A US general has warned of the high risk of war with China in 2025 – most likely over Taiwan – and is urging his officers to be combat ready as early as this year.
“I hope I’m wrong. My gut tells me we will be fighting in 2025,” Air Force General Michael Minihan wrote in an internal memo, the authenticity of which was confirmed by the Pentagon on Friday.
President Xi Jinping “has both a team, a motive and an opportunity for 2025,” the military said, assuring that Taiwan’s 2024 election will give the Chinese leader a “reason” to act. The race for the White House, scheduled for the same year, will offer a “distracted America” to China, he still reckons.
This note encourages his troops to train for battle by, among other things, going into positions to fire at targets. The general invites us to “aim for the heads”. In August, China conducted major military exercises around Taiwan, an unprecedented show of force, in retaliation for a visit to the island by Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the US House of Representatives.
China considers the island, with a population of 24 million, to be one of its provinces, which it has not yet been able to reunite with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
She sees with displeasure the rapprochement that has worked in recent years between the Taiwanese authorities and the United States, which has given the island military support against Beijing for decades.