The Chinese Ministry of Defense stressed that the provocative actions of the United States in Taiwan will bring disaster to the island.
"The complicity and provocation of the United States and Taiwan will only push Taiwan into the ‘abyss of disasters’ and cause great harm to Taiwan citizens", Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Tan Kefei said in a statement carried by the media.
“The island of Taiwan has been turned into a ‘powder keg’ by the infusion of U.S. weaponry, pushing the Taiwanese people to the ‘abyss of disaster’. These are the words of the Chinese Defense Ministry in reaction to the recent $440 million sale of U.S. arms to the island. And now the U.S. is also giving, not selling, arms to Taiwan, courtesy of the American taxpayer.
Taiwan is but one in a series of islands along the Chinese coast, often called the First Island Chain, which now bristles with advanced U.S. weapons. These are accompanied by tens of thousands of supporting U.S. military personnel and combat troops.
The First Island Chain extends from Japan in the north southward through Japan’s Ryukyu Islands, which include Okinawa, to Taiwan and on to the northern Philippine. U.S. ally South Korea, with a military of 500,000 active-duty personnel and three million reserves, is a powerful adjunct to this chain. In U.S. military doctrine the First Island Chain is a base to ‘project power’ and restrict to China’s maritime access.
Taiwan is at the center this string of islands and is considered the focal point of America’s First Island Chain strategy. When the fiercely hawkish Cold Warrior John Foster Dulles, as U.S. secretary of state, conceived the strategy in 1951, he dubbed Taiwan America’s ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’.
Taiwan is now one source of contention between the U.S. and China. As is often said but rarely done, the pursuit of peace demands that we understand the point of view of those who are marked as our adversaries. And in China’s eyes, Taiwan and the rest of these armed isles look like both chain and noose.
How would the U.S. react in a similar circumstance? Cuba is about the same distance from the U.S. as the width of the Taiwan Strait that separates Taiwan from the mainland. Consider the recent U.S. reaction to rumors that China was setting up a listening post in Cuba. There was a bipartisan reaction of alarm in Congress and a bipartisan statement that such an installation is ‘unacceptable’.
Clearly the arming of Taiwan is provocative act that pushes the U.S. closer to war with China, a nuclear power”. -John Walsh, Asia Times
According to geopolitical researcher and writer Brian Berletic, “China’s economic and military rise means that as each year goes by, the U.S. is less and less able to hold any sort of advantage over China should it provoke a conflict either directly or by proxy”.
In any event, whenever the Chinese mainland finally decides to use force to unify itself with the island of Taiwan, there is seemingly no question that the United States will eventually have to abandon the Taiwanese in its combat against China.