by Guido Santevecchi, correspondent from Beijing
The United States could find itself at war with China within two years: US Air Mobility Command chief Mike Minihan has warned in a confidential report. Meanwhile, Xi Jinping tasks his ideologue with coming up with a new idea for Taiwan reunification
I hope I’m wrong but my gut tells me we’re going to fight in 2025. The prediction of General Mike Minihan, head of the US Air Mobility Command.
Who is the United States likely to go to war with? The Air Force officer has China in mind. The scene of the conflict would be Taiwan, the democratic island that Xi Jinping has vowed to the party and the Chinese nation to reunite.
Minihan is well aware of the chessboard he is talking about, having been number two in the US Indo-Pacific Command, which would lead American forces in a hypothetical firefight with the People’s Republic of China. The four-star general expressed his concerns in an internal memorandum to his staff officers. Perhaps he intended to keep it confidential, or perhaps not: in fact, the contents were revealed to American television NBC and picked up by the Financial Times.
This is the Pentagon general’s most dramatic warning of the imminent danger posed by China.
The commander writes: Xi Jinping received his third mandate as communist general secretary in October and immediately set up a war council. Presidential elections will be held in Taiwan in 2024 and will give Xi a reason.
That motivation could be the election to the presidency of Lai Ching-te, the current deputy of the pragmatic Tsai Ing-wen. Lai Ching-te is still little known in the West, but in Taipei political scientists have dubbed him a radical who has never given up his dream of independence: the banned word for Beijing. The election campaign will be tough, as is tradition on the democratic island, which has been self-governing since 1949: in the coming months, harsh statements about relations with the communist regime are certain to provoke a Chinese reaction.
There’s another factor to consider, according to General Minihan: 2024 will also be an election year in the United States, and America will be distracted. Conclusion: Xi’s team of power, reason and opportunity will all be aligned by 2025.
Something too serious to leave to the military
The war! C’est une choose trop grave pour la confer des militaires, said Georges Clemenceau in 1917 when, at the age of 76, he was recalled to the head of the French government at a critical moment in the First World War. He was a tough Clemenceau, they called him the Tiger, with that phrase war was too serious an issue to leave in the hands of the military, he wanted to make it clear that politics is always in control of a nation’s fate.
Letter to Pope Francis
It is comforting, therefore, that Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen wrote to the Pope last Monday: War with China is not an option. However, Frau reiterated to the Holy See (which is the only government of global weight that formally recognizes the government of Taiwan) that democracy and freedom can only be the basis if the Taiwanese people’s attachment to sovereignty (de facto, ed. ) is respected for resuming constructive contacts in the Straits.
Opinion polls have been saying for years that the vast majority of Taiwan’s 23 million people are unwilling to be ruled by Beijing’s party-state.
Another positive event is scheduled for next week: Antony Blinken is expected in Beijing, the US Secretary of State who is trying to resume dialogue with Xi Jinping and prepare the ground for President Joe Biden’s first face-to-face meeting with his Chinese rival .
Perhaps the best interpretation of the alarm raised by General Minihan is that the United States and China are racing against the clock to avoid conflict.
The former US admiral is expected in Taipei
Admiral Philip Davidson, who as head of the Indo-Pacific Command of the American armed forces had predicted China’s attack on Taiwan by 2027, is also making waves again.
The official on leave at 62 is a private citizen and will visit Taipei on Monday, according to Nikkei reports from Tokyo. He is also expected to meet President Tsai Ing-wen on the island.
Before leaving, Davidson reportedly received the green light from the US Navy.
There has been no comment from Beijing, which unleashed a military exercise around the island last August in response to a visit by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. As previously mentioned, Davidson has ditched his admiral’s uniform and is no longer commissioned by government, but continues to study the strategic situation in the Pacific.
In Tokyo, he held a conference where he said he remains confident and concerned about possible Chinese troop action across the Taiwan Strait by 2027. No random date. The year 2027 on China’s political calendar has significant significance: the date of the next Communist Party Congress after last October, which promised Xi Jinping at least five more years in power. Since 2012, when he was first appointed party general secretary and chairman of the Central Military Commission, Xi began saying that the Taiwanese province must return to the motherland, the issue can no longer be left open and postponed to future generations.
Now he has another five years until 2027 to fulfill his promise and face history as a great unifier. Admiral Davidson noted that in his speech before Congress in October, Xi refused to abandon the use of force to seize control of the Democratic Island: “Therefore, I am not changing my prediction on the risk of attack. Even if the former Indo-Pacific military commander’s landing in Beijing goes unnoticed, a mission by Kevin McCarthy, the new speaker of the House of Representatives in Washington, would certainly create new tensions. American press sources claim McCarthy is discussing with the Pentagon the best time to visit the island.
Xi’s ideologue
Xi Jinping has neither the time nor the interest to speak publicly about Taiwan these days. He is managing the dramatic exit from the Covid-Zero policy with the wave of infections and deaths in China and is trying to give the economy impetus again. Also, he needs a truce with Joe Biden at least at this stage.
But he does not forget the ambition to surrender himself to history as the great leader who brought Taiwan back to mainland China.
When General Minihan says that the communist leader formed a war council in October, he is referring to the fact that 15 of the 24 members of his new politburo had direct experience in administering (military or political) the Taiwan issue.
In addition to the generals and mandarins, there is a former university professor to keep an eye on. It is Wang Huning, 67, who is considered the Chinese Communist Party’s most sophisticated ideologue. In October he was promoted to number 4 in the Politburo hierarchy.
According to rumors from the Nikkei, which has good sources in Beijing, Xi Jinping has put the head of the People’s Republic in charge of coordinating Taiwan’s reunification strategy. Not from a military point of view, which is why Xi included a number of soldiers with direct experience in the theater of operations around the island in the new party leadership group.
Instead, Wang Huning should come up with a new policy proposal after the one-country-two-systems model has become unacceptable to Taiwanese, who see Hong Kong as done: repression, quashing of democratic opposition, restriction of economic freedoms.
To end the game in Hong Kong, Xi Jinping knowingly killed an opportunity to persuade fellow Taiwanese to accept a compromise that would see Beijing’s sovereignty over the province.
For some time, the communist leader has not mentioned the “one country, two systems” formula introduced by Deng Xiaoping to obtain redress in 1997. conceivable that he wants to try on his own to crown the dream of reunification. In March, Wang Huning was to be appointed deputy director of the Central Steering Group for Taiwan Affairs, the body that decides strategy towards the island.
The leadership group led by Xi. Ideological mastermind Wang was tasked with devising a new strategy to restart political dialogue with the Taipei government. Wang is a former academic, political scientist from the renowned Fudan University. And the top ideologue of the party. A man who has put his refined, cultured and cynical mind at the service of power under the last three general secretaries, from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao and then Xi.
All the formulas of Xi’s thoughts are said to have been discussed with this scholar, who speaks very little in public. But quick in reflexes and quick in his grasp, as he demonstrated at the October Congress in the dramatic moments of old Hu Jintao’s expulsion from the Great Hall of the People. The ideologue Wang sat two seats to the left of the unfortunate Hu (perhaps ill, certainly humiliated) and restrained Comrade Li Zhanshu by tugging at his jacket, who was about to get up to physically support the former general secretary. Wang’s gestures and facial expressions said to the generous and perhaps naive companion: Don’t show yourself, it’s none of your business.
January 28, 2023 (change January 28, 2023 | 15:43)
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