ANALYSIS – It is just a matter of time before this scenario becomes reality. Communist China under Xi Jinping is hell-bent on conquering and absorbing Taiwan.
And many experts believe that China is using its numerous and escalating military drills around the island as a cover for an eventual surprise attack.
During one major round of war games around Taiwan in April of last year, China practiced precision strikes and blocked the island.
Beijing hopes to “normalize” these drills to lull Taiwan and its allies into complacency. This is why Taiwan's annual war games this year will simulate a scenario where China suddenly turns one of its regular invasion and blockade drills around the island into an actual attack.
And American troops are there to help. (RELATED: Report: Taiwan Confirms Presence Of US Troops)
China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its territory, has been staging regular joint military exercises around the island for the past four years, to pressure Taipei to accept Beijing's claim of sovereignty.
But this year, based on lessons learned from the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, Taiwan starts its main annual Han Kuang exercises this month with tabletop drills, extended from five days to eight given the number of scenarios to be included, followed in July by actual combat exercises. (RELATED: Senate Foreign Aid Bill Funds Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan But Not Border)
As Fox News reported:
Tung Chih-hsing, the head of the joint combat planning department of Taiwan's defense ministry, made the announcement during a news conference Tuesday, according to Reuters. He reportedly added that the drills would integrate naval, air, coast guard forces, drones and shore-mounted anti-ship weapons to establish an “attack and kill chain” at sea.
Fox News continued: “‘In addition, [we will] use naval and air forces and coast guard ships to jointly carry out escort operations” in the simulated event of a blockade of Taiwan by China, the news agency also quoted Tung as saying.'”
The Daily Sabah news outlet added:
Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine two years ago, Taiwan has been looking to see what lessons it can learn and integrate into its own exercises, especially how the much smaller Ukrainian forces have been able to fend off the larger Russian military.
Tung said those would again feature this year, along with the lessons learned from the war in Gaza.
For both of those conflicts, Tung said officials were looking at the use of psychological warfare and asymmetric operations in particular, though without explaining exactly how they would figure in the drills.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has championed the idea of “asymmetric warfare” to make its forces, which are also much smaller than China's, more mobile and hard to attack, with, for example, vehicle-mounted missiles and drones.
Meanwhile, U.S. forces are helping. Army special forces (Green Berets) have now deployed to Taiwan on a permanent basis to train and advise Taiwanese forces in irregular warfare. The training is being planned and supervised by the 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) based out of Okinawa, Japan.
This includes Green Berets being on small islands just six miles from the Chinese coast. The Kinmen Islands are visible from the port city of Xiamen in eastern China, on the Chinese side of the Taiwan Strait.
After a long period of being an open secret, the Green Berets permanent presence was made public under the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was signed into law in December 2022.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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