Patience running thin over long-delayed US promises

• Source: Global Times
• [21:19 February 02 2010]
• Comments

Editor's Note:

The Obama administration approved a $6.5 billion arms sales package to Taiwan on Friday. China soon fired back with an unprecedentedly sharp attitude. Some US hawks have predicted that arms sale may lead to a comprehensive breaking of the Sino-US relationship, and the bilateral relations will likely enter the most difficult decade since the Nixon administration. Global Times (GT) reporter Chen Chenchen talked with Meng Xiangqing (Meng), a security strategist at the People's Liberation Army University of National Defense, on the trends in Sino-US relations in the near future.

Meng Xiangqing

GT: What's the difference between this package and other US arms deals with Taiwan over the past three decades?

Meng: The latest US arms sale to Taiwan includes 114 Patriot (PAC-3) antimissile system, 60 UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters, 12 Harpoon Block II telemetry missiles, two Osprey Class mine-hunting ships and a command and control enhancement system. Compared to other arms sales since the 1980s, the latest deal includes more expensive and powerful weapons.

I compiled a statistical table of US arms sale to Taiwan since the 1980s. Arms packages were frequently less than $100 million in the 1980s, $100 million to $300 million in the 1990s, and $1 billion to $6 billion after 2000. Arms sales to Taiwan have exceeded, both in qualitative or in quantitative terms, previous levels.

In the early 1990s, the US sold PAC-2s to Taiwan for the first time. The PAC-3's interception rate is 75 percent higher that of the PAC-2. The command and control enhancement system is not a weapon, but an updated system that can integrate joint operations in land, sea, air and space battles.

In defending the sale, Washington insists that the weapons in the latest arms sale are primarily defensive. However, in the information era, it's hard to distinguish defensive from offensive weapons.

For instance, the Black Hawk helicopters can carry commandos who conduct frontline military operations. Also, antimissile and missile technologies are theoretically interlinked with each other. Though antimissile systems are mainly used to defend against missiles, they're able to attack warplanes too.

To some extends, this arms sale strengthens the US's military alliance with Taiwan, which has mainly adopted the US's integrative combat and command system. In the Joint Communiqué signed in 1972, the US government accepted three principles, namely cutting off diplomatic relations with Taiwan, withdrawing its armed forces and military facilities from Taiwan and annulling the treaties signed between the US and the Chiang Kai-shek regime. These principles have been broken time and again.

GT: Taiwan leader Ma Ying-jeou said the arms sale would actually help the effort to promote political negotiations across the Straits.

Meng: Ma's words show the sense of superiority when relying on foreign forces.

The cross-Straits relationship has entered a period of peaceful development, and people on both sides hope that this continues. Under such circumstances, buying weapons from the US is undoubtedly erecting an obstacle for cross-Straits peace.

It's also ludicrous to protect the security of Taiwan through buying weapons from the US. The gap in military strength between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan is being widened.

Purchasing arms from the US is essentially like buying self-deceiving psycho-logical comfort.

GT: Some put the arms sale in a larger picture, and link the deal with the recent Google case and Sino-US trade frictions. Is it true that the two country's conflicts over trade, military and human rights indicate new signals in the Obama administration's China policy after the Sino-US honeymoon last November?

Meng: Obama has inherited the dual tactics of each US president since the Cold War ended. The general principle of both cooperating with and containing China is consistent.

Given special circumstances, the US government may adjust some specific manners. For instance, Bill Clinton emphasized constructive cooperation with China in the latter years of his administration. George W. Bush leaned toward containing China as soon as he took office, and listed it as one of the US's main potential rivals.

Obama stressed cooperation with China as soon as he was inaugurated, because the two countries share more and more common interests. The US needs China's help in tackling global issues like the financial crisis and climate change, or promoting regional security in the Middle East and Northeast Asia. Obama personally holds a different governing style from his predecessor and emphasizes multilateralism.

But putting aside the current internal and external environment of the US and Obama's personal ideas of government, the US's strategic intent of enhancing Taiwan's status to contain China has not changed over the past 30 years.

GT: It seems that US presidents who face domestic crisis like to divert domestic attention to external issues. Is this the main motive behind the latest arms sale?

Meng: Historically, US presidents facing domestic crisis tended to win points through moves on the global stage. The government faces less pressures from special interest groups over foreign policy, so it's easier to win political agreement.

The Sino-US relationship has been sacrificed to some degree for the moment, because it's impossible to achieve anything in the short term over more difficult issues, such as Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons. The US public does not necessarily care about the government's arms sale to Taiwan.

But the arms sale to Taiwan can at least please domestic hardliners who criticize the president for being too weak when dealing with China.

We cannot ignore this motive behind the deal. But the fundamental reason is still the consistent mentality of containing China by playing the Taiwan card.