General Mike Minihan, a four-star with the Air Force, sent out a memo to his subordinates warning of a war with China by the year 2025. In the memo, he wrote:

My gut tells me we will fight in 2025. Xi [Jinping] secured his third term and set his war council in October 2022. Taiwan’s presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a reason. United States’ presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a distracted America. Xi’s team, reason, and opportunity are all aligned for 2025.

General Minihan went on to explain that training will be more rigorous and have increased risks as they prepare for the impending storm of war he has seen on the horizon.

Biden’s Department of Defense (DOD) quickly contradicted this prognostication, stating that it’s “not representative of the department’s view on China.”

Brigadier General Patrick Ryder of the DOD further elaborated, “The National Defense Strategy makes clear that China is the pacing challenge for the Department of Defense and our focus remains on working alongside allies and partners to preserve a peaceful, free and open Indo-Pacific.”

Minihan is merely voicing what any astute observer fears after watching the chaos that the Biden administration has allowed to happen and has even provoked on the world stage. America has been crippled militarily and its people are extremely polarized politically. Conservative commentator Gary Bauer voices fears that Minihan may lose his job over the memo because our military is no longer a serious one.

It has never been more clear than in the past two years that wokeness is killing our military. Between pushing the LGBTQ+ agenda in recruitment videos and General Mark Milley advocating for critical race theory (CRT) and other woke ideology, our troops are not as battle ready as they should be. The ideology that centers sexual identity as the core concern is contradictory to the selflessness and service identity necessary for the defense of the country. CRT labels the military and virtually every American institution inherently racist. All these things have conspired to hurt military recruitment.

Our military is also low on munitions. According to The New York Times, “The prospect of growing military threats from both China and Russia is driving bipartisan support for a surge in Pentagon spending.” Even Congress is acknowledging that we have military readiness issues. Some of our stockpiles of weapons have been nearly depleted, and it will take years to restock them.

Our current leadership is weak on foreign affairs. We also have a poor record in recent years of supporting our allies, and Taiwan is right to be worried. The apathy of the Democrats in power toward China’s predations is perfectly exemplified in former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan and her immediate walk back of assurances of support when she returned to the states. To put it mildly, President Joe Biden was ineffective in deterring Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, even saying that a small incursion wouldn’t provoke action from the United States. Putin’s invitation came via Biden’s unnecessary and disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which also led to the deaths of 13 American service members.

China sees its opportunity growing with each passing day. China is highly motivated to become the global hegemony and it cannot do that with the U.S. holding sway over the production of semiconductors — the all-important part of making modern day tech work.

Ever since China was allowed on the global scene — with the hope that capitalist influences would help change its culture — it has slowly been grabbing more and more control over the United States.

The Chinese have been buying up our debt, allowing us to outsource our jobs to them for cheaper products, infiltrating our universities through Confucius Institutes, and corrupting our youth with TikTok — a terrible social media site.

They are perching ever closer to having a launching point to our mainland by getting poorer countries in South America indebted to them. Not to mention, our souther border is basically open and already being invaded by migrants. China has even infiltrated the American interior by buying up land.

No one wants war, especially a war that could potentially be fought here on the U.S. mainland. General Minihan is using his knowledge and experience to prepare his troops in spite of the DOD’s dismissal of his fears. It’s not foolish to follow former President Teddy Roosevelt’s advice: “Speak softly but carry a big stick.” General Minihan is just making sure that our stick is the biggest and scariest one. We also need to stop letting the Chinese bullies steal our land, manipulate our culture, and threaten our well-being as a country.