US Abstracts

Panel 3: East Asia Security and Nonproliferation-Challenges and Responses

Regional Security and Nonproliferation

Darryl N. Johnson

Since the Mid-19th century, the United States has been engaged in East Asia through missionary contacts, trade and military contacts. The United States and China, to a large extent, share a strategic approach that favors evolutionary change over cataclysmic shifts in the balance of power in the region. Likewise, both China and the United States share long-range objectives in the realm of nonproliferation even though they do not always agree on specifics. With regard to the issue of arms sales to Taiwan, the United States and China disagree completely. Sales of "carefully selected defensive weapons" are not a matter of proliferation concern but rather are meant to provide Taiwan with a defensive capability which contributes to stability in the region. The United States will continue to make available certain defensive goods and services to Taiwan in the context of the overall US policy of trying to preserve peace and stability in the region. Despite differences, the United States and China will remain inextricably linked in East Asia.

Darryl A. Johnson is the Deputy Assistant of State, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, US Department of State.

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