On May 2, 2011, one of the elite units of the American special forces, “SEAL Team 6”, launched Operation Neptune’s Trident in Pakistan. The target: Osama Bin Laden, leader of Al-Qaeda and instigator of the September 11 attacks, finally killed about fifty kilometers from the capital Islamabad. 13 years later, after equally sensitive missions in Somalia and Yemen, “SEAL Team 6” is preparing to radically change theater of operations, but for a mission that is just as strategic for Washington: the defense of Taiwan in the event of a potential Chinese invasion.
THE Financial Times claims that this unit of American special forces, programmed for the most sensitive and difficult missions of the American army, has been planning and training for such an operation for more than a year in their headquarters in Virginia Beach, nearly 250 kilometers from Washington.
Military support on the rise
These exercises demonstrate that the United States is taking a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan extremely seriously. While Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered his army to be able to invade the island by 2027, the United States is also seeking to strengthen its support and military presence in Taipei to dissuade Beijing from carrying out such an operation. All the more so since Washington has been required to provide military assistance to the island since 1979 and the passage of the “Taiwan Relations Act” in the American Congress – still without officially recognizing the island.
The United States has thus strengthened and diversified its support for Taiwan in recent years, while Beijing has multiplied provocations and incursions in the China Sea or in the Taiwan Strait. Still with the Financial Times, CIA Director Bill Burns had assured in early September that 20% of his agency’s budget was devoted to China, an increase of 200% in three years. The Pentagon has also deployed special forces to the island to train Taiwanese soldiers, much to Beijing’s anger.
“Inevitable” involvement of elite forces
But the preparation of one of the most elite U.S. special forces units for “a wide range of possibilities” around Taiwan, in the words of a Pentagon spokesman, signals yet another step up in Washington’s potential involvement in the region. “That Seal Team 6 is preparing for potential Taiwan-related missions should not come as a surprise,” he conceded to the Financial Times Sean Naylor, author of Relentless Strikea book about the U.S. Special Operations Command.
“With the Pentagon’s strategic shift in recent years toward great-power competition, it was inevitable that even the nation’s most experienced counterterrorism units would seek a role in that arena, which is the one that drives missions, budgets and reconnaissance,” adds the man who also runs a website on American national security, The High Side.
One thing is certain: this news risks further increasing tensions between Beijing and Washington. On Thursday, a senior Chinese military official stated that “if the United States advances its pawns behind the scenes, if it pushes countries onto the front line, or if the United States itself ends up on the front line,” the Chinese army “will not hesitate,” he insisted. Taiwan “will never succumb” to the mounting pressure from a “more aggressive” China toward it, for his part assured on Thursday the Taiwanese minister in charge of policy toward Beijing, Chiu Chui-cheng. The preparation for a possible conflagration is not likely to subside.