Financial Times reported Wednesday that the White House is expected to ask Congress to include military aid for Taiwan in the next spending bill to fund the war in Ukraine.
Citing people familiar with the plan, the report said the White House’s Office of Management and Budget is expected to submit a request to Congress for another “emergency” supplemental funding bill sometime this month, a type of spending not capped by the debt ceiling deal.
The White House will ask to include funds for Taiwan through Foreign Military Financing (FMF), a State Department program that gives foreign governments money to purchase US weapons. The 2023 National Defense Authorization Act included $2 billion in FMF for Taiwan, but the funds were not granted by congressional appropriators.
The news comes after the White House announced it was sending Taiwan a $345 million military aid package using the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which allows the US to send weapons directly from Pentagon stockpiles, the primary way the US has been arming Ukraine. The 2023 NDAA included $1 billion in PDA for Taiwan, and this marked the first time the Biden administration drew from the funds.
Both the PDA and FMF for Taiwan are unprecedented in the era of normalized relations between the US and China, which were established in 1979. Since then, the US has always sold weapons to Taiwan but never financed the purchases or provided them free of charge. From Beijing’s perspective, the new form of US support is extremely provocative, and Chinese government officials have issued several statements condemning the move.
According to Financial Times, including the Taiwan aid with the Ukraine spending bill could help win over support from Republicans who have opposed supporting the proxy war against Russia. Many Republicans who are against arming Ukraine say the US should be focused on arming Taiwan instead. “Adding supplemental funding for Taiwan will put some House Republicans in a more difficult position since many who oppose Ukraine funding remain in favor of supporting Taiwan,” Zack Cooper of the American Enterprise Institute told the paper.
It’s unclear how much the White House will request for Ukraine and Taiwan. At this point, Congress has authorized $113 billion in spending on the war in Ukraine, which includes military aid, economic assistance, money to replenish US stockpiles, and funding for US troop deployments in Eastern Europe.
Main photo: Taiwanese soldiers participate in a preparedness drill simulating defense against a Chinese military intrusion on Jan 11, 2023 © Daniel Ceng / AP.
Source: AntiWar.
