Former US president George W. Bush planned to station missile interceptors in Poland and radar bases in the Czech Republic to prevent Iran from attacking Europe with missiles. However, because the plan upset Russia, US President Barack Obama canceled it. A Wall Street Journal editorial criticized Obama for giving dictators more room to maneuver while not giving those who challenge dictators enough opportunities.
Obama’s tendency to please enemy states while overlooking allies and the way he has dealt with Poland and Tibet make one wonder whether he might postpone the sale of F16C/D fighter planes to Taiwan because of Chinese opposition. This is something that Taiwan cannot afford to ignore.
Obama administration officials have repeatedly said the US has the responsibility to provide defensive weapons to Taiwan according to the Taiwan Relations Act. However, he has also extended strategic guarantees to Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤). While the Obama administration slapped 35 percent tariffs on Chinese tires and sent the USS Chung-Hoon destroyer to protect the US’ naval right of passage in the South China Sea, his postponing of a meeting the Dalai Lama, muted criticism of China’s human rights and finance policies and increasing China’s voting power in the IMF all show that moral principles are losing to practical concerns.
Over the past two years, Taiwan has set funds aside and requested that the US provide it with weapons. At the 2009 US-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference, Deputy Minister of National Defense Chao Shih-chang (趙世璋) said budgets and policy implementation in the coming years would be hindered because major procurement deals such as those for F-16C/D fighters cannot be completed in time. In the past, it was Taiwan that delayed arms purchases; now it is the US government, and in doing so it is allowing the cross-strait military balance to shift in Beijing’s favor.
Obama will find that the longer he postpones the sale of the F16C/Ds to Taiwan, the stronger China’s reaction and the higher the price the US and Taiwan will have to pay to pacify it.
After the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1996, then-US president Bill Clinton realized that there were not enough military exchanges between the US and Taiwan, that neither side understood the other enough and that this highlighted serious security issues. Under the leadership of Kurt Campbell, then deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia and the Pacific, the US and Taiwan increased collaboration on issues aside from arms purchases, including exchanges on strategic ideas, crisis scenarios and system integration. Campbell is now assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs. In the past, he was also a member of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank, as is US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs Wallace Gregson.
This implies that the Obama administration plans to increase the “soft power” of Taiwan’s military and will not be focusing so much on weapons sales.
At the conference, Gregson said that as Taiwan’s national defense resources are limited, Taiwan should adopt more creative security concepts.
He also suggested that Taiwan develop asymmetric warfare capabilities. This suggestion is very similar to the “porcupine” defense strategy proposed by US Naval War College professor William Murray and probably shows the way for future US-Taiwan cooperation on defense. The method dodges the matter of selling F16C/Ds to Taiwan and eases US worries that US-made weapons could end up in Chinese hands 20 years from now.
Lin Cheng-yi is the director of the Institute of European and American Studies at Academia Sinica.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
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