According to a new book “Peril” written by Bob Woodward, Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs chairman, told China in a secret phone call that he would give advance warning if the US was ever going to attack.
“In a pair of secret phone calls, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the PLA, that the U.S. would not strike, according to the new book written by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward and national political editor Robert Costa.
Milley told China in secret phone call that he would give advance warning if U.S. was ever going to attack!!!
"If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.” https://t.co/bIYO1HFuVi
— Brent Scher (@BrentScher) September 14, 2021
One call took place on Oct 30, 2020, four days before the election that unseated President Trump, and the other on Jan. 8, 2021, two days after the Capitol siege carried out by his supporters in a quest to cancel the vote.
The first call was prompted by Milley’s review of intelligence suggesting the Chinese believed the United States was preparing to attack.
“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.”
In the book’s account, Milley went so far as to pledge he would alert his counterpart in the event of a US 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.”