Taiwan: EgrAegis.

The administration's long-awaited decision on arms sales to Taiwan turned out to be a mixed bag. Some weapons were approved for sale, and some others were deferred, most significantly the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers bearing the Aegis missile-tracking system. A few very high- tech items were denied altogether.

The deferral of the Aegis sale is a serious error in judgment. The reasons given by the administration do not hold up under close examination. It is entirely proper for us to exercise caution about selling our most advanced equipment to foreign countries, and the derelictions of the previous administration in this regard are well known. The deferral of Aegis, however, was based not on these considerations, but on the arguments that deployment could anyway not take place until later in this decade and that Taiwan's military may not be capable of operating the system. There were some additional hints from the administration that the sale of Aegis is being held back as a sanction against future bad behavior by the Chinese.

If the Aegis system is so complex, then the more notice Taiwan has of its delivery, the better. It is not an item they could suddenly acquire and deploy in an emergency. That a nation as successful in high-tech manufacturing and software as Taiwan should not be able to summon the human skills to operate the system seems unlikely. Certainly they will not begin training their people until they know the sale is going to be approved. Aegis is entirely defensive; it poses no threat to China. If the Beijing leadership does not like our selling missile-tracking equipment to Taiwan, the solution is simple: Let them stop arraying missiles on their side of the Taiwan Strait.

In addition, the administration decided to end our annual review of arms sales to Taiwan, a further signal of misplaced sensitivity to the mainland's government.

"The balance which we think had started toward China's favor in a dangerous way, is righted," a "senior White House official" said when releasing details of the approvals. But where, exactly, is the point of balance between a sheep and a wolf? Taiwan is no threat to China at all, having renounced all claims to the mainland in 1991. The Chinese attitude, by contrast, is unchanged since the Shanghai Communique of 1972, when, in words never revoked, China asserted that "the liberation of Taiwan is China's internal affair in which no other country has the right to interfere."

It would have been better to make it plain to the regime in Beijing that the United States is not to be trifled with, will not be intimidated, and will respond to provocations-like the recent harassment of our reconnaissance planes-with clear resolution. Beijing will probably view the failure to approve Aegis as a sign of weakness on the part of the U.S. If so, this is the more dangerous because it comes so close after other signals that could be similarly interpreted: our desperation to win the safe return of our servicemen from Hainan island, the mumbled formulas of regret we issued to that purpose, and the unaccountable delay in resuming reconnaissance flights over the South China Sea.

Wars begin by miscalculation, as when an oligarchic power with a secretive, suspicious mode of internal politics misjudges the resolution of a liberal nation that has loud and open public disagreements about foreign policy. Peace with the cynical oligarchs of Beijing will not be kept by "balance" and such. It will be kept, if at all, by the clear expression of our intention to check aggression when required. Approval of Aegis would have been such an expression. It is a pity that the administration did not see this. All the more important, now, to restart reconnaissance flights, without delay and without apology; to preserve, in the words of the Taiwan Relations Act, "the peace and security of the Western Pacific area."