A US senator on Tuesday said that if US President Barack Obama’s administration refuses to sell Taiwan the 66 F-16C/D aircraft it is requesting, he would push to have Congress approve the sale instead.
Republican Senator John Cornyn, who made the remarks after visiting Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth aircraft assembly plant in his home state of Texas, said Taiwan needed the aircraft to deter China.
“Congress has traditionally delegated this authority to the president, but it can pass legislation allowing this sale to take place,” Cornyn told the Star-Telegram.
“There’s significant support in Congress for providing our allies [Taiwan] with these planes, and I believe, under the Taiwan Relations Act, we’re obligated to do so,” he was quoted as saying.
Cornyn said an amendment to the defense authorization bill to approve Taiwan’s request could be introduced in October or November.
The amendment would require approval by Congress and Obama could still exercise his veto powers to prevent the sale, but this would mean scuttling approval of a wide variety of defense programs, he said.
Forty-five senators and 181 members of the US House of Representatives have signed letters urging Obama and US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to release the aircraft.
Earlier this year, Cornyn held up the confirmation of William Burns as US deputy secretary of state, resulting in a compromise by Clinton, who said the US would announce its final decision on Oct. 1.
Beijing has characterized the sale of F-16C/Ds to Taiwan as a “red line” and threatened retaliation, including severing military-to-military ties, if the US allowed it to go through.
So far the US has not officially accepted Taiwan’s request for the F-16C/Ds, with reports saying that the US Department of State had instructed Taiwan’s representative office in Washington not to submit a “Letter of Request.”
Although the Pentagon and the Ministry of National Defense maintain that the deal is not dead, recent reports claim Washington is likely only to approve an upgrade program for Taiwan’s aging F-16A/B fleet.
Washington’s refusal to release the more advanced F-16C/Ds would be a mistake, Cornyn said, and would “demonstrate we’ll give our allies the back of our hand” to pacify “our adversaries,” the newspaper wrote, adding that a well-armed Taiwan would take off some of the pressure on US forces involved in operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat