CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE: OBAMA IS DOING SOMETHING RIGHT
US announces $6B arms sale to Taiwan
From AP:WASHINGTON – In a move sure to aggravate China, the Obama administration on Friday announced plans for more than $6 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, the self-governing island the Chinese claim as their own.
The sale would include Black Hawk helicopters, Patriot missiles, mine-hunting ships and information technology. Lawmakers have 30 days to comment before the plan proceeds; senior lawmakers have traditionally supported arms sales to Taiwan.
Taiwan is the most sensitive matter in already-tense relations between the U.S. and China, two powers increasingly linked by security and economic issues. The sale could spark a temporary break in U.S.-China military ties.
The United States, which only told China of the sale hours before the announcement, acknowledged Friday that Beijing may retaliate by cutting off military talks with Washington, which happened after a multibillion dollar U.S. sale to Taiwan in 2008.
Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said Beijing will lodge a formal protest against the U.S. decision. Asked if China would cut off military ties, he said, "Let's wait and see."
President Barack Obama's national security adviser, Jim Jones, said Friday that Washington and Beijing both do things "periodically that may not make everybody completely happy."
But Jones told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank the U.S. is "bent toward a new relationship with China as a rising power in the world."
China vehemently opposes U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. It has threatened to invade Taiwan should the island ever formalize its de facto independence.
The United States is Taiwan's most important ally and largest arms supplier.
The package, posted on a Pentagon Web site, dodges one thorny issue: The F-16 fighter jets that Taiwan covets are not included.
The sale satisfies parts of an $11 billion arms package originally pledged to Taiwan by former President George W. Bush in 2001, which has been provided in stages because of political and budgetary considerations in Taiwan and the United States.
The arms sale will test the Obama administration's China policy, which U.S. officials say is meant to improve trust between the countries, so that the inevitable disagreements over Taiwan or Tibet don't reverse efforts to cooperate on nuclear standoffs in Iran and North Korea and other issues.
China aims more than 1,000 ballistic missiles at Taiwan; the U.S. government is bound by law to ensure the island is able to respond to Chinese threats.
The package includes 114 Patriot missiles designed to shoot down other missiles, 60 Black Hawk helicopters, and two mine-hunting ships.
-
Washington Times: Beijing develops pulse weapons Blasts thwart all electronics China's military is developing electromagnetic pulse weapons that Beijing plans to use against U.S. aircraft carriers in any future conflict over Taiwan, according to an...
- Another Ally Wonders About Obama's Loyalty And No Doubt, Sense
Taiwan has still not heard from Obama on high-priority F-16s East-Asia-Intel.com, May 5, 2010 A U.S. official said Taiwan's government is continuing to press the Obama administration to sell the island nation additional...
- Meanwhile, China Keeps On Keeping On...
China's air force building 'offensive power projection capability' IMHO, China is pursuing all military means necessary to successfully invade and conquer and occupy Taiwan, including absolute defeat of any and all american forces which...
- Not Your Father's Cia
In the immediate post Vietnam era the CIA was the bogeyman who was responsible for the state of all banana 'republics', the backwardness of African nations, the deaths of everyone from Dag Hammerskold to Malcom X, purveyors of cocaine to americans...
- Japan: Six-party Talks On North Korea A Waste Of Time (duh) - Japan Stepping Up !
From Gertz, sub req, excerpted Tokyo does not believe that the six-party talks with North Korea will produce a breakthrough or even pause in Pyongyang’s covert uranium-enrichment program, according to Asian diplomatic sources. “Negotiations with North...