The US has multiplied the presence of the military in Taiwan, as part of a training program for the Taiwanese army against a possible invasion by China, which considers the island part of its sovereignty.
Of the nearly thirty US military in Taiwan, a contingent of between one hundred and two hundred in the next few monthsas revealed by ‘The Wall Street Journal’.
The contingent is part of a training program that the Pentagon has tried to carry out with discretion and that will now be the largest by the US in decades.
The deployment of these soldiers occurs at a time of growing tensions between Washington and Beijing, in which Taiwan is one of the central issues. The US has shown in recent months a greater commitment to the island -as demonstrated last summer with the visit of the then Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi- and efforts to contain the Chinese push on the diplomatic level and commercial.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to speculation about whether China could do something similar in Taiwan in the short or medium term. According to a memo from a US general last month, his calculations are that Chinese ambitions in the region will lead to a war with the US in 2025.
In this context, the Pentagon wants Taiwan to develop the so-called ‘porcupine strategy’, strategies and tactics to hinder that eventual invasion.
In addition to training on the island, the US trains Taiwanese military through a program with the Michigan National Guard, which hosts military exercises with several countries each year at its headquarters at Camp Grayling in northern Michigan.
The US had a large military presence in Taiwan until 1979when it established formal relations with Beijing, it withdrew its army from the island and established its ambiguous ‘one China’ policy, by which it recognized that present-day China is the only sovereign entity, but without explicitly recognizing its sovereignty over Taiwan .
