United States: the highest American officer feared that Donald Trump would attack China – teller report

Explosive revelations on the end of Donald Trump’s mandate. This is what the journalists of the Washington post Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in their book Danger, to be published in the coming days. According to the two men, the top Pentagon official, General Mark Milley, was worried about Donald Trump’s mental state in the last days of his mandate. To the point of secretly taking measures to avoid a war with China.

With the American intelligence services concluding that China considered an American attack imminent, the chief of staff called General Li Zuocheng twice: on October 30, shortly before the American presidential election, and on January 8, two days after the assault by supporters of Donald Trump on the Capitol. “General Li, I want to assure you that the US state is stable and everything is going to be fine”, he told him, according to this book based on the anonymous testimonies of 200 American officials. “We are not going to attack or carry out a military operation against you. “

General Milley recalled his Chinese counterpart two months later, as the behavior of Donald Trump, furious at his electoral defeat, appeared more and more erratic. “Everything is fine”, he told him. “But democracy is sometimes messy.”

According to extracts published by the Washington post and CNN, General Milley also made his deputies promise not to immediately obey a possible extreme order from Donald Trump, in particular on the use of nuclear weapons.

In addition, General Milley called the General Staff to stress that if Donald Trump ordered a nuclear strike, he had to be informed first. Looking them each in the eye, he asked all the assembled officers to confirm that they understood correctly, add Woodward and Costa, according to which it was a “oathHe also asked CIA Director Gina Haspel and Military Intelligence Chief General Paul Nakasone to monitor any erratic behavior by Donald Trump.

“Some may think that Milley overstepped his authority and gave himself excessive powers”, write the authors of Danger. But he was convinced he was doing the right thing to “that there is no historic break in the international order, accidental war with China or others, and that nuclear weapons are not used”, they add. When questioned, the American staff – unsurprisingly – refrained from any comment.