A war between the United States and China involving nuclear blasts could have taken place in the dying days of Donald Trump’s regime but for the timely telediplomacy of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, Gen Mark A. Milley.
The details of what the General did based on his reading of Trump’s state of mind and the overall security situation form the content of a book due for release shortly in Washington but which the Washington Post has captured in a lengthy story.
The long and short of it is that the General drew on history and his immediate environment as well as Trump’s mood to reach the conclusion that he needed to assure his Chinese counterpart that there was no cause for alarm. In other words, he sensed that Chinese intelligence were surely concluding that they were vulnerable to an American attack, everything put together.
The story brings to light again the point that much of the defining diplomacy are still backchannel in character. It also shows how American military leaders understand their duty to international security, the American State, the Constitution and a sitting president.
The Washington Post said that Milley assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army in a pair of secret phone calls that the United States would not strike. While one of the calls took place on Oct. 30, 2020, four days before the election that unseated President Trump, the other took place on Jan. 8, 2021, two days after the Capitol siege, said the newspaper in its synthesis of the book by the paper’s well known author of such sensational stuff, Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, also of the Post.
The Post also said the first call was prompted by Milley’s review of intelligence suggesting the Chinese believed the United States was preparing to attack, arising from Chinese assessment of “tensions over military exercises in the South China Sea, and deepened by Trump’s belligerent rhetoric toward China”
“General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be okay,” Milley told him. “We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you”. Obviously to make the assurance thick enough and believable, the American General offered to alert his counterpart in the event of a U.S. attack, stressing the rapport they’d established through a backchannel. “General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”
In the book’s account as narrated by The Post, the Chinese General took the plege seriously.
Trump was not told of the backchannel conversation between the two military chiefs because the American commander suspected that his boss had suffered a mental decline after the election, a position he communicated to other high state officials such as the Speaker of the House of Representatives. It is also a position the CIA, for instance, shared, said the book.
According to the Post, the chairman knew that he was “pulling a Schlesinger” meaning he was resorting to measures resembling the ones taken in August 1974 by James R. Schlesinger, the secretary of defense at the time. Schlesinger told military officials to check with him and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs before carrying out orders from President Richard M. Nixon, who was facing impeachment at the time.
The security chief took the security assessment seriously enough as to summon senior officers to review the procedures for launching nuclear weapons, telling them the power to give order to fire should also involve him, a point the senior commanders understood.
So, why did a serving American Gen took the risks of placing himself between an incumbent president and Commander-in-Chief and his arsenal of war. The story in The Washington Post puts the answer to a Jan. 8 call from Speaker Pelosi who demanded to know “What precautions are available to prevent an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or from accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike?” In the book, Gen Milley assured her that there were “a lot of checks in the system”
The call transcript obtained by the authors shows Pelosi telling Milley, referring to Trump, “He’s crazy. You know he’s crazy. … He’s crazy and what he did yesterday is further evidence of his craziness” Milley replied, “I agree with you on everything.”
But it is also said that Gen Milley’s resolve was deepened by the events of June 1, 2020 when he felt Trump had used him as part of a photo op in his walk across Lafayette Square during protests that began after the killing of George Floyd. The chairman came to see his role as ensuring that, “We’re not going to turn our guns on the American people and we’re not going to have a ‘Wag the Dog’ scenario overseas,” the authors quote him saying privately, reports the Post, adding that Trump’s posture, not just to China but also to Iran, tested that promise. In discussions about Iran’s nuclear program, Trump declined to rule out striking the country, at times even displaying curiosity about the prospect, according to the book. Haspel was so alarmed after a meeting in November that she called Milley to say, “This is a highly dangerous situation. We are going to lash out for his ego?”
What the Post quotes the book as calling Trump’s fragile ego drove many decisions by the nation’s leaders, from lawmakers to the vice president, according to the book. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was so worried that a call from President-elect Biden would send Trump into a fury that the then-Majority Leader used a backchannel to fend off Biden. He asked Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, formerly the No. 2 Senate Republican, to ask Sen. Christopher A. Coons, the Democrat of Delaware and close Biden ally, to tell Biden not to call him.
These details will be of interest to other national militaries across the world as well as the dangers of nuclear arsenal because they could always fall into anybody’s hands. That is besides the chances of misreading of signals that anti-nuclear campaigners have been highlighting.
