The United States may be running out of time to defend Taiwan against a feared China invasion, columnist and lawyer Gordon Chang said Monday, in an interview on Newsmax's "John Bachman Now," adding defense support for Taiwan amid roiling protests in China has created "a critical situation."
"In general, there's been a lot of slow-walking by the Pentagon and prior administrations, including the Biden administration, of delivering arms in Taiwan," he said.
"But it's of course been made worse because we don't have enough [arms] and the Chinese can see this," he said, noting, however, the U.S. support of Ukraine "is a really important thing for us to do because it helps deter China."
"Nonetheless, that means that arms that were supposed to go to Taiwan are now in Eastern Europe," he said. "And because these protests can go on for quite a long time — because the Communist Party can suppress them, and then they'll bubble up — it means that [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping now has an incentive to create a missile misadventure abroad in order to distract the Chinese people to say, Look, we have a common enemy, there are foreigners, whether it's Taiwan and the United States, Japan, whatever."
"So this is going to be, I think a particularly sensitive and dangerous time for the United States," he warned.
Chang also lamented Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party's call for statehood and independence from China during an election cycle — the party suffered election losses over the weekend.
"When President [Tsai Ing-wen] made China and China relations the centerpiece of local elections, that probably wasn't very smart because in Taiwan, local elections are fought over local issues," Chang said.
"But you know the KMT [the Chinese Nationalist Party], the nationalists …want to have unification with the mainland. They don't really have the support to do that, because there is a growing consensus in Taiwan that Taiwan is independent," he added.
"And while they may vote KMT, [voters in Taiwan] do not want to become part of the People's Republic of China … it does show a failure of the Taiwan president to understand these elections in these municipalities."
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