Despite new pledges of support for Taiwan in new US legislation, it remains to be seen how the scale of joint military training and funding will develop, an academic said.
Lin Ying-yu (林穎佑), an assistant professor in Tamkang University’s Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies, said that the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2023, signed into law by US President Joe Biden on Friday, contains a pledge to hold “full-scale military exercises” with Taiwan, but whether such drills would be held depends “on how the competent authorities act.”
There are signs that the US Congress intends to limit the extent of the Taiwan-friendly provisions in the act, such as grants for military equipment.
Photo: AFP
Also on Friday, the US House of Representatives excluded funding for those grants from the US$1.65 trillion Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act, which covers most US government funding for the fiscal year.
While the appropriations bill authorizes US$2 billion in loans for Taiwan to buy weapons from the US, this does not necessarily mean Taiwan would get all the equipment it desires, Lin said.
Any decision on what to sell rests with the US Department of State and the US Department of Defense, which are required to clear and prioritize defense articles sold to Taiwan under the terms of the defense act, Lin said, calling it a “seller’s market.”
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) said that a requirement that the two departments submit plans for joint military exercises highlights what is “most desperately lacking in current Taiwan-US exchanges.”
Due to unclear stipulations regarding the scope of any cooperation, “joint exercises” might merely mean the continuation of existing drills, such as those involving Taiwanese and US naval forces, which were most recently held in Guam last year, but they might also refer to Taiwan participating in multinational naval drills led by the US, Huang said.
Lin put the focus on potential Chinese reactions to Taiwan-US defense cooperation. Whether joint exercises inevitably stir a Chinese reaction is “a point worth observing,” adding that Beijing “will sometimes look for pretexts to justify its actions,” he said.
While mentioning joint exercises in legislation is an improvement, whether and in what form drills are to be held depends on the two departments, he added.
Asked whether Taiwan-US joint military exercise would provoke China and endanger Taiwan, Ian Easton, senior director of the US-based Project 2049 Institute think tank, said it would be “dangerous for the current inadequate levels of US-Taiwan cooperation to continue.”
“The Chinese Communist Party views it as provocative that Taiwan continues to exist as a free country. For this reason, Beijing can use any pretext to escalate tensions and threaten Taiwan,” he said.
North Korea reacts the same way to every US-South Korea joint exercise, but it would be strategically destabilizing to stop those drills, he said.
However, he was reserved when asked to comment on the likelihood of the US holding joint exercises with Taiwan.
“Only time will tell,” Easton said.
While the defense act is focused on improving the deteriorating defense and security situation in East Asia, defense cooperation between Taiwan and US should go beyond what is stipulated in the legislation, Easton said.
New Taiwan-US defense and security initiatives to respond to Chinese threats should be implemented, including visits to Taiwan by four-star US admirals and generals stationed in Washington and Hawaii, joint air and sea patrols of the Taiwan Strait, US Navy port calls in Taiwan, and the re-establishment of a US military assistance advisory group in Taiwan, Easton said.
“Obviously, the US and Taiwan need to build a much stronger political and diplomatic relationship, without which there will always be a perilous security gap that the [Chinese] People’s Liberation Army can exploit,” Easton said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Department of International Affairs head Alexander Huang (黃介正) said that previous defense authorization acts only included nonbinding “sense of Congress” provisions regarding joint exercises with Taiwan.
The binding commitment in this year’s defense act made it “bigger, better and stronger,” Huang said, calling it a positive gesture for bilateral cooperation on upholding security in the Indo-Pacific region.
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