All of the domestic scandals have distracted Americans from foreign threats. Conflict could be right around the corner.
And these threats of war are sending the entire White House into chaos.
Joe Biden and the Democrats have been trying to put out fires on the home front for months.
Thanks to a slew of scandals including Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, the border crisis at the southern border, and the revelations of FBI censorship against conservatives, Democrats have had barely any time to breathe.
But the world doesn’t stand still.
While U.S. politicians are playing blame games and virtue signaling on talk-shows, America’s greatest global competitors are making moves.
And now Republicans are blowing the whistle on this growing threat to the country.
U.S. Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX) claimed on Sunday that the chances of war with China by 2025 are “very high,” after a four-star Air Force General cautioned officers that a battle over Taiwan is on the horizon.
McCaul, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told “Fox News Sunday” that he agreed with Air Force General Mike Minihan’s previous statement, in which the military official stated that US forces “will fight in 2025.”
“I’m hoping he’s wrong…” McCaul stated. “I think he’s right, though, unfortunately.”
According to the top Republican lawmaker, China may consider a military invasion of Taiwan if Chinese Communist Party President Xi Jinping fails to influence Taiwan’s presidential election in 2024, which takes place a year from today, and further China’s efforts on its so-called “reunification” with the island.
Taiwan, officially known as the Republic of China, has been ruled autonomously by China since 1949. China adheres to the “One China” policy, claiming that Taiwan is a part of China.
“We have to be prepared for this,” McCaul said. “And it could happen … as long as Biden is in office — projecting weakness as he did with Afghanistan that led to Putin invading Ukraine — that the odds are very high we could see a conflict with China and Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific.”
Last week, Seth Jones of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published a paper based on a CSIS wargame scenario that stated that in a battle with China, US armaments, especially long-range, precision-guided munitions, may run out in one week.
Jones reiterated his judgment to The Wall Street Journal, which emphasized that US support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia had depleted the US arsenal. As a result, Pentagon officials evaluated its weapons stockpile in December, highlighting years of underinvestment in munitions.
“The bottom line is the defense industrial base, in my judgment, is not prepared for the security environment that now exists,” Jones told Journal, adding that the defense industry is currently “better suited to a peacetime environment.”
“How do you effectively deter if you don’t have sufficient stockpiles of the kinds of munitions you’re going to need for a China-Taiwan Strait kind of scenario?” Jones stated.
Rep. McCaul acknowledged that the CSIS scenario had made him “very” concerned.
“Our defense industrial base is broken,” he remarked, adding that he signed off on all foreign military weapons sales to Taiwan three years ago.
On “Fox News Sunday,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) countered his colleague’s probable war with China scenario, stating the confrontation is “highly unlikely.”
Smith further suggested that generals take caution by not signaling to the world “the U.S. is going to war with China.”
“Anything is possible,” Smith said. “I’m really worried when anyone starts talking about war with China being inevitable.”
Smith agreed with McCaul that the United States’ military supply stockpiling puts the military forces in a vulnerable position in the event of a conflict with China.
“This is a huge problem,” Smith said. “We don’t have the industrial base, and we don’t have the ability to ramp up that industrial base.”
According to NBC, which first reported the message from the Air Force General, such sentiments “are not representative of the department’s view on China.”
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin dismissed fears of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
“What we’re seeing recently, is some very provocative behavior on the part of China’s forces and their attempt to re-establish a new normal,” Austin said. “But whether or not that means that an invasion is imminent — I seriously doubt that.”
Stay tuned to DC Daily Journal.
