Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty
Malta and Iceland were sometimes described as unsinkable aircraft carriers during World War II, making Malta a target of the Axis powers. At the end of the Chinese Civil War, the US military was said to have considered Taiwan an unsinkable aircraft carrier, though this position toward Taiwan changed when the United States and the People's Republic of China normalized relations in the 1970s and the United States annulled the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty with Taiwan. The US military is also said to have considered the British Isles as unsinkable aircraft carriers during the Cold War. In 1983, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone pledged to make Japan an "unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Pacific", assisting the US in defending against the threat of Soviet bombers. US Secretary of State General Alexander Haig described Israel as "the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk". In arguing against production of the CVA-01 aircraft carriers, the Royal Air Force claimed that Australia could serve adequately in the same role, using false maps that placed Singapore 400 miles closer to Australia.