US Navy Aircraft Transits Taiwan Strait, China Responds

The U.S. Navy’s 7th fleet said a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft transited the Taiwan Strait on Tuesday.

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Around once a month, U.S. military ships or aircraft pass through or above the waterway that separates democratically governed Taiwan from China – missions that always anger Beijing. China claims sovereignty over the island of Taiwan and says it has jurisdiction over the strait. Taiwan and the United States dispute that, saying the strait is an international waterway.

Related:

The P-8 is a reconnaissance aircraft used for intelligence gathering. While the U.S. government claims that this is a “freedom of navigation operation,” China does not see it that way.  👇🏻

Impossible for China to accept US’ definition of freedom of navigation and overflight:

The US wants to use close-in reconnaissance to force China to accept its definition of freedom of navigation and overflight, which is absolutely impossible.

The U.S. government doesn’t have a defense agreement with Taiwan (a province of China, as recognized by the United Nations’ Resolution No. 2758). They’re not obligated to defend them if China retaliates against the U.S. government meddling in the Taiwan Strait. 👇🏻

Why Should We Care About America’s Indo-Pacific Allies?, May 10, 2024:

Well, I mean, it’s an important question. Let me tackle the bigger one first. And that is the United States has only five bilateral treaty, defense treaty alliances in the whole world.

And they’re all in the Indo-Pacific. That’s Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines and Thailand. Those are our only bilateral defense treaties in the whole wide world.

And we are obligated, those treaties obligate us to do certain things in case those countries are attacked. But each treaty stands on its own and each treaty is different. So I believe that our willingness to defend those countries and our willingness to extend our nuclear deterrence to some of those countries acts as a deterrent to aggression against those countries.

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We’re not obligated to defend Taiwan. What we are obligated to do is governed by the law and the law is the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act. We celebrate 45 years of that act this year.

Last month to be more precise in the timeframe. So I believe that we owe a debt of gratitude to the 96th Congress, the Congress that was serving in the 1979 timeframe. They looked to the future and they crafted the Taiwan Relations Act, which obligates the United States to do certain things for Taiwan’s defense.

But defending Taiwan is not one of those things, but it means that we sell them equipment that they need to defend themselves and the like. And it makes it clear intent that we want a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan PRC issue, a peaceful resolution across the Taiwan Strait. And that we are opposed to a forceful reunification against the Taiwanese people’s will.

And that’s kind of where we are with the law with regard to Taiwan. I believe that China’s intent all along, PRC’s intent all along has been crystal clear. They want Taiwan, which they view as a renegade province, to come back into the family, if you will.

And they want to do this peacefully, but they have been crystal clear they’ll do it by force if necessary. And Xi Jinping has directed his military, the People’s Liberation Army, and all its branches, the Air Force, the Navy, rocket forces and all that. He’s directed the PLA to be ready to take Taiwan back forcefully, militarily by 2027.

That’s the end of his third term. I’m not sure what third term means if you’re president for life, but that ends in 2027. So that’s also the Davidson window, if you will.

Admiral Davidson was my successor, and he said 2027, and that’s become known as the Davidson window. Phil didn’t mean to say that China, and he didn’t say actually that China would attack Taiwan in 2027. He said that’s the window, right?

But it’s been interpreted in the media that Phil said that it would happen in 2027. That’s not really what he said. But that’s where the 2027 thing comes from.

So China has been crystal clear with regard to what they’re going to do if it doesn’t happen peacefully. We, on the other hand, since 1979, we have had this policy of strategic clarity. Now I will tell you, in my opinion, that policy has served us well for the past 45 years, but I think it is time to change the policy because we’re facing a peer competitor, not a near-peer competitor, but a peer competitor in China.

And they have expressed clearly their intent. So here we are being ambiguous if we’re gonna defend Taiwan or not. That is no deterrent at all.

And so what I told the Senate, and I’ve said this before, is I believe that we have three constituencies that we owe clarity to them, whether we’re going to defend Taiwan or not. The first constituency is Taiwan itself. They ought to be able to understand if we’re gonna defend them or not so that they can then make the decision that falls out from that determination.

They can decide, if we are clear that we’re not gonna defend them, then they can make the decision to arm up or capitulate to China. The second constituency is the Chinese people. They need to know the cost of invading Taiwan or trying to take Taiwan by force.

Is the United States going to defend Taiwan? If the answer to that question is yes, they’re going to lose hundreds of thousands of troops in that fight and they ought to know that. And then they can then make the calculus whether it’s worth it or not.

But the most important constituency is the American people because it’s their daughters and sons that are going to do the fighting and some are going to do the dying if we fight China over Taiwan. Now, the American people bought into this during the Cold War of the Soviet Union. And so the women and men who joined up knew that they might have to fight the Soviet Union if the Soviets invaded Western Europe.

Their parents knew that that was a possibility for their children to fight and die in a hot war with the Soviet Union. But we don’t have that clarity with regard to China. They ought to be told that.

They ought to know that we’re gonna defend Taiwan, just as they know that we’re gonna defend NATO, we’re gonna defend Japan, we’re gonna defend South Korea, we’re gonna defend Australia and on and on. So that’s why I believe that this issue of strategic clarity versus strategic ambiguity is so important.