Washington [US], January 30 (ANI): A top Republican in the US Congress on Sunday said that the risk of conflict with China over Taiwan is ‘very high’, after an American General said in a memo that the country will be at war with China by 2025, according to the Hill.
While giving the interview to Fox News Sunday, the new chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the US House of Representatives Michael McCaul said, “We have to be prepared for this 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.”
On Friday, US General in a memo said he believes the country will be a war with China by 2025, saying that Taiwan’s and America’s presidential elections in 2024 may give Chinese President Xi Jinping an ‘opportunity’. Referring to the memo, McCaul hoped that the General would be wrong but “I think he’s right, though, unfortunately”, as per the report in The Hill.
McCaul also said he is ‘very’ worried about the US running out of precision missiles and advanced technology in less than a week if America entered a conflict with China, echoing a study published by a think tank earlier this month.
The think-tank found that the US would likely run out of some of its munitions, including long-range, precision-guided ones, in less than a week of war with China in the Taiwan Strait, reported The Hill.
The study said the US was ‘not adequately prepared’ for a war with China, saying that America’s commitment to sending more defence systems to Ukraine exposed the shortfalls of the defense industry.
“Our industrial defense base is broken,” McCaul said, adding, “I signed off on all foreign military weapon sales three years ago. They have yet to go to Taiwan. So we need that deterrence. But if we don’t have the weapons, that’s as critical for deterrence.”
Adam Smith, who is the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, also said on Sunday that US military readiness is a ‘huge problem’. “This is a huge problem. And we don’t have an industrial base. And we don’t have the ability to ramp up that industrial base,” Smith said on Fox News Sunday, according to the Hill.
He also said he is ‘worried’ when people say that a war with China is ‘inevitable’ and instead said a war with China is ‘highly unlikely’. (ANI)
