Editor’s Note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, the premium online newsletter published by the founder of WND. Subscriptions are $99 a year or, for monthly trials, just $9.95 per month for credit card users, and provide instant access for the complete reports.
 Taiwan |
U.S.-Taiwanese military ties are beginning to show signs of strain as pressure from Beijing on Washington becomes increasingly intense and the notion that China ultimately may incorporate Taiwan appears more and more to be an acceptable outcome in Washington, although no U.S. officials openly will admit that, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
Analysts saw this development as the head of the People’s Liberation Army chief of the general staff, Gen. Chen Bingde, paid a visit to sensitive U.S. military installations after a year-long freeze on those military exchanges following a $6.3 billion U.S. arms sale last year to Taiwan.
It would mean an abandonment of the U.S. security commitment to Taiwan that was first laid out in the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, analysts say.
The TRA was a commitment to provide defensive arms to Taiwan and to come to the island’s assistance in the event of an attack from the mainland.
Increasingly, there have been calls to abandon the TRA and halt U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.
In 2009, former U.S. Vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Bill Owens called for such action in his retired capacity as an American businessman based in Hong Kong, which today is under the control of mainland China.
At the time, the concept was not met with any degree of enthusiasm. Opponents to the concept argued that such an act would adversely affect U.S. security alliances in the region.
That notion now appears to be changing.
There have been new calls for an end to U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan by those arguing that they hinder improved ties with mainland China.
Two retired U.S. Pacific Command commanders, Joseph Prueher and Timothy Keating, and James Shinn, a national intelligence officer in the Central Intelligence Agency’s East Asia office, said that continued arms sales to Taiwan not only had damaged Sino-U.S. relations but had become a “vicious circle.”
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