After a US general sparked panic with a memo warning that the United States could get ahead of a war with China in the next two years, a prominent Republican member of Congress said Sunday the chance of conflict with Beijing over Taiwan was “extremely high.”
Mike McCall, the new chairman of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Fox News: “I hope he’s wrong…I think he’s right,” Reuters reported.
“we must be ready”
He also added that if China fails to take over Taiwan without bloodshed, “in my estimation, they will consider a military invasion. We must be ready for this.”
In addition, he accused the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden of weakness after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which could make war with China more likely, pointing out that “the chances that we will see conflict in China, Taiwan and the Indian Ocean are small.” . very well”.
“Fight in 2025”
Significantly, in a memo released on Friday, General Mike Minihan, who heads the Air Transport Command and has 110,000 troops and civilians under his command, wrote that “my intuition tells me we will be at war in 2025.”
He also added that the US and Taiwan will hold presidential elections in 2024, which could give China the opportunity to start military action.
Show care
While the general’s views do not represent the Pentagon, they demonstrate concern at the highest levels of the US military about a possible attempt by Beijing to assert control over Taiwan, which China claims as its own. A Pentagon spokesman said on Saturday that the general’s remarks “do not reflect the Defense Department’s view of China.”
And this month, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said he highly doubted that an escalation of Chinese military action near the Taiwan Strait would be a sign of Beijing’s imminent invasion of the island.
Great military maneuvers
Notably, in August 2022, China conducted major military maneuvers around Taiwan in an unprecedented show of force in response to a visit to the island by Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the US House of Representatives.
China counts the island of 24 million as one of its regions that failed to reunite it with the rest of its territory after the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, according to AFP.
He also looks with displeasure at the rapprochement in recent years between the Taiwanese authorities and the United States, which provides military support to the island in the person of Beijing.
