In the hours after an Air Force F-22 shot down a giant Chinese balloon that had crossed the United States, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reached out to his Chinese counterpart through a special crisis line, leading a public discussion that could explain it. things and reduce tension.
But Austin’s effort there fell flat, when Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe refused to get in line, the Pentagon said.
China’s Defense Ministry said it rejected calls from Austin after the balloon was shot down because the US “did not create the right atmosphere” for dialogue and exchange. The US action “seriously violates international norms and sets a damaging precedent,” the ministry’s spokesman said in a statement issued late Thursday.
It’s an experience that has frustrated U.S. commanders for decades, as they get their Chinese counterparts on the phone or over video channels as a series of escalating crises stoke tensions between the two countries.
From an American perspective, the lack of the kind of reliable crisis communication that helped the United States and the Soviet Union get through the Cold War without an armed nuclear exchange increases the danger of US-China relations today, at a time of China’s military strength. more and more and tensions with the US are rising.
Without the ability of generals in opposing capitals to move quickly, Americans worried that misunderstandings, false reports or accidental collisions could turn small confrontations into larger hostilities.
And it’s not about a technical lack of communication equipment, says Bonnie Glaser, managing director of Indo-Pacific studies at the German Marshall Fund think tank. The issue is a fundamental difference in how China and the US view the value and purpose of military-to-military hotlines.
The US military leadership’s belief in a Washington-to-Beijing hotline as a way to reduce flare-ups with the Chinese military has run counter to a very different decision – a Chinese political system that runs on slow deliberative consultation by political leaders and does not create space. for individual directed, real-time talk between rival generals.
And Chinese leaders are suspicious of the whole US notion of a hotline – seeing it as an American conduit for trying to talk about the consequences of US provocations.
“This is really dangerous,” Assistant Secretary of Defense Ely Ratner said Thursday about the difficulty of military-to-military crisis communication with China, as Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley pressed him on China’s latest rebuff to Beijing and Washington’s hotline setup.
US generals are constantly working to open up more communications with their Chinese counterparts, a defense official said, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “And unfortunately, so far, the PLA has not answered that call,” Ratner said, referring to China’s People’s Liberation Army.
Ratner accused China of using important communication channels only as blunt messaging tools, closing or reopening them to emphasize China’s dislike or liking for the US.
China’s opposition to the military hotline as tensions rise has accelerated efforts by President Joe Biden and civilian diplomats and security aides to build their own channels of communication with President Xi Jinping and other Chinese political officials, for situations where the military hotline can be used. unanswered, US officials and Chinese experts said.
The US and Chinese militaries are in a confrontation over US-backed Taiwan, which China claims as its territory. The next flare-up appears to be only a matter of time. It can happen with expected events, such as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s visit to Taiwan, or something unexpected, like the 2001 collision between a Chinese fighter jet and a US Navy EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft in the South China Sea. Without commanders speaking in real time, the Americans and the Chinese will have less means of preventing a larger conflict.
“My concern is that EP-3-type incidents will happen again,” said Lyle Morris, China country director for the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2019 to 2021, now a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “And we will be in a different political environment of hostility and mistrust, which can quickly go wrong.”
Biden insisted on building a line of communication with China to “manage” differences responsibly. The November meeting between Xi and Biden resulted in the announcement that the two governments would resume some of the dialogue that China closed following a visit to Taiwan in August by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Last weekend, the US canceled what would have been a relationship-building visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken after the transit of a Chinese balloon, which the US said was for espionage. China claims it is a civilian balloon used for meteorological research.
The same week that China’s balloon flew over the U.S., Austin was in the Philippines to announce an expanded U.S. military footprint there, China’s neighbor, said Tiehlin Yen, director of the Taiwan Center for Security Studies, a think tank. “America is also very nationalistic these days,” Yen said.
“From a regional security perspective, this dialogue is necessary,” Yen said.
The ideal for the military and civilian hotline between China and the US is not the classic red phone on the desk.
Under the 2008 agreement, the China-US military hotline is a multi-step process in which one capital sends requests to the other for joint calls or video conferences between top officials over an encrypted line. The pact gives the other side 48 hours to respond, though nothing in the pact prevents top officials from speaking immediately.
Sometimes when the US calls, current and former US officials say, Chinese officials don’t even pick up.
“No one answered. It’s just noise,” said Kristen Gunness, a senior policy analyst at the Rand Corporation. Gunness was talking about an incident in March 2009 when he was working as an adviser to the Pentagon’s chief of naval operations. A Chinese naval vessel at the time surrounded a US surveillance ship in the South China Sea and demanded that America leaves. US and Chinese military officials finally talked – but about 24 hours later.
It took decades for Washington to force Beijing to agree to its current military crisis communications system, said David Sedney, a former assistant secretary of defense who negotiated the deal.
“And after we have been in place, it is clear that they are very reluctant to use it in any substantive sense,” Sedney said.
American test calls to the hotline will be taken, he said. And when Americans call to offer congratulations on some Chinese holiday, Chinese officials will pick up and say thank you, he said.
Anything more sensitive, Sedney said, the staffers who answered the phone “will say, ‘We’ll look into it. As soon as our leader is ready to talk, we’ll get back to you.’ Nothing will happen.”