Taiwan has confirmed there are U.S. troops stationed on its islands in the Taiwan Strait on a permanent basis, including an island just over a mile off China's southeast coast.
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in 2023 paved the way for their arrival to conduct training programs for troops on Taiwan's front line.
China has vowed to someday annex democratic Taiwan, which it regards as a rogue province, despite the fact that the Chinese Communist Party government in Beijing has never ruled there. China has sharply increased military sorties and drills in and around the 90-mile-wide Taiwan Strait, prompting its neighbor to boost investment in defense.
Asked to confirm reports U.S. Army Green Special Forces, also known as Green Berets, were in Taiwan on a permanent basis, Taiwanese defense chief Chiu Kuo-cheng told reporters on March 14: "No matter the situation, there may be blind spots or shortcomings. So we need to communicate with our allies—whether it is a team, a group or a country."
"We can learn from each other to see what strengths we have. This is a fixed thing," he added.
In 2021, President Tsai Ing-wen revealed U.S. instructors were conducting occasional training with Taiwanese armed service members, though Chiu's statement is the first confirmation of the long-term nature of the activities.
Taiwan's Defense Ministry has refrained from commenting on specific reports, but said all foreign military exchanges follow an annual plan.
U.S. Army Green Berets from the 1st Special Forces Group are now permanently stationed at a pair of bases of the 101st Amphibious Reconnaissance Battalion, a Taiwanese army special operations force, according to Taiwan's United Daily News (UDN).
These instructors were sent to the outlying island counties of Penghu and Kinmen. At its closest point, Kinmen is just barely over a mile from Chinese shores.
The 1st Battalion of this Pacific-oriented Special Forces Group is forward-deployed in Okinawa, Japan, while the rest of the battalion is stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state.
The UDN previously reported there is also an American military presence in the northeast city of Taoyuan on Taiwan's main island. These service members are said to be providing specialist training on drone equipment Taiwan hopes to obtain for its elite Airborne Special Service Company.
The U.S. Army and Chinese Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to Newsweek's written request for comment.
The U.S. has maintained no official military presence in Taiwan since it pulled out in 1979 following the normalization of U.S.-China relations.
Officially, U.S.-Taiwan military exchanges, which have been indirectly acknowledged in the past, are handled by the de facto U.S. embassy, the American Institute in Taiwan.
Though the U.S. switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing, the U.S. remains Taiwan's largest arms supplier.
The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act commits Washington to providing Taipei with defensive weaponry and to resisting the use of "force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan."
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ta ... r-BB1kb2zS
Taiwan Confirms US Troops on Front-Line Islands Near China
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2 days later:
Taiwan, U.S. Deny Reports of American Special Forces Stationed in Disputed Islands
Story by Kevin McSpadden
The U.S. government has denied reports Army "Green Berets" special forces troops were sent to the Kinmen Islands to establish a permanent observation point in Taiwan.
Earlier in March, an online military publication reported that the U.S. had sent its Green Beret special forces to Taiwan’s Kinmen Islands, Knewz.com has learned.
SOFREP reported on March 8 that "U.S. military advisors have started to take up permanent position" in Kinmen and Penghu, with small teams comprising "Army Green Berets ... acting as permanent training observers."
When reporters asked Taiwan’s defense minister, Chiu Kuo-cheng, on Thursday, March 21, about the military station, he said, “This exchange is for mutual observation, to identify our problems, figure out how to improve, and recognize our strengths so we can learn from them.”
The quote appears to confirm U.S. military activity on the Kinmen Islands.
When the Wall Street Journal asked the Pentagon for comment, spokesperson Lt. Col. Martin Meiners refused to comment on the troops. Still, he said, “Our commitment to Taiwan is rock-solid and contributes to the maintenance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and within the region.”
On Thursday, John Aquillo, the commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said the reports were incorrect: “The U.S. military is not currently stationed there permanently.” He added that, “We can conduct further assessments in a confidential setting. But essentially, this is incorrect.”
On Thursday, March 21, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense also denied the presence of American troops on the Kinmen Islands.
“We would like to thank allied countries for their long-term support and assistance in strengthening Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities, but the so-called statement that ‘troops from other countries are stationed in our country’ is originally a wrong message,” the ministry said in a statement.
The presence of American troops in Taiwan is not new, but those deployments were for training exercises, and still provoked Beijing. An observational deployment in the Kinmen Islands would mark a significant uptick in American presence in Taiwan.
In 2023, the U.S. government said it was expanding the number of troops in Taiwan from 100 to 200 to “help improve Taiwan’s capabilities to defend itself.”
Those training deployments are rotational, and confusion emerged in both Anglophone and Taiwanese media about whether the U.S. had deployed any forces permanently to the island. Both governments said on Thursday that the U.S. had not.
Taiwan does appear as if it will send its troops to American territory for training purposes, which was seemingly confirmed in the 2023 U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission annual report.
The commission’s chair, Carolyn Bartholomew, told reporters they are trying to learn their lessons from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and train Taiwanese military personnel on how to use advanced weaponry before they are sent to the battlefield.
She said the U.S. doesn’t want Taiwan to experience the same “lag time between getting [the weapons] and then taking another six months of training before it becomes operational and can be used in the field.”
The Kinmen Islands have become a geopolitical hotspot in the past month after two mainland Chinese fishermen died when they were chased out of Taiwanese territory by the Coast Guard.
China responded to the incident by ramping up patrols in the region, and its Coast Guard even boarded a Taiwanese sightseeing boat and demanded registration and paperwork from the crew.
https://knewz.com/taipei-and-washington ... ts-taiwan/
Taiwan, U.S. Deny Reports of American Special Forces Stationed in Disputed Islands
Story by Kevin McSpadden
The U.S. government has denied reports Army "Green Berets" special forces troops were sent to the Kinmen Islands to establish a permanent observation point in Taiwan.
Earlier in March, an online military publication reported that the U.S. had sent its Green Beret special forces to Taiwan’s Kinmen Islands, Knewz.com has learned.
SOFREP reported on March 8 that "U.S. military advisors have started to take up permanent position" in Kinmen and Penghu, with small teams comprising "Army Green Berets ... acting as permanent training observers."
When reporters asked Taiwan’s defense minister, Chiu Kuo-cheng, on Thursday, March 21, about the military station, he said, “This exchange is for mutual observation, to identify our problems, figure out how to improve, and recognize our strengths so we can learn from them.”
The quote appears to confirm U.S. military activity on the Kinmen Islands.
When the Wall Street Journal asked the Pentagon for comment, spokesperson Lt. Col. Martin Meiners refused to comment on the troops. Still, he said, “Our commitment to Taiwan is rock-solid and contributes to the maintenance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and within the region.”
On Thursday, John Aquillo, the commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said the reports were incorrect: “The U.S. military is not currently stationed there permanently.” He added that, “We can conduct further assessments in a confidential setting. But essentially, this is incorrect.”
On Thursday, March 21, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense also denied the presence of American troops on the Kinmen Islands.
“We would like to thank allied countries for their long-term support and assistance in strengthening Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities, but the so-called statement that ‘troops from other countries are stationed in our country’ is originally a wrong message,” the ministry said in a statement.
The presence of American troops in Taiwan is not new, but those deployments were for training exercises, and still provoked Beijing. An observational deployment in the Kinmen Islands would mark a significant uptick in American presence in Taiwan.
In 2023, the U.S. government said it was expanding the number of troops in Taiwan from 100 to 200 to “help improve Taiwan’s capabilities to defend itself.”
Those training deployments are rotational, and confusion emerged in both Anglophone and Taiwanese media about whether the U.S. had deployed any forces permanently to the island. Both governments said on Thursday that the U.S. had not.
Taiwan does appear as if it will send its troops to American territory for training purposes, which was seemingly confirmed in the 2023 U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission annual report.
The commission’s chair, Carolyn Bartholomew, told reporters they are trying to learn their lessons from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and train Taiwanese military personnel on how to use advanced weaponry before they are sent to the battlefield.
She said the U.S. doesn’t want Taiwan to experience the same “lag time between getting [the weapons] and then taking another six months of training before it becomes operational and can be used in the field.”
The Kinmen Islands have become a geopolitical hotspot in the past month after two mainland Chinese fishermen died when they were chased out of Taiwanese territory by the Coast Guard.
China responded to the incident by ramping up patrols in the region, and its Coast Guard even boarded a Taiwanese sightseeing boat and demanded registration and paperwork from the crew.
https://knewz.com/taipei-and-washington ... ts-taiwan/