US Chief of Staff Mark Milley has feared that Donald Trump will start a war with China in his final days as US President. That’s why he is said to have contacted Beijing on his own, says the new Bob Woodward book.
“What if there were no coup plans, General Milley,” asked the “” a little thoughtfully a few weeks ago. It was then that the first excerpts from a book about his time as US Chief of Staff at Donald Trump’s side had appeared. In it, the top military man describes the storming of the Capitol on January 6th and his fear that the outgoing US president might attempt a coup. Ultimately, the coup did not materialize, but Milley had already discussed countermeasures with confidants if the worst came to the worst. Arguably, they weren’t his only anti-Trump plans.
Two contacts with Beijing because of war
Concerned about a war with China, Milley is said to have contacted his colleague Li Zuocheng twice in Beijing: In an initial conversation on October 30, a few days before the US presidential election, he said: “General Li, I want to assure you, that the US government is stable and everything will be fine. We will not attack you or engage in any military operation against you. ” With these words the investigative journalist Bob Woodward quotes the US chief of staff in her book “Peril” (danger).
After January 6, Milley called Li again, according to the book. “We are one hundred percent stable. Everything is good,” he is said to have told his Chinese colleague. In order to convince Beijing, Milley even arranged for a US military exercise to be postponed. In addition, the chief of staff had instructed his commanders to first inform him if Trump wanted to use his authority to order a nuclear strike. Milley is said to have coordinated with the heads of the secret services CIA and NSA out of concern about possible irrational actions by Trump.
The authors of the book also had a transcript of a phone call between Milley and the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, according to the reports. “You know he’s crazy,” the US Democratic MP Milley is said to have said two days after the storming of the Capitol. “If they couldn’t even stop him from attacking the Capitol, who knows what else he could do?” According to the transcript, Milley replied that he “agreed on all points”.
Trump calls for high treason lawsuit
Donald Trump reacted badly to the publication. He shared a statement on his website berating Milley and blaming Milley for the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan. “I assume that he will be charged with high treason because he negotiated with his Chinese colleague behind the president’s back,” said the ex-president. At the same time, however, the ex-president denied any credibility to the new revelation and called it “fake news”.
In the first reactions, criticism of Milley’s behavior is again loud. “There are still risks to our rule of law and our institutions, a lot can go wrong. But we must not rely on a breakaway military leadership to protect us from breakaway presidents,” writes the business paper “Bloomberg”.
Sources: DPA, AFP,, “New York Times”,
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