Time says arms sale to Taiwan is diplomatic slam-dunk for Bush

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Tuesday, April 24, 2001

Why Taiwan Arms Deal Is a Diplomatic Slam Dunk for Bush

By holding off on the hot-button Aegis anti-missile system, the White House both rearms Taiwan and placates Beijing — and keeps the leverage offered by the sale

BY TONY KARON

By playing it smart on Taiwan's request for the state-of-the-art Aegis anti-missile system, President George W. Bush has managed to sell the island a robust package of weapons without pushing Beijing over the edge. China reacted with predictable anger to Monday's reports that the President had OK'd a substantial weapons package to Taiwan, even though he'd nixed, for now, their request for the Aegis. But then China reacts angrily when the U.S. considers issuing a tourist visa to a former Taiwanese president; still, the fact remains that Beijing had drawn a line in the sand over the Aegis system, and Washington stopped short of crossing that line even as it moves to sell Taiwan four guided-missile destroyers, eight submarines, aircraft, missiles and other sophisticated weapons.

There had been fears during the Hainan spy-plane standoff that China's detention of a U.S. crew and aircraft would push the administration to stick it to Beijing by approving the Aegis sale — and 102 members of Congress had sent the administration an open letter urging that the sale proceed — but word from the White House had always been that Bush would not allow the incident to decide other key issues in relations with Beijing. The decision, administration sources indicated, would be based solely on Taiwan's defensive needs. From that point of view, a number of military experts had concluded that the island's military did not need the Aegis at this point, nor would it necessarily be able to absorb the sophisticated system. Even if the sale had been OK'd, the construction of the Aegis-equipped Arleigh Burke-class destroyers would take another eight years. So why rush? Instead, by deferring the sale for "a couple of years" and tying it to Beijing's deployment of medium-range missiles across the Taiwan Strait, Bush has retained the leverage afforded by the Aegis option.

While Beijing objects to any U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, it had made a diplomatic priority out of stopping the Aegis sale, even sending Vice Premier Qian Qichen to Washington to press the issue with President Bush. Approving the sale might have put President Jiang Zemin and other reformers who seek good relations with the West in an untenable position in their domestic power struggle against hard-liners who believe confrontation is inevitable, even possibly forcing them to find some way of retaliating that could further escalate China-U.S. tension. Having made Aegis the hot-button issue — partly out of a belief that it would enable Washington to include Taiwan under a missile shield — Beijing is likely to keep a lid on its unhappiness of the rest of the arms package. And if the Bush administration manages to re-equip the Taiwanese navy without provoking a showdown with Beijing, that's got to rank as a diplomatic slam dunk.

-- Aint's (shoe@repair.man), April 24, 2001

Answers

Boy howdy! Time-Warner Corporation, the biggest media conglomerate in the world echoes a press leak by a Republican administration that (just incidentally) praises itself as being really smart.

Stop the presses! I'm convinced! GW Bush is a boy genius! Lucky us to have such a great, pious, smart, humble, funny, brilliant Maximum Leader! We are truly blessed! Don't applaud, send money!

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), April 24, 2001.


Nipper:

Just out of curiosity, how would you have played it, if you were President? What would you have done better?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 24, 2001.


Flint, you missed my point. This may purport to be analysis and explanation. Instead, it is pure panegyric. If the reader were meant to believe that his or her own opinion mattered, it would have been couched in far different language. It would have taken a tone of persuasion rather than praise. This crap is aimed for the consumption of passive worshippers rather than active participants. All it is meant to do is to convince the loyal subjects that their monarch is taking good car of them.

And YES, it can stand being pointed out that the Clinton administration indulged in much the same nonsense. The only difference under Clinton was a minor reduction in the stridency of the praise and the fact that much of the media did not slavishly echo it, as now under Bush. I just cracked under the strain of believing Bush had any strong hand in forming this policy.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), April 24, 2001.


"I just cracked under the strain of believing Bush had any strong hand in forming this policy."

You cracked along time ago girl.

-- telling it (like@it.is), April 25, 2001.


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