Last Friday, the United States government gave the go-ahead to a long-delayed arms sale to Taiwan. The $6.5 billion defense package announced by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency includes the upgrade of four E-2T aircraft to HAWKEYE 2000 configuration and the sale of thirty AH-64D Block III APACHE Longbow attack helicopters as well as PATRIOT Advanced Capability (PAC-3) missiles, sea-launched HARPOON Block II missiles, JAVELIN medium-range guided anti-tank missiles, and assorted spare parts for fighter aircraft. While three other systems sought by Taipei-diesel-electric submarines, Black Hawk helicopters, and F-16 C/D fighters-were not included in the deal (the request for fighters has not even been officially accepted), the transfers will go a long way to redressing the dangerous cross-strait military imbalance that the Bush administration's de facto suspension of arms sales had occasioned, one which I have argued ultimately increased the burden on America. The Pentagon acknowledged this logic when it told Congress that:

This proposed sale serves U.S. national economic and security interests by supporting the recipient's continuing efforts to modernize its armed forces. The proposed sale will help improve the security of the recipient and assist in maintaining political stability, military balance, and economic progress in the region.

However helpful and welcome the arms sale is, a careful examination of the current situation along the Taiwan Strait reveals dynamics which cannot be adequately addressed with even the most advanced defense technologies. At best, the defense package buys some time for Washington, although the next president will not so easily dodge the geopolitical challenge that George W. Bush will punt to him.

While rhetorical and political tensions between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) government on Taiwan have decreased considerably since the inauguration in May of the latter's President Ma Ying-jeou who has undertaken a pragmatic diplomacy with the mainland-including lifting limits on cross-strait investment capital, allowing direct passenger flights, and negotiating Taiwan-China currency transactions-it nonetheless remains true that he leads a country very much under siege. Even as the island's social and economic ties with the mainland have strengthened, Beijing has not relented in its efforts to isolate Taipei diplomatically.

Last year, the Democratic People's Party government of then-President Chen Shui-bian tried and failed once more to get the United Nations General Assembly to take up the question of Taiwan's admission to the world body. This year, the Nationalist government of President Ma tried a lower-keyed approach focusing on functional and technical cooperation. At the sixty-third session of the General Assembly last week, seventeen of Taipei's African, Caribbean, Central American and Pacific diplomatic allies proposed discussing the "fundamental rights of the 23 million people of the Republic of China (Taiwan) to participate in the activities of the United Nations specialized agencies" like the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO). In a joint submission, the measure's sponsors noted that not only is it senseless to exclude the country with the world's tenth largest shipping capacity (and the eighteenth largest economy) from the IMO, but the strictures against Taiwanese participation in WHO technical conferences and informational exchanges when epidemics like SARS occur seriously jeopardizes global health as a whole. And no one can explain how excluding Taiwan from the ICAO advances air safety when the Taipei Flight Information Region covers more than 176,000 square nautical miles of airspace through which some twelve major international routes cross, carrying more than 40 million passengers annually. Despite the fact that the recent measure intentionally did not raise the issue of formal UN membership, just participation in these technical organizations, it was nevertheless blocked in committee by the PRC.

Shut out of international forums, to say nothing of formal alliances, the ROC's strategic horizons are increasingly darkened by the rapid modernization of the People's Liberation Army which has largely wiped out the technological edge which the smaller Taiwanese forces once enjoyed. The growing mastery of joint operations control and the vast arms build-up on the mainland side of the strait make the use of force, which Beijing has never ruled out, an all-the-more tempting option, while rendering the American "balance of neutrality"-official agnosticism about the future status of Taiwan and opposition to both PRC military coercion and any unilateral formal declaration of independence by the ROC-increasingly untenable.

The reality that policymakers in Washington have to face is that, by hewing to an approach that does not treat Taiwan like a normal country, the United States is in fact creating a vicious cycle which leaves the ROC dependent upon America to maintain even the semblance of a balance of power between it and the PRC. The fact that there is nothing "normal" about our political, diplomatic or military ties to Taipei, far from reducing friction, heightens it all the way around. The lack of high-level contacts hinders development of the trust so necessary in delicate international relations: ROC Defense Minister Chen Chao-min's address last week to a U.S.-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference in Amelia Island, Florida, was only the first such visit to the United States by a Taiwanese military chief since one of his predecessors met with then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz in 2002. At the same time, the diplomatic boycott encourages hardliners on the mainland that America does not have a serious stake in the island's fate. Moreover, the failure to allow Taipei to acquire a more robust defense capability, a policy undertaken in the vain attempt to mollify Beijing-an effort whose futility was evidenced by the shrill protests and threats about "serious damage" to bilateral relations which mainland officials and media spewed over the weekend in reaction to limited arms package-leaves Taiwan even more dependent upon America since it deprives the island of the single most important asset to negotiate successfully with Beijing. Unable to deter the PRC aggression with any credible preemptive option, the ROC's default strategy is to be able to play defense long enough in the hope that the United States will come to its aid. Whether, with its forces overstretch as they are, America would have capacity, much less the political will, to do so is another issue entirely.

The results of Taiwan's March 23 elections made clear that the vast majority of Taiwanese of all political persuasions view themselves as citizens of an independent, sovereign state distinct from the mainland and, their growing trade and investment ties notwithstanding, are not particularly interested in being incorporated into it. The question is whether, after American voters themselves go to the polls in four weeks, there will be an administration in Washington prepared from day one to reassess U.S. policy and align it on a more stable basis with the realities on the Taiwan Strait. After all, while it is a certainty that the "one China" policy suits Beijing, can one be so sure that it is in America's national interests?

 

J. Peter Pham is the director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University and a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.