Last week, the US Senate passed the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, which included several types of support for Taiwan. TaiwanPlus spoke to Liu Fu-kuo from National Chengchi University in Taipei for more on what this means for US-Taiwan defense relations.
00:00Based on what is currently available, what are the primary differences between the Senate and the House version of this year's NDAA?
00:07The Senate basically has proposed to invite Taiwan to be part of RIMPAC 2026.
00:18So this may be the major differences between the House and also between the Senate.
00:26And I consider during the discussion and debate back in September, the House actually proposed through these Republican congressmen proposed to cut off the military assistance to Ukraine as well as Taiwan.
00:49But this proposal altogether was rejected.
00:53Do you expect the Taiwan-related parts of the NDA to make it through negotiations without meaningful changes?
00:58There has been a lot of discussion over the last few years.
01:03But because this is really in between the White House and Chinese government,
01:11So this actually shows very strong political gestures.
01:17Of course, for Taiwanese, we just hope that there would be possibilities to be invited to RIMPAC.
01:26If it were to happen, what would Taiwan's participation in the RIMPAC naval exercise mean?
01:31If Taiwan would be able to be invited to RIMPAC, it would actually lift up the level of such coordination just among our Air Force and the Navy, but also in time of difficulty.
01:48I'm not saying in time of conflict, Taiwan would be able to quickly connect with our airlines and friends in the region.
01:58So from my professional perspective, this is all the more important to strengthen ROC Navy as well as ROC Air Force.
02:10But of course, there is an extra political implication.
02:16What is something that you're monitoring in this year's NDA that you think is important for the future of US-Taiwan collaboration and engagement on these issues?
02:24From those proposals released by the media, at least through this defense industrial collaboration, since Taiwan is standing at the center of a global supply chain.
02:43And this is all the more important, not just for business, but also connecting with this defense industry collaboration.
02:54I thought through the discussion proposed by the Senate, this would be very different from the previous years.
03:04And that would have such a long term effect to facilitate, deepen the relations between the US and Taiwan, especially not just technology, but also more defense industry.
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