American troops are in Taiwan on a training mission. Are Taiwanese troops able to fight a hard battle to repel a Chines invasion?
In the past I've read wildly conflicting stories about Taiwanese willingness to fight a Chinese invasion. Some say the troops would fight tooth and nail and others question whether they'd collapse in combat from too little training.
This news indicates the truth is closer to the latter:
A U.S. special-operations unit and a contingent of Marines have been secretly operating in Taiwan to train military forces there, U.S. officials said, part of efforts to shore up the island’s defenses as concern regarding potential Chinese aggression mounts. ...
The U.S. special-operations deployment is a sign of concern within the Pentagon over Taiwan’s tactical capabilities in light of Beijing’s yearslong military buildup and recent threatening moves against the island.
China called on the U.S. to abide by its agreement to withdraw troops from Taiwan, in a relatively muted response to reports that a small number of American military advisers have been deployed to the island.
China's increased threats to invade to Taiwan have invalidated our past pledge made when America cooperated with China against the USSR, in my opinion. And technically we rotate troops through Taiwan rather than station them there. The American deployment was begun in secret a year ago, although I'm reasonably sure Peking knew. But I sure didn't.
It is interesting that we used American troops. That was a signal we wanted China to see. Because we easily could have used former military personnel in private military companies to do the training to avoid stepping on Chinese toes.
We need to step up this kind of training for the Taiwanese. Will the British and French participate?
And the deployment might explain the extra pre-publication reviews by additional agencies for Military Review's Taiwan issue a year ago, which I had an article in. Sensitive stuff was going on in the real world.
