Last week’s surprise announcement by US President Barack Obama’s administration that it would give “serious consideration” to the possibility of selling F-16C/D combat aircraft to Taiwan was cause for cautious optimism. However, while it may be welcome in defense circles, the timing could give President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) a major headache as his inauguration day approaches.
Two administrations — that of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Ma’s — have since 2006 made repeated, yet unsuccessful, attempts to acquire 66 of the much-needed F-16C/Ds to bring back some balance in air power in the Taiwan Strait. Through a bureaucratic sleight of hand, the White House, weary of complicating its relationship with Beijing, managed to avoid having to make a decision by pretending that Taipei had yet to submit a Letter of Request (LoR) for the aircraft. The reality is that officials in the administrations of both former US president George W. Bush and Obama made it impossible for Taiwan to submit an LoR.
This diplomatic charade made it feasible for Ma, who since 2008 has attempted to avoid angering Beijing — as the F-16 sale certainly would — to make repeated public requests for the aircraft, while knowing that such calls were unlikely to bring any change in the “status quo.”
However, the context in which those calls are being made appears to have changed, which is the result of several factors, from the US having entered another electoral season to Washington’s decision to focus more on Asia amid its so-called “pivot.”
Obama, who is seeking re-election, has often been accused of being soft on China. Allowing the long-delayed sale of F-16s to Taipei, which in and of itself would be insufficient to ensure Taiwan can maintain air superiority against China, could be a means for him to silence his detractors while creating jobs in Texas, an important state in the election. As former US deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz has told this paper, this would not be the first time that a major arms sale to Taiwan derived, if only partly, from a US presidential election. The initial F-16A/Bs acquired by Taiwan in the early 1990s were, in his opinion, such a case.
This new context puts Ma in a quandary. While the Ministry of National Defense maintains it is keen on procuring the F-16C/Ds (with plans being floated by at least one representative in Washington to request just 44 aircraft), political considerations at the top could add some friction.
Ma will be watched closely by Beijing during his inauguration on May 20, and his second term will likely be marked by intensifying pressure by the Chinese Communist Party to enter political negotiations. Starting his second term by acquiring the F-16s — a “red line” that ought not to be crossed, Beijing has said — might appear an ominous start for Ma.
Conversely, delaying the submission of an LoR, or dismissing this opportunity altogether for cost or political considerations, could cost Ma dearly domestically, as doing so would be a huge loss of face for a president who claims he remains committed to Taiwan’s security and sovereignty. Not seizing the opportunity to finally obtain the F-16s, after years of claiming that he wanted them, would make Ma’s pleas sound like they were fraudulent all along.
The door has been opened a crack; let us see whether Ma, who has painted himself into a corner on this issue, as he has on many others, will dare to walk in.
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,
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