US Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrapped up his recent trip to Beijing with few clear successes and further uncertainty ahead.
Blinken’s mission had been to stabilize the teetering US-China relationship and find a way to prevent a potential crisis between the two global superpowers from escalating into a larger conflict. But a daunting set of challenges remain — from tussles over high-tech supply chains to tensions over Taiwan — not least of which is repairing the military communications channels that have fallen dangerously silent, while the two nation’s armed forces operate within closer proximity and greater frequency.
Although Blinken restarted high-level diplomacy with China, he failed to make progress on a top US priority: reviving military talks. In a press conference in Beijing, Blinken acknowledged that it is “vital that we have these kinds of communications, military to military” but conceded that “at this moment, China does not agree to move forward.”
President Biden has declared that a key pillar of his China policy is to “manage competition responsibly” and ensure it “does not veer into conflict.” China’s leader Xi Jinping agrees, calling for the United States and China to avoid “colliding with each other.” But the lack of open, reliable, and functional channels of communication between the US and Chinese militaries in an era of intense strategic rivalry, compounded by growing encounters between aircraft and naval vessels in the air and at sea, elevates the risk that one accidental collision could trigger a spark that leads to conflagration.
In recent months, US officials have sounded the alarm over an increase in hazardous incidents caused by unsafe intercepts of US and allied forces throughout the Indo-Pacific. From near misses over the South China Sea to an incident earlier this month when a Chinese guided-missile destroyer cut off a US warship in the Taiwan Strait, these close interactions risk an episode that could quickly spiral out of control.
Concerns about a crisis are not hypothetical or overexaggerated. In 2001, when a US EP-3 reconnaissance plane collided with a PLA fighter jet over Hainan Island, the death of the Chinese pilot and capture of the US crew led to a diplomatic showdown. Today an accidental collision accelerated by deadly currents of domestic politics and nationalistic pressures in both countries could easily ignite a fire that leads to conflict. In fact, on the canvas of history, wars often result from accidents with unintended consequences, triggered by smaller sparks that can quickly lead to global conflagration.
To mitigate the risk of real bloody war, more effective and empowered modes of military communication are needed to prevent miscalculation, avert a future confrontation in the region, and, in the event of a crisis, control inadvertent escalation that could flare into an unwanted clash neither side wants. As tensions amplify, the urgency of a flexible framework for real-time dialogue, professional conduct of forces, and deconfliction mechanisms becomes ever more acute.
The Biden administration has repeatedly proclaimed its desire for “guardrails,” or measures to prevent an accident from veering into conflict. But Beijing has increasingly rejected the term. It views bilateral military consultations to ensure safe interactions in the Pacific as thinly veiled attempts to legitimize what it perceives as illegitimate provocations by foreign forces intruding on its sovereignty. When US officials have proposed military dialogue, Chinese officials have countered that the best guardrail is to adhere to the Three Joint Communiques, which helped normalize relations in the ’70s, and “observe basic norms of international relations.”
Moreover, the two countries approach communication differently. While successive US administrations have reaffirmed the importance of dialogue even when expectations are low and tensions are high, China’s leaders condition meetings — particularly between defense officials — on the overall health of the bilateral relationship; they refuse dialogue when ties are strained to express displeasure to objectionable actions. Recent events have further underscored Beijing’s strategy of suspending selective bilateral contacts as leverage for friendlier US policies.
In the days after the balloon shootdown in February, Beijing rebuffed Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s request for a call with China’s defense minister — and later refused a sit-down meeting at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s security summit. After then-speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan last August, China canceled three military talks. As China’s Foreign Ministry argued, the responsibility fell on the United States to “show sincerity” and “create necessary conditions for dialogue and communication between militaries.” Translation: Cease and desist with the wrong practices — and then we can talk.
Even when there has been moderate progress — such as the Defense Telephone Link established in 2008 — those channels often fall silent in times of crisis, when China’s tendency is to withdraw. In the hours after the 2001 Hainan incident, then-ambassador to China Joseph Prueher recalled that Foreign Ministry officials refused to answer his calls. And as the White House’s top Asia official Kurt Campbell observed recently, “the hotlines that have been set up have just rung kind of endlessly in empty rooms.”
To be clear, the overwhelming impediment to effective military dialogue lies in China’s reluctance. But the misalignment of the two nations’ conceptions of crisis management cannot result in fatalism or see officials resign to admiring the problem — it must serve as a clarion call to catalyze more creative and urgent action.
During the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union, sworn ideological enemies, established and sustained robust mechanisms for reducing risk. >From accords constraining dangerous military activities that might interfere with command and control networks to nuclear risk reduction centers, Moscow and Washington recognized the urgency of putting aside differences in a joint effort to prevent the greatest catastrophe of all: nuclear war.
In fact, after the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster, and President John F. Kennedy pronounced the risk of war as “one in three,” he and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev redoubled their efforts, establishing a direct hotline from the White House to the Kremlin. After a series of near misses between the US and Soviet militaries, both countries in 1972 adopted the Incidents at Sea Agreement, establishing protocols for aircraft and vessels to interact safely, long viewed as a model for bilateral confidence building.
While China so far has had different views, there may be room for cautious optimism down the road that the People’s Liberation Army’s aversion to military communications may evolve. As China’s forces modernize and operate more globally, it may recognize — or be convinced — that averting an accident is in its own interest. Perhaps most important, Xi himself has implied openness to the idea in the past, telling then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joe Dunford in 2017 that the military relationship could be a stabilizing force in the overall relationship.
To call for dialogue does not equate to condoning another’s behavior but rather recognizes realities. And reinvigorating military channels would be entirely consistent with decades of defense policy under both Republican and Democratic presidents. If wise leaders in Beijing and Washington seek to manage relations, they must soon establish a way to stabilize the military-to-military relationship. The stakes are too high for an accidental crisis to spark an unwanted conflict — and the world is depending on it.
Eric Rosenbach is codirector of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He previously served as US assistant secretary of Defense for Global Security. Chris Li is director of research for the Asia-Pacific Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.