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Elite US unit training against China – FT | |
(about 8 hours later) | |
SEAL Team Six has reportedly been focusing on “a Taiwan conflict” | |
The US Navy’s elite special operations unit, SEAL Team Six, has been training to “help Taiwan” in case of a “Chinese invasion,” according to the Financial Times. The unit is most famous for the 2011 mission that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. | |
SEAL Team Six “has been planning and training for a Taiwan conflict for more than a year at Dam Neck, its headquarters at Virginia Beach about 250km south-east of Washington,” FT reported on Thursday, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter. | |
The US has sent special forces to Taiwan in the past several years to train the island’s military against a potential attack from the mainland. No details were given about the SEAL activity, which is “highly classified.” | |
The US Special Operations Command referred any questions about the Taiwan plans to the Pentagon, which did not comment on specific details. | The US Special Operations Command referred any questions about the Taiwan plans to the Pentagon, which did not comment on specific details. |
So far, the only hints of US plans for a potential conflict around Taiwan have come from Admiral Samuel Paparo, the head of the Indo-Pacific Command, in an interview in June. | |
“I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities so I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything,” Paparo told the Washington Post. | |
Taiwan has been run by descendants of Chinese nationalists since they fled the mainland in 1949, following a communist victory in the civil war. Washington did not recognize the People’s Republic of China until 1979, treating the government in Taipei as the ‘Republic of China’ in the meantime. | |
Though it has officially adopted the One-China policy, the US maintains informal diplomatic and economic ties with Taipei, which is a major source of semiconductors and chips for Western markets. Washington has also supplied Taipei with weapons, ammunition, and equipment to “deter” Beijing. | |
Taiwan is “the very core of China’s core interests and the first red line that must not be crossed in the China-US relationship,” the Chinese Embassy in Washington has said, urging the US to “stop creating factors that could heighten tensions in the Taiwan Strait.” | |
The US government claims that Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered the People’s Liberation Army to modernize to achieve the capability of forcibly seizing the island by 2027. | The US government claims that Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered the People’s Liberation Army to modernize to achieve the capability of forcibly seizing the island by 2027. |
Beijing’s official Taiwan policy is peaceful reintegration, though China has not ruled out using force in the event of the island declaring independence. | Beijing’s official Taiwan policy is peaceful reintegration, though China has not ruled out using force in the event of the island declaring independence. |