Charles Q. Brown Jr., retired U.S. Air Force General and 21st Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made his first public comments since being dismissed in February by President Donald Trump. Brown spoke to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) this week.
[Note: In 2020, during his first administration, President Trump nominated Gen. Brown for Chief of Staff for the U.S. Air Force. In 2023, President Biden nominated Brown to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In February 2025, Brown was abruptly dismissed by Trump. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had said Brown was overly focused on diversity issues.]
Addressing America’s allies and adversaries, Brown sent a warning about what a potential military conflict between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) would look like.
He said: “No matter what happens with Taiwan, we’re going to have to deal with the PRC over the long term…It’s not just from a military standpoint. It’s economically, diplomatically, commercially. It’s in all kinds of forms, things that we’ve got to pay attention to — because we’re in competition right now, pretty heavy competition.”
Brown added: “If we go into a conflict, we could have casualties very similar to what we had during World War II, and our nation hasn’t had that experience in the conflicts we had in the Middle East.”
“If we go into a conflict . . . [we could] have casualties very similar to what we had during World War II,” says Charles Q. Brown Jr., retired U.S. Air Force general and 21st chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Brown discusses the potential long-term challenges of clashing… pic.twitter.com/fVrgZFqKid
— Council on Foreign Relations (@CFR_org) October 24, 2025
Brown said a future conflict between the U.S. and China would be “the equivalent of another world war where the nation—the entire nation goes to war.” Brown said: “So what you really want to do is actually—you know, our goal is not to go to war. So, really, the goal is to deter and so how are you doing or how are we doing with our allies and partners, [how are we doing] the things to not have a conflict.”
Brown said the complex relationships in the Indo-Pacific region and its commercial and military interdependencies may provide what’s needed for stability, while also pointing out that if these break, the consequences will be dire.
Brown said of independent nations in the region that “they really do like our military security but sometimes they’re economically intertwined with the PRC and we are as well in some cases, and that creates a bit more of a dynamic challenge and it has a huge impact if there’s a conflict, you know, there in the Indo-Pacific not just to, you know, the economics in the Indo-Pacific but more globally.”
Brown’s interview marked for some an opportunity to voice displeasure at Hegseth’s tenure and style of leadership. Veteran Marine Amy McGrath, the first woman to fly a combat mission for the Marine Corps and the first woman to pilot the F/A-18 in a combat mission, who is running as a Democrat for U.S. Senate in Kentucky, responded on X to Brown’s comments: “Good people in our military have been fired for no reason. It’s a shame and none of this makes us stronger, that’s for sure.”