By Alexander Benard, Paul J. Leaf
As President Obama travels throughout Asia this week to revive his stalled pivot there, he should pay special attention to Taiwan—a country that, in recent years, has quietly but steadily drifted deeper into China’s orbit.
The U.S. military commitment to Taiwan has historically been strong. The Taiwan Relations Act, passed by Congress in 1979, requires the United States to provide Taiwan with weapons “to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.” In 1982, President Reagan made the “Six Assurances” to Taiwan, including that the United States would set no date for ceasing arms transfers to Taiwan and would not consult with China before making such sales. Since 1990, the United States has approved over $44 billion of arms sales to Taiwan. In 1996, President Clinton sent two aircraft-carrier groups to the Taiwan Strait after China test fired missiles there to intimidate Taiwanese voters before their presidential election. Departing from the “strategic ambiguity” that cloaked previous administrations’ positions on the issue, President Bush stated in 2001 that if China attacked Taiwan, he would order “whatever it took” to help the island defend itself.
Source: nationalinterest.org
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