US General Wallace Gregson, assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs, said that President Barack Obama’s administration “will not waver in its commitment to provide those defense articles and services necessary for Taiwan’s self-defense.”
But he stopped well short of telling the US-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference in Charlottesville, Virginia, this week just what specific weapons systems would be offered.
Gregson didn’t mention the 66 F-16C/Ds that the Taiwanese military is anxious to buy from Washington. The closest he came to addressing the issue was to offer the generalized “commitment” promise.
“I’m sure many of you here tonight are quite eager to know more about what our administration considers to be the right tools for Taiwan,” he said.
Gregson, who went out of his way to emphasize the word “right,” said that he was not going to deal with the issue in detail.
“True and lasting security cannot be achieved simply by purchasing the next gleaming piece of advanced hardware. A defense strategy is most effectively implemented when you have the right tools. Taiwan’s defense strategy will therefore be most effective when its resource decisions are driven by a clear sense of its defense objectives and the most efficient means to achieve these objectives,” he said.
A senior military analyst in Washington said later that it was impossible to gauge from Gregson’s speech how the White House would handle Taiwan’s weapons requests.
On the one hand, Gregson seemed to be positive and ready to boost Taiwan’s military, but on the other he said nothing that might alarm Beijing ahead of Obama’s planned trip to China next month.
The analyst, who spoke on strict condition of anonymity, said that he did not expect any announcement on the F-16s before early next year.
The annual three-day meeting — organized by the lobby group US-Taiwan Business Council — focused on US-Taiwan defense and military cooperation and Taiwan’s defense and national security needs.
“A strong Taiwan will be less susceptible to coercion or intimidation and better able to engage the PRC [People’s Republic of China] with confidence. A strong Taiwan will be free to expand cross-strait economic, cultural and political ties without fear or reservation, and therefore everyone in the region — including the PRC — should view a strong Taiwan not as a threat but as a stabilizing force,” Gregson said.
“As a result of the PRC’s rapid economic growth and military modernization, Taiwan will never again have the luxury of relying on quantitative advantages over the PRC. Instead, Taiwan must look to its qualitative advantages through focusing on innovation and asymmetry,” he said.
“Taiwan should seek out new initiatives that will be more expensive for the PRC to defeat than they will be for Taiwan to employ. Asymmetry will not replace a layered defense or defeat PRC forces, but it can deter them from fully employing the advanced weapons they are developing and undermine their effectiveness,” he said.
General Chao Shih-chang (趙世璋), deputy minister of Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense, told the conference that the only way to sustain the easing of cross-strait tension was to maintain defensive capabilities.
“We do have expectations for assistance that could be provided by friends and allies as new challenges that we have never faced before, [that will] emerge along with the many tasks of defense reform,” Chao said.
“Critical acquisitions, including F-16C/Ds, diesel submarines, utility helicopters, additional two units of PAC 111, could not be completed before the budgets expired, thus obstructing follow-on annual budgeting and policy implementation. I’m sure the officials in charge did not mean to see such a development,” he said.
Tropical Storm Usagi strengthened to a typhoon yesterday morning and remains on track to brush past southeastern Taiwan from tomorrow to Sunday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was approximately 950km east-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost point, the CWA said. It is expected to enter the Bashi Channel and then turn north, moving into waters southeast of Taiwan, it said. The agency said it could issue a sea warning in the early hours of today and a land warning in the afternoon. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was moving at
UPDATED FORECAST: The warning covered areas of Pingtung County and Hengchun Peninsula, while a sea warning covering the southern Taiwan Strait was amended The Central Weather Administration (CWA) at 5:30pm yesterday issued a land warning for Typhoon Usagi as the storm approached Taiwan from the south after passing over the Philippines. As of 5pm, Usagi was 420km south-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost tip, with an average radius of 150km, the CWA said. The land warning covered areas of Pingtung County and the Hengchun Peninsula (恆春), and came with an amended sea warning, updating a warning issued yesterday morning to cover the southern part of the Taiwan Strait. No local governments had announced any class or office closures as of press time last night. The typhoon
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
At least 35 people were killed and dozens more injured when a man plowed his car into pedestrians exercising around a sports center in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai on Monday night. Footage showing bodies lying on the pavement appeared on social media in the hours after the crash, but had vanished by early Tuesday morning, and local police reported only “injuries.” It took officials nearly 24 hours to reveal that dozens had died — in one of the country’s deadliest incidents in years. China heavily monitors social media platforms, where it is common for words and topics deemed
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