The US Navy’s elite special operations unit, SEAL Team Six, has been training to “help Taiwan” in case of a “Chinese invasion,” according to the Financial Times (FT). The unit carried out the 2011 mission that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan.
SEAL Team Six “has been planning and training for a Taiwan conflict for more than a year at Dam Neck, its headquarters at Virginia Beach about 250km south-east of Washington,” the FT reported on Thursday, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter.
The US has sent special forces to Taiwan in the past several years to train the island’s military against a potential attack from the mainland. No details were given about the SEAL activity, which is “highly classified.”
The US Special Operations Command referred any questions about Taiwan plans to the Pentagon, which did not comment on specific details.
So far, the only hints of US plans for a potential conflict around Taiwan have come from Admiral Samuel Paparo, the head of the Indo-Pacific Command, in an interview in June.
“I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities so I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything,” Paparo told the Washington Post.
Taiwan has been run by descendants of Chinese nationalists since they fled the mainland in 1949, following a communist victory in the civil war. Washington did not recognize the People’s Republic of China until 1979, treating the government in Taipei as the ‘Republic of China’ in the meantime.
Though it has officially adopted the One-China policy, the US maintains informal diplomatic and economic ties with Taipei, which is a major source of semiconductors and chips for Western markets. Washington has also supplied Taipei with weapons, ammunition, and equipment to “deter” Beijing.
Taiwan is “the very core of China’s core interests and the first red line that must not be crossed in the China-US relationship,” the Chinese Embassy in Washington has said, urging the US to “stop creating factors that could heighten tensions in the Taiwan Strait.”
The US government claims that Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered the People’s Liberation Army to modernize to achieve the capability of forcibly seizing the island by 2027.
Beijing’s official Taiwan policy is peaceful reintegration, though China has not ruled out using force in the event of the island declaring independence.
美國海軍精英特種部隊海豹六隊（SEAL Team Six）正在訓練以「幫助台灣」，以應對「中國入侵」，《金融時報》（FT）報導。該部隊執行了2011年在巴基斯坦擊斃基地組織領導人奧薩馬·本·拉登的任務。
《金融時報》周四援引匿名消息來源報導，海豹六隊「在位於華盛頓東南約250公里的弗吉尼亞海灘的總部達姆內克（Dam Neck）計畫並訓練台灣衝突已有一年多」。
美國在過去幾年中已向台灣派遣特種部隊，以訓練該島的軍隊應對來自大陸的潛在攻擊。關於海豹部隊的活動沒有提供細節，該活動被認為「高度機密」。
美國特種作戰司令部將有關台灣計畫的任何問題轉給五角大樓，後者沒有對具體細節發表評論。
迄今為止，美國對台灣潛在衝突計畫的唯一暗示來自印太司令部司令塞繆爾·帕帕羅海軍上將在6月的一次採訪中。
帕帕羅在接受《華盛頓郵報》訪問時表示：「我希望將台灣海峽變成一個無人區，用多種機密能力讓他們的生活在一個月內變得極為痛苦，這為我爭取了其他一切的時間。」
自1949年國民黨逃離大陸以來，台灣一直由國民黨的後裔統治。華盛頓直到1979年才承認中華人民共和國，在此期間將台北政府視為「中華民國」。
儘管美國正式採納了一個中國政策，但仍與台北保持非正式的外交和經濟聯繫，台灣是西方市場主要的半導體和芯片來源。華盛頓還向台北提供武器、彈藥和裝備，以「威懾」北京。
中國駐華盛頓大使館表示，台灣是「中國核心利益的核心，是中美關係中不可逾越的第一道紅線」，呼籲美國「停止製造可能加劇台海緊張局勢的因素」。
美國政府聲稱，中國國家主席習近平已下令人民解放軍現代化，以在2027年前具備強制奪取台灣的能力。
北京的官方台灣政策是和平統一，儘管中國並未排除在島嶼宣布獨立的情況下使用武力。
