“I hope I’m wrong. My gut tells me we’ll be fighting in 2025.” US general warns against high risk of war with China in two years – most likely around Taiwan. President Xi Jinping “has both a team, a motive and an opportunity for 2025”writes Michael Minihan, General of the Air Force, in an internal note, the authenticity of which was confirmed on Friday January 27 by the Pentagon to AFP.
The soldier assures that the Taiwanese elections of 2024 will give the Chinese leader a “raison” to act. The race for the White House, scheduled for the same year, will offer a “Distracted America” to China, he still judges. In this note, he calls on his troops to train in combat by going, among other things, to stands to shoot at targets.
A rapprochement between Taiwan and the United States
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 believes the island, with a population of 24 million, is one of its provinces it has yet to successfully reunite with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 .
China sees with dissatisfaction the rapprochement 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.