Sattahip Women Arrested for Playing Card Game Without Asking for Permission

[snoop1130]

U.S. State Department approves possible $2.2 billion arms sale to Taiwan

 

FILE PHOTO: Flags of Taiwan and U.S. are placed for a meeting between U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce speaks and with Su Chia-chyuan, President of the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, Taiwan March 27, 2018. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department has approved the possible sale to Taiwan of M1A2T Abrams tanks, Stinger missiles and related equipment at an estimated value of $2.2 billion, the Pentagon said on Monday, despite Chinese criticism of the deal.

 

China’s foreign ministry expressed anger about the sale and urged the United States to revoke it. The timing is especially sensitive as the Washington and Beijing are seeking to resolve a bitter trade war.

 

The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a statement the sale of the weapons requested by Taiwan, including 108 General Dynamics Corp (GD.N) M1A2T Abrams tanks and 250 Stinger missiles, would not alter the basic military balance in the region.

 

DSCA notified Congress on Monday of the possible arms sale, which it said could also include mounted machine guns, ammunition, Hercules armored vehicles for recovering inoperative tanks, heavy equipment transporters and related support.

 

Reuters reported last month that an informal notification of the proposed sale had been sent to the U.S. Congress.

 

The United States has no formal ties with self-ruled and democratic Taiwan but is bound by law to help provide it with the means to defend itself.

 

The United States is the main arms supplier to Taiwan, which China deems a wayward province. Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control.

 

Speaking in Beijing on Tuesday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said U.S. arms sales to Taiwan were a serious violation of international law and a “crude interference in China’s internal affairs, harming China’s sovereignty and security interests.”

 

“China is strongly dissatisfied and firmly opposed to this and has already made stern representations to the US side,” Geng told a daily news briefing.

 

“Taiwan is an inseparable part of China’s territory and nobody should underestimate the Chinese government’s and people’s firm determination to defend the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and oppose foreign interference.”

 

China urged the United States to immediately revoke the planned arms sale and end all contacts between the U.S. and Taiwan militaries to avoid further damage to Sino-U.S. ties and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, he added.

 

Taiwan’s Presidential Office expressed “sincere gratitude” to the U.S. government for the arms sale.

 

“Taiwan will speed up investment on defense and continue to deepen security ties with the United States and countries with similar ideas,” Chang Tun-han, a spokesman for Taiwan’s president, said in a statement.

 

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said in March that Washington was responding positively to Taipei’s requests for new arms sales to bolster its defenses in the face of pressure from China.

 

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry confirmed it had requested those weapons and that the request was proceeding normally.

 

The U.S. commitment to providing Taiwan with the weapons to defend itself helps Taipei’s military raise its combat abilities, consolidates the Taiwan-U.S. security partnership and ensures Taiwan’s security, the ministry said last month in a statement.

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-07-09

Follow Thaivisa on LINE for breaking Thailand news and visa info

[legend49]

If no country bought these war tools US economy is finished.

[wombat]

1 hour ago, legend49 said:

If no country bought these war tools US economy is finished.

without war capitalism fails.

[wombat]

China owns, by proxy, all the infrastructure required for Taiwan to function.
China can bring Taiwan to a grinding halt without firing a shot.
 

[Morch]

1 hour ago, legend49 said:

If no country bought these war tools US economy is finished.

 

Them alternative facts at work.

http://www.worldstopexports.com/united-states-top-10-exports/

[ballpoint]

I wonder why a small island like Taiwan needs 108 Abrams tanks?  Are they planning their own independence day parade?

[Morch]

2 minutes ago, ballpoint said:

I wonder why a small island like Taiwan needs 108 Abrams tanks?  Are they planning their own independence day parade?

 

It's not really that small. And guess the military purpose would be defense against invasion. Not that tanks (or anything else, for that matter) would impede the PRC much if it wished to do so.

[expatfromwyoming]

1 hour ago, ballpoint said:

I wonder why a small island like Taiwan needs 108 Abrams tanks?  Are they planning their own independence day parade?

Taiwan is bigger than Delaware and Maryland combined or about the size of the Netherlands. 

[ballpoint]

Just now, expatfromwyoming said:

Taiwan is bigger than Delaware and Maryland combined or about the size of the Netherlands. 

It's still an island though.  They can't take a land battle to the enemy, and, if things ever got to the point of ground based fighting in Taiwan, they would have already lost.

[alex8912]

7 minutes ago, expatfromwyoming said:

Taiwan is bigger than Delaware and Maryland combined or about the size of the Netherlands. 

Exactly extremely small. 

[727Sky]

Like other Taiwanese if I lived there I would fight to the death before I surrendered and was placed under the yoke of the Communist Chinese.

 

Off topic, but, even Hong Kong knows better than to let the Communist extradite people with a dissenting voice if their 2 million strong protest is any sign.. Involuntary organ harvesting and the reeducation camps where an estimated couple of million are indentured slaves or worse should be enough for most countries to say, "No thank you" to the communist idea of a totally controlled society !

 

I bet China and their territorial war hawks are besides themselves with angst and are severely pissed. They have been doing war games of a full blown invasion of Taiwan for as long as I have been alive. Ooops back to the planning board.

 

https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2019/july/terrifying-footage-shows-thousands-of-religious-minorities-held-in-chinese-thought-transformation-camps-i-love-the-communist-party

Quote

But when the BBC journalist asks questions of those held, they espouse scripted, almost robotic answers.

“Is it your choice to be here?” one man was asked. “Yes,” he replied, without hesitation. “A policeman at my village told me to get enrolled in the school and transform my thoughts.”

As interviews are conducted by a heavily-screened group of journalists, Chinese government agents watch on.

 

Edited July 10, 2019 by 727Sky

[zydeco]

Why is the PRC so worried? After all Xi has been boasting about all his hypersonic this and that, rail guns, lasers, better than the average bear stealth aircraft, nuclear powered ice breakers, etc. A few tanks should be an easy take down for the Napoleon of Asia.

[Srikcir]

19 hours ago, snoop1130 said:

M1A2T Abrams tanks

The M1A2T is a special configuration variant that specifically caters to Taiwan, while the letter “T” designates “Taiwan.” https://chinapost.nownews.com/20190710-629729

 

Typically tanks are strategic tools used to advance or interdict military power. So it's no surprise that Egypt, Israel, Kuwait, Morocco and Saudi Arabia have the M1A2 that can cover substantial land areas as an offense weapons. For Taiwan it's easy to understand its purchase of 1,240 Raytheon BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missiles, 409 Raytheon-Lockheed Martin FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missiles, and 250 Raytheon FIM-92 stinger surface-to-air missiles.  https://www.theepochtimes.com/taiwan-confirms-new-us-arms-sales-of-missiles-and-tanks_2953718.html

There comes then the question of why the small island of Taiwan noted for its mountains and coastal wetlands would want the M1A2 tank? It's like a battleship and you don't park a battleship in a harbor to defend a city. It become in essence a fixed bunker. You "put it out to sea" but there is no "sea" of land figuratively speaking in Taiwan. Unlike regions where the M1A1/2 has actually operated such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

Chief of Staff of the Republic of China Army Lt. Gen. Yang Hai-ming says the firepower, command and control characteristics of the Abrams tank are keys to boosting the island’s ground defense capabilities.  https://chinapost.nownews.com/20190710-629729

 

Part of successful warfare is psychology. Maybe Taiwan military strategy is both pro and con San Tzu psychology:

• Pro - “Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate.”
• Con - “Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”

It appears that Taiwan's well advertised purchase of the M1A2 falls under the "pro" strategy approach. Regardless of the M1A2's warfare effectiveness in Taiwan, the CCP has broadcasted its expectations of Taiwan's defenses and likely to coordinate any invasion accordingly. Which might be put to Taiwan's advantage. Taiwan's purchase of the M1A2 might be mostly an expensive diversion and a means to attract a concentration of Chinese firepower that might better be applied strategically.

 

[Morch]

Kuwait is about half the size of Taiwan, and got 200 of these.