U.S.-led drills forging deterrence network around Taiwan: Scholar

Taipei, July 16 (CNA) The United States is intensifying multinational drills around Taiwan to link regional allies in a deterrence network aimed at preventing Chinese aggression, a Taiwanese scholar said Thursday, warning Beijing could respond with large-scale exercises and gray-zone pressure later this year.

"The U.S. has abandoned the kind of broad, framework-based multilateral cooperation it previously pursued in the Indo-Pacific," Yujen Kuo (郭育仁), director of National Sun Yat-sen University's Institute of China and Asia-Pacific Studies, said at a seminar in Taipei on Thursday.

Washington has instead "anchored" its regional strategy to a "very specific" military objective -- defending the First Island Chain and Taiwan -- Kuo said, citing a shift reflected in the U.S. National Security Strategy released last December and its National Defense Strategy issued in January.

At the seminar hosted by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party's Department of China Affairs, Kuo said Washington is also shifting from its traditional "hub-and-spokes" alliance system, under which it dealt separately with individual allies, toward a more interconnected "mesh" structure.

Regional partners are increasingly cooperating through smaller groupings, including AUKUS -- comprising Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S. -- the U.S.-Japan-South Korea partnership and the "Squad," made up of the U.S., Japan, Australia and the Philippines, he said.

Linking regional forces

The aim of such a "mesh" structure is to link military forces from the Korean Peninsula through the East China Sea and the Taiwan Strait to the South China Sea into a "single operational theater," Kuo said.

Alongside that "horizontal integration," the U.S. is pursuing "vertical integration" of allied capabilities across land, sea, air, space, cyber, electronic warfare and undersea domains to form what Kuo called a "kill web."

As an example of both horizontal and vertical integration, Kuo cited the 2026 U.S.-Philippines Balikatan exercise, held across the Philippine archipelago from April 20 to May 8, saying it was the largest and most diverse edition in the drill's history, with more participating countries than ever before.

The U.S. also held major multinational exercises around Taiwan at a rate of about "one major exercise every week" between late July and October last year, he said.

Washington has conducted such drills with "very high intensity and frequency" for three consecutive years, making them "an important way for the U.S. to deter China," Kuo said.

Kuo also cited remarks made on June 24 by Gen. Ronald P. Clark, commanding general of U.S. Army Pacific, that the 53 Operation Pathways activities held annually across East Asia have, since last year, been concentrated in May-June and September-October.

Those periods were chosen because conditions in the Taiwan Strait are most favorable for a potential Chinese invasion, Kuo quoted Clark as saying.

Taiwan's role and China's response

Although Taiwan has not formally joined the exercises, Kuo said it could eventually participate more regularly as an observer, though formal participation in live-fire drills remained unlikely.

"The degree of Taiwan's involvement will not be low," he said, urging Taipei to "find every possible way to cooperate" with the emerging regional security structure while increasing defense spending and strengthening asymmetric capabilities.

Meanwhile, China will likely try to disrupt the U.S.-led network through "gray-zone actions or military actions," including operations by coast guard and oceanographic survey vessels in waters east of Taiwan, Kuo said.

He noted that the possibility of another large-scale Chinese exercise around Taiwan later this year will be "very high" if President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) travels overseas and transits through the continental United States.

China may draw future exercise zones closer to Taiwan, Kuo said, but its forces must not be allowed to enter Taiwan's territorial waters or airspace, calling that "a bottom line that must be defended" by Taiwan's military and Coast Guard.