US has “the ability” to defend Taiwan, says Pentagon high command

The United States has “absolutely the ability” to defend Taiwan from an attack by China should it have the need to do so, said the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mark Milley.

But the Pentagon’s top general also warned that China’s military has made shocking technological advances in a short time, exemplified in its hypersonic missile test, leaving the world at risk of entering a period of increasing strategic instability.

Milley considered it unlikely that China will take any military action against Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province, in the next 24 months.

“However, the Chinese are clearly building capabilities to give those options to their leaders if they decide to use them at some point in the future,” he said.

Although when asked at the Aspen Security Forum whether the Pentagon could defend the island, he replied: “We absolutely have the capacity. There is no doubt about it”.

He also said that the United States maintains its policy of “strategic ambiguity” regarding the protection of Taiwan, and that it would be a presidential decision to intervene or not if China acted to gain control of the island.

“We absolutely have the ability to do all kinds of things around the world, including that, if necessary,” Milley insisted.

And he added that the United States believes that the differences between China and Taiwan should be resolved peacefully based on the will of the citizens of both sides. “We are simply interested in a peaceful outcome,” he said.

Milley also said that after seven decades of competition between two nuclear superpowers – Russia and the United States – the rapid expansion of the Chinese army and its technological capabilities has created a three-pole rivalry that increases complexity.

He added that the August test of a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, which circled the world at relatively low altitude and at a speed more than five times the speed of sound, was almost as significant as Sputnik’s impressive launch by Russia in 1957, the first satellite launched into space.

The hypersonic test was “very significant,” he said, highlighting Chinese advances in military technology.

“We are witnessing one of the largest movements in world geostrategic power that has ever been seen,” he said.

The consequence, according to Milley, is that the world is entering a period “potentially much more strategically unstable” than in the decades following World War II.