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.
An alleged US government plan to encourage Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) to form a joint venture with Intel to boost US chipmaking would place the Taiwanese foundry giant in a more disadvantageous position than proposed tariffs on imported chips, a semiconductor expert said yesterday. If TSMC forms a joint venture with its US rival, it faces the risk of technology outflow, said Liu Pei-chen (劉佩真), a researcher at the Taiwan Industry Economics Database of the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research. A report by international financial services firm Baird said that Asia semiconductor supply chain talks suggest that the US government would
ANNUAL LIGHT SHOW: The lanterns are exhibited near Taoyuan’s high-speed rail station and around the Taoyuan Sports Park Station of the airport MRT line More than 400 lanterns are to be on display at the annual Taiwan Lantern Festival, which officially starts in Taoyuan today. The city is hosting the festival for the second time — the first time was in 2016. The Tourism Administration held a rehearsal of the festival last night. Chunghwa Telecom donated the main lantern of the festival to the Taoyuan City Government. The lanterns are exhibited in two main areas: near the high-speed rail (HSR) station in Taoyuan, which is at the A18 station of the Taoyuan Airport MRT, and around the Taoyuan Sports Park Station of the MRT
Starlux Airlines on Tuesday announced it is to launch new direct flights from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to Ontario, California, on June 2. The carrier said it plans to deploy the new-generation Airbus A350 on the Taipei-Ontario route. The Airbus A350 features a total of 306 seats, including four in first class, 26 in business class, 36 in premium economy and 240 in economy. According to Starlux’s initial schedule, four flights would run between Taoyuan and Ontario per week: Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Flights are to depart from Taoyuan at 8:05pm and arrive in California at 5:05pm (local time), while return flights
Nearly 800 Indian tourists are to arrive this week on an incentive tour organized by Indian company Asian Painted Ltd, making it the largest tour group from the South Asian nation to visit since the COVID-19 pandemic. The travelers are scheduled to arrive in six batches from Sunday to Feb. 25 for five-day tours, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. The tour would take the travelers, most of whom are visiting Taiwan for the first time, to several tourist sites in Taipei and Yilan County, including tea houses in Taipei’s Maokong (貓空), Dadaocheng (大稻埕) and Ximending (西門町) areas. They would also visit