Defending Taiwan is one of the top priorities of the Pentagon and the US is “very unlikely” to reduce its military presence in the nation, a US defense expert said yesterday.
The remark came after the Washington-based Defense Priorities think tank on Wednesday released a report calling on the US to withdraw all 500 US military training personnel stationed in Taiwan to avoid appearing “provocative” to China and contravening “past commitments not to base US forces on the island.”
However, Mark Cancian, a defense expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has prioritized defending Taiwan from a potential Chinese invasion.
Photo: Cheng I-hwa, Bloomberg
Hegseth at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in May emphasized the US military presence in the west Pacific region and the importance of defending Taiwan, Cancian wrote in an e-mail.
The White House would be interested in other suggestions in the report concerning Europe and the Middle East, but not the part about the west Pacific region, he wrote.
Withdrawing military training personnel is unlikely to ease tensions, said Michael Mazza, senior director at the Virginia-based Institute for Indo-Pacific Security and senior non-resident fellow at the Washington-based Global Taiwan Institute.
Tensions in the Taiwan Strait do not come from Washington’s support for Taiwan, but the fact that Beijing refuses to respect Taiwan’s democratic choices and insists on the fictional narrative that “Taiwan has always been a part of China,” Mazza wrote in an e-mail on Thursday.
US military training personnel are assisting Taiwan’s military to prepare for defense and to learn how to collaborate with partners during wartime, which is an important task, Mazza said.
The aim is to show Beijing that the US is determined, he said, adding that a withdrawal of training personnel would negatively affect stability in the Taiwan Strait.
The US government has not confirmed the number of military training personnel stationed in Taiwan.
Retired US Navy rear admiral Mark Montgomery last month said that the US’ joint training mission in Taiwan should be expanded to 1,000 from 500 personnel, and advocated for Taiwan’s defense budget to reach 5 percent of GDP by 2028.
He made the remarks at a hearing of the US House of Representatives Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the US and the Chinese Communist Party.
Additional reporting by Sam Garcia
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