“It’s remarkable that a year and change after the pandemic started in China,I think the CCP feels more emboldened than they did before and the West is more divided,” Gallagher toldThe Sydney Morning HeraldandThe Age.
“We all need to send a signal that they can’t get away with it.”
The Wisconsin congressman pointed to Senate testimony by Admiral Philip Davidson,the outgoing commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command,in March that China could make a move on Taiwan within six years.
Davidson’s statement chimes with recent comments by Defence Minister Peter Dutton that a war with China cannot be discounted and Home Affairs SecretaryMike Pezzullo’s claim that the drums of war are beating in the region.
Gallagher,a member of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee,said the US and its allies should deploy more submarines,naval ships and intermediate-range missiles in the Indo-Pacific to convince Beijing it would lose any military dispute over Taiwan.
The China hawk also called on the Biden administration to end the decades-old American policy of “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan by formally pledging to defend the island in the case of a Chinese troop invasion.