from The Grayzone
Randall Schriver US defense secretary arms China Taiwan
How a key Pentagon official turned China policy over to arms industry and
Taiwan supporters
GARETH PORTER.OCTOBER 27, 2020
CHINA
The "Fortress Taiwan" arms deal overseen by ex-Assistant Secretary of
Defense Randall Schriver is one of the most provocative U.S. moves against
China in years - and a big win for his think tank's arms industry and
Taiwanese patrons.
When the United States finalized a set of seven arms sales packages to
Taiwan in August, including 66 upgraded F-16 fighter planes and longer-range
air-to-ground missiles that could hit sensitive targets on mainland China,
it shifted U.S. policy sharply toward a much more aggressive stance on the
geo-strategic island at the heart of military tensions between the United
States and China.
Branded "Fortress Taiwan" by the Pentagon, the ambitious arms deal was the
engineered by Randall Schriver, a veteran pro-Taiwan activist and anti-China
hardliner whose think tank had been financed by America's biggest arms
contractors and by the Taiwan government itself.
Since assuming the post of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and
Pacific Security Affairs in early 2018, Schriver has focused primarily on
granting his major arms company patrons the vaunted arms deals they had
sought for years.
The arms sales Schriver has overseen represent the most dangerous U.S.
escalation against China in years. The weapons systems will give Taiwan the
capability to strike Chinese military and civilian targets far inland, thus
emboldening those determined to push for independence from China. Although
no U.S. administration has committed Washington to defend Taiwan since it
normalized relations with China, the Pentagon is developing the weapons
systems and military strategy it would need for a full-scale war. If a
conflict breaks out, Taiwan is likely to be at its center.
Returning the favor to arms makers and Taiwanese government donors
Schriver is a longtime advocate of massive, highly provocative arms sales to
Taiwan who has advanced the demand that the territory be treated more like a
sovereign, independent state. His lobbying has been propelled by financial
support from major arms contractors and Taiwan through two institutional
bases: a consulting business and a "think tank" that also led the charge for
arms sales to U.S. allies in East Asia.
The first of these outfits was a consulting firm called Armitage
International, which Schriver founded in 2005 with Richard Armitage, a
senior Pentagon and State Department official in the Reagan and George W.
Bush administrations. Schriver had served as Armitage's Chief of Staff in
State Department and then as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East
Asian and Pacific Affairs. (Armitage, a lifelong Republican, recently
released a video endorsement of Joseph Biden for President).
As a partner in Armitage International, Schriver was paid consulting fees by
two major arms contractors - Boeing and Raytheon - both of which hoped to
obtain arms sales to Taiwan and other East Asian allies to compensate for
declining profits from Pentagon contracts.
Schriver started a second national security venture in 2008 as President and
CEO of a new lobbying front called The Project 2049 Institute, where
Armitage served as Chairman of the Board. The name of the new institution
referred to the date by which some anti-China hawks believed China intended
to achieve global domination.
From its inception, The Project 2049 Institute focused primarily on U.S.
military cooperation with Northeast Asian allies - and Taiwan in particular
- with an emphasis on selling them more and better U.S. arms. Schriver,
known as the Taiwan government's main ally in Washington, became the key
interlocutor for major U.S. arms makers looking to cash in potential markets
in Taiwan. He was able to solicit financial support for Institute from
Lockheed Martin, General Atomics, BAE and Raytheon, according to the
Institute's internet site, which provides no figures on the amounts given by
each prior to 2017.
Equally important, however, is the Project 2049 Institute's heavy dependence
on grants from the government of Taiwan. The most recent annual report of
the Institute shows that more than a third of its funding in 2017 came
either directly from the Taiwan government or a quasi-official organization
representing its national security institutions.
Project 2049 received a total of $280,000 from the Taiwan Ministry of
Defense and Taiwan's unofficial diplomatic office in Washington (TECRO) as
well as $60,000 from the "Prospect Foundation", whose officers are all
former top national security officials of Taiwan. Another $252,000 in
support for Schriver's Institute in 2017 came from the State Department, at
a time when it was taking an especially aggressive public anti-China line.
By creating a non-profit "think tank," Schriver and Armitage had found a way
to skirt rules aimed at minimizing conflicts of interest in the executive
branch. The Executive Order 13770 issued by President Donald Trump in early
2017 that was supposed to tighten further restrictions on conflicts of
interest barred Schriver from participation for a period of two years "in
any particular matter that is directly and substantially related to my
former employer or former clients.."
However, the financial support for Project 2049 from Boeing,
Lockheed-Martin, General Atomics, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, and from
Taiwanese official and quasi-official bodies were considered as outside that
prohibition, because they were not technically "clients."
Big wins for Schriver's corporate supporters and anti-China interests
Brought into the Pentagon at the beginning 2018 to push China policy toward
a more confrontational stance, Schriver spent 2018 and the first half of
2019 moving proposals for several major arms sales to Taiwan - including the
new F-16s and the air-to-ground missiles capable of hitting sensitive
targets in China - through inter-agency consultations. He secured White
House approval for the arms packages and Congress was informally notified in
August 2019, however, Congress was not notified of the decision until August
2020. That was because Trump was engaged in serious trade negotiations with
China and wanted to avoid unnecessary provocation to Beijing.
Lockheed Martin was the biggest corporate winner in the huge and expensive
suite of arms sales to Taiwan. It reaped the largest single package of the
series: a ten-year, $8 billion deal for which it was the "principle
contractor" to provide 66 of its own F-16 fighters to Taiwan, along with the
accompanying engines, radars and other electronic warfare equipment.
The seven major arms sales packages included big wins for other corporate
supporters as well: Boeing's AGM-84E Standoff Land Attack Missile (SLAM),
which could be fired by the F-16s and hit sensitive military and even
economic targets in China's Nanjing region, and sea surveillance drones from
General Atomics.
In February 2020, shortly after Schriver left the Pentagon, the Taiwanese
President Tsai Ing-wen received the lobbyist in her office in Taipei and
publicly thanked him for having "facilitated the sale of F-16V fighter jets
to Taiwan and attached great importance to the role and status of Taiwan in
the Indo-Pacific region." It was an extraordinary expression of a foreign
government's gratitude for a U.S. official's service to its interests.
Having delivered the goods for the big military contractors and the Taiwan
government, Schriver returned to the Project 2049 Institute, replacing
Armitage as chairman of the board.
Realizing the neocon PNAC's vision
The arms sales to Taiwan represented a signal victory for those who still
hoping to reverse the official U.S. acceptance the People's Republic of
China as the legitimate government of all of China. Ever since the 1982
U.S.-China Joint Communique, in which the United States vowed that had "no
intention of interfering in China's internal affairs or pursuing a policy of
"two China's" or "one China, one Taiwan", anti-China hardliners who opposed
that concession have insisted on making the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which
called for the United States to sell Taiwan such arms "as may be necessary
to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability" as
keystone of U.S. Taiwan policy.
The neoconservative Project for a New American Century (PNAC) led by William
Kristol and Robert Kagan wanted to go even further; it pushed for the United
States to restore its early Cold War commitment to defend Taiwan from any
Chinese military assault. Thus a 1999 PNAC statement called on the United
States to "declare unambiguously that it will come to Taiwan's defense in
the event of an attack or a blockade against Taiwan, including against the
offshore islands of Matsu and Kinmen."
After leaving the World Bank in 2008 amidst a scandal involving his
girlfriend, Paul Wolfowitz - the author of that 1999 statement on East Asia
- turned his attention to protecting Taiwan. Despite the absence of any
business interest he was known to have in Taiwan, Wolfowitz was chairman of
the board of the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council from 2008 to 2018. The Project
2049 Institute was a key member of the Council, along with all the major
arms companies hoping to make sales to Taiwan.
During the first days of Wolfowitz's chairmanship, the U.S.-China Business
Council published a lengthy study warning of a deteriorating air power
balance between China and Taiwan. The study was obviously written under the
auspices of one or more of the major arms companies who were members, but it
was attributed only to "the Council's membership" and to "several outside
experts" whom it did not name.
The study criticized both the Bush and Obama administrations for refusing to
provide the latest F-16 models to Taiwan, warning that U.S. forces would be
forced to defend the island directly if the jets were not immediately
supplied. It also called for providing Taiwan with land-attack cruise
missiles capable of hitting some of the most sensitive military and civilian
targets in the Nanjing province that lay opposite Taiwan.
The delicacy of the political-diplomatic situation regarding Taiwan's
status, and the reality of China's ability to reunify the country it chooses
to do so has deterred every administration since George H.W. Bush sold 150
F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan. That was, until Shriver's provocative "Fortress
Taiwan" sale went through.
The triumph of corporate and foreign interests in determining one of the
most consequential U.S. decisions regarding China is likely to bedevil U.S.
policy for years to come. At a moment when the Pentagon is pushing a
rearmament program based mainly on preparation for war with China, an
influential former official backed by arms industry and Taiwanese money has
helped set the stage for a potentially catastrophic confrontation.
