US Should Send Message to CCP By Selling More Weapons to Taiwan: McConnell

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) speaks to reporters after a closed-door lunch meeting with Senate Republicans at the U.S. Capitol on May 24, 2022. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on May 24 that the United States should send a message to the Chinese Communist Party by selling more weapons to Taiwan and helping the Ukrainians win their war with Russia.

By helping the Ukrainians defeat Russia, he said, the United States could demonstrate to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping that asymmetrical warfare was possible, and that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would end in grave harm to the Chinese people.

Likewise, he said, by selling more and better weapons to Taiwan, the United States could better ensure that it could defend itself from CCP aggression.

“Number one, send a message to Xi by beating Putin in Ukraine,” McConnell said. “Number two, by selling to the Taiwanese the weapons they need to defend themselves if in fact they’re attacked.”

“The single most important thing we could do to send a message to the Chinese is to continue to help the Ukrainians defeat Putin,” McConnell said.

The CCP claims that Taiwan is a breakaway province that must be united with the mainland, although Taiwan has been self-governed since 1949 and has never been under Chinese communist control. The island maintains its own democratic government and its continued de facto independence is possibly the most contentious issue in Sino-American relations.

The United States does not recognize Taiwan as a country, but maintains robust relations with Taipei under the Taiwan Relations Act. The legislation requires Washington to supply the island with the military capabilities required to provide for its own self-defense.

To that end, China’s Xi has vowed to unite Taiwan with the mainland and has not ruled out the use of force to do so. Indeed, U.S. intelligence leaders believe that the CCP will launch an invasion of Taiwan by 2030 if it fails to otherwise coerce it into unification.

As such, many lawmakers such as McConnell have called for newer and more weapons to be sold to Taiwan in the hopes that the island government could effectively shield itself with so much weaponry as to be unassailable.

Others, however, have criticized the administration for having no real military strategy in place to contend with China in the event it actually does invade.

For his part, McConnell said that the United States needed to do more to help Taiwan help itself.

“My suggestion is to this administration: Sell to the Taiwanese the weapons they would need, that are appropriate for any potential Chinese invasion,” McConnell said. “And that is the single strongest thing we could do to help the Taiwanese just like we’re helping the Ukrainians defend themselves if, in fact, they’re attacked.”