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Rep. Gallagher Says War Game Shows US Needs to Arm Taiwan ‘To the Teeth’

The House’s new committee on China conducted a simulation of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan with the think tank CNAS, by Dave DeCamp April 20, 2023  https://news.antiwar.com/2023/04/20/rep-gallagher-says-war-game-shows-us-needs-to-arm-taiwan-to-the-teeth/

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) has said that a congressional war game that simulated a Chinese invasion of Taiwan shows that the US must arm Taiwan “to the teeth.”

Gallagher is the head of the House’s new panel on China, which participated in the war game on Wednesday evening, a highly unusual move by members of Congress that demonstrates the US government is preparing for a future war with Beijing.

“We are well within the window of maximum danger for a Chinese Communist Party invasion of Taiwan, and yesterday’s war game stressed the need to take action to deter CCP aggression and arm Taiwan to the teeth before any crisis begins,” Gallagher said in a statement, according to Reuters

The war game was conducted with the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a hawkish think tank that receives funding from US arms makers and the Taiwanese government through the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, Taiwan’s de facto embassy.

A source close to the China committee told Reuters that the war game’s conclusions were that a US-China fight over Taiwan would result in high US losses, the depletion of long-range missiles, and would leave global markets in “absolute tatters.”

Gallagher and other China hawks insist increasing support for Taiwan will prevent a Chinese attack. But Beijing has only put Taiwan under more military pressure in response to the growing military and diplomatic ties between Washington and Taipei.

April 22, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized