A top US general has advised that any Chinese attack on Taiwan would be a strategic mistake as bad as Russia’s descent on Ukraine, adding its service does not “have the experience(and) the background to do it.”
“I suppose it would be unwise; it would be a political mistake, a geopolitical mistake, a strategic mistake, analogous to what the strategic mistake is that(Russian President Vladimir) Putin has made in Ukraine,” said US Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley on Wednesday.
Milley didn’t say any attack on the islet was imminent.
But he said he believes that China’s President Xi Jinping, who just won a major third term as the country’s consummate leader and has declared uniting Taiwan with China a high precedence, is a “rational actor.”
“I suppose he evaluates effects on cost, benefit and threat, and I suppose that he’d conclude that an attack on Taiwan in the near future would be an inordinate quantum of threat and would end in a strategic debacle for the Chinese service,” Milley told journalists.
That would stall China’s drive toward getting the world’s top profitable and military power, Milley said.
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Russia’s illustration
He said Russia’s February irruption of Ukraine, which has stalled in the face of suddenly strong resistance from Kiev fortified by munitions from the West, offers pictorial assignments.
“One of the effects people are learning is that war on paper is a whole lot different than real war,” said Milley.
“When blood is revealed, and people die, and real tanks are being blown up, effects are a little bit different. There is a lot of disunion and fog and death in combat,” he said.
He noted that the Chinese service hadn’t been involved in combat since fighting the Vietnamese in 1979.
And he said that while China’s People’s Liberation Army could fluently open an assault on Taiwan with losers and missiles, physically landing the mountainous, heavily populated islet would be a “veritably delicate military task.”
“They would be playing a veritably, veritably dangerous game to cross the woe and foray the islet of Taiwan. They do not have the experience, the background to do it.They’ven’t trained to do it yet,” he said.
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