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David Ensor: Arms sales to Taiwan and U.S. – China relations
David Ensor is CNN's national security correspondent. Q: Do recent events with China affect U.S. thinking about arm sales to Taiwan? ENSOR: Officially, the Bush administration has said that it will make the decision about what arms to sell to Taiwan entirely independently of other issues; for example, the recent impasse over the surveillance plane. But there are plenty of people on Capitol Hill who are saying that this recent incident underscores for them the importance of selling a pretty robust package of new weaponry to Taiwan. There is a sense that there will be more votes for more weapons on Capitol Hill then there might have been before this impasse. The decision is the president’s. Given that the Republicans control both houses, his decision will probably stick. We journalists are hearing from officials that while the final decisions have not been made on quite a few of the specifics – which weapons specifically will be sold – that the administration is leaning towards quite a robust package and, in fact, they were leaning to that even before this incident. Q: Does an arms deal with Taiwan have the possibility of souring U.S.-China relations even further? ENSOR: China experts are predicting that what they expect will be a pretty large package of arms sales announced in less than two weeks time will indeed further sour the relationship between Beijing and Washington. There are even those that suggest that the relationship could really spiral downwards in the near term. There is actually a whole set of things on the calendar coming up that could cause friction between Washington and Beijing. First of all, the Taiwan military delegation is scheduled to come on April 24 and be told which weapons systems President Bush is agreeable to selling. So that is one that we have already talked about. But there is also an annual consideration of a resolution critical of China’s human rights record at the United Nations. That issue will come up soon. The U.S. has already said that it will co-sponsor a resolution against China’s human rights record. China will be watching closely to see whether the Bush administration lobbies hard for others to vote for it. Traditionally, the U.S. will co-sponsor and doesn’t do much about it and the thing fails. So that’s another potential friction point. Then there will be another vote that Congress must make on the subject of Chinese membership in the World Trade Organization. That will be a hot one, I think, because this recent surveillance plane incident will have turned some minds on Capitol Hill against voting for the WTO membership. Q: Can you tell us about some of the weapon systems scenarios under consideration? ENSOR: At the top of the shopping list that the Taiwanese submitted is the Aegis destroyer and missile defense system. Most analysts think they won’t get it. And they might, it is not clear. They are also asking for Kidd-class destroyers, for some sort of diesel electric submarines, for P-3 anti-submarine surveillance aircraft, for a version of the patriot missile batteries and for a lot of air-to-air and ground-to-air missiles. It’s the longest military shopping list that Taiwan has ever presented. And they are likely to get a lot of it. RELATED STORIES:
Bush takes 'tough' China stance as crew returns to U.S. RELATED SITES:
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