The United States said today that it is “closely” monitoring China’s military actions against Taiwan and assured that it is fully prepared for any possible attack on the island.
“We are following closely. We are militarily prepared. One of the key issues right now is ensuring that Taiwan can defend itself,” US Chief of Staff General Mark Milley said during a press conference.
Milley underlined that one of the “many lessons learned” from the Russian invasion of Ukraine is that “the war on paper is very different from the real war, when blood is spilled and people die”, noting that the Chinese army “was not involved in combat since the fight against the Vietnamese in 1979”.
“They would be playing a very dangerous game by invading the island. They have no experience or training for this. They haven’t trained for that yet,” added the general.
Milley explained that although he does not personally know Chinese President Xi Jinping, he considers him a “rational” person who “will make decisions based on what he believes to be in the interest” of his country.
“I think he weighs things based on cost, benefit and risk. And I think he would quickly conclude that an attack on Taiwan in the near future would be too risky and would end up in a real strategic disaster for the Chinese military”, explained the US chief of staff.
Even so, Milley acknowledged that the US “is looking closely at Chinese amphibious capability and airlift capability”.
“For now, they can bomb, they can launch missiles. They can attack Taiwan, but it will be a very difficult military task”, concluded the general.
The island is one of the main sources of conflict between China and the United States, not least because Washington is the main supplier of weapons to Taiwan, being its main military ally in the event of a war with China.
Taiwan – where the Chinese nationalist army withdrew after the defeat against communist troops in the civil war – has been governed autonomously since 1949, although China claims sovereignty over the island, which it considers a rebellious province for whose reunification it has not ruled out the possibility of use of force.
Tensions around the island were heightened last August as a result of a trip to the island by US Speaker of the House of Representatives, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, to which Beijing responded with military exercises in the region.
At the bilateral meeting between the US President and his Chinese counterpart in Bali on the eve of the G20 summit, US President Joe Biden told Xi that Washington has not changed his position on Taiwan.
Xi took the opportunity to warn Biden that Taiwan is “the first red line that must not be crossed”, adding that he hopes the US will “honor its promise” not to support eventual independence for the island.
