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進入《TAIPEI TIMES》 Taiwan military needs more: US senator
US Senator Dan Sullivan speaks to reporters after giving his annual address to a joint session of the Alaska legislature in Juneau, Alaska, on Feb. 21, 2019. Photo: AP
By Liu Tzu-hsuan / Staff reporter
US Senator Dan Sullivan has called for more military support and harsher economic sanctions to deter China from invading Taiwan.
The Republican laid out a “three-layered approach” for the US to meet the “critical immediate needs to bolster deterrence in the Taiwan Strait” in an opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday.
The first layer is providing Taiwan with the necessary weapons to defend itself, he said.
Sullivan said that he has, for the past three months, been urging his colleagues to “significantly strengthen” the weapons systems provided to Taiwan, so that the nation can prevail in a cross-strait conflict.
In October, US President Joe Biden’s administration requested emergency supplemental funding to provide security assistance to the US’ allies and partners, including Taiwan.
However, Sullivan said that the US$5.4 billion, out of the nearly US$106 billion budget requested to deal with Beijing, was far from enough, as the Chinese Communist Party is undertaking “the largest peacetime military buildup in history with a clear goal of conquering Taiwan.”
Criticizing the budget, he said it was set because the US government did not want to “spoil the mood music” when Biden met Chinese President Xi Jinping （習近平） on the sidelines of the APEC summit in San Francisco last month.
The second layer of deterrence is the US’ capability to defend Taiwan if the US president decided to do so, Sullivan said.
The US’ military power “has proven decisive in keeping the Taiwanese people free over the decades,” he said, adding that it has been “eroded” by Biden’s budgets.
The third layer is ensuring China is aware that launching a military attack against Taiwan would be met with “debilitating economic, financial and energy sanctions,” which could be “the most powerful” deterrence measure, he said.
Together with US Representative Mike Gallagher, Sullivan introduced the Sanctions Targeting Aggressors of Neighboring Democracies with Taiwan Act in March, which would impose comprehensive economic and financial sanctions on China if the People’s Liberation Army or its proxies launched an invasion of Taiwan.
The bill failed to advance in US Senate or US House of Representatives.
Sullivan said a lesson from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that “sanctions have the best chance of deterring conflict when they are ready to go before the conflict begins.”
新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES
