Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) yesterday said that a warning by the US’ top commander for the Indo-Pacific region about significantly increased Chinese military aggression toward Taiwan underscores that peace in the Indo-Pacific region is a “core interest” of the US.
Before the start of a legislative plenary session, reporters asked Koo about remarks from US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo that China’s aggressive military actions toward Taiwan have increased 300 percent over the past year.
Closing the Taiwan Strait, one of the world’s major trading channels, could be more devastating than for the world than the Great Depression in the 1930s, Paparo on Thursday last week told the US Senate Committee on Armed Services when asked why Americans should care about protecting Taiwan, US Naval Institute News reported.
Photo: Chen Yi-kuan, Taipei Times
A blockade in the waterway would expose the US’ dependence on Taiwan for semiconductor production, which is essential to modernizing and growing the domestic economy, the report quoted Paparo as saying.
War in the Indo-Pacific region could cause “a 25 percent reduction in GDP in Asia, an effect of 10 to 12 percent GDP reduction in the United States of America, unemployment spiking at 7 to 10 percent” above normal levels, “and 500,000 excess deaths of despair,” he said.
Even a successful US intervention “would halve that impact, so still a grave result” and “a lot of human misery,” he added.
Koo said that Paparo’s remarks were proof that stability and prosperity in the world hinge on stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region.
It also showed that maintaining the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait is practically a consensus among countries around the world and something that requires an active effort to maintain.
Koo referenced a leaked Pentagon internal memo as evidence of the US’ commitment to deterring a Chinese annexation of Taiwan.
The memo, leaked during US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s tour of Asia last month, reportedly directed the prioritization of deterring China’s capture of Taiwan while scaling back its support for Ukraine amid Russia’s ongoing invasion.
China is the Pentagon’s “sole pacing threat,” and denial of a “Chinese fait accompli seizure” of Taiwan while simultaneously defending the US homeland is its “sole pacing scenario,” the memo reportedly said.
Taiwan is stepping up plans to create self-sufficient supply chains for combat drones and increase foreign orders from the US to counter China’s numerical superiority, a defense official said on Saturday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said the nation’s armed forces are in agreement with US Admiral Samuel Paparo’s assessment that Taiwan’s military must be prepared to turn the nation’s waters into a “hellscape” for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, reiterated the concept during a Congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday. He first coined the term in a security conference last
Prosecutors today declined to say who was questioned regarding alleged forgery on petitions to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, after Chinese-language media earlier reported that members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Youth League were brought in for questioning. The Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau confirmed that two people had been questioned, but did not disclose any further information about the ongoing investigation. KMT Youth League members Lee Hsiao-liang (李孝亮) and Liu Szu-yin (劉思吟) — who are leading the effort to recall DPP caucus chief executive Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) and Legislator Wu Pei-yi (吳沛憶) — both posted on Facebook saying: “I
Sung Chien-liang (宋建樑), who led efforts to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-cheng (李坤城), was released on bail of NT$80,000 today amid outcry over his decision to wear a Nazi armband to questioning the night before. Sung arrived at the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office for questioning in a recall petition forgery case last night wearing a red armband bearing a swastika, carrying a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and giving a Nazi salute. Sung left the building at 1:15am without the armband and covering the book with his coat. Lee said today that this is a serious
A mountain blaze that broke out yesterday morning in Yangmingshan National Park was put out after five hours, following multi agency efforts involving dozens of fire trucks and helicopter water drops. The fire might have been sparked by an air quality sensor operated by the National Center for High-Performance Computing, one of the national-level laboratories under the National Applied Research Laboratories, Yangmingshan National Park Headquarters said. The Taipei City Fire Department said the fire, which broke out at about 11am yesterday near the mountainous Xiaoyoukeng (小油坑) Recreation Area was extinguished at 4:32pm. It had initially dispatched 72 personnel in four command vehicles, 16