Taiwan is trying to buy 218 AMRAAM medium range air-to-air missiles and another 235 Maverick missiles at an estimated cost of $421 million.
"China is improving its military power and we treat that as a threat," Rear Adm. Wu Chi-fang, a Taiwanese Defense Ministry spokesman, said Saturday.
A statement on the proposed sale issued earlier this week said it would improve Taiwan's security and promote "political stability, military balance and economic progress in the region."
The Chinese government is protesting:
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said earlier that the proposed missile sale would "seriously violate" previous commitments made by Washington to reduce arms sales to Taiwan and be a "rude interference into China's internal affairs."
"The Chinese side hopes that the United States can definitively keep its promise to work with the Chinese side together and fight and contain Taiwan independence in order to maintain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait," Qin said.
Given my past concerns that Taiwan's military is too much of a Potemkin village that couldn't fight more than four days because of a lack of ammunition, this is a welcome piece of news. I hope it is a part of a general effort to increase the robustness of the existing Taiwanese military.
All the furor over the arms package in limbo since 2001 takes away attention from the fact that simple things like ammunition, hardening and dispersing existing assets, and training will have a bigger impact in the short run than the big arms package.
So I hope the State Department tells the Chinese government that we've certainly noted their disapproval. And that we'll let them know if we change our mind.
And then pass the ammunition.
