What if Trump Ordered a Nuclear Strike on China? I’d Comply, Says Admiral
By AUSTIN RAMZYJULY 27, 2017
HONG KONG — The commander of the United States Pacific Fleet was asked a hypothetical question during a
talk on Thursday in Australia: If President Trump ordered a nuclear strike on China, would he comply?
Charlie Brown, a spokesman for the United States Pacific Fleet, said the premise of the question about using
nuclear weapons against China was "ridiculous," and not something Admiral Swift had raised himself.
In 2005, a Chinese military official told a group of foreign reporters
that Beijing should consider using nuclear weapons against the United States if it intervened in a conflict over Taiwan, the self-ruled island China considers part of its own territory.
At the time, Beijing called those maneuvers a "serious political
and military provocation." On Thursday, Britain’s foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, committed his country’s newest and largest aircraft carriers to steam through the South China Sea.
Johnson said that One of the first things we will do with the two new colossal aircraft carriers
that we have just built is send them on a freedom of navigation operation to this area,
Medcalf said that Admiral Swift answered the question the only way a serving military officer could,
