The United States has announced a new weapons program for Taiwan worth US$345 million. In a article dedicated to this program, the agency to Reuters suggests that it aims to provide Taiwan with a "security support».
In reality, the transfer of arms from the United States to Taiwan constitutes a violation of Chinese sovereignty under international law, which recognizes Taiwan as an island province of China.
On his official website, the US State Department admits that “the United States does not have diplomatic relations with Taiwan" and "we do not support taiwan independence". Yet the continued support for Taiwanese political parties that aspire to independence, and the sending of US arms to Taiwan to support those aspirations, is a flagrant violation of the agreements Washington has reached with Beijing under the "China" policy. unique".
Washington's actions, which contravene both international law and its own agreements with Beijing, are a clear provocation against China and are the main driver of Chinese military expansion, especially domestically. and around the Taiwan Strait.
By violating China's sovereignty by sending arms to separatist elements in Taiwan, the United States is neither ensuring Taiwan's security nor supporting regional stability, as Washington often claims its presence in the region, thousands of miles off its own shores, is supposed to.
The very nature of these arms transfers is another factor that undermines Washington's claims that it provides "security" to Taiwan through these transfers.
to Reuters reports that:
Over the past few weeks, four sources have told to Reuters that the package should include four unarmed MQ-9A reconnaissance drones, but noted that their inclusion could fall through the cracks as officials work out the details of removing certain advanced equipment from the drones to which only the US Army American air is allowed access.
Even if the MQ-9A reconnaissance drones, also known as Reapers, included the most advanced technologies used by the United States Air Force, their usefulness in providing "security" to Taiwan would be, at best, questionable. The fact that the US is stripping them of features that maximize their capabilities further demonstrates the insincerity of US intentions to "secure" Taiwan through these arms shipments.
Western drone technology, notably the American Reaper drones as well as the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones, has proven ineffective in combat roles against peer or near-peer competitors, namely Russia, as seen in the fighting in Ukraine and Syria.
In the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, Russian Su-27 warplanes managed to shoot down an American Reaper over the Black Sea simply by dumping fuel in its path, compromising its propellers enough to drag its destruction, reported CNN in March.
Russian warplanes also challenged US Reaper drones flying illegally in Syrian airspace. The magazine Air & Space Forces published on July 27, 2023 an article titled “Russian fighter damages second MQ-9 over Syria". So what should the United States do now?
On July 26, two Russian fighters approached an MQ-9 and one launched flares, hitting and damaging the left wing of the aircraft in several places, according to US officials.
A similar incident a few days earlier also damaged an American MQ-9 Reaper.
Although US military commanders have insisted that they will continue to use the drones in Syrian airspace and "to show a certain will and a certain forcethe United States can do next to nothing to prevent Russian warplanes from disrupting and even shooting down American drones, short of escorting them with manned warplanes and firing on Russian planes.
Drones themselves are incredibly vulnerable to peer or near-peer nations like Russia, China, and even Iran, which has repeatedly disrupted and even hijacked some of the United States' most advanced drones.
The Bayraktar TB2 combat drone, manufactured in Turkey, has many similarities with American drones. Its use by Ukraine was hailed as a game-changing capability that would decimate Russian ground forces. A few months later, almost all of the Ukrainian TB2 drones were destroyed.
Russia's air defense capabilities, along with its vast modern aerospace forces, were more than sufficient to deal with the kind of drone warfare pioneered by the United States during its "war on terror." What had proven very effective against irregular forces in developing countries proved totally inadequate and vulnerable against the armed forces of a developed industrial power.
China's air defenses and warplanes are among the most advanced in the world. Some of their most successful systems have in fact been purchased from Russia, including the S-400 air defense system and the proven Sukhoi Su-35S fighter jets.
China is fully capable of disrupting, if not destroying, any MQ-9 Reaper drones Taiwan may acquire under this latest US weapons program, which begs the question of what the US thinks it is getting by sending these drones.
Other weapons systems that the United States has pledged to send to Taiwan in recent years include the Patriot air defense system, which has also been revealed to be vulnerable to modern cruise missiles, hypersonic missiles and drones, both in Saudi Arabia's conflict in Yemen and, more recently, in Ukraine. Besides its battlefield shortcomings, the United States is simply unable to manufacture the Patriot air defense systems (launchers, radars and command units) and interceptors it uses in sufficient numbers to support operations in a conflict, even on a moderate scale.
The qualitative and quantitative reality behind years of vaunted Western military hardware has been fully revealed on the battlefields of Yemen, Syria and Ukraine. Not only is Washington eager to provoke a similar conflict with China, but it seeks to do so through a proxy also armed with insufficient varieties and quantities of American weaponry.
The United States has sought to use Ukraine to “expand” Russia, as explained in a 2019 document by the RAND Corporation titled literally “Extending Russia Competing from Advantageous Ground". The idea was to continue to antagonize Russia, forcing it to expend resources, and thus undermine its socio-political and economic stability, in the same way the United States claims to have caused the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Clearly, US policymakers miscalculated. Russia's determination to prevent NATO's "flexibilization" of Ukraine and its economic and military ability to do so have proven far more formidable than the West had imagined.
China, with its much larger military, economy and industrial capacity, is certainly able to counter similar tactics used by the United States and its allies to undermine its sovereignty over Taiwan and use the island province in the part of a broader policy of encirclement of the United States. The fact that Washington is pursuing its current policy of encircling China despite the military means by which it seeks to do so, which have already proven insufficient against Russia in Ukraine, indicates a lack of options and, in a sense, growing desperation in Washington.
American foreign policy is centered on the singular pursuit of global primacy, although it is increasingly clear that the United States no longer possesses the military or economic means to achieve this. Will Washington continue to expend military, political and economic resources for diminishing returns in the face of a resurgent Russia and a rising China? Or will the United States finally abandon its increasingly unrealistic quest for global primacy and adopt a more rational policy of working with other countries rather than trying to impose itself on all other countries? ? If Washington does not make this decision now, others will do so in the near future.
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