U.S. Role Expected in Taiwanese War Games

The U.S. military will participate in Taiwan’s largest annual war games for the first time, a senior Taiwanese government official indicated Thursday.

Speaking to parliament in Taipei, Vice Defense Minister Chen Chao-min appeared to confirm a report in Thursday’s editions of the Taiwanese daily China Times that a limited number of U.S. Army personnel will take part in the exercise, planned for this spring.

The report indicated that the U.S. will send a team from its Pacific Command, whose job would be to evacuate Americans and other expatriates from Taiwan in case of an invasion from mainland China.

Chen said the move reflected what he termed “a reinforcing” of military exchanges with the U.S. “to ensure the best interests” of the island.

“Hopefully, through the exchanges, we can better protect security in the Taiwan Strait and stability in the Asia-Pacific region,” he added.

There was no immediate reaction from Beijing, which vigorously opposes any ties between the U.S. and Taiwanese militaries. The Beijing government considers Taiwan a rogue province that must eventually be reunited politically with the mainland -- by force, if necessary.

The Taipei newspaper account stated that the Americans involved in the exercise will remain in the Taiwanese military command center and that no armed U.S. troops will take part.

The annual war games involve all three main branches of Taiwan’s military and simulate efforts to repel an invasion by mainland Chinese forces.

Although political tensions across the Taiwan Strait have eased in the last few years, the area has simmered as a potential flashpoint since 1949, when Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek retreated to the island and established a government after losing a bitter civil war to the Communists.

U.S. military personnel have observed Taiwanese war games previously but have not participated in them.

American forces withdrew from the island in the late 1970s when President Carter broke formal diplomatic ties with the Nationalists and recognized the Communist regime in Beijing instead as the legitimate government of China.

A diplomat at the American Institute in Taiwan -- the de facto U.S. Embassy in Taipei -- declined to confirm the U.S. military participation. The envoy, who declined to be identified, said only that the United States would “continue to assist Taiwan in meeting its legitimate self-defense needs.”

Pro-Taiwan Steps

Any direct U.S. role in the Taiwanese military exercises would represent one more in a series of pro-Taiwan steps taken by the Bush administration since it came to office nearly two years ago.

Just a few months into his term, President Bush ended years of deliberate uncertainty about how the U.S. might react in a cross-strait conflict, declaring that America would do “whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself.”

Shortly after, a group of Taiwanese military officers visited Washington for a series of informal policy meetings -- the first such talks in more than two decades. Under Bush, the U.S. has also offered to sell Taipei a substantial arms package.

Andrew Yang, a Taiwan security specialist in Taipei, said it would be “a step forward for the Taiwanese armed forces to work alongside the U.S. military in a crisis situation,” but he cautioned the Taiwanese to keep the move in perspective.

“This doesn’t mean the U.S. is now ready to cooperate in defending the island militarily,” he said. “In this exercise, the Americans will be there to rescue U.S. citizens, not Taiwan.”

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Times special correspondent Tsai Ting-I in Taipei contributed to this report.