Senate panel approves Taiwan invoice after diluting some provisions
The majority of the invoice’s different safety help provisions have been left unchanged, although some descriptive wording was altered. For instance, an authentic authorization for the president to determine a “battle reserve stockpile for Taiwan” was modified to turn out to be a “regional contingency stockpile for Taiwan.”
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who finally voted for the invoice, mentioned he nervous the impact of the measure can be to implicitly undermine the long-standing U.S. coverage of strategic ambiguity, whereby Washington leaves it unclear how it might reply within the occasion of a Chinese language assault on Taiwan.
Romney mentioned it might have been higher to attempt to go the safety help provisions in a lower-profile method, comparable to by attaching them to Congress’ annual must-pass protection authorization invoice.
“We’re doing one thing that’s extremely provocative and bellicose,” he mentioned. “I hope it doesn’t make China say, ‘Nicely, gosh, Taiwan goes to get stronger, perhaps we ought to maneuver now.’ I’m simply very pissed off that we, as a committee, determined to place an enormous highlight on a Taiwan Coverage Act. This could have been achieved quietly.”
Generally, many of the criticisms of the invoice got here from progressive Democrats, although not less than two Republicans — Romney and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky — additionally voiced worries. Many of the considerations centered round how China would view the invoice and if Beijing concluded the invoice would do an excessive amount of to strengthen Taiwan’s defenses, whether or not it would find yourself backfiring by inflicting Chinese language President Xi Jinping to hurry up his feared timetable for launching an invasion.
