U.S. support for Taiwan 'committed' but inadequate: expert

Taipei, Sept. 18 (CNA) The US-Taiwan Business Council (USTBC) said on Tuesday that Washington remains "committed" to Taiwan's security but hasn't done enough to support the "modernization" of the Taiwan's military in the face of evolving threats posed by China.

"The Biden Administration appears to remain committed to a steady cadence of Taiwan security assistance," USTBC President Rupert Hammond-Chambers was quoted as saying in a press release on Tuesday.

Speaking in response to an announcement by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) on Tuesday that the U.S. State Department had approved the sale of military goods and services to Taiwan worth around US$228 million, Rupert Hammond-Chambers said this continues a "consistent trend" over the last four years of the Biden Administration providing military equipment in "relatively small value tranches."

According to a press release from the DoD's Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the State Department "made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale" to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States for "return, repair, and reshipment of spare parts and related equipment."

Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense said on Tuesday that the goods and services -- the 16th Foreign Military Sale from the U.S. since 2020 -- will be useful for "maintaining the combat readiness and and safety of various types of aircraft equipment of our Air Force."

However, despite this assistance, the USTBC president said that American support for Taiwan's "force modernization" has been "on hold since 2020."

According to Hammond-Chambers, the U.S. has a "singular focus" on "bolstering Taiwan's defense against a kinetic D-Day style attack," but such an assault "is not the only challenge that the Taiwan military faces."

"The absence of U.S. support for other areas -- including grey zone, blockade, and quarantine scenarios -- is destabilizing over time," warned Hammond-Chambers.

"Meanwhile, China's force modernization continues apace."

The USBTC president also noted that the Biden Administration appears to "minimize the dollar value of each arms sale" in line with the administration's "global, non-escalatory approach" to conflict zones including Ukraine and Israel.

The approach "harks back to a pre-Trump era" when "greater than US$1 billion Taiwan arms sales were considered overly provocative toward Beijing and therefore to be avoided," he said.

Hammond-Chambers, who was elected president of USTBC in 2020 after joining the non-profit organization in 1994, has long since urged the U.S. to do more to boost Taiwan's defense preparedness.

In a 2022 article criticizing the U.S. policy of "strict strategic ambiguity" published by the Prospect Foundation, he urged the U.S. government to provide "at least some clarity on when and where the U.S. would be willing to step in," thereby enabling Taiwan to focus on "a narrower defensive ability" in expectation of the U.S. "filling the gaps" where needed.

Otherwise, in its attempt to annex Taiwan, China's military would be able to "focus on Taiwan's more narrowly scoped defensive stance" as the U.S. has seemed reluctant to sell Taiwan the full range of capabilities needed to deter China and defend itself on its own, he argued.