The director of the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency, Edward Ross, on Monday issued a blunt warning on Taiwan's blocked arms-procurement bill, saying that in terms of its Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), the US is under no obligation to help Taiwan deter a military threat in the Strait if it believes that Taiwan has not fulfilled its unwritten obligation to ensure its own viable self-defense.
The US' comments to Taiwan have evolved from statements of support and appreciation into complaints, and now into clear words of warning.
The latest rhetoric from senior Pentagon officials shows that the US has changed its policy of communicating with the Democratic Progressive Party administration to making appeals to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party, and now to directly addressing the people of Taiwan, urging them to have the determination to defend themselves and hold their lawmakers accountable for their actions.
Without doubt, the Bush administration seems to have grown rather disappointed, frustrated and discontented with politicians in Taiwan on the self-defense issue. As Ross forthrightly put it: The special budget for the arms-procurement plan has become a "political football" in the field of Taiwan's domestic politics, and that "this battered ball has been kept in play more to entertain the players -- the politicians -- than to serve the real needs of Taiwan."
Can you blame the US? Even Taiwan's friends in the US Congress are asking why the US should risk the lives of its young men and women to defend Taiwan, which seems to be reluctant to invest in its own defense.
Despite China's substantial military build-up in recent years, Taiwan's defense budget has been declining for the past 10 years. And then the legislature's pan-blue dominated Procedure Committee on Tuesday yet again rejected the arms-procurement bill, marking the 29th time Taiwan has said "No" to the package of eight diesel-electric submarines, 12 P3 surveillance planes and advanced Patriot missile defense systems which the US had approved in 2001.
What impression is Taiwan creating with these 29 rejections? That it is unwilling to invest in its own defense, but regards the TRA as a blank check issued by the US to defend it? Or that it is simply so stupid as to be oblivious to the military threat posed by its vicious, giant neighbor? The latest rejection of the arms-procurement plan must seem like encouragement to China in its aggression toward Taiwan.
Some in Taiwan argue that Taiwan can never match the spending of China, the emerging military giant -- so why try? Such a mindset demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the military. The military exists to deter attacks. It deters attacks by providing a credible defense capability.
It is frustrating enough to see Taiwan being locked in a diplomatically disadvantageous position on the international stage, but it is even more terrifying to see senseless domestic politics making Taiwan's national defense one of the nation's weaknesses.
All politicians, regardless of party affiliations, ought to ask themselves and examine their hearts about what they have done to substantively promote Taiwan's national defense. Taiwan possesses no offensive capability against China. Are they going to let the nation lose even the most basic minimum requirement -- a capacity to at least deter threats?
It is time for all the people of Taiwan to reach a consensus on national security and show the US that Taiwan is no coward, nor a baby that knows only how to cry for help but refuses to help itself.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,