Today is the one year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and while the US is doing a lot to fund and supply Ukraine’s effort to push Russia back inside its own borders, there’s also a clear focus on making sure something similar doesn’t happen with China invading Taiwan. Yesterday the US announced it would be increasing the number of troops sent to Taiwan:

The U.S. is preparing to send 100 to 200 troops to Taiwan for training amid rising tensions with China, a U.S. official familiar with the planning confirmed to Fox News on Thursday.

This number will expand a much smaller training program, which has included the National Guard, Special Ops, and U.S. Marines in the past…

“We don’t have a comment on specific operations, engagements, or training, but I would highlight that our support for, and defense relationship with, Taiwan remains aligned against the current threat posed by the People’s Republic of China,” Lt. Col. Marty Meiners, a Defense Department spokesperson, told Fox News on Thursday.

That follows another announcement earlier this month about our military commitment to the Philippines.

The United States is increasing its military presence in the Philippines, gaining access to four more sites and strengthening the Southeast Asian nation’s role as a key strategic partner for Washington in the event of a conflict with China over Taiwan.

The agreement, announced on Thursday, allows Washington to station military equipment and build facilities in nine locations across the Philippines, marking the first time in 30 years that the United States will have such a large military presence in the country…

“Having increased U.S. access in Northern Luzon, close to Taiwan, is really ensuring that the Philippines and the U.S. alliance is going to have a front and center role in Northeast Asian security and deterrence,” said Drew Thompson, a visiting senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and a former U.S. defense official.

The exact locations of those four sites hasn’t been announced yet but several possibilities, Cagayan and Isabela are in the northern part of the country nearest Taiwan. You can see them on this map created by the NY Times:

The military also seems to be giving reporters more access to what is happening in the South China Sea. Last night, CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell broadcast part of the show from the deck of the USS Nimitz which she described as being in the “western Pacific Ocean.” The lead story was the US buildup in Taiwan and the Philippines and the tension with China. “Xi Jinping is likely watching the war in Ukraine very closely,” one expert on China’s Navy tells CBS.

Today, there were two more reports from the region. Both NBC and CNN had reporters on a US surveillance plane flying over the South China Sea. Both reported a close encounter with a Chinese destroyer and with a Chinese fighter plane which shadowed the US plane for more than an hour. One soldier described it as just “another Friday afternoon in the South China Sea.”

The NBC version of this report is here.

All of this makes me a bit curious about why the US military is a) pushing back more forcefully and publicly at this moment and b) bring the media along for the ride. We’ve been hearing for years that China intends to invade Taiwan one day if it can’t achieve a peaceful “reunification.” That threat has been ever-present as has China’s increasing belligerence toward Taiwan and their militarization of islands in the South China Sea. So why the activity this month?

Please don’t tell me this is all the result of that spy balloon.

Maybe that is part of it. Not the balloon itself which really wasn’t much of a threat but maybe it was enough to shake up some US complacency about China. Or maybe we’re just trying to discourage China from making the same mistake Russia made exactly one year ago today. The final possibility is that the Pentagon know something more specific, maybe something it can’t talk about publicly, which is stirring up all of this activity. I don’t have a clear answer but it does feel as if something about our response and our focus has changed.