Top US General Warns of Increasing Potential for 'Significant International Conflict'

With the US already providing millions worth of military hardware to Kiev, White House press secretary Jen Psaki has pledged that Washington will continue doing so amid Russia's current special military operation in Ukraine. The operation was launched by Russia on 24 February to demilitarise and de-Nazify Ukraine.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, has warned of a more unstable modern-day world, something that he claimed increases the chances of a full-fledged international conflict.

During testimony on the defence budget before the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, the top US military officer argued that his country is "now facing two global powers: China and Russia, each with significant military capabilities both who intend to fundamentally change the rules-based current global order".

"We [the US] are entering a world that is becoming more unstable and the potential for significant international conflict is increasing, not decreasing", the four-star general asserted.

Milley went on by claiming that the US "needs to pursue a clear-eyed strategy of maintaining the peace through unambiguous capability of strength relative to the People's Republic of China and Russia".

He also gave his thoughts on Russia's ongoing special operation in Ukraine, which the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff described as "an invasion".

In particular, when asked how long the military standoff in Ukraine might last, Milley said he thought this would be "a very protracted conflict".

"And I think it's at least measured in years. I don't know about decades but at least years for sure. This is a very extended conflict that Russia has initiated. And I think that NATO the United States, […] and all of the allies and partners supporting Ukraine are going to be involved in this for quite some time", the general said.

Additionally, he undercut previous claims by Republicans that POTUS could have effectively deterred Vladimir Putin from launching the special operation in Ukraine, saying that any major pressure on the Russian president could have resulted in hostilities between Moscow and Washington.

"I'm not sure he [Putin] was deterrable. This has been a longstanding objective of his that goes back years. The idea of deterring Putin from invading Ukraine, deterring him by the United States, would have required the commitment of US military forces, and I think that would have risked armed conflict with Russia, which I certainly wouldn't have advised", Milley stated.

Russia's Special Op in Ukraine

Russia's special operation to demilitarise and de-Nazify Ukraine was ordered by President Vladimir Putin on 24 February, with the Russian Defence Ministry stressing that only the country's military infrastructure would be targeted with high-precision weapons. The operation was launched following a request for help from the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics which saw weeks of intensifying shelling by the Ukrainian Army.

The Biden administration has already supplied millions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine's military, but POTUS recently scrapped a Polish proposal to transfer 28 Soviet-designed MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine as part of American aid. The US president made it clear that Washington's facilitation of the transaction could trigger World War III.