Taiwan’s defense minister on Tuesday appeared to confirm a report that said Taiwanese Marines are being trained by their US counterparts in Guam.
The report from Taiwan’s Apple Daily said about 40 members of Taiwan’s Republic of China Marine Corps were selected to partake in drills led by US Marines in Guam for one month.
Discussing the report, Taiwanese Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said, “We have a long history of exchanges and cooperation with the United States. There is necessary interaction on some levels, and this forms part of the exchanges.”
According to Apple Daily, the training is happening under a program known as “Marine Roar” that was established in 1958 when the US and Taiwan still shared a mutual defense treaty. The program stopped in 1979 when Washington severed official relations with Taipei, but it was revived in 2017.
The revelation comes after Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen confirmed the presence of US troops on the island of Taiwan, making her the first Taiwanese leader to do so since 1979.
The South China Morning Post reported Monday that China had been aware that the US has deployed small numbers of troops to Taiwan for training purposes over the past few decades.
A Chinese military source told the Post that the US and China had a tacit understanding over the issue, and Taiwan’s acknowledgment was meant as a provocation. The source said the move was a “politically-motivated attempt to provoke the mainland authorities’ bottom line.”
Not a good idea. Perhaps better to let the world defend itself and we stay home. Since we left these shores in 1917 our alliances have been disastrous.
Here is what China has to say about a war with the United States over Taiwan:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2021/11/priming-world-for-war-with-china.html
Washington’s ruling class with its Cold War mentality still believes that it can win a conflict anywhere in the world, however, China’s massive and technically advanced military, its close links to both North Korea and Russia and its geographic proximity to any conflict in the East and South China Seas give it a significant advantage
The US also trained the Iraqi army, the Afghan army, and the Syrian “moderate rebels”, and we know how that worked out.
That said, there will be no Chinese attack on Taiwan. That would be both stupid and entirely unnecessary. The Chinese will be patient, and in due course, when the US has faded, Taiwan will reintegrate. So the ridiculous bluff of a US military defense of that island will for the moment remain fake news nonsense.
It’s just the MIC building the next boogieman to keep their rice bowl full.
Seems like we are indebted to the Mainland for a trillion or two, now if we could provoke them to war we could cancel that debt and maybe confiscate any holdings they have around the world. We wouldn’t be that dirty and desperate would we ? I mean we have done it before for a lot less, for example the oil in Syria, according to our man Trump.