A top American air force general has warned that the US and China will most likely go to war in 2025. General Mike Minihan, director of the US Air Mobility Command, predicted that the two military forces would end up at odds due to a series of events that would encourage Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“I’m hoping I’m mistaken.” “My gut instinct tells me that we will battle in 2025,” Minihan wrote in a private note to his top commanders, obtained by NBC News and seen by the Financial Times. “Xi secured his third term [as Communist Party general secretary] and set [sic] his war council in October 2022. “Taiwan’s presidential elections in 2024 will provide Xi with a reason,” Minihan stated. Minihan went on to say that the 2024 presidential elections in the United States will result in a “distracted America,” which will assist the Chinese president.
“For 2025, Xi’s team, cause, and opportunity are all aligned,” he concluded. The memo comes as tensions over Taiwan, a democratically governed country over which China has long claimed sovereignty, remain high. Minihan’s remarks are the most direct warning from a senior military commander. It is unusual for a top general to state so unequivocally that the US will respond to a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
The remarks came just one week before Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to become President Joe Biden’s first cabinet secretary to visit China. China has been flying more sorties of warplanes near Taiwan for the past two years. In reaction to then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei last August, the Chinese military conducted large-scale exercises that included firing missiles over Taiwan.
Biden has stated four times that if China attacks Taiwan, he will order the US military to intervene. His comments appeared to reverse a long-standing strategy known as “strategic ambiguity,” under which Washington has refused to specify whether the US military would intervene in a confrontation over Taiwan. Several US military officers have provided estimated timetables for likely Chinese military action against Taiwan over the last two years. Admiral Philip Davidson, then-head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, stated in March 2021 that China could invade Taiwan by 2027, raising concerns in the US and around the Indo-Pacific about a threat to Taiwan.
Last October, US Navy Chief Admiral Michael Gilday stated that the Pentagon must be ready for military action at any time. “When we talk about the 2027 window, in my mind, it has to be a 2022 window or perhaps a 2023 window,” Gilday told the Atlantic Council, in remarks that some derided as a misguided attempt to remind the military that it must always be ready to fight at any time.
As commander of the Air Mobility Command, Minihan is in charge of all air-related logistics for the US military. The four-star general was previously the deputy commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, which would be directly in charge of leading US forces in any battle with China. Eric Sayers, a former Indo-Pacific command adviser, said Minihan had been at the “tip of the spear” in the Pacific for more than a decade and understood the China threat “better than probably anyone in
“The language in the message is strong and may make people uncomfortable, but memoranda of this type are not written for public consumption or as a sophisticated intelligence assessment of the possibility for violence,” Sayers added. People should understand the document as “managed correspondence to Minihan’s subordinates that he expects them to act with urgency to boost the command’s readiness,” he said. The Pentagon and the White House did not respond.
