THE GREEN BEE

Jeffrey Lewis 0:02

Do you think we were laundering missiles? You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk Podcast, the leading podcast on arms control disarmament and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog, and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Scott LaFoy 0:23

And I am Scott LaFoy, master's student at the Georgetown University Center for Security Studies in Washington, D.C., and producer at the Arms Control Wonk Podcast.

Jeffrey 0:32

Super producer of the Arms Control Wong podcast. We're in a good mood because even though Aaron is still out and not with us, that family situation looks like it's going to get better. So we can say Aaron's still not here. He's dealing with a family situation, but it's cool. And I thought we would talk about arms sales to Taiwan.

You want to talk about arms sales to Taiwan with me, Scott?

Scott 0:55

I am so excited to talk about arms sales to Taiwan.

Jeffrey 0:59

This is not... Really a podcast about Donald Trump, but it is inspired by the discussion that has grown up around Donald Trump's phone call to the what he said was the president of Taiwan. One of the things that happened when Trump took the call from the president of Taiwan is there was a natural reaction that this was really going to upset China because this is not something that presidents or president-elects do because we don't recognize the government on Taiwan.

We have a variety of unofficial contacts that – Replicate an official relationship, but there are these important barriers. And Trump crossed one. And as he was criticized for that, one of Trump's defenses was, look, we sell billions of dollars of weapons to Taiwan. How can a little phone call be a big deal when we have these much more substantial arms sales?

And while It is true we sell arms sales to Taiwan, I think the argument back was, well, the phone call part is unprecedented, arms sales are not. And that just happened to correspond with my own research, because I've been looking into the very early history of arms sales to Taiwan in the period between the first contacts with the People's Republic of China and And the change in diplomatic recognition.

And it's a really fascinating period that touches on Taiwan's early interest in nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. So, Scott, do you want to talk about that?

Scott 2:38

I absolutely do.

Jeffrey 2:39

That's great, because if not, I would have to hang up on you. Well, I don't know, Scott, do you think that that's a I mean, is that a fair introduction to the situation?

Scott 2:50

I think that's a fair introduction. Donald Trump's tweets have generated a lot of controversy. Like you said, this is an unprecedented sort of political announcement that touches some very particularly sensitive buttons in a very sensitive area right now.

Jeffrey 3:06

So one of the things that I noticed in the conversation is there is this kind of basic factual knowledge I realize I'm complaining that our contemporary political discourse is not grounded in factual knowledge, which is at this point kind of a commonplace objection. But when I went to school, we learned the three communiques. Did you learn the three communiques, Scott?

Scott 3:33

I did. Chinese history class.

Jeffrey 3:35

It's like the basis of our relationship is that we have these three communiques, right? So we've got the first communique that, well, I don't know how you would describe it. It's the famous communique. It's the Shanghai communique. I guess that's where the one China policy comes from.

Scott 3:54

Right. And that's where President Nixon and Mao Zedong met, I believe, to work it out. Right.

Jeffrey 3:59

It's this kind of fascinating moment because what we agree is that there's one China. And in 1972, at least, we don't agree about which of the two governments claiming to be the government of China is the right one. Right. Right. But Mao is satisfied. Right. Mao is satisfied basically with the idea that we have agreed in principle that there's one China and we are satisfied that this is an issue for the people of that one China to decide.

You know what I love about this document, Scott, is that it's not an agreement. It is like the Chinese side says and the U.S. side says and the Chinese side and the U.S. side are not really trying to like paper over their differences. Right.

Scott 4:48

No, it's sort of finding the, like, most base of baselines that everyone can agree on and sort of ignoring any nuanced discussion past that. Yeah. And just kicking that down the road.

Jeffrey 5:03

In a way, though, I actually think it's kind of admirable because I think we often imagine that when you have these really difficult situations, you paper over something with words, right? And this doesn't really paper over it. I mean, it sort of says, look, we have these two really different approaches. And so we have a really serious set of problems.

And instead of papering over those problems, they find the slenderest area of agreement. They find the tiniest little bit of terra firma. And on that tiny little bit, then we're able to build everything, including the next two communiques. So then the second communique is from 1979, and that establishes diplomatic relations. Right. And then the third communique, which I want to talk about, which I guess I am now told it is called the August 17th communique, but I have always heard the 1982 communique called the arms sales communique.

Scott 6:02

I think I learned it as the August 17th, but I mean, that's pretty much interchangeable. That certainly describes it very well.

Jeffrey 6:08

Well, but do you think that, did that change? I mean, am I learning that I'm old? I am old. What year did you graduate college? Yeah, see, that hurts me.

Scott 6:19

Yeah, the listeners don't need to know that.

Jeffrey 6:22

You can delete that if you want. I graduated college in 1997? 1997? Yeah. And so I learned that it was the arms sales communique because from the get-go, right, the big question, and this is what we're going to dedicate the podcast to talking about, the United States was opening relations with China and then eventually ending official relations with Taiwan, but we were not prepared to throw Taiwan to the wolves.

And so throughout that entire period, we sold arms to the Taiwanese. And that made the Chinese really angry. And they sought to address that in a communique in 1982. And they got a very interesting commitment out of old Al Haig. So they got the United States to say, and this is still an issue of dispute, we'll talk about that, that the United States does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan.

That its arms sales to Taiwan will not exceed either in qualitative or quantitative terms the level of those supplied in recent years. And that it intends to reduce gradually its sale of arms to Taiwan, leading over a period of time to a final resolution.

Scott 7:44

So how'd that work out? Yeah, I assume that means they were selling $10 billion worth of Patriot missile batteries to them back in the 70s as well. Yeah, that's right.

Jeffrey 7:56

Yeah.

Scott 7:58

Didn't really stick to that one. And implicit within, we were talking a little off pods. Some people claim that implicit within that agreement was the linkage of the reduction of arms sales to the reduction of tensions.

Jeffrey 8:16

Right. But... So the Reagan administration almost immediately, particularly once the communique was announced, the Reagan administration came under attack from its conservative allies. I actually think quite rightly. I mean, this was a heck of a commitment to make, right? Right. And Reagan in interviews made the argument that this is all premised on a reduction of tensions, which is not what the agreement says.

But it's what Reagan thought. And I have often thought of this as a really nice illustration of a broader principle in negotiations, which is I think Al Haig, who in some very scary ways reminds me of General Flynn. We could talk about Al Haig, but I'm pretty sure that General Flynn is going to end up like General Haig, which is to say on paid programming on airplanes selling gold to crazy people.

Yeah. I think this is where this story ends. But Haig really wanted this deal with the Chinese. And he was willing to tell them what they wanted to hear. And I kind of blame the Chinese because this, I think, is a classic problem. Negotiators are imagining that they really matter, right? And that the agreement that they get, you know, is their skill as a negotiator.

Other voice 9:35

But if you swindle another country, the other country is just not going to follow through.

Jeffrey 9:42

Right. And I think that's what happened is they they found in Hague someone who was willing to tell them what they wanted to hear. They thought, oh, we're getting this amazing deal. You know, they get it on paper and they're elated. And, you know, the problem is nobody bothered to check with the president. And the president just reinterpreted it.

And, you know, we have the last. 30 years of arm sales now. So, you know, let that be a warning kids, right? Like I always hear people say like, oh, we should have got a better deal. Like sometimes you don't want a better deal. Like you don't want a deal that's too good to be true because it's not true.

Scott 10:15

So then let's move on to talk about Taiwan, who then pursued their own domestic surface-to-surface offensive ballistic missile systems. Much in the similar vein, though not the same, as other East Asian ally in a similar political situation, South Korea.

Jeffrey 10:34

Yeah, Asia in the 70s is cool and weird. I mean, so I actually teach... A couple of South Korea and Taiwan units in my class on U.S. nuclear decision-making in Asia. And so, right, you have these two governments that are not democratic at all and that don't treat their citizens very well. And so it's a political problem for the United States.

And... It's not entirely clear that they're going to make it. It's not like today where South Korea is way richer than North Korea. It's really unclear whether Taiwan and South Korea are going to exist in another 10 or 20 years. They are our allies. We don't want to let the communists take them over, but we also don't adore them.

And they want to be armed to the teeth, but that means we have to sell them stuff. And it is really interesting. I mean, you know, because I'm interested in proliferation, and so these cases in the 70s are fascinating. There's a great document, which I love as the kind of starting point for Taiwan's missile ambitions. It's from 1969.

And it concludes, this is foreshadowing by the way, it concludes that nationalist China has neither the scientific, technological, or industrial resources to develop ballistic missile delivery systems and would probably be unable to obtain assistance in this area from foreign sources. Guess what else this document also notes?

Scott 12:11

What?

Jeffrey 12:11

France is helping a little country called Israel develop a two-stage solid-fuel ballistic missile. We'll just put a little asterisk there and come back to that. So, yeah, like, in 1969, we think that there is no chance that Taiwan can do this. Yeah.

Scott 12:29

But we're also about to open the book on our favorite Cold War proliferator, France. That's right.

Jeffrey 12:36

But guess when Taiwan's missile program started? 1969? Oh, my God. It was underway three years ago.

Scott 12:47

It's like the same when we have those CIA declass documents now that say, no, no, there won't be a People's Republic of China. There won't be a red Chinese bomb is what I think they call it for at least five years. And there's a memo like two months later that's just like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry.

Jeffrey 13:01

I've never seen the I'm so sorry memo. We totally missed what just happened. I've never seen the I'm so sorry memo. My favorite is there's a document that says – You know, that the test site is ready, but that we don't think they have fissile material. And it ends with a footnote saying, you know, there'll be a fuller discussion of these in the NIEE on China's strategic programs that's scheduled for October 1964.

Other voice 13:28

They never published that.

Jeffrey 13:31

Anyway, yeah, so in 1966, thanks to some historical documents we have, there are memoirs, and this is actually a journalistic account that's functionally a memoir. It's a journalist who got stories from a senior Taiwanese general that they got technical information on the V-2 rocket in 1966, and that's the start of their missile program. Which they name... I know you know this already.

They name it the Green Bee.

Scott 14:03

They do. The Qingfeng, I believe. Which is a very particular name, especially for the 60s.

Jeffrey 14:12

Because there's nothing to do out in rural China where the Defense Research Institute is, except for watch TV. And who is a bigger star in the Chinese-speaking world than Bruce Lee?

Scott 14:30

And so listeners who are familiar with the Green Hornet television show, and I believe the character was Kato, which if anyone wants to feel old, I'm only familiar with from that reboot where they got... Hey, that program was off the air by the time I was born.

Jeffrey 14:49

I want to be clear about that. Yeah.

Scott 14:54

Yeah, so there's literally a television show starring Bruce Lee called The Green Hornet, which in Chinese, the name of the TV show is Qingfeng Cha, I think. My Chinese is awful, forgive me, but it's the Qingfeng Cha. Yeah. And so you just drop the Xia from that, and it's the Qingfeng. And it becomes the Qingfeng Daodan.

Jeffrey 15:21

Yeah. I love that they're so bored that they're hanging out, and they name their missile program after Bruce Lee. The missile program that we don't think exists.

Scott 15:29

Yeah. Which, can you imagine being the clandestine operations agent who is told that there is a missile program named after a popular television show? I'm not sure you believe them.

Jeffrey 15:41

Probably not. I don't actually think we believe them until 1974. And I think then that's the point at which we start to realize, holy crap, they have a missile program. This was a fun bit of research. So I found this blurb in Aviation Week in Space Technology from April. And it's just like these two sentences, right? And it says, the Chinese nationalists are an exploratory development of a medium-range surface-to-surface missile.

The weapon is intended to have a range as much as 600 miles. The work is being done at the Chengshan Institute of Science and Technology in Taipei.

Scott 16:12

Well, right.

Jeffrey 16:15

How the hell does Aviation Week know this?

Scott 16:18

Certainly, that's a juicy piece of intel right there to uncover an entire state's surface missile program.

Jeffrey 16:27

It's my favorite. Do you know that the National Archives and Records Administration has put a bunch of cables from the 70s online? Oh, yeah. So you can go search declassified diplomatic cables from the 70s, which I find incredibly useful. And – One of the stories, there's this cable. Turns out the Chungshan Institute went around to various makers of inertial guidance systems in the U.S. and wanted to buy them.

And they went to a company called Lytton Systems and said they want one of these systems for what they called a flying body. And Lytton kept asking them, like, well, I mean, what kind of flying body exactly? I mean, it kind of matters, right? Yeah. And they wouldn't tell them. They kept saying, well, you have to understand it's very secret.

And I guess Lytton called around to other makers and was like, hey, have you talked to these guys from this institute? And they had apparently, the Taiwanese had gone and contacted like three or four other companies. And one of those companies said, yeah, it's for a medium range missile. And so what I love is Lytton is like, okay, well, we'll sell it to you, but we're going to need an export license.

And so we have this cable from the State Department going to the embassy in Taipei that basically says, and in 1974, it is still an embassy. Hey, look. This company got this request and they've applied for an export license and they have told us it's for a missile. So, you know, Lytton is not, like, doing anything sneaky at all.

I'm guessing Lytton's attitude is like, look, if you want them to have missiles, we'll sell them the guidance system. But, like, just so you know, that's what this is for.

Scott 18:10

And... Please don't shut us down. We're being transparent about this.

Jeffrey 18:13

Yeah, like, look, if there's going to be a, you know, a missile orgy in Taiwan, you know, like, we want in, but... It's not our idea, like, like, we're not, we're not pushing it. We're just saying and the state, the cable says, look, we're going to deny this license, but we want any information that you have that the Taiwanese might be developing ballistic missiles. And then the freaking embassy is like, oh yeah, there's a ton of that. And then you know, cable's back, you know, that basically that they had acquired all of these technologies to set up a missile test range.

You know, it's like you're just sitting on this.

Scott 18:51

Yeah. You think maybe this would have been like a red flag? Yeah. Right. You maybe tell me about this.

Jeffrey 18:57

But I'm almost certain that that's where the Aviation Week must have gotten it from one of the companies. You know, because they have all the same information that it's the Chungshan Institute because that's probably who called the company. And one of the companies did get told it was for a medium range missile. And that's the information that shows up in Aviation Week.

So, you know, I think it's really interesting that like they're like asking around, but they're not like all that clever. I mean, they try to be secret, but they are, you know, they're like, but it's very, very secret, you know, which is the worst thing you could possibly do.

Scott 19:33

Well, maybe to take devil's advocate, maybe that was the point. Maybe it was to leak it and make the PRC get a little nervous about little Taiwan building its missile systems.

Jeffrey 19:45

Or they're just terrible at operational and information security.

Scott 19:50

Just the worst.

Jeffrey 19:51

So let me put another data point on the table. I assume you're familiar with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Scott 20:05

I think I've heard of it.

Jeffrey 20:07

It's a world-famous educational institution. MIT, you know, that's a place where you could learn a lot of stuff.

Scott 20:21

A lot of types of offensive sciences, perhaps.

Jeffrey 20:26

So a lot of students apply to MIT. That they do. Sometimes students from Taiwan apply to MIT.

Scott 20:35

Always looks good for Cold War bilateral relations.

Jeffrey 20:38

So in 1976, MIT discovered... That the entire Taiwanese missile program at the Changshan Institute of Science and Technology had individually and kind of – they applied individually so that no one would notice this. They all applied to MIT and gained admission. So the guy who was working on the nose cone applied to MIT and got admission. The guy who was working on the guidance system applied to MIT and got admission.

The guy who was working on the airframe applied. The guy who was working on fuel applied. They had the entire missile team individually applied, and they all got in, and they embedded in MIT.

Scott 21:27

I believe the term for that is metric filtration.

Jeffrey 21:33

So this is hilarious. I mean, this was like covered in the press. Like MIT had to expel the entire Taiwanese missile team in 1976.

Scott 21:40

See, they should have played the long game. Let them produce a system, then sue them for the IP rights because it clearly belongs to the school. Their final class, their thesis project was to build a functional deterrent.

Jeffrey 21:57

Oh, my God. I don't think any of them intended to finish.

Scott 22:06

Or if they had broken export regulations, you're arrested and sentenced to 15 years hard labor at Lockheed.

Jeffrey 22:12

Yeah. There's actually a great article in the Harvard Crimson of all places. I think maybe there's a little bit of crowing about what was going on down Massachusetts Avenue.

Scott 22:24

Oh, they're just jealous that they don't have a deterrent. They're going to be calling MIT a paper tiger for now. 30 years down the line, they've got their own robust mobile missile systems.

Jeffrey 22:35

Well, you know, they're close enough, right? You don't have to have a ton of range on an MIT-deployed missile.

Scott 22:40

They could go with rocket artillery then. Yeah.

Jeffrey 22:44

I used to live in Central Square halfway between MIT and Harvard when I worked at Harvard.

Scott 22:49

Oh.

Jeffrey 22:50

And I could walk to both. It's a little bit of a long walk from one to the other. In fact, there's a tube stop halfway between where I lived, conveniently. But yeah. Yeah, it's a short range. It's definitely a short range ballistic missile.

Scott 23:08

I guess maybe Princeton would be looking for the fancier things. Then they've got to get in on it. I've seen all the whole Ivy Leagues.

Jeffrey 23:17

I'm imagining Ivy League missile programs. All right. Didn't we have a missile called the La Crosse? I don't know. No, we had a spy satellite called the La Crosse.

Scott 23:27

Oh, MGM-18 La Crosse. Oh my gosh. Oh, it's a short-range tactical ballistic missile, if that would not be what Princeton deployed. I don't know what it would be.

Jeffrey 23:41

I'm sorry, I just can't get over the fact that Yale's missile would almost certainly be codenamed the Cucumber Sandwich. Okay, so one more data point on Taiwan's missile interest in the 1970s. Shortly after they threw all the characters out of MIT, the Taiwanese at this point were still interested in buying arms sales to the U.S., and we'll talk about the process of that.

So they had this great idea that they would send one of the Taiwanese missile guys to check out U.S. missile capabilities in South Korea. Right. Which I think seemed like a good idea initially to, like, the defense attache in Taipei.

Other voice 24:35

Right.

Jeffrey 24:36

But as you and I know, right, South Korea was at that point busily trying to figure out how to reverse engineer some of the surface-to-air missiles.

Scott 24:46

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 24:46

And convert them to surface-to-surface missiles, something that we later— Acceded to in exchange for limitations on South Korea's missile program. And so, you know, the embassy in Taipei is like, oh, this is a great idea. This guy wants to go, you know, visit all these missile programs in South Korea. And, you know, states like, no, this is a terrible idea.

You can tell that the undercurrent of it is like... Maybe it's classified and you don't know, but at this moment, South Korea has a nuclear weapons program and a missile program. We would like to keep the Taiwanese as far away from that as humanly possible.

Scott 25:27

Controlling our own allied proliferation concern that was slowly emerging at this time.

Jeffrey 25:34

Well, and so that's kind of the context for this research, which is, you know, It's in this period from 1974 to 1976 when Taiwan's interest is most evident. The Ford administration is going through this process triggered by a national security study memorandum numbered 212 in which they have to decide how we are going to approach this question of arms sales to Taiwan given that our relationship with Beijing is changing.

Right. It's you know, it's after the first communique, but before the second. And so we haven't recognized the government in Beijing as the rightful government of the one China. But they can see that this is where things are heading. Right. And I think if the Ford administration had been reelected, they would have done what the Carter administration did, which is recognize Beijing.

Since it's really just completing the process that started by Nixon. And so we have this really interesting window, which I think is this moment at which we have to decide like, okay, well, if we are doing this, what is our policy toward arms sales? Are we just throwing the Taiwanese to the wolves or are we going to still help them defend themselves?

And that 74 to 76 period is when I think a lot of the – Rules or approaches or behaviors that we have continued, right, they really first get established. And it's really fascinating because there's this really complex discussion within the Ford administration about what you sell to Taiwan and what you don't sell. So there are some things that are way too provocative to Beijing, and so you don't sell them.

And then there are all these really complicated cases that are somewhat provocative to Beijing, but also the Taiwanese really need these capabilities. And so they're trying to come up with some formula that rationalizes it. And now we have the declassified U.S. documents. But we also have a bunch of Chinese histories or Taiwanese histories, rather, from this period.

And so we can actually see how the U.S. side's decisions impacted the Taiwanese side. And it has this really direct impact for their missile program.

Scott 27:58

So you describe this sort of U.S. attempting to manage the long-term or medium-term peacetime competition between the respective Chinas, but the U.S. is trying to manage this short-to-medium-term peacetime competition between China and Taiwan and doesn't want to sell these hyper-provocative systems. But is also providing systems they know can be sort of scooched into the provocative category. Like they have Nike Hercules at this point.

But we're hesitant to sell them, for example, Lance.

Jeffrey 28:37

Right. Well, so the way this fight plays out, which is really interesting, is this question of anti-ship missiles first, right?

Scott 28:46

Right. It's the era of harpoon coming online, if I remember correctly, and the sticks on the Russian side.

Jeffrey 28:53

That's exactly right. And so the Taiwanese are buying these destroyers.

Scott 28:58

Right.

Jeffrey 29:00

But having a destroyer with no weapons is not a very useful destroyer. And so the Taiwanese are like, OK, well, so great. You're going to sell us a destroyer. Now we got to arm the thing. And so Harpoon, that's what goes on the destroyer. Right. We're like, oh, whoa, slow down. Right. And so the the big fight in the whole NSS NSSM 212, this goes on for like two years.

Scott 29:34

And just to clarify, what year is this? 74 to 76.

Jeffrey 29:37

Okay.

Scott 29:39

Okay, because the harpoon comes online. It becomes operational. It's in development at this time then. It's operational in 77.

Jeffrey 29:49

Right, but they know that it's coming.

Scott 29:51

Coming, okay. I'm just making sure I'm clear on that.

Jeffrey 29:53

Yeah, well, it's just like the F-35 now, right?

Scott 29:56

Right, exactly. There's long-term discussions leading. It's not like the harpoon came out of nowhere.

Jeffrey 30:01

Right, they know that the U.S. is developing this really cool anti-ship missile. They are buying some brand-new destroyers, and they want the brand-new anti-ship missile to be part of the destroyers. And so we have this debate on our side about whether we're actually going to sell them that. And it's really interesting because the State Department... The State Department leads the group that comes up with the draft study that basically says like, look, there are things that are provocative to Beijing and there are things that the Taiwanese need.

And so here is a nice kind of way to balance all these things. But it's an interdepartmental group led by the State Department. And the State Department actually objects to the interdepartmental group's memo. Right. And and and says, look. In theory, that makes a lot of sense. But in practice, this is really hard. And Harpoon is the place that it gets complicated.

Because on the one hand, you talk about wanting to give the Taiwanese what they need to defend themselves. And what they need is Harpoon, right? They need a modern anti-ship missile for their modern destroyers. On the other hand, it's really going to make Beijing angry.

Scott 31:13

Yeah, and just for listener context, anti-ship missiles are always particularly sensitive because in sort of the long-term war planning thing, sea lift and the ability to move boats full of people across the Taiwan Straits is a really important part of mainland war planning. And so even sometimes, arguably more than surface-to-surface missiles, these are like a direct operational affront that frustrates warplans very directly.

Especially at that time, because the Harpoon was being advertised as a very effective anti-ship missile.

Jeffrey 31:51

Hey, since we're on the subject of how old I am, I am so old that I remember when the... Best combat game for a computer was Harpoon, right? And Harpoon was hopelessly cool. Uh-huh. And it was named Harpoon because that was, right, the U.S. conventional military capability that was super awesome. And so obviously the Taiwanese wanted to get on board with super awesome, and we didn't.

And what I think is so interesting about these documents and about the State Department's opposition to selling Harpoon is we are explicit – About something, which is, you know, for some capabilities Taiwanese really need that would really provoke the hell out of Beijing, we should just encourage them to buy those from somebody else.

Scott 32:52

Perhaps someone within our specific proliferating little buddy network.

Jeffrey 32:58

Well, right. And so the document, one of these documents from NSSM 212, I can never say that. One of the documents from the study goes through and lists capabilities that are too provocative for Beijing and the other countries that might supply them. And for surface-to-surface missiles, which is a category that probably, because of the way they wrote at the time, which we wouldn't do it this way today, but would have included the harpoon.

Scott 33:33

Oh, that's interesting.

Jeffrey 33:34

Yes. That's a weird categorization. It's a weird categorization. It took me a long time dealing with the documents to get my head around it. But sometimes they call the harpoon a surface-to-surface missile, which in a way it is. The surfaces are waters and boat decks. I mean, it is a surface action group. Yeah. In the Navy.

Scott 33:55

That's just not a submarine.

Jeffrey 33:58

Right. So they list the country that might provide surface to surface missiles to Israel or to Taiwan is Israel. And holy cow. Do you know? I can't speak Hebrew. Yitzhak Shakur Shakur.

Scott 34:15

I am familiar with the name, but why don't you explain who he is?

Jeffrey 34:20

It's not spelled like Tupac or anything.

Scott 34:22

That was going to be my follow-up question. Presumably he's the grandfather of Tupac.

Jeffrey 34:29

Yeah, I think I'm probably mispronouncing his name because I'm thinking of the rapper. He has written this amazing article called The Importance of Being Ernst, which is about this Israeli guy who dies in 1975, but is instrumental in setting up Israel's defense sales to Taiwan. And holy crap. Right. So we ultimately don't sell the Taiwanese the harpoon.

But the Israelis sell them something called the Gabriel, which is much like the harpoon and ultimately is the basis of Taiwan's anti-ship missiles today because they reverse engineer it.

Scott 35:08

Right. Which additional foreshadowing our Afrikaans speaking listeners may recognize as I think it's pronounced the scorpion.

Jeffrey 35:16

Yes, I know there is a South African version. Well, so that's not even foreshadowing, because that's the thing to talk about next, which is a term I love, which we never use anymore. It reeks of the 1970s. Pariah states.

Scott 35:30

Ah, yes, the pariah states, which incidentally are not the same as rogue states.

Jeffrey 35:36

No.

Scott 35:38

They're just the ostracized guys who sort of did what the sort of political and military thing that gave us the, I believe the professional term is, the heebie-jeebies.

Jeffrey 35:50

Yeah. So, obviously, Israel counted as a pariah state because, you know, none of its neighbors recognized its existence. And while in the United States we have a very close relationship with Israel, Israel generally, particularly in the 1970s, felt a lot of international isolation. South Africa deserved its international isolation. Yeah, absolutely.

Scott 36:15

Apartheid drove it very deep divisions at certain times. I guess depending on the time changes the depth of the division, but ostracized it from not only communist bloc countries, which one would maybe expect from a potential European ally, or ally of the Europeans and the Americans, but also of the Europeans and the Americans, which made us super uncomfortable.

Jeffrey 36:37

Yeah, there was even the, do you remember the boycotts on, they had that, what was that resort, like Sun City or something? And it was like, they tried to get rock acts to play there. They got who? Oh, they tried to get like musical acts, like rock and roll acts to play at this place called Sun City.

There's even like a protest song called, I think it's Sun City, like I won't play Sun City. Is this, this is too old? This is what happens when I get old?

Scott 37:02

Oh, interesting. Oh, yeah. Here it is.

Jeffrey 37:05

Sun City is a 1985 protest song written by Stephen Van Sant. Oh. Yeah.

Scott 37:13

I'm going to put that in the show notes for this week.

Jeffrey 37:16

You may even want to drop a little Sun City.

Scott 37:20

Yeah, absolutely.

Jeffrey 37:21

Yeah. So South Africa was totally a pariah. And as a consequence of that, South Africa and Israel had really close defense ties. Yeah. And we now know that those defense guys ventured into the area of the nuclear.

Scott 37:39

Right. A very curious clandestine, still sort of attempted to be well-documented, but still not the best-documented program. Both nuclear and South Africa had a ballistic missile program itself. Right.

Jeffrey 37:55

Foreshadowing. Also, and so Taiwan was the third member of that group, right? Because everyone recognized China. China had taken Taiwan's seat at the UN. And so Taiwan had no friends. And so these three countries that really were isolated internationally and did not have relations with a lot of countries found it very useful for them to cooperate, particularly on defense goods.

And so it's not surprising that the Israelis sold Gabriel to the Taiwanese. But one of the things that the historical accounts leave out Is, as you say, Lance.

Scott 38:43

Lance, Lance, gonna make you dance. Lance is one of my favorite U.S. short-range systems because it is one of the only liquid-fueled missile systems that looks like a solid fuel because it is the dirtiest. It looks like someone fired a diesel engine into the sky.

Jeffrey 39:06

Well, because it's this long-term storable propellant. You know, for listeners, it's a liquid propellant, but it's manufactured so that it comes sealed. So it's not like a missile that you fuel before firing. It's a missile that's been fueled at the factory and has been sitting in storage. In fact, I don't know if we're out of them now, but for a long time we used them as missile defense test assets.

Scott 39:31

Yeah, I don't actually know if we do that anymore, because I know we've switched to some very specific dedicated MRBM and SRBM simulation targets, like I think the Hera is one. I'm not sure if we still use those anymore.

Jeffrey 39:44

I think we might be out of them. I mean, it's an old missile now. Oh, yes. Hey, but in the mid-1970s. Lance was hot, right? That was the short-range, nuclear-capable ballistic missile of choice for the United States and its allies. And we sold some, right? We sold them to many of our NATO allies. We sold some to Israel.

But we did not sell any to Taiwan!

Scott 40:14

No, we did not. Which is going to be a pretty important point.

Jeffrey 40:18

Yeah, I love this story. So, it... In the documents from the Ford administration, they make clear that offensive ballistic missiles are a capability that the United States judges are too provocative for Beijing.

Other voice 40:34

In fact, I think it says it's obviously too provocative.

Jeffrey 40:36

It's not even a question, right?

Other voice 40:38

Right.

Jeffrey 40:39

But on the other hand, we do seem to be willing to let the Israelis sell things to the Taiwanese that we would not sell. Right. And the Taiwanese would probably love. We know. We know the Taiwanese want a missile. And we know the Israelis have Lance missiles. And lo and behold, in 1981, what parades through the streets of Taipei for their National Day parade?

A perfect Taiwanese copy of Lance.

Scott 41:09

Which I believe, as we mentioned earlier, was advertised under the name the Green Bee.

Jeffrey 41:14

Yep.

Scott 41:15

Or the green hornet, but it's far more adorable when it's the green bee.

Jeffrey 41:21

Yep. So it seems that Israel maybe transferred some lance missiles, even though none of the Taiwanese historical documents say that.

Other voice 41:30

I mean, I have eyes.

Jeffrey 41:33

I can see the lances in the trucks.

Scott 41:36

Yeah, it looks very much like a Lance missile. So someone did, like according to the documents, there's no transfer, which there probably can't be.

Jeffrey 41:49

Yeah, I find that really interesting, though. You know, because this is now like 40 years later, right? I mean, okay, the parade in 1981 is not 40 years, but the transfer probably happened around 76, right? Right. That's 40 years late. That's 40 years ago. Mm-hmm. They still to this day won't acknowledge that the thing that they paraded down the streets of Taipei that looks exactly like a Lance Missile was a Lance Missile, even though there are State Department documents that say it's presumed to be a Lance Missile.

Scott 42:24

Yeah, which is, that's a very interesting sensitivity to revealing that particular information. Yeah.

Jeffrey 42:31

Yeah, so my question is, given that the documents that the Ford administration produced say explicitly that Israel might be a source of surface-to-surface missiles, and given that we sold Israel lands in 75, and given that we didn't complain too much – we'll talk about how we complained after the parade, but we didn't – there's no evidence I can find that we demarched the Israelis – Do you think we were laundering missiles?

I mean, there is a document that says for capabilities that are too provocative, we may seek to not object to third-party sales. And I cannot imagine that the Israelis would take our most modern short-range ballistic missile and transfer it without at least a casual sort of... So you're good with this, right? We cool? I mean, maybe they would.

I shouldn't say I can't imagine, but I would think that that would be an issue.

Scott 43:41

One thing, and I don't know this, so this is a question to you. So when these documents say too provocative...

Jeffrey 43:48

Yes.

Scott 43:49

My question is, is the hardware like is is the provocative thing Taiwan having this hardware or is the provocative thing the United States giving Taiwan the hardware?

Jeffrey 44:03

Do they make it clear in the document if it is absolutely about how Beijing will feel about the fact that we are providing this capability? This is not at all about what the Taiwanese might be able to do.

Scott 44:19

Okay, so even implicit within that, missile laundering becomes a pretty realistic option pretty quick. If the provocative thing is us transferring it, then who knows? You know, you get a little missile here, you get a little missile there. Our name's not on it.

Jeffrey 44:35

Except it's named after an American show. Right. I mean, it's not on it. It's not not freaking called the Cato.

Scott 44:45

So also a good name for a missile.

Jeffrey 44:48

Yeah. Right. So I think. Well, I will say this. In 1976, we begin, and it plays out over the course of the Carter administration, to have really serious concerns about Taiwan's nuclear program.

Scott 45:05

Right.

Jeffrey 45:06

And so it is possible that our attitude toward the transfer of the Lance would have changed, you know, would change because you get the Carter administration, which is just different than the Ford administration. Right. This shows you how long ago this is. Right. Because I would say it's different from the Ford administration in worse ways. Right. Like, holy crap, did I just want Don Rumsfeld's first tenure as Secretary of Defense to continue?

I think I said I did. Like, okay. 70s were weird. And so it may be that because you have different people in the Carter administration and because there is more evidence about the impending Taiwanese nuclear option, That at some point that concern would have shifted over to, not only do we not want Beijing to think we supplied this, we would prefer they not have this capability at all.

Scott 46:10

Right, so the provocative... So what you're saying is sort of the view on what was provocative has switched from political to actual, like, operationally provocative.

Jeffrey 46:20

Yeah, I don't know that it did. I just think that it might have. Might have. That... The documents we're dealing with are all in the 74 to 76 period. And so things definitely happen that I think change our calculation. And actually, they don't show it off right till the Reagan administration. So Carter sort of is out of this whole picture.

And then I think the Reagan administration has to decide how to respond. To this really brazen display. Right. Like, holy crap, you did what? Like, it was one thing for the Israelis to transfer this technology. It's totally another for there to be. And I have this video. I've put it up on YouTube. I can put it up in the show notes.

No, I'll put it up on the Slack. I'll put the link on the Slack channel. Yeah. That Footage of that missile is really explicit. I mean, it is high-quality film showing that missile up close. You can see all the nuts and bolts. You can see that it is a copy of Lance. And I think that that probably really upsets the Reagan administration.

Right. Evidence, which is not super great, you know, because now we're getting into the period where declassification hasn't really come through for us. but it seems like the Reagan administration tells the Taiwanese, don't do that again, because we never see it in another parade. And the Taiwanese themselves say that the program has been shut down. but they would say that, right..

But U.S. documents, there's also a declassified document from 1991 that says at some point in the 80s that that program got shut down.

Scott 48:02

Now, do you mean just specifically the Green Bee program or the ballistic missile program as a whole?

Jeffrey 48:08

So the document in the 90s says the two missiles that were under development, and this is my transition, the two missiles that were under development were the Green Bee and the Tianma. And both of them end under U.S. pressure. Which either was because of the parade or because in 1987 there was a defector who announced that the nuclear program had not stopped.

That it had gone underground because it had been pressured in the 70s, but that it had continued. And so the Reagan administration leaned really hard on Taiwan following that defector who came to the U.S. to end these programs. And so that is kind of where it leads to this really interesting question. Like the Green Bee was just a copy of the Lance, and that's not really a Taiwanese missile.

Scott 48:59

I was just going to say, and the Lance, like even if they went into production on the Green Bee, we were talking about this a little bit before the pod, the Lance doesn't actually range, can't range the PRC from any part of mainland Taiwan, the main island.

Jeffrey 49:13

Yeah, you have to put it at like Jinmun, right?

Scott 49:14

Which is just not a good idea. Let's not do that.

Jeffrey 49:20

Right. So they had all of the documents from the 70s that are now declassified say there's the Green Bee and then there is this other missile. Right. There's the actual medium range ballistic missile that they want to build. And it seems in retrospect, again, based on. Like OTA, Office of Technology Assessment publications, that it was going to be a solid-fueled missile.

And we don't know anything about this missile other than it was called the Tianma. Like, we know literally nothing other than one or two things describe its range, and its range is variously described as 500 kilometers or 1,000 kilometers, which is, you know, a big difference. Right. And it's usually described as being solid-fueled, although I've never seen any documentation to that effect, which leads to this question of what the heck was that thing?

And you know I have an answer.

Scott 50:15

I think it's something we've actually alluded to within the network of pariahs, even. Yeah.

Jeffrey 50:20

I think it was going to be a Jericho missile. I really do. So there's this great article by this guy, Robert Harkavy, and it's on the Pariah State Network. And he's got no information whatsoever, right? And it's still a really good article, despite not having all the historical information we have now. Three separate times he basically does some version of, boy, a Jericho missile would make a lot of sense for Taiwan.

And, like, he can't quite bring himself to say, so Israel will probably sell them one. And, you know, in fact, Israel doesn't sell them, right? We know from Wendell Minnick's reporting that the Taiwanese say the missile never got off the drawing board, which to me makes sense. Like, the Israelis probably transferred. The lance and the taiwanese were working on that and they may have been discussing transferring the jericho or at least jericho technology but then you know there's like the parade in 81 and so the pressure comes down on them which probably slows things down quite a bit israel is by the 1980s starting to make nice with china which is a much larger defense market

Scott 51:33

Hey, listeners, quick producer note. The sound quality is about to seriously degrade due to a hardware glitch that we were unable to fix in editing. I apologize for this. We did not cut the section, though, because there is good data in it if you can listen through the noise that comes up. But it only lasts for about two minutes, about a minute, actually a minute and 45.

If you can make it through that, the podcast continues regularly. Our apologies. Thank you very much.

Jeffrey 52:00

Right. And so I think, you know, and then there's the defector in 87. So there's it's actually really easy to see how the program might not go anywhere. Like they've got the missiles on the drawing board. Like, yeah, we want to make a copy of the Jericho. But maybe at that point, the Israelis start to get cold feet.

Other voice 52:21

You know, we know they sold it. So they did sell the Jericho. I guess it was the Jericho 2, right? To South Africa. Right.

Jeffrey 52:29

And we have the evidence with these transcripts.

Other voice 52:33

You know, the Israelis discussed with the Shah of Iran's government selling them to Jericho. Oh. And Shah's government was like, all for it.

Scott 52:45

But those discussions happened in the late 17th century. Soon they were out of customer. Yeah, right.

Other voice 52:52

By 1979, the Shah was no longer doing defense purchases. But what's really interesting about the documents... So we have documentation of the transfer to South Africa. So we know that happened. But the documents where the Israelis were selling Jericho to... Iran are interesting because of the arguments the Israelis take, which is the Jericho program. They start with the French.

The French cut them off, and they have to finish the Jericho, and they have to finish the Jericho, too, and so on and so on. They are complaining that it's too expensive. They want money so that they can offset the cost of that old program of launching the Jericho missiles. So, Taiwan has money. Taiwan wants a missile.

Israel has a missile. Israel wants money. Israel is willing to sell that missile for money. And yeah, if I can find zero evidence, it's a hypothesis. But it seems so straightforward to me.

Scott 54:03

Yeah, it's something that makes the Condor 2 Vector look like... It's much more straightforward than something that's more well-documented, like the Condor 2 Vector program, which we can find evidence on. Right, and that's kind of a crazy, crazy... Yeah, yeah.

Other voice 54:21

Whereas this would be totally straight forward. Like the Israelis are, you know, we know that the Israelis are selling the Gabriel to the Taiwanese and the Taiwanese are reverse engineers with that. We actually know that Taiwanese, South Africans and Israelis co-developed an anti-tank missile.

Jeffrey 54:40

Right. And so if the, you know, like, surely at some point the Taiwanese had to say, hey, do you know that missile you sold to the South Africans? Yeah. We'd like one of those. Like, how could that not have happened?

Scott 54:57

At a minimum, like, that discussion has to exist.

Jeffrey 55:00

Yeah, and, you know, maybe by the time the Taiwanese got around to asking it, you know, the Israelis told them to blow off. Like, that's possible. Because certainly we never see the Tian Ma, right? So something happens. And so it's just a question of, you know, why that was. And it kind of bums me out because... I think there's a really interesting story here because something intervened, right?

Something happened between the transfer of the Lance, which we seem to have, I think tacitly approved of, or at least didn't scream too much about. And, and, and the Tianma. And I don't know what that was, you know, like, why didn't the Israelis sell them the Jericho? And, you know, is that because they they made nice with the Chinese?

Is it because the US was angry about the parade? Is it because the Taiwanese got cheap? You know, like, it is this enduring mystery to me. You know, which I think, presumably would have some lessons for for non proliferation today.

Scott 56:05

Right. Do they ever discuss the possibility of Tian Ma in space applications? Because when I think Jericho transfer to South Africa, I think the RSA and space launch vehicles.

Jeffrey 56:19

Yeah, so the Taiwanese at some point start talking up their space program. And they're looking at modifying different missiles for that purpose. But then it kind of goes nowhere. And so it's like they flirt with the idea, like, oh, hey, maybe a space launch program, maybe that's the excuse we need. But that happens in, like, the early 90s.

Like, that's later.

Scott 56:42

Right, which is... And early 90s is when the RSA program has sort of fallen off. That's the end... I guess the middle and end of the RSA program, I believe, takes place in the early 90s.

Jeffrey 56:55

And so at the end of the day, it's just this kind of mystery, right? And we don't have, like, a compelling... We don't have a compelling answer to it. But it is... An important history, and it stinks that we don't have a full understanding of it. Because contra our political debate at the moment, we have consistently sold Taiwan weapons. That's consistently annoyed the Chinese, and we have developed these really complex but tacit rules about what weapons we do and do not sell.

And in some cases, that means selling them... I actually don't think we ended up selling them to destroyers, but we might be willing to sell them a destroyer, but then force them to go get the missile from Israel. Or we might be willing to install something on a destroyer they buy from another country. There's a whole complex relationship we have with Taiwan and making sure that they are well-armed that is...

Designed to annoy Beijing just enough.

Scott 58:06

Right. In some ways, it's a similar, though certainly not identical, relationship to how some U.S. folks paint the Chinese DPRK relationship as sort of an annoyance valve, which I don't really think is the best way to conceptualize that relationship. I think that has a lot of problems with it. But the idea of a country that you can sort of, by even providing a little bit of support, you can mess with someone else.

Jeffrey 58:35

Well, and I think we also take seriously their need to defend themselves. Of course. And so what I take away from it is not our goal in terms of how it makes Beijing feel, but it's sort of we know we have to sell them arms and we know that's going to make the Chinese angry. And so we have created these really elaborate structures to get the Taiwanese the arms they need.

At a manageable level of irritation in Beijing. Right. And what annoys me about our contemporary political debate, particularly the partisans who are, I think, being deliberately obtuse, is those rules are unwritten. And so it's very easy for someone to say, as Trump and his defenders did, oh, well, this was just a phone call. What about the $2 billion in weapons sales?

When it's like, yeah, but the $2 billion in weapon sales in this incredibly convoluted and hard-to-explain way is carefully crafted to be consistent with this now 40-year policy of arming the Taiwanese in just the right way so that they have enough defense and that the Chinese only issue a really irritated statement. And I think what I was saying off the pot is, you know, they were kind of like the Trump defenders are refusing to understand this.

And they're like, it's like we're playing this game of Monopoly and we don't have the rule book, but we all know how to play. And now they're demanding that they can put four hotels on boardwalk. And it's like, no, no, you can't do that. And they're like, well, but you put four houses on your... It's not the same, right?

And we are all screaming, it's not the same. But we don't have... There's no rule book. We just know it's not the same because that's how things have been done. We know that the Chinese are sitting here and going, no, no, no, the phone call, that's different. Yeah, we don't like the arms sales and we're always going to complain about the arms sales.

But this is not NOM. There are rules. But the rules aren't written down, and so it's easy for Trump or General Flynn or whatever egg is defending the president on Twitter to pretend that the rules are something different. Because we don't have a rule book. All we have is practice. But gosh, it's an interesting practice, right?

Scott 1:01:06

But Jeffrey, he just tells it like it is, and he says what everyone's thinking. Are you tired of the winning yet, Scott? I'm not. We have not won enough yet for me. I think we could do with a little more winning.

Jeffrey 1:01:21

A little more. I think I've seen enough winning. I think I'm ready for the winning to be over.

Scott 1:01:29

Well, at least, though, DC is getting a nice makeover. They've begun painting the outside of the Pentagon orange. And it's going to be the Pumptagon. It's going to be great come next Halloween.

Other voice 1:01:43

Oh, that's a happy note.

Jeffrey 1:01:45

That's a happy note, a bright orange pentagon to honor our dear leader.

Scott 1:01:52

So it shows up easily on Russian imaging satellites. They're having a little bit of trouble over there, I've heard.

Jeffrey 1:01:59

Hey-o. Oh, gosh. Get some early warning jokes in. Scott, thank you for filling in for Aaron.

Scott 1:02:08

Absolutely, and we hope Aaron and his family is doing well, and we hope to see him back on the pod very soon. And thank you for listening.

Jeffrey 1:02:17

If you like the podcast, as always, you can leave us an iTunes. It helps get the word about the show out. And if you really like the podcast, you can join the surprisingly large number of people who support us through our Patreon page. And thank you, Scott, and thank you for listening.