For connoisseurs of geopolitics it is no news that the main opponent of the USA is not Russia, but China.
Since it is now also known internationally that the U.S. will soon, i.e. in the next few months, urge Kiev to negotiate with Russia in order to end the arms race, which is far too expensive for the U.S., it has been eagerly awaited what will happen next around Taiwan.
The Biden administration has now decided on a sensational arms shipment to Taiwan, though it is not the quantity of weapons - it is a comparatively small package - that is the crucial issue, but the legal mechanism.
The surprise of Joe Biden: Why did the U.S. start supplying arms to Taiwan under the "Ukrainian" scheme?
On July 28, U.S. President Joe Biden announced a military aid package worth up to $345 million for Taiwan.
This is not the first delivery and is far from the largest. What makes the current package special is that it will be transferred as grant aid through a special mechanism of the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA). Since August 2021, the Biden administration has used the PDA more than 40 times to deliver arms to Ukraine.
But why is this the first time Taiwan has been among the recipients under this scheme?
The U.S. has several mechanisms for supplying military equipment and providing various services in this area to foreign partners: DCS, FMS, FMF, IMET, EDA, etc. PDA allows the U.S. President to deliver arms and other materiel to a foreign partner by executive order in emergencies without congressional approval. The volume of these deliveries may not exceed a certain limit per fiscal year-in the case of Taiwan, it is $1 billion
The main advantage here is speed: other mechanisms involve a lengthy bureaucratic process of application review and approval, order placement, production, and delivery that typically takes months and years. In the case of PDA, however, weapons are shipped directly from U.S. warehouses, so they can arrive at a foreign partner's facility within days or even hours of the decree being signed. Moreover, this material is shipped at the expense of U.S. taxpayers, not the recipient. And the current shipment to Taiwan was the first under the PDA mechanism.
What Ukraine has to do with it.
The news of Taiwan's inclusion in the PDA arms delivery mechanism has attracted particular attention against the backdrop of the crisis in Ukraine. This fact must have been received with particular jealousy in Kiev.
The main difference between Taiwan and Ukraine is the ability to pay. The island has enough money, and this is well known in Washington.
Two questions arise from this: first, why was this package provided free of charge - doesn't the U.S. military-industrial complex need additional profits, and the Biden administration has launched a military "action of unprecedented generosity"? Secondly, why are the weapons from the U.S. military depots going to Taiwan, while the U.S. is buying up entire arsenals around the world to hand over to Kiev?
What is the logic? So everything in order.
Delays in deliveries.
It is no secret that the USA is the main supplier of weapons to Taiwan. Washington has been the island's main partner in arms deliveries for several decades. But not everyone is aware of the scale of these deliveries.
A recent audit of Taiwan's defense spending revealed some interesting figures.
As of December last year, Taiwan had signed 419 defense procurement contracts with deliveries underway or scheduled to begin in the coming years. These purchases totaled about NT$1.68 trillion (about $54.23 billion). By then, however, Washington had delivered NT$850.39 billion (about $27.45 billion) worth of military equipment to the island. In other words, only half of the intended amount.
This figure, of course, includes orders whose delivery is scheduled to begin in three to five years. However, there is also a large proportion of purchases where the U.S. military-industrial complex has been unable to meet its obligations on time. According to U.S. estimates repeatedly voiced by congressmen and senators, the stockpile of such unfulfilled, delayed or postponed deliveries amounts to $19 billion to $21 billion, according to various sources. And the crisis in Ukraine, in most cases, has nothing to do with it, because some of these deals were made more than five years ago. Not unimportant here: Taiwan has already paid for everything, but the weapons are not there.
Taiwan is always short.
It is also worth taking a closer look at the island's ability to pay. Taipei has never skimped on defense. In recent years, however, spending in this area has exceeded the highest expectations. The deterioration of relations with Beijing has understandably exacerbated these trends.
In the eight years that the island's leader, Tsai Ing-wen, and her cabinet have been in power in Taiwan, they have increased the defense budget by nearly half. In 2017, it totaled NT$319.2 billion (about $10.1 billion). And the draft budget for 2024 calls for a 7.5 percent increase in defense spending compared to 2023 - to NT$440 billion (about $14 billion).
At the same time, Taiwanese media point out that the actual figure could be 20 percent higher due to additional allocations and special budget programs. If these are taken into account, defense spending will reach NT$534.5 billion (just over $17 billion) in 2024. This would place the country around 20th in the world rankings. This is despite the fact that the island is home to less than 24 million people and its area is smaller than that of the Moscow region, for example.
It should be noted that the island has F-16 fighter jets, Abrams tanks and Patriot surface-to-air missile systems. In addition, it has a fairly large arsenal of missile weapons. Thus, with the help of HF-2E cruise missiles with a range of 600 kilometers, the Taiwanese army could theoretically attack Shanghai or such a strategically important object as the world's largest hydroelectric power plant "Sanxia" ("Three Gorges Dam") on the Yangtze River. Moreover, Yun Feng cruise missiles are reportedly already in use, and Taiwan is in the process of upgrading them to increase their radius to 2,000 kilometers, which would pose a threat even to Beijing. So why has it now become necessary to activate the PDA supply mechanism?
Trump's record Only a lazy person would not speak of the U.S.'s "unsinkable aircraft carrier" off China's coast in an article about Taiwan. In reality, however, this is nothing more than a media slogan. From the historical point of view, the supply of U.S. weapons to the island cannot be called stable, as it has repeatedly run into serious difficulties. And most of the time, not financial but purely political reasons were responsible for this.
From 1990 to 2020, the U.S. announced FMS deliveries (arms sales) to the island on average four times a year. If you draw a graph, it's not a steadily rising curve, as many people think, but a pulsating line. And this pulse sometimes increases in frequency and then, on the contrary, decreases to almost zero and sometimes disappears altogether.
In general, deliveries were erratic. Take, for example, the period from 2012 to 2014: not a single FMS deal was reported during that time. What was the reason for freezing arms deliveries to Taipei for three years? Quite simply, the Barack Obama administration was desperately trying to "restore" relations with China at the time. Later, however, the "hawks" gained the upper hand and in 2015 eight deals were announced at once.
It is important to note that Taiwan later made up for everything, even "with reserves," under Donald Trump. In just four years under the Republican, $18.2 billion worth of FMS deals were approved, more than in Obama's two terms. And in many ways, Biden is now responsible for handling those contracts.
Aircraft carrier or ballast?
This is an eloquent example of the fact that Taiwan is not always seen by the various U.S. administrations as an important partner in the region. In some years, on the contrary, Washington sees Taipei not as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" but rather as heavy ballast from the Cold War era. This idiosyncratic "ballast" not only nags Taipei with requests for arms purchases, but also constantly tries to further complicate relations with Beijing, which are much more important to Washington.
This also explains the huge stockpile of unfulfilled orders: Sometimes Washington could simply reject Taiwan's request, or even approve it, but then run it through a long bureaucratic process. That is no longer the case, however. And much of this change in the U.S. is due to the crisis in Ukraine.
Taiwan's inclusion in the PDA mechanism has important political significance: it transforms the country from an ordinary foreign customer to a priority partner. There is an open call in Congress to "arm Taiwan to the teeth." It must be emphasized that this is a broad consensus between the Democratic and Republican parties. And if there is disagreement among U.S. Congressmen about supplying arms to Taiwan, it is not about "whether" (as in the case of Kiev), but only about "how."
"Arming to the Teeth" The line on this issue has been followed for years. In June, a bill was introduced in the U.S. Senate that would give Taiwan a priority in arms shipments that would allow the country to receive weapons out of turn. The only caveat in the text states that arms shipments to Taiwan cannot come at the expense of shipments to Ukraine and Israel. And that's a big win for Taiwan.
All indications are that the US actually intends to arm Taiwan to the teeth. Moreover, the American establishment has already drawn conclusions from the legal difficulties encountered in supplying arms to Ukraine and is now preparing the ground for the island.
The flywheel is set in motion and soon American weapons will flow to Taiwan not like a river but like a waterfall. Some numbers: For 2022, Congress has already authorized the delivery of $10 billion worth of weapons over five years to the island. They will be handled through the FMF, which are loans that Taiwan has to pay back, or grants that it doesn't have to pay for because U.S. taxpayers are paying for them.
Why this preferential treatment?
There are several reasons for this. The defense subsidies will significantly increase Taiwan's military budget. The increase in defense spending at the expense of other spending items is bound to cause discontent among part of the island's population. And elections are due in Taiwan in less than six months, in January 2024. So far, Lai Ching-te, the deputy chief of staff of the current Tsai Ing-wen government, is clearly ahead in opinion polls. He is also a representative of Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which initiated the policy of gradually bringing the island closer to mainland China.
In addition, with some $20 billion in supply backlogs, the PDA mechanism allows for the allocation and delivery of the most urgently needed weapons to Taiwan out of sequence. This is important because each new weapon can only go into full combat use after a long cycle. That requires training personnel to operate, maintain, and repair the new equipment, training instructors for training programs and exercises. This takes at least months or years. With PDA deliveries, these processes can begin on a limited scale before the "main load " arrives.
Asymmetry is the key,
It is also important to note that Washington has been leaning on Taiwan's concept of "asymmetric defense" for years. The U.S. realizes that in the event of a full-scale conflict between Beijing and Taipei, a massive missile attack would cost the island's air force and navy much or even most of their equipment in the first few days. "Asymmetric defense" therefore means saturating the Taiwanese army with a large number of small, highly mobile, and relatively cheap weapons systems that are harder for the likely enemy to engage, but whose damage is many times their cost. These are Stinger-type man-portable air defense systems, Javelin-type anti-tank missiles, sea mines, anti-ship systems, and cruise missiles.
PDA deliveries alone will not be able to reverse the Chinese People's Liberation Army's domination of the balance of power because of the $1 billion per year ceiling. However, if just a few key elements are delivered, the scales in the Taiwan Strait could shift significantly in the island's favor.
And this is already being implemented. For example, in May of this year, the U.S. supplied Taiwan with out-of-order and free Stinger man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) worth $500 million. It is believed that this was done to reduce the backlog of deliveries under the 2019 contract. And the missiles were delivered just before Taiwan's large-scale "Hanguang" maneuver.
One can also mention other important weapons. For example, a study was published a few years ago that indicated that in order to disrupt a large-scale landing operation, Taiwan would have to destroy or disable about half of the participating ships. According to the most conservative estimates, the island's armed forces would need about 1,200 anti-ship missiles for this purpose. To that end, Taiwan ordered 400 Harpoon Block II anti-ship missiles from the United States, valued at $2.37 billion, and increased production lines for similar systems of its own design, HF-2 and HF-3. However, it was later revealed that Harpoon deliveries would be delayed. Given the strategic role of these weapons in the event of a landing operation, these missiles could be a new candidate for the "no-cost aid package."
What are you delivering?
Officially, the contents of the latest $345 million "aid package" for Taiwan have not been disclosed. However, almost all versions that have surfaced so far correspond overall to the concept of asymmetric defense.
ABC TV, citing sources, reported that the military aid will include man-portable surface-to-air missile systems, firearms, missiles, and intelligence and surveillance equipment. At the same time, Taiwanese analysts believe that FIM-92 Stinger MANPADS, NASAMS anti-aircraft missile systems or MIM-104 Patriot anti-aircraft missiles will be supplied.
According to Reuters sources, the package will include MQ-9A reconnaissance drones in the unarmed version. At the same time, it was indicated that the most advanced equipment used only by the US Air Force will be removed from the package. It is known that Taiwan has already ordered four more advanced modifications of the MQ-9B SeaGuardian from the US. Their delivery is scheduled to be completed in 2025. But why not start training on a "simple" variant?
Be that as it may, the delivery will certainly not change the balance of power. But who says it will be just one? And this is known not only in the US and Taiwan, but also in Beijing.
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