The US has expanded its training of the Taiwanese military to include a program involving the US National Guard, Nikkei Asia reported on Thursday.
A source told Nikkei that the training began sometime before spring 2022. In May 2022, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen announced cooperation with the National Guard while hosting Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) in Taipei.
“The US Department of Defense is now proactively planning cooperation between the US National Guard and Taiwan’s defense forces,” Tsai said. “We look forward to closer and deeper Taiwan-US cooperation on matters of regional security.”
The report said that the training already began before Tsai made the announcement during Duckworth’s visit. Since the training started, the National Guard has trained Taiwanese troops in both Taiwan and inside the US.
National Guard training overseas typically involves a unit from a single state, but the report said the training in Taiwan involves units from multiple US states, including Hawaii. The US and Taiwan rarely acknowledge their military cooperation, and a Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on the National Guard Training.
“We don’t have a comment on specific operations, engagements or training, but I would highlight that our support for, and defense relationship with, Taiwan remains aligned against the current threat posed by the People’s Republic of China,” the Pentagon told Nikkei.
In October 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that a US special operations unit and a contingent of Marines were in Taiwan and had been training Taipei’s military for at least a year. Tsai later confirmed the report, marking the first time a Taiwanese leader acknowledged a US military presence in Taiwan since Washington severed diplomatic relations with Taipei in 1979.
The growing US-Taiwan military ties anger Beijing, which views the policies as an affront to the one-China policy. The 2023 National Defense Authorization Act President Biden recently signed into law includes measures to increase US and Taiwanese military cooperation even more.
The US is also encouraging Japan’s military buildup and is planning to expand its military facilities in the Philippines as part of its effort to counter China in the region. The top US Marine Corps general in Japan described the effort as “setting the theater” and said the US did something similar in Ukraine starting in 2014, after the US-backed coup that deposed former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
The US launched a similar National Guard training program for Ukraine in 2014, known as Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine, that rotated through units from different states. US military officials said 23,000 Ukrainians were trained under the program. The US withdrew its National Guard troops from Ukraine shortly before Russia’s invasion.
I’m so tired of funding the killing of people who kill people in hopes of proving killing people is wrong
If the world did not have people like Putin you would not have that problem.
I think it is more about humanity as a whole. We should have evolved to a higher point by now. Everything seems predicated on a war based mentality.
Not really, Donna. Humans evolved to top of the pecking order because when someone shouted “Danger… Saber tooth tiger.” there was no reason to doubt the cries of warning.
Now we know the banker/Hollywood/industrialist class is lying for their own reasons. When warnings are shouted out everyone knows capitalists are lying cowards attempting to rile normal people into profitable war monger schemes.
Highly cynical but true.
Primates.
Kenneth and John and Don, and a few others here, could be replaced with a hundred lines of code and a compact SQLite database.
And you can be replaced with daily reports from Russia.
So, those 20 million the US has killed since WW2 are on Putin? Putin is like Gandhi in comparison to most US leaders in that time period. Plus, we knowingly sanction others into economic ruin and starvation. But that would be on Putin too, right? Your jingoism knows no bounds.
KH thinks so much like Biden it’s spooky.
Well, then I should run for election so that you can vote for me like you did for Biden.
You seem awfully snarky….
If the world did not have people like Biden, Blinken, Nuland, Sullivan, Cheney, Bush, Pompeo and all the other odious Neocons we would not have that problem.
And another Putin defender chimes in.
I think you are confusing a realist with a defender.
You bet I am a Putin defender because I know what the truth is! Biden and Blinken are indefensible.
Putin is a man amongst unbridled enemies of history. If there was anyone thinking in Washington we would not be having the current Ukraine war.
If the world did not have the US government and all of its terrorist agencies you would not have the problems the world has now. Putin has never been the issue, at every turn he has tried to work with Uncle Sam only to be damned and shunned because he refuses Russia to be a vassal to the US.
Or Saddam, or Bin Laden or…It has to stop somewhere.
China will eventually be forced to admit they are being bullied.
Ninety percent of rattlesnake bites on humans are on the hands of young boys, they were taunting the snake and then it struck, fast.
Now the US has pushed war with Russia and is still pushing for war with China and Iran. Will the Japanese, South Koreans and Taiwanese be willing American stooges and behave like Ukrainians?
Probably.
Unprovoked provoked SOP.
Each and every day we prove once again that we are not fit to lead in any category.
There is a slim possibility the American Dream will stimulate people to evolve to a new level of consciousness and a new form of government that actually works. Eurasians have copied the west and might be open to copying a new way that westerners grasp to avoid extinction.
China must expel the US from Taiwan with everything at its disposal. The US government is a perpetual trouble maker and wants Taiwan as a bulwark against China. China should begin with forbidding any flights or ships entering Taiwan’s space since it is a part of China.
Must in one hand. Sh*t in the other. Let me know which hand gets full first.
The hand with the excrement will be Uncle Sam’s hand. They have no chance here. China has seen the full folly of the US military and its continued failures. China hold the cards here..
Americans are going to wake up one morning and the sky is going to be full of planes dropping bombs all over America
“US Expands Training of Taiwanese Military With National Guard The US launched a similar program in Ukraine in 2014”
Joey Biden lost in Afghanistan, is losing in Ukraine, and now wants to compound those loses in Taiwan. Insanity doing the same thing over and over.
It wouldn’t be any better if he were winning.