WASHINGTON - The latest wrinkle in the
long-running tale of US arms sales to Taiwan
occurred last week when seven Taiwanese lawmakers
from four different parties arrived in the United
States on an 11-day visit to conduct a feasibility
study for a submarine-procurement deal.
According to lawmaker Liao Wan-ju of the
main opposition Kuomintang (KMT), the purpose of
the visit, which began last Tuesday, is to learn
about the production capacity of US
submarine manufacturers and
Washington's attitude toward the deal.
Other members of the group are KMT
legislators Shuai Hua-ming and Su Chi, Fu Kun-chi
of the opposition People First Party, Ho Ming-hao
of the opposition Taiwan Solidarity Union, and
Chang Hua-kuan and Shen Fa-hui of the ruling
Democratic Progressive Party.
Because of
media criticism and partisan disputes in Taiwan
over the trip, Vice Defense Minister Ko Cheng-heng
canceled a plan to join the group, and the
duration and itinerary of the journey were both
curtailed. According to an original itinerary
revealed by Taiwan's United Daily News in
mid-July, the trip will take the lawmakers to the
cities of Washington, Boston and Los Angeles and
the state of Hawaii, and will include visits to
defense contractors General Electric, Northrop
Grumman, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin.
And, in response to media criticism that
the trip is a waste of taxpayers' money, the
sources said the legislators will have to foot
part of their travel expenses out of their own
pockets.
The dispute stems from an
accusation by Legislator Lin Yu-fang, who claimed
that the Defense Ministry was trying to "buy"
lawmakers' support for its plan to acquire eight
US-built submarines by offering them free trips to
the United States. Lin claimed that many of the
lawmakers in the delegation do not even sit on the
legislature's Committee for Defense Affairs, and
that the organizers altered the itinerary to
accommodate some lawmakers' requests for private
trips during the visit.
The Ministry of
National Defense has wanted the submarines since
2004, but a budget bill for the deal has been
bogged down in the opposition-controlled
legislature ever since.
This visit occurs
about a week after the US Defense Security
Cooperation Agency notified Congress of a possible
Foreign Military Sale to Taiwan of 60 AGM-84L
Harpoon Block II missiles as well as associated
equipment and services. The total value, if all
options are exercised, could be as high as US$125
million. The missile suffers from a subsonic speed
and is prone to interception. But it can be
launched from the air, from the sea, or from under
the sea, and can hit land as well as sea targets.
Taiwan has previously purchased both air- and
surface-launched Harpoon missiles. The Harpoon
Block IIs proposed for Taiwan are air-to-surface
missiles launched from F-16 fighters.
By
their range alone, the missiles could reach
mainland Chinese coasts. But the fighters would
have to take off successfully and reach the middle
of Taiwan Strait before the missiles could be
launched.
It is likely that the US
Congress will approve the proposed sales, as they
are relatively small compared with past sales to
Taiwan. The proposed deal seems to follow a
pattern in which the US would sell any weapon
system that Taiwan is capable of developing by
itself or procuring from a third party. The
Harpoon Block II is the US equivalent to Taiwan's
Hsiung Feng IIE. Hsiung Feng IIE missiles
developed by Taiwan can only be launched from the
island's IDF fighters, whereas its 100 F-16A/B
fighters can only carry Taiwan's older Harpoon
missiles.
But Taiwan may not consider the
60 Harpoon Block II missiles to be reason enough
for them to give up its own project.
Ironically, the trip takes place a month
after the Legislative Yuan broke a four-year
deadlock over the purchase of a package of
advanced US weapons. That package included 12 P-3C
Orion anti-submarine-warfare aircraft, eight
diesel-electric submarines, six Patriot Advanced
Capability-3 (PAC-3) missile-defense batteries, as
well as upgrades to older Patriot batteries
already in Taiwan's possession. However, the Yuan
only approved funds for the Orion aircraft and the
Patriot upgrades. The sale will cost Taiwan
NT$31.9 billion (US$970 million), far less than
the approximately US$18.5 billion value of the
total package.
In a further complication,
according to a commentary by an analyst at the
conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington,
DC, the US State Department is actively blocking
the sale from going through to warn President Chen
Shui-bian against holding a referendum on Taiwan's
entry into the United Nations, one of Washington's
leading commentators on Taiwanese affairs said.
Writing in the latest issue of Defense
News, the analyst, John Tkacik, said the State
Department had told the Pentagon that it opposed
the sale of P-3C Orion submarine-hunter aircraft
and advanced PAC-2 anti-ballistic-missile
batteries, which the Legislative Yuan agreed to
fund in June.
David Isenberg is
a senior research analyst at the British American
Security Information Council, a member of the
Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, a
research fellow at the Independent Institute, and
an adviser to the Straus Military Reform Project
of the Center for Defense Information, Washington.
These views are his own.
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2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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