The top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee believes two of America’s biggest adversaries will soon invade smaller neighboring territories backed by the United States.
Rep. Michael McCaul, who represents Texas’s 10th Congressional District, told reporters Friday that he expects Russia will invade Ukraine and China will invade Taiwan in a matter of weeks.
“My prediction is that you’re going to see Russia invading Ukraine in the next month,” he said. “And I think after the Olympics … China’s gotten so provocative, so aggressive in the South China Sea that you will begin to see CCP, Communist Party, invade Taiwan.”
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The threats that Russia and China pose to Ukraine and Taiwan, respectively, have grown in recent months under the Biden administration.
Russia has amassed a significant military presence on the border with Ukraine, raising fears of an incursion, and those concerns have reached a new height in recent days as conversations between U.S. leaders and their Russian counterparts have been largely unsuccessful.
The White House has said this week that “Russia could at any point launch an attack on Ukraine” and that Russian President Vladimir Putin could conduct a “false flag operation” to justify a military response.
President Joe Biden implied earlier this week that “a minor incursion” might be met proportionally, setting up an avalanche of international criticism from people who believed the president’s comment, which the White House has since walked back, could make an aggressive move by Putin more likely.
Any movement across the border “will be met with a swift, severe, and united response from the United States and our Allies,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said shortly after the president’s remark.
“Putin will see a green light to invade the breadbasket of Russia,” McCaul added. “He’s always wanted it back, and as he looks at now President Biden as a weak president, in his calculation, no matter what the tough language is from Biden, he sees the weakness as there’s no action taken by this administration.”
Similarly, the Chinese government has taken a more aggressive stance toward Taiwan, the island off the coast of China that claims its independence from the mainland, though China disagrees and believes Taiwan is under its sovereignty. The U.S. provides defense support to Taiwan, but it has not been formally recognized by Washington.
McCaul’s comments came during a GOP conference call with Reps. Elise Stefanik, Mike Gallagher, and Michael Waltz, all of whom are on the House Armed Services Committee. The call was an opportunity for Republicans with foreign policy expertise to provide their opinions on the first year of the Biden administration as it pertains to international decisions.
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Gallagher, a day before the call, introduced legislation that would provide $3 billion to Taiwan each fiscal year from 2023 to 2027 to fund its deployment of asymmetric defense capabilities. He previously told the Washington Examiner that the point of the legislation is to prevent the China-Taiwan conflict from developing into Russia-Ukraine.
“We don’t want to be caught in the same scenario two years from now,” he said, “which is why I think that we need to attack this with a sense of urgency.”