US announces $345 million military aid package for Taiwan

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States has announced $345 million in military aid for Taiwan, marking the first major package from the Biden administration to draw on America’s own reserves to help Taiwan counter China.

The White House said Friday that the package would include defense, education and training for Taiwanese. Washington will send man-portable air defense systems, or MANPADS, intelligence and surveillance capabilities, firearms and missiles, according to two US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

US lawmakers have been lobbying the Pentagon and the White House to speed up arms shipments to Taiwan. The goals are to help it counter China and to discourage China from considering attacking, providing Taipei with enough weaponry so that the price of invasion is too high.

As Chinese diplomats protested the move, Taiwan’s representative office in the US said the administration’s decision to remove weapons and other materials from its stores provided “an important tool to support Taiwan’s self-defense.” In a statement, he pledged to work with the United States to maintain “peace, stability and the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.”

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense also expressed its appreciation in a statement thanking “the United States for its steadfast commitment to Taiwan’s security.”

The package is in addition to almost $19 billion in military sales of F-16s and other major weapons systems that the United States has approved for Taiwan. The delivery of those weapons has been hampered by supply chain problems that began during the COVID-19 pandemic and have been exacerbated by pressures on the global defense industrial base created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. .

The difference is that this aid is part of a presidential authority passed by Congress last year to draw weapons from current US military stockpiles, so Taiwan won’t have to wait for military production and sales. This causes weapons to be delivered faster than providing funds for new weapons.

The Pentagon has used similar authority to bring billions of dollars worth of munitions into Ukraine.

Taiwan seceded from China in 1949 in the midst of a civil war. Chinese President Xi Jinping maintains China’s right to seize the now autonomous island, by force if necessary. China has accused the United States of turning Taiwan into a “powder keg” through the billions of dollars in arms sales it has promised.

The United States maintains a “One China” policy under which He does not recognize Taiwan is an independent country and does not have formal diplomatic relations with the island in deference to Beijing. However, US law requires a credible defense for Taiwan and for the US to treat all threats to the island as matters of “serious concern.”

Moving arms stocks to Taiwan now, before an attack begins, is one of the lessons the United States has learned from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Pentagon deputy defense secretary Kathleen Hicks told The Associated Press earlier this month. this year.

Ukraine “was more of a cold start approach than the planned approach we’ve been working on for Taiwan, and we’ll apply those lessons,” Hicks said. Efforts to resupply Taiwan after conflict broke out would be complicated because it is an island, she said.

china regularly send warships and planes through the center line in the Taiwan Strait that provides a buffer between the sides, as well as in Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, in an effort to intimidate the island’s 23 million people and wear down their military capabilities.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said in a statement that Beijing “strongly opposes” US military ties with Taiwan. The United States should “stop selling weapons to Taiwan” and “stop creating new factors that could lead to tensions in the Taiwan Strait,” Liu said.