Taiwan will be at its most dangerous at the height of rumors about a return of American forces to the self-ruled island and before any troops actually arrive to fend off an attack from the mainland Chinese army, a military commentator in Hong Kong has said.

The scenario was postulated in the wake of a report published in the latest issue of Military Review, a bimonthly journal of the United States Army, saying that a number of former U.S. generals believed it was time to redeploy troops to Taiwan after an absence of more than four decades, to deter potential strikes by China.

Tensions in the Taiwan Strait have escalated since June against a backdrop of deepening mistrust and sharply deteriorating China-U.S. relations. Frequent interaction between Taipei and Washington has provoked Beijing into greater saber-rattling, with the Chinese army persistent in conducting drills, sending warplanes to disrupt Taiwan and even crossing the midline of the strait.

From the Communist Party’s point of view, the window of opportunity to launch an offensive would close once U.S. forces were back in Taiwan, so the People’s Liberation Army should strike just as talk of a redeployment was at its highest and before troops landed on the island, according to “Larry,” a host on YouTube military channel Hong Kong Neo.

A return of the American military was however contingent on Washington and Taipei re-establishing formal diplomatic ties, the chances of which would be high if incumbent Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election in November, Larry told Apple Daily.

In the eyes of Washington, Taiwan held pivotal strategic value given that its loss at the hands of the PLA would heighten the Chinese threat to U.S. forces, he said.

“Once Taiwan was defeated, a big gap would appear along the first chain of islands, allowing the PLA to leave the Western Pacific and break through the second chain of islands, and even the third,” he said.

The first island chain is roughly situated in waters around major archipelagos off the East Asian continental mainland coast.

In defending Taiwan, the U.S. must accurately determine whether the cost of setting up a base in Taiwan was greater, or if it would be more effective to rush troops to the island upon a PLA attack, Larry said.

He estimated that if the plan was approved, 6,000 to 20,000 soldiers would be sent to Taiwan, similar to the current scale of deployment to Japan. In the event that the plan fell through, U.S. forces stationed in Japan could still be easily mobilized to go to the rescue of Taiwan.

Larry also observed how Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party had been taking a tough stance against mainland China under an aggressive approach on defense adopted by Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen.

The U.S. operated a base of mostly air force personnel in Taiwan between 1951 and 1979, stationing about 30,000 soldiers on the island at the peak of the deployment in 1970. Troop withdrawals started in 1971 after a switch in the country’s Chinese foreign policy.

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