The White House announced on Friday night a major military aid package for Taiwan amounting to 345 million dollars (313 million euros). The goal is to deter China from attacking the island. And the obvious effect is a return to the language of confrontation after the threats of dialogue fostered by the recent visits to the eastern power by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The most substantial and innovative aspect of the new military assistance package for Taiwan is not its amount but the speed with which it is delivered. Unlike previous shipments, in which Taipei had to wait for the production of the weapons and the processing of their sale, in this case the aid is channeled through a presidential authorization approved by Congress last year to be able to extract the material from the current reserves of the Pentagon with the destination that Parliament and the Executive consider appropriate. And preventive measures regarding a possible Chinese advance on Taiwan are a priority for Washington.
Although the White House did not specify the content of the assistance, beyond noting that it would include defense and training means for the Taiwanese military, senior officials of the US security apparatus leaked it to the national media: it is about portable anti-aircraft systems – the so-called Manpads–, missiles, various “firearms” and intelligence and surveillance capabilities.
The endowment adds to some provisions from previous years worth almost 19,000 million dollars in sales, mainly F-16 fighters and MQ-9B Sea Guardian unmanned aircraft. But those earlier deliveries have been slowed and hampered by supply chain breaks in the wake of the pandemic, as well as pressure on the defense industry from the war in Ukraine.
The approval of the 345 million in weapons and other military aid to Taiwan reaffirms the carrot and stick policy that the Joe Biden Administration has maintained towards Beijing, its main adversary, from the beginning.
After the crisis over the discovery and downing of the Chinese “spy balloon” that flew over the North American sky for a few days in February, Blinken traveled to the eastern country in June to tune bagpipes and met with President Xi Jinping there in an atmosphere of distension. It didn’t last. The next day, Biden called Xi a “dictator”.
Janet Yellen restored the precarious bilateral communication with her trip at the beginning of July. “The United States and China must find a way to live together and share global prosperity,” she said before and during the visit. Friday’s decision does not go exactly in that direction.
The announcement of the new military assistance to Taipei gave rise to the expected protest from the Xi government. “China strongly opposes” the closer military ties between the US and Taiwan, said the spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu. And he added that the American superpower must stop sending arms to the island of Formosa “to stop creating new factors that can generate tensions and threaten peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”
None of this will be fulfilled in the short term, except by a miracle. Washington will continue to support Taipei, and the Chinese army will repeat its continuous incursions, military exercises and other provocations in the territories it disputes with Taiwan. A dangerous game that both parties know can end in disaster. But the complex conflict behind it, with all its economic and strategic implications, is not one to be resolved with a couple of visits or a meeting of leaders from time to time. The desire for a true rapprochement seems insufficient for the moment on the part of both contenders; insufficient, if not nil.
