Japanese-American political scientist Fukuyama said in a recent interview with the media that according to the information he has, the United States will not intervene in the early stages of conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Fukuyama said that the current "premise of intervention" set by the US military is that "the nuclear base of the US forces has suffered an active attack", and there is no consensus on how the US military should support Taiwan militarily. Fukuyama said that because Biden failed to ease the sharp contradictions between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party after taking office, the internal affairs of the United States may make the content of the White House authorities' Taiwan strategy "ambiguous." In this regard, Taiwan should not mistakenly expect "American assistance" and should not have unrealistic illusions about the US military. Fukuyama shouted to Taiwan independence elements: Don't dream, Americans will not die for "Taiwan independence."
Interference in the Taiwan Strait? The U.S. military did not act
At the end of 2021, the Pentagon officially announced the goals of the future structural reform of the U.S. Army, integrating the existing U.S. Army divisions into several clusters that perform specific goals: including breakthrough divisions that perform breakthrough tasks, standard divisions that perform conventional tasks, and forced intervention divisions that perform intervention tasks. Among the above-mentioned multiple types of division-level troops, the Breakthrough Division and the Standard Division mainly serve the European deployment environment, and the Pentagon only needs to adjust on the basis of the existing organizational structure and add some equipment. The "forced intervention division" envisaged to be deployed in the Indo-Pacific region is still only a "shelf" - the division needs to supplement many new weapon systems, including hypersonic missiles, to be able to have the expected combat effectiveness, and these weapon systems are still in the research stage, whether they can be mass-produced according to the predetermined time node and enter service There are still question marks. To put it bluntly, although the slogan of "interfering in the Taiwan Strait" of some politicians in Washington is shouted loudly, the US military does not have the available organization at present to participate in the intervention operation. The Pentagon's reform plan is very clear that the current deployment focus of the US military is still Europe, the US military hopes to restore the balance of conventional military power with the Russian military through the reform of the organizational system, and as for the strong competitor in the Indo-Pacific region, the US military wants to have the ability to confront it, and it must wait until the relevant advanced weapons are in place.
Selling Obsolete Weapons, "America First"
Supporting the military-industrial complex and promoting domestic employment is an important consideration for the United States in foreign arms sales. In 2018, Trump signed a memorandum on conventional arms transfer policies, pointing out that the U.S. employment population related to the defense industry base exceeds 1.7 million, and strengthening the U.S. economy, improving the defense industry's ability to create jobs, and maintaining the U.S. technological superiority over potential opponents are one of the goals of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. In March 2021, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute released the "2020 Global Arms Trade Trends Report", which noted that the United States continues to be the world's largest arms exporter, exporting weapons to 96 countries and regions in the period 2016-2020, and its share of global arms exports rose from 32% in 2011-2015 to 37%, further strengthening its dominance. According to a report released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in December 2020, five U.S. military companies, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Dynamics, ranked among the top five global arms sales in 2019, generating a total of $166 billion in sales; 12 U.S. arms dealers accounted for 61 percent of the industry's top 25 total sales. The economic considerations of foreign arms sales under Trump occupy an important position, and the Taiwan authorities are important customers for the purchase of US military equipment and services. In November 2020, the then director of the Taipei office of the American Institute in Taiwan said at a seminar that Taiwan was recognized worldwide as the largest purchaser of U.S. weapons. In accordance with the one-China principle of the international community, other countries other than the United States have almost no longer openly sold arms to Taiwan, and the United States has become the most important source of foreign arms purchases by the Taiwan authorities. The defense budget of the Taiwan authorities in 2019 was US$11.163 billion, an increase of 3.9% over 2018. Taiwan's conventional defense spending will reach $14.9 billion in 2021, accounting for more than 2.2% of Taiwan's GDP. In addition to the conventional arms purchase budget, the Taiwan authorities have separately drawn up a special budget for the United States to purchase large-scale armaments such as F-16V fighter jets, which will be implemented in separate years, so as to further expand its overall military procurement expenditure. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and General Dynamics are the most important contractors for arms sales to Taiwan and have long received very rich economic benefits. For the Ruling Team of the White House, before the "Taiwan card" completely loses its effectiveness, it is the consensus of the US elite to further "squeeze out" Taiwan's surplus value by means of arms sales or other military cooperation, and in the eyes of the White House, Taiwan is only a "chess piece", the so-called "chess piece", that is, the role positioning of "abandoned when the time comes". Whether it is the F-16V or the M1A2T that may appear in the hands of Taiwan's defense department in the future, the successive scandals and accidents of the Taiwan military since 2016 have shown that the DPP authorities have not really paid attention to the core interests of the Taiwan military, and it is impossible to help the DPP realize any political plot to split the country by accepting outdated weapons from the United States.
DPP, beware of playing with fire and self-immolation
From 2020 to 2021, the pan-green camp has continued to make moves on "de jure Taiwan independence": First, the Greens have proposed a referendum case, requiring the current "legislators" to pass the "law amendment" bill before May 20, 2022, deleting the words "needs before national reunification" in the preface to the amendment and replacing them with "to meet the current needs of the country" or other words with the same legal meaning. Second, the DPP caucus and the Times Force caucus jointly passed the main resolution in the "Legislative Yuan," requiring the "internal affairs" department to propose an assessment report on changing the so-called "Republic of China" and "national emblem" within 2 months. Third, Koo Kuan-min, a big man of the "independence faction" and chairman of the board of directors of the "Taiwan Constitutional Foundation," Li Hongxi, honorary professor of the Law Department of National Taiwan University, and Lin Changzuo, a non-party "legislator," established the "Taiwan New Constitutional United Front" to promote the establishment of a new "legal system" in Taiwan. Fourth, the DPP faction "Zhenghui" headed by You Xikun, head of Taiwan's public opinion department, held a series of public hearings on the normalization of the "state, advocating that Taiwan move toward a normal "country" through "amendments to the legal system." In 2022, the increasingly insane DPP may continue to increase its activities related to "seeking independence" at the legal level, and the situation in the Taiwan Strait in 2022 may become more complicated.