I give you the translation of this article which has not yet been denied what will happen perhaps but I doubt it.
According to these sources, the United States has already been preparing for a mass evacuation of its nationals living in Taiwan for more than six months, while China is very clearly on the side of Russia in the war in Ukraine and that Iran also massively supports the Russians.
However, it would seem that preparations have intensified in recent days as the threat of a Sino-American confrontation increases.
The United States is preparing evacuation plans for American citizens in Taiwan.
The US government is preparing evacuation plans for US citizens living in Taiwan, three sources told The Messenger.
Planning has been underway for at least six months and “it has intensified over the past two months or so,” said a senior US intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to discuss planning.
The official said an “increased level of tension” had led to these preparations. “It’s nothing you won’t read about in the news,” he told The Messenger. “The forces are growing. China is aligning itself with Russia on Ukraine.
A source familiar with the matter cited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 as an impetus for the planning.
The US government has not publicly discussed the preparations. The State Department declined a request for comment. While Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Martin Meiners declined to comment directly on the planning, he said, “We do not view a conflict in the Taiwan Strait as imminent or inevitable.
The planning process has been kept silent as it is a sensitive issue for the Taiwanese government, a source said; more generally, a former State Department official said:
“Just talking about an escape plan makes people think something can happen, even if it’s just careful planning.”
In 2019, more than 80,000 Americans were in Taiwan, which has faced growing threats from the Chinese military and Chinese leaders in recent years. Some US officials have said an invasion could take place in the coming years, while other officials and experts doubt the Chinese government will use force in its long-standing commitment to “reunification” with Taiwan.
Planning an evacuation from Taiwan “is a very prudent thing to do,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who has run war games in Taiwan and has been involved in evacuating Americans from Saigon in 1975. But he added that these were only contingency plans. “The fact that the United States is doing this does not mean that it expects there to be a war. It is only a declaration that there could be a war.
Details of US plans are still being worked out, sources told The Messenger, including where US citizens could be evacuated if deemed necessary.
All agreed: any evacuation from Taiwan would pose multiple challenges.
“Taiwan’s physical geography is an important factor,” a source said, adding that there is often only one main road between two points and the mountainous island’s many tunnels could become hotspots. strangulation. If evacuations were ordered, it is likely that hundreds of thousands of other foreigners in Taiwan – and Taiwanese citizens – would also be on these routes.
General State Department guidelines urge citizens abroad to use commercial transportation to leave before a crisis, but that’s not always possible — and certainly not in the event of a surprise assault. “Once the shooting starts, it’s very, very difficult,” Cancian said. He cited as an example the challenge of maintaining safe corridors for evacuations and humanitarian aid in Ukraine.
In Taiwan, the main airports are on the west coast of the island, facing China, and could well be attacked in the event of an invasion. Chartered ships could be sent in place of commercial aircraft, but again the war would make this option difficult, if not impossible.
“Imagine the D-Day landings, and then a third country — Switzerland or something — wants to send a cruise ship through the US fleet to Normandy to pick up its citizens,” Cancian said.
In some of the most harrowing evacuations in US history – Saigon in 1975 or Kabul in 2021 – the US military has been drafted in to help as a last resort. In Taiwan, the current US presence is limited to some 200 troops – down from just 30 last year – and even that presence is a source of tension with China.
Plan for the worst
Under US policy, embassies worldwide are responsible for formulating contingency plans for embassy staff and US citizens, while more detailed operational planning for evacuations is undertaken in conjunction with the Department of Defense.
John McLaughlin, former acting director of the CIA and practitioner-in-residence at the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies, said a basic but essential step for evacuation planning in Taiwan is identifying and locating US citizens. on the island.
“One thing they could do is I would find a way to tell Americans to register in this database,” McLaughlin told The Messenger, referring to the State Department’s registry for US citizens living abroad.
Recently, the American Institute in Taiwan, which handles diplomatic work in the absence of an official US embassy, appears to have done just that – without referring to the geopolitical situation. In February, it posted a message on its website after the earthquakes in Turkey with the title “Prepare for disasters now”, reminding citizens that Taiwan is in a “disaster-prone region” and encouraging them to s register and have emergency bags and personal documents ready.
State Department and Defense Department planners are also tasked with identifying possible meeting points, evacuation routes, and transit modes for a range of contingencies.
“From an emergency perspective,” McLaughlin said, “you have to anticipate how many planes you will need, the rate at which they will need to be ready to come in and out, and who is responsible for that. And then there’s internal transport, how to get people to and from airports.
Other governments have already drawn up evacuation plans for Taiwan or are in the process of doing so, including Indonesia, which has around 300,000 citizens in Taiwan, the island’s largest foreign population, made up mainly of workers. immigrants. Officials in the Philippines, which has around 150,000 citizens in Taiwan, also said they had contingency plans in place. And last year, Japan and Taiwan began talks on an evacuation plan for Japanese citizens.
Charles SANNAT
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