Aug. 1, 2023
Chris Gordon, Air & Space Forces Magazine
Though a parade of senior American officials have visited China as of late to try to encourage a working relationship with Beijing, the Pentagon has yet to make significant progress in establishing substantive communications between the American and Chinese militaries—a tool for avoiding miscommunication and escalation during a potential crisis.
“Escalation management in the Indo-Pacific is so incredibly important, and we would be delighted to have increasing communication channels and connectivity with the [People’s Republic of China],” Mara Karlin Mara Karlin, a senior policy official at the Pentagon, told reporters Aug. 1 at a Defense Writers Group event.
But so far, that has yet to happen. Beijing has repeatedly rebuffed attempts by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III to establish a channel for talking with his Chinese counterpart.
“Secretary Austin has requested multiple times to have communication channels, particularly crisis communication,” said Karlin, who is performing the duties of deputy under secretary of defense for policy. “It’s really important that the most senior folks can talk to each other as quickly as possible when something happens. So Secretary Austin keeps asking for that.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for “reunifying” Taiwan with China, perhaps by force if need be, and objected to U.S. efforts to improve Taiwan’s defenses with military aid. The Chinese have ramped up military drills near the island in recent years, including sending warplanes into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone.
Tensions between the U.S. and China in the region have also grown. A Chinese jet came within a few yards of U.S. Air Force RC-135 over the South China Sea in December. In February, an F-22 Raptor shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon that transited the continental U.S. And in May, the Pentagon released video of another “unnecessarily aggressive” maneuver by a Chinese fighter intercepting a U.S. RC-135.
Heightening the potential for miscalculation is the often opaque nature of China’s decision-making. That tendency was highlighted by dramatic moves in late July when Xi sacked the head of the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, which is in charge of China’s land-based nuclear missiles, and his foreign minister in short order.
The reason for the moves are not clear. But it comes as China is engaged in a substantial nuclear buildup that could leave it with a stockpile of 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035, according to a Pentagon report released last year on China’s military power.
In recent weeks the U.S. has attempted to stabilize the U.S.-China relationship. On July 12, Chinese ambassador to the U.S. Xie Feng met with Ely Ratner, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs.
So far, however, the establishment of a military-to-military channel remains stalled despite recent visits to China by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and climate envoy John Kerry.
“We have been trying really hard to set up communication channels and they have not been enthusiastic about those,” Karlin said. “That’s really problematic. When we look at history, it is usually quite helpful for us to be able to sit down and speak with those whom we disagree, not least so we can get an understanding of what they’re doing, what we’re doing, what we all think is escalatory, and how we might understand it in different ways.”
Austin shook hands with his Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu in June at a Singapore security meeting but did not have a substantial exchange, Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder said in a statement at the time. Li is under U.S. sanctions, though the Pentagon says those would not prevent talks between the two defense chiefs.
Austin met with the Chinese minister’s predecessor, Wei Fenghe, in November 2022.
Karlin pointed to how the U.S. has tried to manage the risk of escalation with Russia despite Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
She highlighted the example of the U.S. postponing a routine test of a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile that had been scheduled for March.
“Now, this was just a regular old ICBM test,” Karlin said. “But understanding in that context was critical because the context was, of course, Russia’s military had just attempted this massive invasion. It wasn’t doing terribly well. Ukraine’s military was fighting a lot harder than perhaps some folks had expected. And so what would appear to be just a traditional old here’s what we do, not interesting, actually might be meaningful for escalation management.”
Others:
Pentagon’s strategy planner wants China crisis channels (yahoo.com)
Nuclear Submarines and Lessons From the Front | AFCEA International
Ukraine is ‘extraordinary laboratory' for military AI, senior DOD official says | DefenseScoop
