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| April 28, 2001 | atimes.com | ||
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Editorials
NEWS BACKGROUND Part 1: Elusive submarines The military sales program for Taiwan just approved by the US Bush administration includes provisions for the delivery of eight diesel-electric patrol submarines (SSKs). This has caused hemming and hawing and evasive answers from the White House and Pentagon spokesmen and a good deal of consternation in Berlin and The Hague. The reason: The US hasn't built such submarines in decades, but it has promised to source them on behalf of Taiwan - and the principal sources, according to most news reports, are Germany and the Netherlands. In Berlin, the immediate reaction to suggestions that Germany, which has supplied 66 SSKs to 14 countries since 1967, might help the US out of the bind was categorical denial. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's foreign policy adviser Michael Steiner said: "There is no request [by Washington] for the delivery of German submarines nor would one be granted," adding that even if the US merely wanted to buy blueprints for the diesel propulsion system and produce the subs by itself, this would be in violation of German export guidelines as the end use of any weapons system was the determining factor. The Netherlands, which sold two Zwaardvis (Swordfish) SSKs to Taiwan in 1981 and saw its diplomatic relations with China severed until 1984 as a result, reacted with equal resolve: "The Netherlands maintains a one-China policy. That means no weapons are to be sold to Taiwan or to third parties for resale to Taiwan," stated foreign ministry spokesman Frank de Bruin. Contrary to most news reports, the German and Dutch preemptive strikes do not, however, leave Washington and Taipei without recourse. As the table at the foot of this report indicates, there are other potential submarine suppliers, and the technological know-how required to build SSKs is so widespread (and not exactly frontier stuff) that it shouldn't be a major feat for American nuclear submarine builders to acquire it without too much trouble. Would Vickers of the UK refuse a US request to provide plans and know-how? Would anyone even come to know for sure that the company had done so? Won't Ingalls pick up a good deal of know-how and tooling while collaborating with RDM in building Moray-class SSKs for Egypt? Couldn't France decide to sell DCN-built Scorpenes outright to Taiwan, much as it did with Lafayette frigates in the early 1990s? There are at present some 400 SSKs in operation worldwide. Several of the buyers of German SSKs - Brazil, South Korea, Turkey and India - have acquired licenses to build the German boats. So, whatever the Germans or Dutch may be saying right now, or however officially standoffish they are, there can be little doubt that the US has the wherewithal to get the Taiwanese boats built. Pakistan built nuclear weapons while the world was looking the other way - and ballistic missiles with Chinese help. The real issue is not IF the US has the ability to supply the submarines it has promised to sell to Taiwan, but whether it is prepared to go to the trouble of doing so. That - much like the question of the sale of the Aegis system - is an issue that's being held in abeyance. Whether Aegis destroyers or SSK hunter-killer subs, whether Taiwan - some five to seven years down the line - will acquire them, is not a question of military technological capability. It's a question of politics and of the evolution of the US-China relationship. What some silly German foreign policy adviser opines or equally silly European journalists having "discovered" that the US can't build what it has promised to sell matters not just precious little, it's just plain irrelevant.
*) other than home country ((c)2001 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.) |
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