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5 May 2024 (Sunday)
The Year to Fear for Taiwan: 2006
Asia Times - 20th Anniversary
By Wendell Minnick (Whiskey Mike) 顏文德
TAIPEI - This article appeared in April 2004 in Asia Times. It was deleted, along with everything prior to 2006, most likely due to insufficient space.
For years, I could not find it anywhere on the Internet, or even on the “Wayback” search engines, until this week.
Now that I have salvaged the article, I wanted to share my 2004 mindset while I was serving as the Taiwan correspondent for Jane’s Defence Weekly.
The article was extremely popular at the Taiwan Office in the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA, responsible for Foreign Military Sales/FMS) with folks making jokes about having hats and t-shirts made: “The Year To Fear!”. It was also popular at the China-Taiwan Desk at the Pentagon’s Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) then headed by Mark Stokes.
Basically, I took 2004 Pentagon reports that indicated that 2006 would be the year that Taiwan would begin to lose Stage 1 (Air Parity) with China, then I speculated about the possibility of a decapitation strike on Taiwan in a Tom Clancy-style fictionalized story.