U.S. Worries About Escalation in Pacific as Chinese Military Steps Up Confrontation
Pentagon hopes security forum in Beijing next week will help restart military communications
China’s jet fighters are harassing American military aircraft and stepping up sorties around Taiwan. Its coast guard is confronting a U.S. security treaty ally in the South China Sea, leading to a recent collision.
Amid the tensions, talks between the U.S. and Chinese militaries remain largely frozen, which leads Washington to worry that a misstep could trigger a dangerous escalation.
The latest flashpoint is a clash between the Philippines and China over control of a reef in the South China Sea that could draw in the U.S. to defend its ally.
“If Manila requests American support for this mission, it brings into the picture a more serious Chinese challenge of American ships or aircraft,” said Zack Cooper, a former Pentagon official.
Scenarios could include a Chinese ship using a military-grade laser—as has happened against a Philippine ship—or locking its missile-targeting radar on a U.S. aircraft as a warning, according to Cooper, now a security analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank.
President Biden said Wednesday that the U.S. stood by its legal commitment to defend the Philippines.
There are few active military communication lines between the U.S. and China, making it harder to coordinate a mutual effort to dial down tensions.
China cut off high-level military talks with the U.S. in August 2022 in response to the visit to Taiwan by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Among the casualties were annual talks at which American and Chinese military officers discussed ways to ensure safe military encounters at sea and in the air, a forum known as the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement that had been active since 1998.
Beijing also suspended a channel between the Pentagon and the Chinese military called the Defense Policy Coordination Talks that had been used to foster cooperation and discuss crisis management.
Adm. John Aquilino, the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said recently that he has sought talks with his Chinese counterparts for 2½ years without having a request accepted.
In its latest annual report on the Chinese military, the Pentagon said the absence of communication “raises the risk of an operational incident or miscalculation spiraling into crisis or conflict.”
From China’s perspective, that may be exactly the intention. Chinese military scholars say Beijing wants the U.S. to feel the danger of taking what China sees as provocative actions such as flying and sailing close to Chinese territory or areas over which China seeks to exert control.
“If on one hand you put too much pressure on me with so much aggressive behavior, and on the other side you say, ‘OK, please come out and we will talk about guardrails or crisis management,’ it doesn’t make sense,” Senior Col. Zhao Xiaozhuo, a senior fellow at China’s Academy of Military Sciences—a research institute controlled by the People’s Liberation Army, as China’s military is known—said in June.
“If I talk with you, that will legitimize your aggressive behavior,” Zhao said.
U.S. officials are hopeful that a shift by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to re-engage over diplomacy and economic policy could lead to progress in the military sphere. On Thursday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is set to arrive in Washington for talks with Secretary of State Antony Blinken that may pave the way for a visit by Xi to the U.S. in November.
Biden administration officials say Blinken will raise actions by China’s military in the East China Sea and South China Sea that the U.S. considers provocations.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon plans to send officials to an annual security conference in Beijing next week known as the Xiangshan Forum, where U.S. defense officials have in the past held talks with their Chinese counterparts.
“In terms of hopefully kind of kick-starting some of the military-to-military engagements, yes, I’m hopeful that we’ll have an opportunity to do that in the coming months,” said Michael Chase, deputy assistant secretary of defense for China, this week in response to a question about the Xiangshan Forum.
Chad Sbragia, who attended the forum in 2019 as Chase’s predecessor, said he had a range of meetings with his counterparts, including Wei Fenghe, China’s defense minister at the time.
Sbragia said Beijing could still move to rebuild ties even in the absence of a defense minister. Li Shangfu’s removal from the post was confirmed by Beijing this week without explanation.
If China names a successor in time, the new minister might have an opportunity to meet Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at a regional defense ministers summit meeting in November in Jakarta, Indonesia.
“The key now will be to see if initial outreaches can mature into substantial exchanges,” Sbragia said.