The Council on Foreign Relations says that Taiwan “is waiting on a significant backlog of weapon deliveries [from the United States] that defense experts say are urgently needed to deter China.” But despite this, and also despite the American and world betrayal of Taiwan in the 1970s, the support of the U.S. has been abundantly and variously manifest over the years (“U.S. Military Support for Taiwan in Five Charts,” September 25, 2024).
The article’s charts illustrate such facts as these:
● “Since 1950, the United States has sold Taiwan nearly $50 billion in defense equipment and services, with a number of large sales during recent U.S. administrations.”
● Taiwan received U.S. aid from the 1950s through 1979. But “in late 2022, Congress passed historic legislation enabling Taiwan to receive U.S. military aid once again….”
● The U.S. “maintains major military bases in both Japan and South Korea, which collectively host more than seventy-five thousand U.S. service members,” and Japan at least would be a likely ally of the U.S. and Taiwan in resisting a Chinese attack on Taiwan, for such an attack would pose “the starkest threat” to Japan’s security.
● Taiwan has received surface ships, fighter aircraft, tanks, missile defense systems, artillery, missiles, and drones from the U.S.
China has also been expanding its military repertoire and capabilities over the years. “But despite China’s advances, U.S. defense officials say it does not yet have the ability to carry out a successful amphibious assault on the island amid a U.S. military intervention on Taiwan’s behalf.”
In the wake of the Nixon-Carter turn against the ROC and toward the PRC during the 1970s, the U.S. is no longer committed to a mutual defense treaty with the ROC. So the situation is “strategically ambiguous.”
“In response to the historic reversal in policy, initiated by the Richard Nixon administration and executed by the Jimmy Carter administration, the U.S. Congress passed the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) to establish and codify the informal relationship. The TRA legally commits the United States to providing Taiwan with military support to maintain its self-defense capabilities. It also says the U.S. government will ‘consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means…of grave concern to the United States.’ However, it does not commit the United States to come to Taiwan’s defense if the island is attacked.”
