CIA chief William Burns said Saturday that China could attack Taiwan in the coming years, claiming Chinese President Xi Jinping «is preparing for war» in his ambition to unify the island with Chinese territory.
Asked in an interview with the PBG network, Burns stressed that, although China has publicly insisted on its intention to control Taiwan by peaceful means, it has also instructed its military leadership to be ready in 2027 to launch an eventual war.
«I’m not sure I would measure it in terms of months or a year (…) The honest answer is that the further we go into this decade, the greater the risks of a military conflict,» the CIA chief said.
Meanwhile, he stressed that the CIA’s priority is not only how a conflict could affect Taiwan, but also how it would influence «the long-term geopolitical challenge posed by Xi’s China».
«Over the course of the two years that I’ve been director, we’ve established a new mission center, which is sort of an organizational block of the CIA. It’s the only single-country mission center we have, focused on China. We’ve put resources, personnel and priorities in that direction, because it’s a global competition,» he added.
However, he recalled that Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin have formed a «fairly close» partnership in recent years.
«A few weeks before Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, when they met at the Winter Olympics in Beijing, they proclaimed a friendship without limits,» Burns said.
In this regard, he has argued that no foreign leader would have paid more attention than Xi Jinping to the war in Ukraine as well as «Russia’s poor military performance» as it would inspire him in his own ambitions in Taiwan.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
