A US general has warned of the high risk of war with China in 2025 - most likely around Taiwan - urging his officers to be combat-ready as early as this year.
"I hope I'm wrong.
My gut tells me we will fight 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," said the military, assuring that the Taiwanese elections of 2024 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 judges.
This note calls on his troops to train in combat by, among other things, going to stands to shoot 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.
Read alsoTaiwan: is China, increasingly threatening, preparing an invasion?
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 .
She 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.
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