Taiwan strengthens Defence Ties with the United States.

Aug 2025 : Taiwan’s biggest ever participation in American led military exercises has been thrust into the open by Pentagon-linked media, widely seen as a deepening of Washington’s defence ties with Taipei despite the Trump administration’s transactional approach to policy.

Analysts said the unusually high-profile disclosure was aimed not only at deterring Beijing but also at countering rising distrust of the United States among Taiwanese people during Donald Trump’s second term as president. Citing a senior official from the US National Guard Bureau, Stars and Stripes reported last Monday that more than 500 Taiwanese soldiers joined this year’s Northern Strike drills in the US state of Michigan.

The two-week exercise, which began on August 2, involved more than 7,500 troops from 36 American states and nine US partners, including Taiwan, according to the military newspaper partially funded by the Pentagon. It was the largest contingent sent by Taiwan since its involvement in the Northern Strike drills began in 2021 and the first time that such participation figures have been revealed.

The admission marks a break from a long-standing policy of avoiding public discussion of Taiwan’s role in American exercises. Unlike previous years, when Northern Strike scenarios focused on European battlefields, this year’s exercise centred on Indo-Pacific conflict, reflecting the Pentagon’s growing attention to rising tensions in the region.

Much earlier, during the tenure of Kamala J. Harris as the Vice President of the United States; she had delivered a sharp rebuke to China for its incursions in the South China Sea, warning that Beijing’s actions constitute “coercion” and “intimidation”. Affirming that Washington would support its allies in the region against Beijing’s advances, Harris also laid out the Biden administration’s vision for the region, saying the US would “stand united with our allies and our partners in Southeast Asia in defence of a free and open Indo-Pacific”.

The repeated reference to “Indo-Pacific”, a policy frame promoted by the Trump administration, reflects the Biden administration’s continued outreach to the region and the way US foreign policy has been recast by China’s expanding influence.

For decades, the vast expanse of territory stretching from Australia to India was referred to in Washington as “Asia-Pacific”, although “Indo-Pacific” was commonly used among foreign policy experts, mainly in India, Indonesia and Australia. Even before Donald Trump’s five-nation Asian tour in November 2017, White House officials and even Trump himself had started using the term “Indo-Pacific”.

The United States is well aware that Asian nations are disinterested in engagement based on a “zero sum” mentality even as it seeks to deepen regional ties to challenge China’s threat to the global rules-based order,

Team Maverick