We were closer to WW3 than anyone imagined

[rocklin]

Gen. Mark A. Milley (pictured)



Fears That Trump Might Launch a Strike Prompted General to Reassure China, Book Says

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff twice called his Chinese counterpart in the final months of the Trump administration to reassure him that Donald J. Trump had no plans to attack China in an effort to remain in power and that the United States was not collapsing, according to “Peril,” a new book by the Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.

(EXCERPT)

In the days leading up to the 2020 election, the book reveals, American intelligence showed that the Chinese believed that Mr. Trump planned to launch a military strike to create an international crisis that he could claim to solve as a last-ditch effort to beat Joseph R. Biden Jr.

General Milley, who had become increasingly concerned about China’s growing military power and the potential for one misread move to set off combat between the world superpowers, first called General Li around that time on a secret backchannel. He wanted to assure General Li and President Xi Jinping that the United States was not planning to attack China.

On the Jan. 8 call, General Li suggested that Chinese leaders feared that the United States government was unstable. He pressed General Milley over the course of an hour and a half about whether the military was going to take action.

Despite General Milley’s reassurances, he feared that Mr. Trump might be trying to find a moment that he could seize on to remain in power, similar to Hitler’s exploitation in 1933 of an arson fire at the German Reichstag to help institute emergency powers, the book said.

But even after the call, General Milley concluded that the situation was “grave” and General Li “remained unusually rattled,” the book reports.

Mr. Trump, General Milley had concluded, did not want a war but might order the launch of some sort of military strike that would set off a chain reaction and lead to war.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/14/us/politics/trump-election-woodward-book.html

 

 

[splitinfinitive]

Anyone remember the Cuban missile crisis?

I was in High School and we were convinced that nuclear war was imminent. Khrushchev backed down and apparently got his missiles into Cuba another way. 

 

[dvernb]

I think in the years to come we will find out just how dysfunctional the White House really was!

I can't wait to see the movie!

 

[splitinfinitive]

Peril:


The transition from President Donald J. Trump to President Joseph R. Biden Jr. stands as one of the most dangerous periods in American history.
But as # 1 internationally bestselling author Bob Woodward and acclaimed reporter Robert Costa reveal for the first time, it was far more than just a domestic political crisis.
Woodward and Costa interviewed more than 200 people at the center of the turmoil, resulting in more than 6,000 pages of transcripts—and a spellbinding and definitive portrait of a nation on the brink.
This classic study of Washington takes readers deep inside the Trump White House, the Biden White House, the 2020 campaign, and the Pentagon and Congress, with vivid, eyewitness accounts of what really happened.
Peril is supplemented throughout with never-before-seen material from secret orders, transcripts of confidential calls, diaries, emails, meeting notes and other personal and government records, making for an unparalleled history.
It is also the first inside look at Biden’s presidency as he faces the challenges of a lifetime: the continuing deadly pandemic and millions of Americans facing soul-crushing economic pain, all the while navigating a bitter and disabling partisan divide, a world rife with threats, and the hovering, dark shadow of the former president.

https://www.amazon.com/Peril-Bob-Woodward/dp/1982182911

 

[Makara]

Anyone remember the Cuban missile crisis?

I was in High School and we were convinced that nuclear war was imminent. Khrushchev backed down and apparently got his missiles into Cuba another way. 

a few years before i was born mate ...i was born in 1970  post boomer/pre millennial ... the 1970s & 80s was the the dysfunctional era  

i believe this to be nonsense spouted by a disgraced general trying to sell his book ... i neither like Trump or Biden i think they are as bad as each other  ... Biden won the election because he wasn't Trump