Provisions to bolster Taiwan’s defense capacity and deter the ambitions of China are included in the compromise version of the National Defense Authorization Act for the fiscal year 2023, submitted by the House and Senate armed services committees on Tuesday.
Beijing says the island is part of Chinese territory but Taipei rejects the sovereignty claims. The uneasy status quo across the Taiwan Strait has held for decades, but lawmakers in Washington and Taipei fear Xi Jinping, China’s president, may be willing to risk a military adventure.
Under a section named the Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act, the legislation authorizes $2 billion in grants and loans annually for Taiwan over the next five years, funds the island can use to purchase defensive arms and services from the United States. The assistance is contingent on Taipei increasing its own defense budget year-on-year.
The act also authorizes $1 billion a year to deliver U.S. military stockpiles to Taiwan in a crisis.
Lawmakers in Taipei say 2023 to 2027 is a critical window in which Taiwan expects some of its modern military platforms to come online. It’s also a make-or-break period for the island’s slow transition to so-called asymmetric defense, through the procurement of cheaper, highly mobile and lethal systems to counter the numerical advantage of China’s forces.
The Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act was introduced earlier this year as the Taiwan Policy Act. Authored by Sen. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, the original bill drew concerns from the White House for symbolic elements that would have upgraded official U.S.-Taiwan political ties.
The substantive security assistance was later folded into the defense authorization legislation, setting up Congress’ most significant material support for Taiwan in decades.
“This national defense bill will be one of the most consequential in years not only for its support of our servicemembers, but for setting the theater for real deterrence by implementing a more resilient strategy for Taiwan should China continue pursuing a collision course toward war,” said Menendez, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a statement on its website.
“The China challenge has become the most significant national security issue our nation has faced in a generation,” he added. “This legislation will clarify in even starker terms the reality of the U.S.-Taiwan relationship: Taiwan’s democracy remains the beating heart to our Indo-Pacific strategy, and the depth and strength of our commitment to the people of Taiwan is stronger than ever.”
The National Defense Authorization Act authorizes spending of $857.9 billion next year. Among the non-security elements related to Taiwan, it asks the administration to help counter Chinese disinformation and back Taipei’s participation in international organizations.
The U.S.-Taiwan security relationship, which dates back to the early days of the Cold War, no longer includes a security guarantee. The White House has walked back each of Biden’s pledges to defend the island with American troops.
However, senior White House officials have committed to supporting Taiwan’s self-defense in keeping with provisions of the Taiwan Relations Act, which the president backed as a senator in 1979. The U.S. law authorizes the sale of weapons to Taipei to sustain the island’s armed forces.
Late on Tuesday, the Defense Department notified Congress of arms sales to Taiwan totaling $428 million. The deals were for aircraft parts to support Taiwan’s ageing air force, which fields American-made F-16 fighter jets and C-130 transport planes in addition to indigenous platforms.
Taiwan’s defense ministry thanked the U.S. and said it expected the sales to take effect in one month. “These spare parts will help keep our aircraft in top shape,” Hsiao Bi-khim, Taiwan’s de facto ambassador in Washington, said in a tweet.
Beijing, which objects to every arms deal between Washington and Taipei, said through a spokesperson on Thursday that the latest sales “undermine China’s sovereignty and security interests, harm peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and send a wrong signal to ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces.”
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