“I hope to be wrong”. In a note sent to his officials and revealed by NBC News, US Air Force General Mike Minihan worries about a conflict between his country and China by 2025.
“My instinct tells me that I will fight in 2025,” writes the person who has led the Air Mobility Command (AMC) since October 2021, a US Air Force command that brings together 50,000 soldiers and nearly 500 aircraft.
Tensions around Taiwan
According to him, this conflict could break out on the sidelines of several elections planned in Asia. In March 2023, Xi Jinping is expected to be officially confirmed as Chinese president after being re-elected for a third five-year term as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China in October 2022.
A year later, in 2024, presidential elections will be held in Taiwan, a democratic sovereign territory long claimed by Beijing. For years, the island has wanted to get rid of the Chinese embrace and these elections, which should confirm this trend, could serve as a pretext for Xi Jinping to launch an offensive and retake Taiwan by force.
In addition to the Ukrainian conflict, the Taiwanese situation has been watched with concern in recent months by the United States. In September 2022, US President Joe Biden even promised that in the event of a Chinese invasion, his army would defend Taiwan.
“Aim for the head”
In the note obtained by the US media, General Mike Minihan goes further, and asks his men to train for combat starting this February. He therefore orders qualified airmen to use a weapon to fire “at a seven meter target with the full understanding that lethality is paramount.”
“Aim for the head,” he hammers again.
Contacted by NBC, an official from the US Department of Defense wanted to calm things down: “These comments are not representative of the department’s point of view on China,” he said. For its part, an AMC spokesperson confirmed that this note is authentic, and its purpose is to “prepare the Mobility Air Forces for a future conflict.”
big losses
At the beginning of January, an American think tank had already mentioned a possible invasion of Taiwan by China, as well as an intervention by the United States. These military experts, assembled by the Center for Strategic and International Studies for a war simulation, stressed the devastating costs that US forces would incur.
“First, in most cases, China has little chance of succeeding in achieving its operational goals or occupying Taipei,” the capital of Taiwan. “Second, the cost of the war would be high for everyone involved, and certainly for the United States,” they concluded, after studying 24 different scenarios.
Source: BFM TV
