The US is stepping up its efforts to turn Taiwan into a major weapons depot, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
US officials have long called for turning Taiwan into a “porcupine” that could withstand a Chinese attack, but support for Taiwan has intensified in recent years as Washington has grown more confrontational toward Beijing.
The US wants Taiwan to focus its arms purchases on smaller, more mobile weapons, as opposed to larger systems. The Times report said that the US has been conveying this to Taiwanese officials and to the US arms industry.
The Biden administration recently approved a $1.1 billion arms sale for Taiwan that includes 60 Harpoon anti-ship missiles. Senate leaders are working to push forward a piece of legislation that would give Taiwan $6.5 billion in military aid, known as the Taiwan Policy Act, which includes other unprecedented support for Taiwan.
The policy of arming Ukraine and Taiwan is a boon for the arms industry as the US and its NATO allies are taking steps to ramp up weapons production. The $6.5 billion for Taiwan that’s included in the Taiwan Policy Act would be in the form of Foreign Military Financing, a State Department program that gives foreign governments money to buy US weapons.
Taiwan has been under increasing Chinese military pressure since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) visited the island back in August. Her visit sparked China’s largest-ever military drill around the island, which included the simulation of a blockade.
The exercises led US officials to conclude that China would likely opt for a blockade rather than an invasion of Taiwan if it chose to take military action against the island. But increased US support for Taiwan will just escalate tensions in the region, making Chinese military action more likely.
And it’ll take a small fire to light that island like a Christmas tree.
What’s wrong with Christmas trees?!… This looks like another situation that can easily take the wrong direction based on the Biden Admin. incoherent policies… We cannot continue to be a major weapons producer/dealer and pretend to support peaceful aspirations… Any potential conflict between US and China could be cataclysmic…
Who in the US pretends to support peaceful aspirations? Progressives have become rank war mongers and conservatives support faster and faster growth forever, which means war monger.
Evolution…
Full-speed self-directed human evolution accelerating at an accelerating pace to match Cosmos. It’s a wild ride.
🙂
so sort of like ukraine then
Yes. To the last Taiwanese.
Maybe the Taiwanese don’t want to go the way of Hong kong and live in a extreme;y repressive state.
Yeah, the Queen is so democratic as head of state, and her prorogue power to suspend parliamentary is just being kind, right…????????
Why on Earth would any country want to be a porcupine? …Wait. It’s a perfect description of Taiwan and Ukraine. Also, Poland wants to be the best porcupine? …Nevermind. I give up.
… sigh…
Like Ukraine, it won’t matter how many weapons the US supplies to Taiwan. Taiwan is a tiny island. China has potentially millions of men and advanced weapons that could level the island and destroy any US expeditionary forces in the region (with the possible exception of US subs).
What irritates me about reports like this, as well as reports on the arms shipments to Ukraine, is that people are led to believe this crap matters. Well, it doesn’t. You need to understand what Andrei Martyanov has been saying for years: what matters most is strategic and operational planning, and the military balance, and the latter is based on the real economy and geopolitical position in the world.
Taiwan and the US can’t win this. Neither can Ukraine and the US. It’s that simple.
Taiwan can never really hurt China,but China may conquer Taiwan.Perhaps,just perhaps,these weapons will dissuade China-though I hate to admit that the Mic wins either way.
Based on war games, the longer the US waits for a war with China, the more likely we lose badly. So long as China decides to end Moaism and embrace communism and imperialism, there will not be peace.
No empire in world history has simply willingly given up it’s status as the most powerful nation on the planet, and it’s folly to beleive that the US will consider just stepping down and handing the mantle to an authoritarian China that shows zero interest in doing fair business and honoring agreements.
It is for this reason that the US should consider derailing them so they are no longer competition, or going to war if that fails. And it’s exactly, what we are doing. We should have started this 15 years ago, as the aggressors the Chinese they ahve militarized AI and space missile systems much faster. They also have us by the balls if they blockade or take over Taiwan, as most of the chips that power our sytems come from Taiwan.
What if we don’t want to be an empire? What if China is only interested in its rightful place as the worlds leading nation, a position they have occupied for most of the past 3000 years? What if the era of war as a way of life needs to end but we’re too stupid and hide bound to see it?
When empires like ours let the homeland disintegrate with civil/social strife, enact disastrous economic polices, don’t even protect our own borders, and display a thirst for imperialism/militarism around the entire Globe, maybe peaceful co-existence and detente would be a better formula, because in an age of nuclear weapons, no one will win in a battle for military domination.
Right on Rightermeister!
Ok, agreed, but you operate under the false presumtion that China wants peace, that approach has left us vulnerable. Have you ever considered, that cover ops from China has led to the issues you have outlined domestically?
China has liberated most of it’s people from poverty and the lingering effects of US military backed opium dealers. It would rather establish an observatory and water mines on the moon in partnership with Russia than be harassed by Euro-American barbarians.
I see, how much do they pay you for this?
You and your BS name, you fraud. Your no Garrett Connelly. You are horse manure Chinese spy.
Considered, but rejected.
They don’t have military forces in the Western Hemisphere; we have military forces and have for a long time in the Eastern Hemisphere. When China, if ever, challenges our “Monroe Doctrine” (you know that rules based order), I’ll take you seriously insofar as which nation is the hegemon.
Why would they have forces in our hemisphere? We have them to prevent another World War from happening, in case you forget, we didn’t start either of the last two wars, but we finished them. And we’ll finish them if they want to start the 3rd.
Why would we have forces in theirs?
World police man, c’mon, everyone knows that. It’s why Xi and Vladimir love us so much. We’ll that and were the only thing between them and enslaving the entire planet as they extract and horde all it’s wealth. Democracy is no fun when you can be a king.
What a Crusader – we’re good and everyone else is evil and satanic. We’ve been pretty efficient in hoarding a good share of the planet’s wealth for decades and that’s why we could buy off lackeys and overthrow democracies with ease.
LOL. Your words not mine, I’m not a Christian. But I do believe in corrupt A holes and you support the two biggest on Earth. Send them a turd for me.
What China has embraced is success and power. Did you say “honoring agreements”, isn’t this dangerous Ukraine war fiasco a result of the U.S. NOT honoring the agreement/deal to allow the reunification of Germany by promising not to encroach closer to Russia or snipe ex Warsaw Pack members. Yes, we should have (started) 15 years ago to up our great gamesmanship, but got (Neo) conned into fighting our little Welfare Queens war against Muslims, the exact provenance of that transaction is murky, and freightenly below board and suspicious. We need to learn to live with China and Russia too or die with them. They are a generation ahead of us in peer nuclear military technology & delivery of weapons. Your hubris is peurile. Your China rant displays a dangerous delusion, that our fading empire has a snowballs chance in a war with them both, which would be inevitable.. How dense we have been to hector China, while in a hot war with Russia. It goes against every rule of war & diplomacy. Hubris precedes a great fall and in this case it would be a great many things falling on us from East AND West, in an exitential catastrophe compliments of Biden, Clinton, Nuland & Piatt.
Mobile defence on a relatively small island seems weird, to me.
It’s a large unsinkable aircraft carrier as the Japanese called it when they occupied it from 1895 to 1945, and launched the attack on Pearl Harbor from there.
The world is tired of the American deep state criminal cartel….