TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth on Tuesday (Aug. 10) revealed that she and Senators Dan Sullivan and Christopher Coons had had to keep their whirlwind trip to Taiwan in May a secret as they took off from South Korea.
Duckworth said in an interview with the Center for Strategic and International Studies that initially, “we weren’t sure we were going to be able to get to Taiwan.” However, Washington approved their trip and arranged for a C-17 transport plane for them at a military base in South Korea, she said.
The senator said they had not been able to mention to the South Korean government that they were heading to Taiwan, otherwise “we would have placed them in a very difficult situation with the Chinese.” The Senate delegation arrived in Taipei on May 6 at 7:19 a.m. to announce a donation of 750,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine and meet with Taiwanese officials to discuss bilateral relations, regional security, and other significant issues of mutual interest.
Although the senators stayed for only three hours and never left Songshan Airport, Duckworth said it was worth it because the Taiwanese should know the U.S. will not abandon them. She noted that the East Asian nation had sent America PPE and respirators at the start of the pandemic in 2020, “so this is just us being reciprocal in friendship.”
The senator said she is worried China will try to seize Taiwan, adding that the U.S. has to prevent them from doing so. “We certainly need to have a longer, a bigger, and more persistent presence all across the Indo-Pacific region,” she said.