Gordon Chang analyzes China's likely reaction to Milley's calls
China expert Gordon Chang joins Mark Levin on 'Life, Liberty & Levin'
When Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley made his two controversial phone calls to Chinese Communist Party Gen. Li Zuocheng, it made the CCP more "aggressive" toward the United States, because until that time, they did not believe then-President Donald Trump was even considering launching a nuclear attack on Beijing, according to author and China expert Gordon Chang.
Chang told "Life, Liberty & Levin" Sunday that Gen. Li and President Xi Jinping probably took Milley's reportedly unsanctioned communications to mean the United States was "in complete disarray and terminal decline" – if the top American military officer was calling them for such a reason.
"[T]hat would have made the Chinese – and I think it will make them – more aggressive, and more belligerent because they think that the U.S. will not be able to oppose them," Chang told host Mark Levin.
"I know some people actually say that Gen. Li Zuocheng – when he heard that, actually thought Milley was threatening to attack China – we just don't know how the Chinese reacted. But whatever was the case, I'm sure that this did not work to the benefit of the United States because it either made the Chinese more aggressive one way or the other."
Chang said Trump had built a reputation as the "least warlike president in decades" – with his detente toward otherwise hostile regimes like that of Kim Jong Un in North Korea.
In that regard, China likely saw the Palm Beach Republican as offering "no objective indications" that he would initiate an attack on China.
"There were no unusual movements of Chinese forces. There were no civilian preparations. And most indicative of all, Mark, there was nothing in Chinese propaganda that signaled that they felt that there was a war [imminent with] the United States," Chang said
"So when Gen. Li heard that from Gen. Milley, I'm sure that generally thought ‘what the devil is going on?’ And he probably thought that Mark Milley was acting on intelligence that the U.S. had, which is what Milley said before the Senate [this week]."
If anything, Chang added, the Chinese Communist Party could've surmised there is a U.S. spy somewhere in China that would've given Milley such an idea.
Levin later added that Milley's decision to make the calls were indeed unprecedented, remarking Ronald Reagan would never have asked the Joint Chiefs chairmen in those years, Gen. Jack Vessey and Adm. William Crowe, to call the Soviet Union without speaking with the president first.
"I just think what Gen. Milley did was an absolute disgrace, and there's absolutely no justification for any of it since there was no indication that President Trump was prepared to go to war with anybody," said Levin, who previously worked in the Reagan administration as chief of staff to Attorney General Edwin Meese III.
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