Sources familiar with US and allied intelligence services are suggesting that China could choose to invade Taiwan sometime within the next 18 months.

The same sources tell Fox News that the window between the upcoming November meeting of the Chinese Communist Party’s National Congress and the US presidential election in 2024 is an especially dangerous time—one that could see the breakout of war between the two superpowers in the Taiwan Strait. This unwelcome news comes from two former senior intelligence officials, who agree that China sees that dangerous window of time as ideal for a military invasion of the small island republic—whose independence is seen as an intolerable insult to national pride and the integrity of Chinese territory.

“We have always had and always been aware that China has an ever-present, ever-evolving plan for an amphibious assault and military invasion of Taiwan,” one of the officials told Fox News, citing intelligence from a US ally in the region. “If they are not successful in reunifying politically, then they will do so with force.”

The astute observer of international affairs will no doubt have recognized that China’s golden window of opportunity coincides with the waning months of the feckless and disastrous Biden administration, the weakness and incompetence of which has been a gift to aggressive and irredentist regimes—first Putin in Ukraine, and perhaps China in Taiwan as well.

“What is different now is, we have intelligence that this has gone from an indefinite, nebulous scenario, to a belief that there is a window of opportunity in the next 18 months,” the intelligence official added. “I don’t think that’s a coincidence that the window of opportunity is within a Biden administration.”

China must be salivating at the prospect of finally acquiring Taiwan, which would cement its status as a world superpower whose star is on the ascendant, in contrast to the United States, which it perceives to be a dying power convulsed by pointless internecine political squabbles and accelerating domestic chaos.

By acquiring the breakaway island republic, closing the Taiwan Strait to US naval passage, and assuming control of Taiwan’s near-monopoly over electronic chip manufacturing, China would place itself on a virtually unassailable military and economic high ground.

A onetime Trump administration official also told Fox News that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s provocative visit to Taiwan provided just the pretext China needs for its saber-rattling—though it is not the ultimate cause of it. Moreover, the official warned, the “Davidson Window” is rapidly closing.

That’s a reference to Admiral Philip Davidson, the former commander of American forces in the Indo-Pacific, who testified before Congress last year that China could invade Taiwan by 2027. The former Trump administration official further noted that China’s military thinking is closely tied to the US domestic political cycle, which closes in January 2025 with the conclusion of the presidential transition period.

“The window is now between the Party Congress and the next U.S. presidential election,” the official explained. “I think we are in a very dangerous two-year window right now.”

Noticeably absent from all this speculation is any belief—either by intelligence sources or apparently the Chinese themselves—that Joe Biden will still be a factor after 2024. It seems to be accepted as a given that he’ll be out for good, and that’s why the next few years are so dangerous: Biden’s weak and ineffectual leadership is an opportunity that our enemies don’t wish to squander.

The former Trump administration official explained that “the likelihood of invasion has increased dramatically, with China perceiving the United States is in a weakened position,” and specifically cited Biden’s chaotic surrender of Afghanistan to the Taliban last year, as well as Russia’s successful invasion of Ukraine, which elicited a weak US response and “only half-measure sanctions being put on the Russian Federation.”

Furthermore, China’s Xi Jinping is encouraged by the domestic turmoil that has weakened the United States, including increased crime, the inability to control the southern border, and failed and foolish green energy policies. That’s why it’s so important for the Chinese to strike while the iron’s hot, as they say—they fear that the 2024 election could elevate an actual leader to the White House, “another leader that could return to a more robust ‘peace through strength’ foreign policy and stronger domestic policies.”

So buckle up: the next few years are going to be exciting.

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Todd Jaquith

Staff Writer

"Originally from South Florida, Todd Jaquith now lives in sunny Santa Fe, New Mexico. He holds a degree in Anthropology from Florida Atlantic University."

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