The U.S. Arms Policy and Taiwan From the 1970's to the 1990's

Before Nixon decided to pursue normalization with China in 1971, the U.S. arms sales policy towards Taiwan was stable because of the Vietnam War effort and global containment strategy. U.S. pulled Taiwan into its global policy without much debate, given that choice for Taiwan was indeed limited and its economic strength as well as defense capability were relatively weak. With US recognition of the PRC a fait accompli, how to make the new relationships with China and Taiwan had engaged lawyers and diplomats beginning in 1972 and especially during 1978. From late 1970s on, the triangular struggle among U.S.-RPC-ROC outlined principal U.S. arms sales policy to Taiwan. This article briefly examines U.S. arms sales to Taiwan from late 1970s to early 1990s, in an attempt to explain its evolution and to understand how the U.S. successfully struck a balance out of its own global strategy and national interests. The first part discusses the layout of the legal framework of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, and stresses its ambiguity. The second and the third part explore how the arms sales evolved from Carter administration to G.H. Bush administration. The last part makes a conclusion on how U.S. arms sales to Taiwan have been successfully used as a policy instrument to serve U.S. global strategy and its national interests.

LEGAL FRAMEWORK AND STRATIGEIC AMBIGUITY ON ARMS SALES

On 16 December 1978, a joint Sino-US communiqué announced the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing as from 1 January 1979. The US agreed in the communiqué to break all official relations with the government of ROC and terminate the MDT, but also noted that ‘the people of the United States will maintain cultural, commercial, and oth...

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...es Gregor, Arming the Dragon: U.S. Security Ties with the People’s Republic of China (Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1987), pp. 99-100; Edwin K. Snyder, A. James Gregor and Maria Hsia Chang, The Taiwan Relations Act and the Defense of the Republic of China (Berkeley, CA: Institute of International Studies, 1980), pp. 68-69.

Aviation Week and Space Technology, (26 March 1979), p68.

Edwin K. Snyder, A. James Gregor and Maria Hsia Chang, The Taiwan Relations Act and the Defense of the Republic of China, p69.

Henry Kissinger, On China (New York: The Penguin Press, 2011), pp.411-412.

See Nancy Tucker, Strait Talk (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009),pp.169-179.

Nancy Tucker, Strait Talk (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009),pp.192

Øystein Tunsjø, US Taiwan Policy: Constructing the triangle (New York: Routledge, 2008), p81.