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The top U.S. general has dismissed warnings of an impending Chinese invasion of Taiwan, insisting the People’s Liberation Army was not yet able to annex the island.
“I think China has a way to develop real capacity and no joke to conduct military operations to seize, by military means, the entire island of Taiwan, if they wanted to do so,” the general said. Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told a Senate credit committee audition.
Milley added that he believed China had little intention of taking Taiwan by force. “There is no reason to do it militarily, and they know it. Therefore, I think the probability is likely to be low in the immediate and near future.
His assessment contrasts with the warning issued in March by Admiral Philip Davidson, then commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, who told lawmakers during a hearing that China could attack Taiwan in the next six years. Admiral John Aquilino, Davidson’s successor, said a Chinese attack on Taiwan could be launched “much closer to us than most think.”
A senior U.S. government official as well he told the Financial Times there was concern that President Xi Jinping considered progress in Taiwan’s unification with China important for his pursuit of a third term.
Over the past year, the Chinese military has sharply increased pressure on Taipei, such as flying planes in the Taiwan Air Defense Identification Zone.
Since Taiwan first announced the raids in September last year, People’s Liberation Army Air Force planes have entered the buffer zone 20 days a month on average. The participation of fighters and bombers in these flights has steadily increased, reaching 44 fighters in April.
After a calm earlier this month, China flew 28 military aircraft to Taiwan on Tuesday, the largest one-day raid. The mission was seen as a reaction to the G7 and NATO statements that shocked China and the arrival of an American aircraft carrier that had sailed in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.
Some experts believe that China’s rapid military modernization has given the PLA the confidence it could successfully organize an amphibious invasion of Taiwan.
“The Chinese military counterparts I’ve been talking to told me they can get to the landing, they trust me,” Oriana Skylar Mastro, a Chinese expert at Stanford University, said this week.
But other analysts disagree. “The PLA does not currently have the elevation, logistics and equipment needed for a strong invasion between the strait and shows no urgency to achieve this,” Andrew Erickson, a professor at the Naval War College, wrote Monday United States.
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