The United States Senate on Wednesday approved a package of arms sales to Taiwan worth more than $10 billion and including medium-range missiles, drones and self-propelled howitzer systems. Some of the weapons systems, such as high-mobility artillery rocket systems, or Himars, and Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, are similar to those provided to Ukraine for its defence against Russia.
Beijing denounced the legislation as foreign interference in China’s affairs, restating its position that the future of the self-governing island of Taiwan is solely an internal Chinese matter.
“The bill has kept playing up the ‘China threat’ narrative, trumpeting for military support to Taiwan, abusing state power to go after Chinese economic development, limiting trade, economic and people-to-people exchanges between China and the US, undermining China’s sovereignty, security and development interests and disrupting efforts of the two sides in stabilising bilateral relations,” the Chinese embassy in Washington said.
Taiwan’s defence ministry welcomed the US Senate’s decision, saying that bolstering the island’s defensive capability is “the foundation for maintaining regional peace and stability”. But president William Lai’s government is struggling to pass an ambitious, multi-year defence spending plan through the legislative yuan, where his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) does not command a majority.
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The eight-year, $40 billion spending package would boost Taiwan’s annual defence spending to 5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030 from an average of 2 per cent over the past 20 years. US president Donald Trump has demanded that the island bears a greater share of the cost of its defence, suggesting that its military budget should rise to 10 per cent of GDP.
The main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), and the smaller Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) say they back increased defence spending but they want more details of how the money will be spent before approving it. KMT leader Cheng Li-wun has described the proposed spending as “too high and too fast” and the TPP has expressed concerns that more money for defence will come at the cost of education and social welfare.
The debate comes against a background of growing uncertainty about Washington’s willingness to come to Taiwan’s aid in the event of an attack from Beijing. Trump’s National Security Strategy restated US opposition to any unilateral change in the status quo in the Taiwan Strait but it played down the defence of democracy around the world as an American interest.
Sam Roggeveen, director of the international security programme at the Lowy Institute, Australia’s leading foreign policy think tank, believes Taiwan is the wrong place for the US to draw the line against China’s ambitions. In an address to the institute this week, he said that China’s rise as an economic, technological and military power means it will not indefinitely put up with US dominance in the Asia Pacific.
“To understand that simple point, we only need to examine the mirror-image: what if China was the status quo power and the US was the rising power? And what if China had 70,000 troops stationed in Canada and an aircraft carrier permanently stationed in Cuba? Would the US stand for this arrangement indefinitely? The question answers itself,” he said.
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He suggests that nothing in the behaviour of the US over the past 30 years indicates that it is willing to fight China for leadership in the region and that Washington’s allies should assume that China will become the leading power in Asia. Mr Roggeveen believes Australia should persuade the US to take on a new role in the region not centred on defending Taiwan but aimed at deterring China independently and non-provocatively.
“To achieve peace between the great powers, we might have to compromise on other principles. It gives me no satisfaction to say it, but it’s hard to escape the conclusion that one of those things is the status of Taiwan,” he said.
“Taiwan is the primary, and perhaps only, point of zero-sum difference between Washington and Beijing. It is a point of direct contention in which both sides want what only one of them can have. Their interests are presently irreconcilable. With Taiwan excepted, a stable balance of power between US and China is within reach.”
Mr Roggeveen argues that the US would still have an interest in denying China the opportunity to achieve regional dominance because such a position would give Beijing a freer hand to further its global ambitions. The US would have been far less well positioned to play its global role in the post-second World War system if the western hemisphere had been permanently contested by another great power.
“The US doesn’t need to be capable of winning a war against China, only to deny China the prospect of victory,” he said.
Mr Roggeveen acknowledges that a Chinese takeover of Taiwan, if it happens by force or merely the threat of violence, would be a disaster for its people, who cherish their democracy and personal freedom. But policymakers in Taipei know that the questions he raises about the future of the US in the Asia Pacific are under close consideration not only in Canberra but in Washington.
