The US Navy’s elite Seal Team 6 is training for missions to “help” Taiwan if tensions between the island and the PRC go hot.
Sources told the Financial Times that planning and training for a Taiwan escalation has been underway “for more than a year” at Seal Team 6’s Dam Neck, Virginia Beach HQ.
The training, which coincides with increasingly systematized deployments of US special forces in Taiwan, comes amid the US military and intelligence community’s broader refocus on China.
The US has reneged on both commitments, with internal Pentagon data released in 2021 revealing that small numbers of US troops have been stationed on Taiwan going back to at least 2008. In March 2024, Taipei confirmed the permanent presence of US troops on islands in the Taiwan Strait for ‘training purposes’, including Green Berets deployed as little as 10 km off the mainland.
“The US is manipulating the Taiwan question in various forms, which is a very dangerous gamble,” China's Defense Ministry said of US moves in late 2023, after Congress authorized a “comprehensive training, advising and institutionalized capacity-building program” for Taiwan. “We urge the US to fully realize the severe harm of the China-related content in the NDAA, stop arming Taiwan under any excuses and by any means, stop its provocations by using Taiwan to ‘contain China’, and take concrete actions to maintain regional peace and stability,” Beijing urged.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has formally outlined a policy aiming at eventual peaceful reunification with Taiwan under the ‘One China, Two Systems’ principle, reportedly accused Washington of trying to “goad Beijing into attacking Taiwan” during talks with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen in 2023.