200 US military advisers reach Taiwan to beef up island's armed forces

New Delhi: Taiwan’s semi-official Central News Agency has reported that the country has welcomed 200 military advisers from the United States to sites throughout Taiwan in order to implement ongoing reforms to the island’s armed services.

According to CNA, the instructors were deployed to support training at boot camps and reserve units before Taiwan’s mandatory military service is set to increase from four to twelve months starting in 2024.

Late last year, as Taipei took significant steps to prepare itself for Beijing’s military ambitions in the ensuing ten years, President Tsai Ing-wen declared the change in policy.

Despite having been in power for seven decades, China’s Communist Party authorities have not yet taken control of the island that it claims as part of its territory.

China has resisted continued U.S.-Taiwan defence relations and reacts forcefully to any political support for the island that would jeopardise Beijing’s position since Washington moved official diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.

In October 2021, Tsai, whose second term as president ends in May 2019, admitted for the first time the existence of American military advisers in Taiwan, but said that their numbers weren’t “as many as people thought.”

Her defence minister, Chiu Kuo-cheng, stated shortly after that military exchanges between the United States and Taiwan did not indicate that American forces were currently “stationed in Taiwan.”

More than half of the island’s active service members are soldiers in Taiwan’s army, reports said.

Without going into any detail, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry spokesperson Sun Li-fang stated at a press conference the same day that it “welcomes allied military training to enhance the nation’s armed forces.”

The Wall Street Journal and Reuters reported separately in February that the U.S. Department of Defense intended to send between 100 and 200 troops to Taiwan in the coming months, the largest such deployment in almost fifty years.

188,000 volunteers make up the majority of Taiwan’s military, which also includes 10% of conscripts at any given moment and excludes 2.3 million officially registered reservists.

The island’s defenders would still be outnumbered by China’s 2 million-strong standing army despite the estimated 70,000 additional service members that the planned conscription reform may bring starting in 2027.

Although most Americans support some level of military assistance in the case of a Chinese invasion across the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan is not a treaty ally of the United States.

According to the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, Washington has served as Taipei’s primary source of arms and training for more than 40 years.

A battalion of roughly 500 soldiers was anticipated to travel to the United States for training this year under the aegis of the TRA, CNA reported in February.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin claimed last month that Taiwanese troops were also being trained by unknown National Guard groups.

According to a quarterly report released in March by the Pentagon’s Defense Manpower Data Center, at least 27 American service members were still on active duty in Taiwan as of late December.

The number has stayed relatively stable in recent years, and the majority of the group are affiliated with the American Institute in Taiwan, which serves as the de facto U.S. embassy in Taipei.

Usually, data on classified troops as well as temporary and emergency deployments are excluded from the figures.

The long-overdue defence reforms in Taiwan have been sped up by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The continuous confrontation has made the likelihood of a cross-strait war evident to the Taiwanese population.

Although Austin and other U.S. officials do not foresee an invasion in the near future, they have cautioned that an accident may occur as China increases its air force and navy maneuvers over the island.

One crucial component of a coordinated U.S.-led strategy to assist Taipei in strengthening deterrence and altering Beijing’s long-term calculations is more training for Taiwan’s armed forces.

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