TAIPEI — Weapons transfers to Taiwan from the United States likely will begin picking up in the coming months and years amid deepening concerns about China’s mounting threats to attack the self-governing island.
But U.S. and Taiwanese government officials still have multiple policy disagreements over what Taiwan’s defense strategy should be. That lack of alignment between Taipei and Washington is contributing to already long delays in Taiwan acquiring arms from the United States, which remains the only country in the world willing to risk China’s wrath by providing weapons to Taipei.
At the same time, some Taiwanese security experts feel Washington has for years been overly cautious and patronizing in trying to tell Taipei what its strategy should be toward China — especially while also still not definitively committing the United States to Taiwan’s defense, should China launch an invasion.
