Taiwanese troops attended a multinational military exercise inside the US last month that was led by the Michigan National Guard, Taipei Times reported, citing the Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun.
The exercises, known as Northern Strike, took place from August 5 to August 19 in Michigan and involved 7,000 military personnel. The report did not detail how many Taiwanese troops participated but said the scale was larger than previous training drills with the US.
Back in February, The South China Morning Post reported that Taiwan would deploy 500 troops to the US for training in the second half of the year. Taiwan has previously sent troops to the US but typically only sent a few dozen at a time.
The US and Taiwan have significantly increased military cooperation despite strong warnings from Beijing. In April, Taiwanese media reports said the US sent 200 troops to Taiwan to assist in training, the largest known US military presence on the island in decades.
The Sankei Shimbun report said the Taiwanese troops inside the US were taking part in drills led by the state-controlled Michigan National Guard rather than other US armed forces in an effort not to “provoke China too much.”
The US began expanding its training of Taiwan’s military to include the US National Guard in 2022, a move that’s been compared to the US National Guard beginning to train Ukrainian forces in 2014, following the US-backed coup that ousted former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
Source: AntiWar.
