Two leading House lawmakers on the Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees had starkly different reactions to a four-star Air Force general’s assessment that the U.S. will be at war with China by 2025.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) agreed with Gen. Mike Minihan, who warned his commanders in a memo sent Friday to prepare for war in roughly two years’ time, while Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, pushed back. Minihan, the head of Air Mobility Command, wrote in his communique: “I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me [we] will fight in 2025.”
AIR FORCE GENERAL WARNS TROOPS OF WAR WITH CHINA BY 2025, DISAGREEING WITH PENTAGON ASSESSMENT
“I hope he’s wrong, as well,” McCaul told Fox News Sunday anchor Shannon Bream. “I think he’s right, though, unfortunately.”
Pressed by Bream on his claim, McCaul cited China’s desire for reunification with Taiwan, referencing Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s 2024 reelection battle as a potential defining moment in the escalating conflict.
“China’s looking at reunification of Taiwan, right? That’s how they call it. There are several ways to do that. The first one is to influence the election that will take place a year from today. President Tsai’s party is running for reelection. China is hitting them hard, saying they’re a proxy for the United States to go to war with China. If they succeed in that effort, like Hong Kong without a shot fired,” McCaul explained, war may be avoidable. “But if they don’t win in that one, they are going to look at a military invasion, in my judgment.”
“We have to be prepared for this,” he continued. “And it could happen, I think, 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.”
Bream conducted an interview with Smith immediately after the Foreign Affairs chairman’s appearance and asked him to respond to the assessments from both McCaul and Minihan.
“Anything is possible. I’m really worried, though, when anyone starts talking about war with China being inevitable,” Smith said. “And I want to be completely clear it’s not only not inevitable, it is highly unlikely. We have a very dangerous situation in China, but I think generals need to be very cautious about saying, ‘We’re going to war. It’s inevitable.’ Their job is to prepare for a wide range of eventualities. I don’t think we should be out there telling the world that we’re going to war with China, most importantly because we’re not.”
Smith went on to say he was “fully confident that we could avoid that conflict if we take the right approach.”
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Smith and McCaul found common ground in one area despite these differences, with both telling Bream that U.S. military supplies are at insufficient levels in the face of possible conflict.
“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.”
