By Le Figaro with AFP
Posted 3 hours ago, updated 2 hours ago
Chinese army soldiers arrive in Russia for exercises. Handout / Russian Defense Ministry / AFP
General Michael Minihan believes the 2024 Taiwanese election will give the Chinese leader a “reason” to act amid an America “distracted” from its presidential election.
A US general has warned of the high risk of war with China in 2025 – most likely around Taiwan – and urged his officers to be combat-ready later this year. “I hope I’m wrong. My gut tells me we’re going to fight in 2025,” Air Force General Michael Minihan wrote in an internal memo authenticated by the Pentagon to AFP on Friday, Jan. 27.
President Xi Jinping “has both a team and a motive and an opportunity for 2025,” the military said, assuring that Taiwan’s 2024 election would give the Chinese leader a “reason” for action. The race for the White House scheduled for the same year will offer China a “scattered America,” he says. This note tells his troops to train in combat, including going to the stands to shoot at targets. The general urges “aim for the heads.”
In August, China held major military drills around Taiwan, an unprecedented show of force, in retaliation for a visit to the island by then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. China believes the island of 24 million people is one of its provinces that it has not successfully reunited with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. She views with displeasure the rapprochement that has been at work in recent years between the Taiwanese authorities and the United States, which has provided the island with military support against Beijing for several decades.