Washington will expedite arms sales to Taiwan through various means including the presidential drawdown authority, US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Affairs Ely Ratner said on Thursday.
Ratner was speaking at a hearing held by the US House of Representatives’ Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the US and the Chinese Communist Party to discuss US President Joe Biden’s China strategy.
Asked about the delay in delivering weapons to Taiwan, Ratner said: “What we are facing is not a backlog as is sometimes described, but rather concerns and slowdowns within all of our industrial base.”
Photo: Screen grab from a video on the US Department of Defense’s Web site
It is a systemic problem that is affecting not only Taiwan, but military production in the US defense industrial base, he said.
“We’re doing everything we can to fulfill our commitments under the Taiwan Relations Act [TRA] as quickly as we can” through foreign military sales, presidential drawdown authority and potentially foreign military financing, he said.
As part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, the US Congress authorized up to US$1 billion of weapons aid for Taiwan using the presidential drawdown authority, which authorizes the president to transfer weapons and services from US stockpiles without congressional approval during an emergency.
The US “will soon provide significant additional security assistance to Taiwan through the presidential drawdown authority that Congress authorized last year,” US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told Congress in May.
“Providing these self-defense capabilities to Taiwan is one of the department’s highest priorities,” Ratner said.
“The TRA has formed the bedrock of peace, stability and deterrence in the Taiwan Strait over the last four decades,” he said.
“We’re absolutely committed to ... meeting our commitments under the Taiwan Relations Act to assist Taiwan to maintain sufficient self-defense capability. We’ll meet those obligations,” US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink told the hearing.
On US-Taiwan economic relations, US Representative Michelle Steel said that the initial trade agreement reached under the US-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade, which the US Senate passed on Tuesday, was welcomed, but “it’s still [a] very tiny bit, so we really have to extend that.”
Asking why Taiwan is not included in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), she said: “Why leave them [Taiwan] out of the IPEF if they are a like-minded, true ally.”
Kritenbrink said that the US is focusing on the 14 partners currently in the IPEF, but reaffirmed Washington’s promise to Taiwan.
“We’re very committed to building our partnership with Taiwan, our very important, robust, but unofficial partnership,” and will continue to do so, he said.
Additional reporting by CNA
MILITARY BOOST: The procurement was planned after Washington recommended that Taiwan increase its stock of air defense missiles, a defense official said yesterday Taiwan is planning to order an additional four PAC-3 MSE systems and up to 500 missiles in response to an increasing number of missile sites on China’s east coast, a defense official said yesterday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the proposed order would be placed using the defense procurement special budget, adding that about NT$1 trillion (US$32,88 billion) has been allocated for the budget. The proposed acquisition would include launchers, missiles, and a lower tier air and missile defense radar system, they said The procurement was planned after the US military recommended that Taiwan increase
POLITICAL AGENDA: Beijing’s cross-strait Mid-Autumn Festival events are part of a ‘cultural united front’ aimed at promoting unification with Taiwan, academics said Local authorities in China have been inviting Taiwanese to participate in cross-strait Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations centered around ideals of “family and nation,” a move Taiwanese academics said politicizes the holiday to promote the idea of “one family” across the Taiwan Strait. Sources said that China’s Fujian Provincial Government is organizing about 20 cross-strait-themed events in cities including Quanzhou, Nanping, Sanming and Zhangzhou. In Zhangzhou, a festival scheduled for Wednesday is to showcase Minnan-language songs and budaixi (布袋戲) glove puppetry to highlight cultural similarities between Taiwan and the region. Elsewhere, Jiangsu Province is hosting more than 10 similar celebrations in Taizhou, Changzhou, Suzhou,
TWO HEAVYWEIGHTS: Trump and Xi respect each other, are in a unique position to do something great, and they want to do that together, the US envoy to China said The administration of US President Donald Trump has told Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) “we don’t want any coercion, but we want [the Taiwan dispute] resolved peacefully,” US ambassador to China David Perdue said in a TV interview on Thursday. Trump “has said very clearly, we are not changing the ‘one China’ policy, we are going to adhere to the Taiwan Relations Act, the three communiques and the ‘six assurances’ that were done under [former US president Ronald] Reagan,” Perdue told Joe Kernen, cohost of CNBC’s Squawk Box. The act, the Three Joint Communiques and the “six assurances” are guidelines for Washington
DEEPENING TIES: The two are boosting cooperation in response to China’s coercive actions and have signed MOUs on search-and-rescue and anti-smuggling efforts Taiwan and Japan are moving to normalize joint coast guard training and considering the inclusion of other allies, the Japanese Yomiuri Shimbun reported yesterday. Both nations’ coast guards in June sent vessels to the seas south of the Sakishima Islands to conduct joint training, the report said, adding that it was the second joint maritime training exercise since the nations severed formal diplomatic ties in September 1972. Japan dispatched the Nagoya Coast Guard’s Mizuho, a 134m, 6,000-tonne patrol vessel which can carry a helicopter, while the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) sent the 126m, 4,000-tonne Yunlin, one of its largest vessels, the report
RSS