Alleged assessments by Pentagon experts exposed what authorities believe to be a leak by a young National Guard reservist that claims that the U.S. military is struggling to monitor Chinese military activity around Taiwan because Beijing is using “civilian” ferries for military purposes, the Washington Post reported this weekend.
The documents detailed in the Washington Post report on Saturday offer an American military perspective on Taiwan’s ability to defend itself from a potential Chinese invasion as well as America’s ability to aid in defending the island.
The alleged assessment warned that Taiwan is ill-prepared to fend off the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) alone and suffers from glaring vulnerabilities such as poor missile warning systems, radio communications that do not allow for soldiers to avoid hitting the same target twice, and an aircraft fleet that is only about half operational.
Taiwan is a sovereign, democratic state in the South China Sea that seeks friendly relations with America. America does not recognize its sovereignty, however, because doing so would result in an abrupt end to diplomatic ties with communist China, both countries’ top geopolitical threat. China falsely claims Taiwan is a runaway “province” and dismisses its elected government as a “separatist” organization, routinely threatening to invade and colonize the country.
China generally claims the entirety of the South China Sea, including territory belonging to the states of Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, and Malaysia, in addition to Taiwan.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague declared China’s claims false in a 2016 ruling that Beijing continues to ignore to this day, with no visible consequences.
The United States Navy regularly sends its ships through the disputed territory for “Freedom of Navigation Operations” (FONOPs) meant to maintain the open status of the waters in question.
The latest such FONOP occurred on Sunday:
The Washington Post did not publish the Taiwan documents but summarized their evaluation of Taiwanese defense forces as grim.
“The assessments state that Taiwan officials doubt their air defenses can ‘accurately detect missile launches,’ that barely more than half of Taiwan’s aircraft are fully mission capable,” the newspaper narrated, “and that moving the jets to shelters would take at least a week — a huge problem if China launched missiles before Taiwan had a chance to disperse those planes.”
“One assessment,” the report continued, “notes that the PLA’s modernization, its heightened operations tempo and the use of civilian ferries in exercises in the Eastern Theater Command near Taiwan are ‘eroding’ the U.S. intelligence community’s ability to detect abnormal activity and preparations for ‘an attack on Taiwan.'”
China has long disguised intelligence or military ships in the South China Sea as “fishing” or other civilian vessels.
In 2017, U.S. Naval War College professor Andrew Erickson estimated that China has thousands of vessels and personnel enlisted in what he described as its “sneaky” navy. Chinese vessels, many of which do not even overtly appear to belong to the government, occasionally attack genuine civilian vessels operating in their own domestic waters that China falsely claims. Vietnam has endured a particularly large number of these incidents.
The Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense responded to the report by asserting on Sunday that it was simply untrue, joining at least seven other countries in denying either the content or the legitimacy of the “leaked” documents. Ukraine, Russia, South Korea, Serbia, the United Kingdom, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have all in the past week denied claims made in the documents; South Korea and Ukraine have called the documents “fake” or “forged.”
Prior to that, the Washington Post published a response from the Defense Ministry stating that it “respects outside opinions about its military preparedness,” but it believes its soldiers are “absolutely capable, determined and confident” against any potential Chinese invasion.
An anonymous alleged “Chinese official,” in turn, told the Post that China “has the ability to swiftly defeat Taiwan in the air and sea — that is not in question.”
The Taiwan evaluations are the latest in a series of information that the Post and New York Times have published as part of the coverage of an alleged leak of documents that reportedly began in a video game chat room on the platform Discord. FBI agents arrested 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, a Massachusetts Air National Guard reservist, in connection with the alleged leaks.
Reports, including by the Washington Post, indicate that Teixeira shared hundreds of such documents online in an attempt to impress video game chat room friends, and the documents circulated for weeks on multiple online platforms before the U.S. government took notice. Authorities have not clarified how Teixeira obtained the documents or if he was acting alone at press time; investigations continue.
In addition to the Taiwan reports today, the documents in question reportedly included sensitive information regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine – including bleak reports warning the Ukrainian military’s efforts were not successfully holding back Russia’s assaults – and documents suggesting that Washington was spying on government officials in states and agencies that are friendly to and even allied with America, most prominently South Korea and the United Nations.
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