For Taiwan, American rock, Chinese hard place
By Todd Crowell
For months Washington has been growing increasingly frustrated by Taiwan's lack
of spending on national defense in the face of China's rising arms expenditures
and force modernization. But seldom has the US delivered such a stern
tongue-lashing to an old friend and ally as it did earlier this month.
The occasion was the US-Taiwan Business Council-Defense Industry Conference on
September 18 in San Diego. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia
Richard Lawless wrote the message, but it was delivered by Defense Department
official Edward Ross, since Lawless was in Beijing taking part in the six-party
talks.
Ross told the delegates that he was going to speak "straight from the heart
untainted by political rancor and partisanship" and he
opined that the Taiwan media would misconstrue his remarks. Yet it would be
hard for anyone not to get the basic message to Taiwan: stand up for yourselves
if you expect the US to stand by you in a crisis with China.
Washington's complaints focus on two things. One is Taipei's foot-dragging over
a huge arms procurement package that involves acquiring eight submarines,
six Patriot anti-missile batteries and a dozen anti-submarine patrol aircraft.
The other is Taiwan's declining defense expenditures as a percentage of its
gross domestic product (GDP).
Yet while the US is getting hot under the collar over the lack of progress on
the package, Beijing is warning against it ever being realized.
On Wednesday, China warned the US that it would "never tolerate" the arms sales
package to Taiwan, saying that if Washington went ahead with the deal, it would
undermine bilateral ties.
"It would undermine the national security and reunification of China and harm
Sino-US relations," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a
briefing in Beijing. "We urge the US to clearly recognize the serious harm the
weapons package entails."
China had made representations to the US many times about the issues concerning
the arms sales to Taiwan, Qin said.
The Bush administration authorized this arms procurement in April 2001, but
money to pay for it has been blocked in Taiwan's legislature by
pro-unification parties, which say that the weapons purchase would throw
Taiwan into an arms race with China that it could not afford. The package
initially was valued at about US$18 billion, which was too large to be covered
in the normal annual budget, so it has been presented as a supplementary item,
the "special budget".
The total cost was then negotiated down to about $11 billion. And desperate to
get something passed, the administration of President Chen Shui-bian split the
purchase of Patriot anti-missile batteries off and placed it in the regular
defense budget. Nonetheless, the opposition recently announced that it would
oppose that too.
On June 2, the cabinet approved the Defense Ministry's special budget
allocations for major military procurement programs worth a total of NT$610.8
billion (US$18.23 billion).
Said Ross: "In the last year, the special budget has been submitted and
rejected 28 times in the procedural committee. This means that it hasn't even
made it to the defense committee for consideration - 28 times, rejected out of
hand, no debate and no opportunity for real compromise, just plain rejected.
"Instead, the special budget has become a political football. Its destiny was
to be kicked and head-butted as the center attraction in the field of Taiwan
domestic politics, as the centerpiece of a near five-year game of
bait-and-switch. In fact, the neutral observer could draw the conclusion that
this battered ball has been kept in play more to entertain the players - the
politicians - than to serve the needs of Taiwan.
"Even as the legislative yuan has failed to take action on the special budget,
the Chen administration in all of the regular budgets it has submitted has
consistently placed defense spending behind other priorities. While defense
spending has increased only marginally, spending on economic and social
priorities has leapt, often in double-digit terms.
"So the question begs; why would Taiwan, a society so prosperous, so
well-educated, so highly developed, but yet so threatened, make the conscious
decision to allocate only 2.4% of its GDP to its security?"
Ross noted that Singapore, a country that does not have 700 ballistic missiles
pointed at it, spends about 5% of its GDP on defense. "In spite of growing GDP
over the past 10 years, Taiwan's defense budget in relation to its GDP has
declined, both in absolute and relative terms ... in stark contract, China has
been able to sustain double-digit increases in its annual defense expenditures
for well over the past decade."
A recent Pentagon report said that China's real defense spending was "two to
three times" the $30 billion budget stated by Beijing. (The US Congress gives
$455 billion to the Pentagon.)
"I want to be clear. No one is suggesting that Taiwan engage in an arms race
with China. No one expects Taiwan to outspend the PRC on weapons procurements.
What we do expect is that Taiwan have the collective will to invest in a viable
defense, to address a growing threat and be in a position to negotiate the
future of cross-strait relations from a position of strength."
He said Taiwan must "stop short-changing itself on reserves of critical
munitions" - a reference, presumably, to the fact that the US has outsourced
replenishing the US Army's stores of small arms ammunition expended in Iraq and
Afghanistan to Taiwan in order to keep production lines at the country's sole
armory in operation.
Counting on America Ross made clear that his comments were not just about arms procurement
per se but a perception that Taiwan doesn't have to defend itself because it is
counting on America to do it for them. "Richard [Lawless] and I have been asked
frequently, 'if Taiwan is not willing to properly invest in its own
self-defense, why should we, the US, provide for its self-defense?'
"We always cite the Taiwan Relations Act [TRA] because it is good policy and
it's the law. However, inherent in the intent and logic of the TRA is the
expectation that Taiwan will be able to mount a viable self-defense. For too
long, the Taiwan Relations Act has been referenced purely as a US obligation.
Under the TRA, the US is obligated to 'enable' Taiwan to maintain a sufficient
self-defense, but the reality is, it is Taiwan that is obligated to have a
sufficient self-defense.
"For the past 10 years, the leaders of Taiwan appear to have calculated US
intervention heavily into their resource allocation equation and elected to
reduce defense spending despite an ever-prosperous and stable economy. And this
short-change math does not work. We're watching the partisan stalemate over
Taiwan's defense spending, and we're doing our own math. In a crisis ... Taiwan
will be stood up against the yardstick of 'national will' and will be measured
accordingly."
Ouch.
What is the reaction to all this in Taiwan? It's hard to say, although several
thousand people demonstrated on Monday in Taipei in favor of the special
defense budget. Some held banners reading "Strength is Defense." President
Chen, visiting Nicaragua, said he was confident that the US would "prevent
Taiwan from being annexed by China".
Postscript Despite all the hard words from Washington
and Beijing, it seems that neither side wants or foresees a real crisis. Some
big American names will be travelling to China next month: US Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, and
Treasury Secretary John Snow, the latter two to attend next month's G20 meeting at Xianghe near Beijing.
Former Asiasweek writer Todd Crowell comments on Asian affairs at Asia
Cable (www.asiacable.blogspot.com).
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