“This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,” Navy Adm. Charles Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said at a conference last week. “The big one is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested [in] a long time.” Such analysis is not new, but for a serving admiral to voice it so openly is.
Politicians and pundits who speak of ending forever wars assume the choice of war or peace is Washington’s alone. In reality, each combatant has a vote. I have just come back from a research tour of Asia and Australia, where I was able to talk to top intelligence and military officials, as well as visit Quemoy, the epicenter of the first two Taiwan crises. Two points became clear: First, Beijing and not Washington will make the decision about whether there will be a war over Taiwan. Second, such a war will not limit itself to Taiwan.
