you have the right tools. Taiwan’s defense strategy will therefore be most effective when its resource decisions are driven by a clear sense of its defense objectives and the most efficient means to achieve these objectives,” he said.
A senior military analyst in Washington said later that it was impossible to gauge from Gregson’s speech how the White House would handle Taiwan’s weapons requests.
On the one hand, Gregson seemed to be positive and ready to boost Taiwan’s military, but on the other he said nothing that might alarm Beijing ahead of Obama’s planned trip to China next month.
The analyst, who spoke on strict condition of anonymity, said that he did not expect any announcement on the F-16s before early next year.
The annual three-day meeting — organized by the lobby group US-Taiwan Business Council — focused on US-Taiwan defense and military cooperation and Taiwan’s defense and national security needs.
“A strong Taiwan will be less susceptible to coercion or intimidation and better able to engage the PRC [People’s Republic of China] with confidence. A strong Taiwan will be free to expand cross-strait economic, cultural and political ties without fear or reservation, and therefore everyone in the region — including the PRC — should view a strong Taiwan not as a threat but as a stabilizing force,” Gregson said.
“As a result of the PRC’s rapid economic growth and military modernization, Taiwan will never again have the luxury of relying on quantitative advantages over the PRC. Instead, Taiwan must look to its qualitative advantages through focusing on innovation and asymmetry,” he said.
“Taiwan should seek out new initiatives that will be more expensive for the PRC to defeat than they will be for Taiwan to employ. Asymmetry will not replace a layered defense or defeat PRC forces, but it can deter them from fully employing the advanced weapons they are developing and undermine their effectiveness,” he said.
General Chao Shih-chang (趙世璋), deputy minister of Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense, told the conference that the only way to sustain the easing of cross-strait tension was to maintain defensive capabilities.
“We do have expectations for assistance that could be provided by friends and allies as new challenges that we have never faced before, [that will] emerge along with the many tasks of defense reform,” Chao said.
“Critical acquisitions, including F-16C/Ds, diesel submarines, utility helicopters, additional two units of PAC 111, could not be completed before the budgets expired, thus obstructing follow-on annual budgeting and policy implementation. I’m sure the officials in charge did not mean to see such a development,” he said.
US PUBLICATION: The results indicated a change in attitude after a 2023 survey showed 55 percent supported full-scale war to achieve unification, the report said More than half of Chinese were against the use of force to unify with Taiwan under any circumstances, a survey conducted by the Atlanta, Georgia-based Carter Center and Emory University found. The survey results, which were released on Wednesday in a report titled “Sovereignty, Security, & US-China Relations: Chinese Public Opinion,” showed that 55.1 percent of respondents agreed or somewhat agreed that “the Taiwan problem should not be resolved using force under any circumstances,” while 24.5 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” disagreed with the statement. The results indicated a change in attitude after a survey published in “Assessing Public Support for (Non)Peaceful Unification
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
‘MISGUIDED EDICT’: Two US representatives warned that Somalia’s passport move could result in severe retaliatory consequences and urged it to reverse its decision Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) has ordered that a special project be launched to counter China’s “legal warfare” distorting UN Resolution 2758, a foreign affairs official said yesterday. Somalia’s Civil Aviation Authority on Wednesday cited UN Resolution 2758 and Mogadishu’s compliance with the “one China” principle as it banned people from entering or transiting in the African nation using Taiwanese passports or other Taiwanese travel documents. The International Air Transport Association’s system shows that Taiwanese passport holders cannot enter Somalia or transit there. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) protested the move and warned Taiwanese against traveling to Somalia or Somaliland
SECURITY: Grassroots civil servants would only need to disclose their travel, while those who have access to classified information would be subject to stricter regulations The government is considering requiring legislators and elected officials to obtain prior approval before traveling to China to prevent Chinese infiltration, an official familiar with national security said yesterday. President William Lai (賴清德) in March announced 17 measures to counter China’s growing infiltration efforts, including requiring all civil servants to make trips to China more transparent so they can be held publicly accountable. The official said that the government is considering amending the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) to require all civil servants to follow strict regulations before traveling to China.