A virtual gale of support is blowing through Washington this week to boost Taiwan’s request to buy F-16C/D aircraft.
However, despite the pressure, there is no indication that US President Barack Obama’s administration would sell the fighter aircraft anytime soon.
White House insiders said not to expect any decisions until well after a visit next month by People’s Liberation Army Chief of General Staff Chen Bingde (陳炳德).
The visit is aimed at strengthening high-level defense contacts and military ties between Washington and Beijing.
Pentagon sources said that nothing was more likely to undermine such ties and lead to another suspension of contacts than new arms sales to Taiwan.
Obama is known to have closer military ties with China near the top of his foreign policy agenda.
Nevertheless, Republican Senator Richard Lugar, a member of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, wrote to US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton earlier this month urging the administration to proceed with the F-16 sale.
“Taiwan has legitimate defense needs and its existing capabilities are decaying,” he said.
Unless Obama approves the sale soon, Lugar said, Taiwan will have “no credible air-to-air capability” when it retires its existing fighter jets in the next decade.
The US would have to decide this year to approve the F-16 sale to produce the jets in time for delivery by 2015.
Clinton has yet to reply to Lugar’s letter.
Voicing his support for the the fighter jet’s sale, US-Taiwan Business Council president Rupert Hammond-Chambers said: “In the coming several years, the pressure on Taiwan to engage with China — not only on economic issues, but with political and military talks as well — will quickly rise.”
“If Taiwan lacks a credible defense and China calculates that the US lacks resolve, the possibilities for miscalculations soar and tensions in the [Taiwan] Strait will rise dramatically,” he said.
“While arms sales may cause short-term difficulties in bilateral relations with China, they have always returned again to a solid baseline. If America succumbs to the short-term expediency of not providing Taiwan with much needed and meaningful capabilities, the chance of Chinese adventurism rises,” Hammond-Chambers said.
“Taiwan’s request for the sale of some 150 additional F-16C/Ds has been languishing unanswered somewhere in the halls of the State Department,” Daniel Goure, a former US Department of Defense official now with the Lexington Institute, wrote in a paper on the subject published this week.
“At a time when the US is still engaged in two wars and finding it difficult not to become engaged in other regional conflicts and crises, it makes eminent sense to do whatever it can to build the ability of friends and allies, our partners in regional security, to defend themselves better,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ed Ross, former principal director for operations at the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, said that Taiwan must “improve its military capabilities and negotiate from a position of strength to deter Chinese aggression and coercion.”
“The US must continue to push the envelope on arms sales to Taiwan, providing Taiwan what it truly needs to maintain a sufficient defense capability, not what it believes Beijing will tolerate,” he wrote in an opinion piece in Defense News.
“If we are willing to defend civilian life and liberty in Libya, we should be willing to do what’s necessary to give Taiwan the ability to defend itself. The time has come for a broader, more inclusive debate on Taiwan and US China-Taiwan policy,” Ross said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), spokeswoman Yang Chih-yu (楊智伃) and Legislator Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介) would be summoned by police for questioning for leading an illegal assembly on Thursday evening last week, Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) said today. The three KMT officials led an assembly outside the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office, a restricted area where public assembly is not allowed, protesting the questioning of several KMT staff and searches of KMT headquarters and offices in a recall petition forgery case. Chu, Yang and Hsieh are all suspected of contravening the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) by holding
PRAISE: Japanese visitor Takashi Kubota said the Taiwanese temple architecture images showcased in the AI Art Gallery were the most impressive displays he saw Taiwan does not have an official pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka, Japan, because of its diplomatic predicament, but the government-backed Tech World pavilion is drawing interest with its unique recreations of works by Taiwanese artists. The pavilion features an artificial intelligence (AI)-based art gallery showcasing works of famous Taiwanese artists from the Japanese colonial period using innovative technologies. Among its main simulated displays are Eastern gouache paintings by Chen Chin (陳進), Lin Yu-shan (林玉山) and Kuo Hsueh-hu (郭雪湖), who were the three young Taiwanese painters selected for the East Asian Painting exhibition in 1927. Gouache is a water-based
Taiwan would welcome the return of Honduras as a diplomatic ally if its next president decides to make such a move, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. “Of course, we would welcome Honduras if they want to restore diplomatic ties with Taiwan after their elections,” Lin said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, when asked to comment on statements made by two of the three Honduran presidential candidates during the presidential campaign in the Central American country. Taiwan is paying close attention to the region as a whole in the wake of a
OFF-TARGET: More than 30,000 participants were expected to take part in the Games next month, but only 6,550 foreign and 19,400 Taiwanese athletes have registered Taipei city councilors yesterday blasted the organizers of next month’s World Masters Games over sudden timetable and venue changes, which they said have caused thousands of participants to back out of the international sporting event, among other organizational issues. They also cited visa delays and political interference by China as reasons many foreign athletes are requesting refunds for the event, to be held from May 17 to 30. Jointly organized by the Taipei and New Taipei City governments, the games have been rocked by numerous controversies since preparations began in 2020. Taipei City Councilor Lin Yen-feng (林延鳳) said yesterday that new measures by