A senior U.S. naval commander has warned that Beijing could start a military conflict as soon as this year and that the Indo-Pacific needs to be prepared to experience conflict in the near future. “If I look at the trends from, let’s say, 2018 to now in how we talk about China, in the 2018 NDS [National Defense Strategy] we really talked about Great Power competition, and that was a focus. And now, based on what we’re seeing from an increasingly aggressive China and Russia … we have our eyes on preparing for a potential fight tonight,” said Admiral Mike Gilday, chief of U.S. naval operations. “I can’t rule that out. I don’t mean at all to be alarmist by saying that. It’s just that we can’t wish that away.” The admiral noted that the U.S. military was paying particular attention to how the Chinese regime was behaving rather than what it was saying, reports The Epoch Times. “What we’ve seen over the past 20 years is that they have delivered on every promise they’ve made earlier than they said they were going to deliver on it,” he said. “When we talk about the 2027 window, in my mind, that has to be a 2022 window or potentially a 2023 window.”
