Report says arms sales to
Taiwan serve U.S. interestsBy
Sandra Jontz
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON — For the first time, White House and Pentagon policymakers have stated that arms sales to Taiwan serve U.S. national interests, a stance that might make an already thorny relationship with mainland China even more contentious.
"The United States takes its obligation to assist Taiwan in maintaining a self-defense capability very seriously," reads a report sent to Congress. "This is not only because it is mandated by U.S. law … but also because it is in our own national interest."
Carrying out the recommendations in the report runs the risk of straining relations between the United States and China, which strongly opposes U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and has for the past two decades, said Lt. Cmdr. Terry Sutherland, a Pentagon spokesman.
The Chinese government claims Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, and China has reserved the right to use force to unify Taiwan with the mainland under an array of circumstances — including if Taiwan were to declare its independence.
The unclassified version of the report, titled Implementation of the Taiwan Relations Act and released Monday, outlines U.S. intentions to continue to supply arms, needed equipment and services that will "enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability."
"As long as Taiwan has a capable defense, the environment will be more conducive to peaceful dialogue, and thus the whole region will be more stable," the report states.
The classified version of the report was sent to Congress on Wednesday.
The Taiwan Relations Act will facilitate the U.S. intelligence community’s ability to gauge the military strength of both Taiwan and China governments and renews a U.S. commitment to keeping roughly 100,000 troops in the region for the foreseeable future.
However, there is no policy change and the United States has been supplying arms to Taiwan since 1979, as mandated by U.S. law, said Sutherland.
In recent years, Pentagon planners have increasingly turned their attention away from Europe and toward China, deemed the emerging national security concern for the United States in the early decades of the new century.
"We must work to prevent China from becoming a 21st-century version of the Soviet bear," Gen. Henry "Hugh" Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a speech last week at the National Press Club. "I am convinced that a peaceful resolution on Taiwan is the only way ahead."
Shelton acknowledged that U.S. policymakers face a daunting task in that regard.
"China takes a distrustful view of U.S. intentions," he said. "They are aggressively modernizing their military forces."
Chinese leaders also are seeking to maintain control of an expanding market economy, which includes the "special economic zones" of Shanghai and Hong Kong, with communist central planning techniques, which Shelton called a "contradiction" that could threaten the regime’s power, and, by extension, regional security.
However, there are "gaps" in the U.S. military’s knowledge regarding the current and future security situation in the Taiwan Strait, the report states.
The United States can’t confidently predict the outcome of a military conflict, the report says, and military leaders are relying on war gaming and experienced analysts to judge likely outcomes.
"U.S. policy opposes any use of force to settle this dispute," the report states. "In addition to the forces of the [Peoples Republic of China] and Taiwan, we would need to consider the role of U.S. forces in deterring the use of force or in assisting Taiwan if deterrence fails."
The United States supports a "one-China" policy and has no official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but maintains unofficial relations with the Taiwanese people and an upkeep of the Taiwan Relations Act.
Also, in 1994, President Clinton initiated a policy review that provided Taiwan with "non-hardware" programs such as defense planning, air defense, maritime capability, anti-submarine warfare, logistics, joint force integration and training.
The report outlines three kinds of gaps in U.S. military intelligence:
The United States needs to know more about how the leaders of China and Taiwan view their military and political situations.
U.S. leaders are less knowledgeable in less visible areas of the Chinese military, such as training, logistics, command and control, special operations and mine warfare.
The United States has difficulty gauging the development of the emerging military competition, especially in areas of missile and information warfare, the report states.
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