“China is watching. They’re watching the US foreign policy when it comes to the war in Ukraine,” Stefanik told NTD’s “Capitol Report” program in a recent interview. “I think we need to be thinking very carefully about what that means for the future of Taiwan.”
Stefanik said the mistake President Joe Biden has made with regards to Ukraine should not be repeated.
“One of the lessons that—frankly, Republicans would have never let this happen, but Joe Biden let happen—was they didn’t get the weapons, munitions, in early enough to Ukraine,” she added.
“We need to be arming Taiwan now,” Stefanik said. “We need to be getting the support to Taiwan now, both as deterrence but also making sure that they are armed to self defend.”
Taiwan has been on a heightened state of alert since Russia launched a full-scale invasion against Ukraine on February 24, wary that China might make a similar military move to seize sovereignty of the self-governing island.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) claims that Taiwan is a part of the mainland and has never renounced the use of force to absorb the island. Internationally, Taiwan is widely recognized as a de facto independent state with its own military, constitution, and democratically-elected government officials.
Beijing may be tempted to attack Taiwan now, believing that Moscow would lend its support under their “no-limits” partnership, a new Sino–Russian alliance announced three weeks before the invasion of Ukraine. While Beijing has officially stuck with a “neutral” position between Russia and Ukraine, the regime has sided with Moscow on UN votes and amplified Russian justifications for the war.
Under the alliance, Russia has openly supported China’s claims for Taiwan. A joint communiqué announcing the partnership on February 04 said that Moscow “opposes any forms of independence of Taiwan.”
Admiral John Aquilino, Head of the US Indo–Pacific Command, shares Stefanik’s concerns about Taiwan. In an interview with the Financial Times on March 25, Aquilino said the lesson from the Russian invasion should be that a Chinese attack on Taiwan “could really happen.”
He said China has “increased maritime and air operations” in what he called a “pressure campaign” against Taiwan. He added, “We have to make sure we are prepared should any actions get taken.”
In recent years, China has repeatedly flown its military aircraft into the island’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ). On Feb. 24, the day Russia began attacking Ukraine, China sent nine military planes into the island’s ADIZ.
Since that day, similar sorties have happened on 18 different days, according to Taiwan’s defense ministry. The latest incursion happened on March 27, when three Chinese military planes, including two bombers, entered Taiwan’s southeast ADIZ, promoting the island to deploy its military aircraft and air defense missile systems in response.
In Taiwan, the majority of Taiwanese do not believe the island can fend off a Chinese invasion by itself. That belief was shared by 78 percent of 1,077 respondents polled, according to a Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation survey released on March 22.
When asked whether the United States would go into a war against China to defend Taiwan, only 34.5 percent of those surveyed said they believed Washington would, while 55.9 percent said the United States wouldn’t.
Washington and Taipei are currently not formal allies and the United States has maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity,” meaning that the United States is deliberately vague on the question of whether it would come to Taiwan’s defense.
Stefanik also criticized Biden for having not used “every tool at his disposal” to confront the CCP, taking exception to the president’s “no threats” remark on March 24 to characterize his phone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
At NATO headquarters in Brussels on Friday, Biden said he had a “straightforward conversation” with Xi. The president added that he did not threaten his Chinese counterpart but “[made] sure he understood the consequences of him helping Russia.”
“You are dealing with a China that is strengthening their ties to Russian President Vladmir Putin prior to the invasion,” Stefanik said, before calling Xi and Putin “authoritarian, blood-thirsty despots” who “see weakness in the United States.”
In mid-March, several media outlets, citing unnamed US officials, stated that Russia had requested military assistance and financial aid for its war in Ukraine, and Beijing had signaled a willingness to comply. The two nations have denied the allegations.
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