What Are US Green Berets Doing Less Than 10 Km Away From Mainland China’s Coast?

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Written by Drago Bosnic, independent geopolitical and military analyst

Antagonizing the vast majority of the world has become NATO’s standard practice. Its never-ending encroachment on Russia’s borders is breaking world records, as it keeps deploying various missile systems and nuclear-capable fighter jets around it. However, trying to provoke a reaction of “only” one global superpower is obviously not enough, so the political West is also going after the other – China.  Its breakaway island province of Taiwan is once again the primary target of a crawling aggression by the United States. Namely, last week, Taipei’s Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng confirmed the presence of US Army Special Forces in Kinmen, a group of islands controlled by the Taiwanese government, but located less than 10 km away from the coast of mainland China.

Worse yet, certain parts of the Kinmen archipelago are a mere 4 km away from the city of Xiamen in Beijing’s Fujian province. The presence of American special forces, specifically the US Army Green Berets, was first reported by local media back in February. According to Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp, Chiu confirmed the highly provocative deployment when asked about a new report from the US outlet SOFREP that said Green Berets have taken up “permanent positions” as military advisors in Kinmen. The US soldiers are also deployed in Penghu, a Taipei-controlled archipelago less than 50 km west of the island of Taiwan and just over 110 km east of mainland China. The SOFREP report stated that the American Green Berets were stationed at amphibious command centers of Taipei’s military.

The deployment of US troops was carried out under the provisions of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, which called for the Pentagon to create a comprehensive training program for the armed forces of the government in Taipei. This includes the training of local forces on the Black Hornet Nano, a micro military drone used for tactical ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance). Defense Minister Chiu stated that the presence of American Green Berets was a “learning opportunity” for the military of China’s breakaway island province. In the last several years, Washington DC has significantly increased its meddling in Taiwan, fanning up tensions with China to a boiling point several times already, despite Beijing’s repeated warnings and attempts to deescalate the situation.

In 2023, the Pentagon sent around 200 troops to Taiwan, making it the largest official American military deployment in China’s breakaway island province ever since the US pulled its forces out after severing de jure (albeit not de facto) diplomatic ties with Taipei back in 1979 and officially recognizing the government in Beijing as the sole legal entity in the entire country. In addition, back in early September last year, the Taipei Times reported that military drills were held in Michigan in the August 5-19 timeframe, involving approximately 7000 American and Taiwanese soldiers. Although most US troops involved in the exercise (dubbed “Northern Strike”) were members of the Michigan National Guard, some reportedly belonged to unnamed military units under the direct command of the Pentagon.

This clearly indicates that the soldiers in question must have been special forces used in various covert operations. For its part, Taipei sent the entire joint battalion of its 333rd Infantry Brigade. At the time, both sides indicated that such military drills would be held in the future on a more regular basis, a move clearly designed to further antagonize China. According to Taipei Times, which in turn cited Sankei Shimbun, a Japanese news source, the reason why the US hosted Taiwanese troops was that it’s supposedly “wary of provoking China”. This was allegedly because “the Michigan exercises were led by the National Guard — a strategic reserve force that is normally overseen by US state governments — instead of the US Armed Forces”. However, policymakers in Beijing certainly did not see it that way.

What’s more, according to Sankei Shimbun’s own inadvertent admission, this was a bogus attempt to present the exercise as not involving US federal troops, because the drills were directly overseen and commanded by the Pentagon. Normally, National Guard units are under the control of their respective states. In other words, Washington DC’s supposed attempt to not anger China is nothing but a mere formality. In practice, nothing could be further from true, as the US is providing hundreds of anti-ship missiles to Taipei, in addition to new fighter jets and a plethora of other types of weapons and munitions, much of it as the so-called “military aid”. This marks a major policy shift, as the Pentagon hadn’t made such deliveries since 1979. Namely, the US would always sell weapons to Taipei.

To make matters worse, the Pentagon is in the process of deploying new medium-range missile systems in the region, including the ones that can fire the land-based version of the medium-range “Tomahawk” cruise missile. Although this isn’t exactly a new capability, as the US had ground-based medium-range cruise missiles back in the early 1980s, these weapons were banned under the now-defunct Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that was signed by Washington DC and Moscow in 1987, banning all types of land-based missiles and weapons with ranges of 500-5500 km. This included ballistic and cruise missiles, both conventional and nuclear-tipped. Needless to say, such weapons are a direct threat not only to Beijing’s interests in the region, but to mainland China itself.

As for Taiwan, it’s not only of historical, legal and national value, but also of prime strategic importance. When in the hands of Beijing’s enemies, the breakaway island province is a major security hurdle, as it exposes the entire southeast China’s “soft underbelly”, particularly the neighboring province of Fujian. This doesn’t only slow down (or even prevent) normal economic development, but it also requires the mobilization of significant resources to ensure the safety of the crucial area. On the other hand, if Beijing restores its full sovereignty over the island, be it in a similar manner to Hong Kong or perhaps within a new, even more lax framework that eliminates the threat posed by the US, Taiwan could then serve as a springboard to push America out of the area and protect China’s basic security interests.

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