Nathan News

WASHINGTON — U.S. officials are stepping up efforts to build a giant stockpile of weapons in Taiwan after studying recent Chinese military naval and air exercises around the island, current and former officials say.

The exercises showed that China would likely blockade the island as a prelude to any attempted invasion, and Taiwan would have to hold out until the United States or other nations intervened, if they decided to do so. current and former officials say. .

But the effort to turn Taiwan into an arms depot faces challenges. The United States and its allies have prioritized sending weapons to Ukraine, which is running down their stockpiles, and arms manufacturers are reluctant to open new production lines without a steady stream of long-term orders.

And it’s unclear how China might react if the United States ramps up arms deliveries to Taiwan, a democratic, self-governing island that Beijing claims is Chinese territory.

President Biden said last month that the United States “does not encourage” Taiwanese independence, adding, “It’s their decision.” Since 1979, Washington has had a policy of reassuring Beijing that it does not support independence. But Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a speech to the Asia Society last month that the United States was undermining that position “through repeated official arms exchanges and sales, including many weapons offensives”.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army conducted drills with warships and fighter jets in areas near Taiwan in August. It also fired ballistic missiles into waters off the coast of Taiwan, four of which flew over the island, according to Japan.

The Chinese military acted after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. But even before that, U.S. and Taiwanese officials had taken a closer look at the potential for an invasion because Russia’s assault on Ukraine had made the possibility more real, though Chinese leaders did not explicitly indicated timeline for establishing power over Taiwan.

The United States could not resupply Taiwan as easily as Ukraine due to the lack of land routes from neighboring countries. The goal now, officials say, is to ensure Taiwan has enough weapons to defend itself until help arrives. Mr Biden said last month that US troops would defend Taiwan if China were to carry out an “unprecedented attack” on the island – the fourth time he has declared that commitment and a change from a preference for “the ‘strategic ambiguity’ over Taiwan among US presidents.

“Storage in Taiwan is a very active topic of discussion,” said Jacob Stokes, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security who advised Biden on Asia policy when he was vice president. “And if you have it, how do you harden it and how do you disperse it so the Chinese missiles can’t destroy it?”

“The point of view is that we need to stretch the time that Taiwan can hold on its own,” he added. “That’s how you save China from reaping the low-hanging fruit of their ‘fait accompli’ strategy – which they won the day before we arrived, that is, assuming we intervene.”

US officials are increasingly emphasizing Taiwan’s need for smaller mobile weapons that can be deadly against Chinese warships and jets while being able to evade attack, which is at the heart of the asymmetric warfare.

“Shoot-and-scoot” types of weaponry are popular with the Ukrainian military, which used Javelin and NLAW anti-tank guided missiles and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles effectively against Russian forces. Recently, the Ukrainians struck Russian troops with American-made mobile rocket launchers known as HIMARS.

To turn Taiwan into a “porcupine,” an entity bristling with armaments that would be expensive to attack, U.S. officials tried to entice their Taiwanese counterparts to order more of those weapons and fewer systems for conventional ground warfare like M1 Abrams tanks.

Pentagon and State Department officials have also regularly discussed these issues since March with US arms companies, including at an industry conference on Taiwan this week in Richmond, Virginia. Jedidiah Royal, a Defense Department official, said in a speech Monday that the Pentagon was helping Taiwan build systems for “island defense against an aggressor with a conventional overrun.”

The Biden administration announced Sept. 2 that it had approved its sixth weapons package for Taiwan — a $1.1 billion sale that includes 60 Harpoon coastal anti-ship missiles.

In a recent article, James Timbie, a former State Department official, and James O. Ellis Jr., a retired U.S. Navy admiral, said Taiwan needed “a lot of little things for distributed defense, and that some of Taiwan’s recent purchases from the United States, including the Harpoon and Stinger missiles, fit this bill. Taiwan also produces its own deterrent weapons, including mine-laying vessels, air defense missile systems and anti-ship cruise missiles.

They said Taiwan needed to shift resources away from “expensive and large-scale conventional systems” which China can easily destroy in an initial attack, although some of these systems, including F-16 jets, are useful to counter the ongoing Chinese warplanes and ships. activities in the airspace and waters of the “grey zone”. The authors also wrote that “effective defense of Taiwan” will require the stockpiling of ammunition, fuel and other supplies, as well as strategic reserves of energy and food.

Officials in the administration of Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s president, say they recognize the need to stockpile smaller weapons, but point out that there are significant lags between orders and shipments.

“I think we are moving towards a high degree of consensus regarding our priorities on asymmetric strategy, but the speed needs to be accelerated,” Bi-khim Hsiao, Taiwan’s de facto ambassador to Washington, said in a statement. interview. .

Some US lawmakers have called for faster, more robust deliveries. Some senators are trying to pass the Taiwan Policy Bill, which would provide $6.5 billion in security aid to Taiwan over the next four years and force the island to be treated as if it were a “major non-NATO ally”.

But Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, said in an interview that arms makers want to see order predictability before committing to increased production. Armaments managers from the United States and more than 40 other countries met last week in Brussels to discuss long-term supply and production issues.

If China decided to establish a naval blockade around Taiwan, US officials would likely study which resupply route from Taiwan – by sea or by air – would offer the least chance of bringing in Chinese ships, planes and submarines and Americans in direct conflict.

One proposal would be to send US cargo planes with supplies from bases in Japan and Guam to the east coast of Taiwan. This way, any Chinese fighter trying to shoot them down would have to fly over Taiwan and risk being shot down by Taiwanese warplanes.

“The amount of materiel that would likely be needed in the event of war is formidable, and getting them through would be difficult, although it may be doable,” said Eric Wertheim, defense consultant and author of “The Naval Institute Guide to Combat Fleets “. of the world.” “The question is, what risk are China and the White House willing to take in terms of enforcing or breaking a blockade, respectively, and can it be maintained?

China likely studied the strategic failure of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he said, and the United States should continue to send the kinds of weapons to Taiwan that will make either an amphibious invasion making an attack with long-range weapons much more difficult for China. .

“Chinese naval officers I’ve spoken to over the past few years have said they fear the humiliation that will come from any type of failure, and that of course has the effect that they’re less likely to ‘act if there’s an increased risk of failure,” Wertheim said. “Essentially, the success the Ukrainians are experiencing is a message to the Chinese.

Biden administration officials are trying to assess what measures might deter China without actually provoking greater military action.

Jessica Chen Weiss, a Cornell University government professor who worked on China policy last year at the State Department, wrote on Twitter that Mr Biden’s recent remarks committing US troops to defend Taiwan were “dangerous”. She said in an interview that pursuing the porcupine strategy builds deterrence, but taking what she sees as token measures does not.

“The United States must make it clear that it has no strategic interest in Taiwan being permanently separated from mainland China,” she said.

But other former US officials praise Mr Biden’s forceful statements, saying greater “strategic clarity” enhances deterrence.

“President Biden has said four times now that we will defend Taiwan, but every time he says it someone backs down,” said Harry B. Harris Jr., a retired admiral who served as a commander. of the United States Pacific Command and Ambassador to South Korea. . “And I think that makes us look weak as a nation because who’s running this show? I mean, is it the president or is it his advisors?

“So maybe we should take his word for it,” Admiral Harris added. “Maybe he’s serious about defending Taiwan.”