USA: A list of recommendations from American lawmakers on how Washington should "arm Taiwan to the teeth" against any potential attacks from Beijing has been published. The recommendations call for increased US weapon sales to the island as well as long-range missile deployments in the region.
This week, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party published a lengthy report outlining ideas for steps to stop Beijing's "aggressive behaviour" towards Taipei, which included a 10-item "blueprint for Congressional action."
The list, which highlights weaknesses in the US industrial base, calls for "additional long-range missiles and unmanned vehicles in the Indo-Pacific region," in the hopes that producers will be able to "quickly produce the needed numbers" in the event of an attack.
The document stated that US forces assisting the island "ran out of critical munitions and ran low on all precision-guided missiles within a week" during a tabletop exercise overseen by the committee last month to simulate a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
The action plan also called for greater military coordination and "collective planning" between Washington and Taipei, as well as more joint training exercises to "bolster deterrence."
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The lawmakers continued by stating that given the backlog of $19 billion worth of arms deals, Taiwan "urgently needs key US weapons systems" that Congress has already authorised for sale. They advised the Pentagon to apply the lessons it learned from transferring weapons to Ukraine to the island.
The House China committee and the hawkish Centre for a New American Security (CNAS) thinktank held wargames in April that, in the words of the committee's Republican chairman, Mike Gallagher, produced a "terrifying... deterrence failure" for US forces.
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The United States, according to Gallagher, must "arm Taiwan to the teeth right now" if it wants to have any chance of "stopping World War III."