In the nation’s capital, China-watchers have one year on their minds: 2027.
During intelligence briefings, congressional hearings, war games and watercooler conversations — across Hill offices, think tanks, the Pentagon and nondescript secure working spaces for “analysts” at the “State Department” — 2027 comes up over and over again.
That’s when American officials worry Chinese leader Xi Jinping might try to seize Taiwan by force. Congress wants to prevent that — or, at least, for the United States to be on better footing in the region by then.
But conflict over self-governed, democratic Taiwan, which the Chinese government insists is its own, could arrive even earlier.
“My gut tells me we will fight in 2025,” U.S. Air Force Gen. Michael Minihan wrote in a widely reported memo to troops in early 2023. “Taiwan’s presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a reason. United States’ presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a distracted America. Xi’s team, reason, and opportunity are all aligned for 2025.”
Minihan’s prediction of a distracted America in 2024 is holding up with a summer of historic political upheaval. And Taiwan elected another president this year who isn’t closely aligned with Beijing, pledging instead that he’s determined to “safeguard Taiwan from continuing threats and intimidation from China.”
As 2025 draws nearer, members of Congress really hope Minihan’s overarching conclusion — that Xi will sense a chance to strike Taiwan — won’t be fulfilled.
“Wouldn’t be the first time that a general got it wrong,” Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, told NOTUS.
A spokesperson for the Air Mobility Command, which Minihan leads, declined to comment for this story.
Minihan and other senior defense officials have said repeatedly since his memo that a Chinese attack on Taiwan isn’t inevitable, even though Xi appears willing to take military action to claim it. It’s uncertain whether America would intervene if he does.
Long-standing, official policy declines to state whether the U.S. military would come to Taiwan’s aid, a layer of ambiguity intended to discourage conflict. Different presidents, as you might imagine, have different personal views on the matter.
Reminded of Minihan’s prediction, members of Congress from both parties told NOTUS they think Beijing doesn’t have enough confidence in victory to move now.
“There’s always that possibility,” Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota said of an attack sooner than 2027. But Xi “also is still concerned about the limitations of his own military, and he most certainly does not want to have any kind of military action which could be defeated.”
American defense officials also hope their sprint to expand U.S. diplomacy in the region has discouraged any rash decisions by Xi.
One defense official who asked to speak anonymously defended that work. “This team has used every tool at our disposal, consistent with that long-standing policy, to maintain deterrence,” this official said. “It’s taken a lot of hard work, and it’s going to keep taking hard work in the future.”
Still, the Taiwan Strait has been anything but calm since Minihan wrote his memo. Chinese vessels and aircraft frequently make incursions into Taiwan’s waters and airspace. China has also simulated potential attacks on the island this year while it stockpiles critical minerals and agricultural supplies.
At the same time, America hasn’t quite been projecting an image of stability or readiness to the rest of the world.
In June, aging President Joe Biden stumbled through a debate with his opponent, unable to answer simple questions or even finish many of his sentences.
“Any time there’s doubts about who’s in charge of America, it raises alarm,” Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence panel, told NOTUS of Biden’s performance.
A couple of weeks later, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump escaped assassination at a rally by mere inches. There aren’t many events more destabilizing or distracting than that.
Trump made his vice presidential pick shortly afterward: Sen. JD Vance, who is fiercely skeptical of American intervention abroad, specifically military aid to Ukraine. The Republican Party’s platform also reflected an increasingly inwardly focused mindset, not mentioning Taiwan for the first time since 1980.
That policy shift is why — if there is a perception of American weakness on the international stage right now — Murphy argues the GOP is to blame rather than Biden’s health and the weeks of chaos within his own party this summer.
“Every day that Republicans telegraph their abandonment of Ukraine is a day that Xi moves up his plans to invade Taiwan,” the senator said.
“Sometimes we engage in simplistic hyperbole when it comes to foreign policy, but this isn’t that case. Xi is watching Republicans’ abandonment of Ukraine and is assuming, probably rightly, that they will also abandon Taiwan,” Murphy told NOTUS. “I wish I had more control over our messaging to China, but right now that is largely in the hands of Donald Trump and his cult.”
Naturally, Republicans blame Biden instead.
Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan argued that the president hasn’t pursued enough military spending and is risking America’s naval dominance, all while Xi’s speeches are “becoming more and more bellicose.”
Countries in the region are watching Xi’s behavior, Sullivan said, and “100% are getting more concerned.”
Sullivan, who visited Taiwan earlier this year, introduced a sanctions bill last month alongside Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth in an attempt to make Xi think twice about an attack. It lays out what economic punishments China could face in the event of aggression against Taiwan.
“The Chinese Communist Party must understand that initiating such an invasion will result in catastrophic economic and financial consequences for the People’s Republic of China,” the legislation states.
“We all want deterrence,” Sullivan told NOTUS. “Nobody wants a war in the Taiwan Strait.”
China-watchers aren’t raising new alarms. Michael Sobolik, a former GOP Hill staffer and expert on China at the conservative American Foreign Policy Council, said he doesn’t expect Xi to invade in 2025, even though he still believes “Beijing is preparing for war over Taiwan, and they’re preparing to win.”
“The risks for the PRC outweigh the benefits of moving now,” Sobolik said. If Xi were to strike sooner rather than later, he argued, it would indicate “he is in a power struggle and the stakes are so high that he begins taking what, for the preservation of his own power domestically, would be very rational decisions, but geopolitically would be very irrational decisions.”
Still, Sobolik said another invasion scenario might be that Xi is stable at home, “and he just simply believes he can win at an acceptable cost.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, told NOTUS he thinks the international community’s response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine — even though it has been controversial within his own party — has discouraged Xi from moving to seize Taiwan yet.
“I don’t see that happening next year,” he told NOTUS when asked about Minihan’s memo recently. “The world has been pretty good to come to Ukraine’s aid. I think the Chinese have seen more resolve regarding Ukraine than they probably thought.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the White House, has backed Ukraine’s self-defense and would likely continue the Biden administration’s approach to that war. Her positions on China are less clear than Biden’s, though she’s had generally supportive things to say about Taiwan’s self-defense.
On both issues, Trump is another story altogether. He and his allies have long opposed additional military aid to Ukraine.
Josh Rogin of The Washington Post reported that the former president also once expressed doubt about America’s ability to respond to an attack on Taiwan: “Taiwan is like two feet from China,” a senator recalled Trump saying, according to Rogin. “We are eight thousand miles away. If they invade, there isn’t a fucking thing we can do about it.”
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul recently shared a different expletive-laced story with NOTUS. During Trump’s last year in office, McCaul remembered, Trump said he’d delivered stern words to the Chinese president. “He told me he told Chairman Xi — I’m not sure I’ve ever said this publicly — that ‘I’m going to bomb the shit out of you if you invade Taiwan,’” McCaul said.“He’s got this, like, crazy, unpredictable…” McCaul trailed off. “That’s deterrence.”
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Haley Byrd Wilt is a reporter at NOTUS.