LAWMAKERS RETURN FROM TAIWAN EAGER TO SPEED ARMS DELIVERIES
They urge bolstering defenses against Chinese aggression
House lawmakers, returning from a pair of official trips to Taiwan aimed at bolstering ties with the selfgoverning island, called Wednesday for the U.S. government to speed up weapons deliveries to shore up the enclave’s defenses against China — and bemoaned that existing channels had not lived up to their potential.
“We have to prove that we’re willing to deliver,” said Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., chair of the House’s new select committee on China. He argued that Taiwan could not be expected to build defenses formidable enough to deter Beijing, which claims the island as its own, without the U.S. making good on a backlog of purchase orders worth almost $19 billion.
Gallagher was one of five House lawmakers who traveled to Taiwan during the congressional recess, meeting with top political, national security and business leaders to discuss how to enhance security and economic cooperation between Taipei and Washington.
Their trips proceeded without the levels of notoriety that surrounded Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit last summer, which became an international incident after Beijing objected to the trip by canceling diplomatic and military engagements and conducting military exercises. Yet they are significant as evidence of a growing willingness by lawmakers of both parties to travel to Taiwan to bolster its profile as U.S.-China tensions grow.
“The more that our colleagues visit, see Taiwan, the more they will understand the issues,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Fremont, who serves on the China panel and led a bipartisan delegation of lawmakers. Referring to the Chinese Communist Party, he said, “To say it is provocative is to accept the CCP narrative, and I just don’t think it’s true.”
Khanna and Gallagher returned from their separate but overlapping trips both intent on dispelling the idea that Taiwan is not ready to fight. Khanna said that although Taiwan’s preference would be to maintain the status quo of operating as a democratic self-governing entity even while China claims it, people in all the political parties lawmakers met with said “that they were committed to building up Taiwan’s defenses” to meet the threat of an invasion.
Khanna said he was pleasantly surprised by the “unanimity” he heard from competing parties in favor of the recent move to increase the mandatory minimum military service from four months to a year, while Gallagher applauded Taiwan for taking steps to bring its military spending up to 2.5 percent of its gross domestic product.
Instead, Gallagher blamed the U.S. for not taking faster steps to provide Taiwan the weapons it might need for battle — including systems critical to defending the island against an invasion from the sea, such as Harpoon anti-ship missiles.