China responded to Menendez with dozens of attack aircraft, says foe

Lisa McCormick, who earned almost four out of ten votes when she challenged US Senator Bob Menendez in New Jersey's 2018 Democratic primary election, says the hawkish chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee blundered by irritating the People's Republic of China by arming Taiwan instead of using peaceful methods to assure that the democratic island's status does not change.

"Instead of defending the United States and being a champion for peace, Senator Bob Menendez is a key agent of the military-industrial-congressional complex," said McCormick. "New Jersey's senior US Senator is playing with fire by ignoring fundamental democratic principles and employing the unnecessarily risky strategy of trying to bully a big and potentially dangerous adversary when the United States is that country's biggest customer and we have the means to address differences in a variety of peaceful ways."

An amendment to the $858 billion Pentagon budget that was proposed by Menendez was cited by the People’s Republic of China as the provocation for its military threats against Taiwan.

China sent 47 aircraft across the median line of the Taiwan Strait, its largest incursion into Taiwan’s air defense zone in recent months, two days after President Joe Biden signed a sweeping new defense bill into law that included provisions offered by Menendez for a military modernization program for Taiwan.

According to the Taiwanese defense ministry, incursions were made by 42 J-10, J-11, J-16 and Su-30 fighter jets, two Y-8 maritime patrol aircrafts, a KJ-500 early warning aircraft, as well as a CH-4 and a WZ-7 military drone.

Beijing beefed-up aggressive military operations around the self-ruled island only days after the Menendez measure authorized spending up to $10 billion of US taxpayer cash over the next five years to make Taiwan able to "defeat" the People’s Republic of China.

Taiwan defense officials said that its military responded by deploying combat air patrol aircrafts, navy vessels, and land-based missile systems when a total of 71 Chinese aircraft were spotted around the island.

"The $10 billion of US taxpayer dollars would only become available if Taiwan increases its military spending, which is likely to inspire more aggression by the People’s Liberation Army," said McCormick, who claims Menendez has a record of supporting perpetual war.

"Congress is giving the Pentagon $858 billion, which is a 25 percent increase from the $633 billion military budget in 2015, while we had two ongoing wars," said McCormick. "Senator Menendez deserves a big share of the blame for this because he has failed to use his Foreign Relations chairmanship to restrain military adventurism around the globe, advance diplomacy and apply common sense to global geopolitics."

"Menendez has a tendency to shoot first without having learned that that is why people start shooting back," McCormick said. "The illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Washington-instigated chaos in Syria, the wanton destruction of Yemen, the barbarism NATO inflicted on Libya, the brutal sanctions and covert military war on Iran, the current catastrophe financed by Washington’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, and countless more lessor depredations,

Menendez has conflicted with both President Obama and the Biden administration over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which sought to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

“While some have tried to paint me as belligerent to diplomacy – or worse – I have always believed that multilateral, diplomatic negotiations from a position of strength are the best way to address Iran’s nuclear program,” said Menendez, whose failed approach has made the possibility of a nuclear conflict more likely there as well as in other hotspots around the world.

The amendment that Menendez proposed also establishes U.S. policy to promote the inclusion and participation of Taiwan in international organizations, actions that China considers a deliberate provocation.

"The Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democratic even published a report that identified chronic underfunding of U.S. diplomacy and development in the Indo-Pacific region," McCormick said. "Senator Menendez undermined the United States’ leadership in the world by failing to provide the diplomatic resources that

McCormick argued that directing the Permanent Representative of the U.S. to the United Nations and other officials to promote Taiwan’s inclusion in international organizations.

China’s ruling Communist Party views Taiwan as part of its territory and vows to eventually “unify” its renegade province with the mainland.

In Taiwan, which has its own government and is home to twenty-three million people, political leaders have differing views on the island’s status and relations with the mainland.

In recent years, Taiwan's exports to the mainland and Hong Kong have accounted for about 40 percent of the total. There are frequent interactions between people on both sides of the strait, and hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese people live on the mainland.

"Without inflammatory prodding by outsiders, the two sides could come to a consensus that moves China’s ruling Communist Party much closer to the kind of democratic values that Americans claim to champion but has failed to materialize 21 years after granting 'most favored nation' status to the People's Republic of China by the United States," said McCormick.

"A bloodless peace is a better way to protect American military superiority and reach an end to China's serious and continuous persecution of human rights," said McCormick. "Given a choice between diplomatically threatening to reduce American purchases or trying to bully Communists into submission, the smarter and more effective means of resolving our differences is also the path to peace."