This is the concluding installment of a three-part series. Read Part 1 and Part 2.
As seen in the two previous sections of this report, in crisis situations China’s primary objective is to advance its interests and “win.” Reducing escalation risks is, at best, a secondary consideration. Moreover, Beijing believes that it can benefit from escalation, due to a deep-seated belief that it can readily control military crises, conflicts and even wars.
The one exception is the use of nuclear weapons. Beijing does not think that nuclear escalation would be controlled in a crisis or armed conflict between the US and China, or any other powers. Whether its ongoing nuclear buildup will change this long-standing approach is not yet clear.
Regardless, Beijing’s mindset leads it to assume that Washington pushes for crisis avoidance and management mechanisms less to deal with problems as they emerge than to undermine China and, in the end, increase its power and influence. Under these conditions, the prospects for successful US-China cooperation in improving such mechanisms appear bleak. Nevertheless, there are policy implications for Washington:
• Understanding China’s views of and approaches to crises in general and military crises in particular is paramount to managing expectations about the prospects for new US-China crisis avoidance and crisis management mechanisms.
• Adapting the goals of these mechanisms by focusing them less on managing or resolving emerging military problems and more on communicating positions and intentions may yield better results and prove useful.
• Investing in unofficial US-China dialogues about crisis escalation and management should be a priority given the wide conceptual gap that exists between the US and Chinese approaches as well as the misperceptions and misunderstandings that each side has about the other.
Worlds apart
The starting point is to realize that the United States and China have fundamentally different views of and approaches to crises in general and military crises in particular – and, by extension, to crisis avoidance and crisis management mechanisms.
As the dominant power, the United States generally sees crises as problems that need to be managed or resolved, whereas China views them both as problems to manage or resolve and as opportunities to advance its own interests. The latter goal appears to be significantly more important than the former.
In other words, China is more interested in “winning” crises than in managing or resolving them, likely because it is a rising power unsatisfied with the regional and global orders. Furthermore, China views military escalation as a potentially useful way to deal with crises.
Thus, while the United States tends to think of crisis avoidance and crisis management mechanisms as tools to help maintain communication between the parties involved in a crisis (notably their military forces) and de-escalate tensions, China is in practice highly suspicious of such mechanisms, even if it is not in theory opposed to them, because it assumes that US officials will want to use them to prevail in a crisis.
These suspicions are rooted in the belief that the United States, as the dominant power, is committed to containing and even undermining China and its rise.
This belief is entrenched now more deeply than ever, given references by US officials to “the pacing challenge” and the bipartisan support in Washington to “take on” China. The United States began talking about China as “the pacing challenge” in 2021. It appears, for instance, in Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s memorandum of March 4, 2021, that outlines the Defense Department’s priorities.
Chinese observers are even convinced that the United States is intentionally creating crises in and around China. When in unofficial dialogues US participants talk about the merits of crisis avoidance and crisis management mechanisms, Chinese participants insist that Washington cannot have it both ways (that is, create crises and dangers for Beijing and then turn around and request Chinese help to address them).
Zhou Bo states as much in a recent essay: “China and the United States do not want military conflict, but the United States continues to provoke China’s sovereignty and security in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.” In other words, he says, the Americans want China to “ensure their so-called ‘security’ when they challenge China.”
Chinese participants at the US-China Arms Control and Strategic Dialogue have been especially vocal about Taiwan, accusing the United States of “reckless words and actions” and stressing that “nuclear escalation is in the cards” over the island because Washington would likely not be able to win a conventional war against Beijing.
They assess, plainly, that the United States would now have to use nuclear weapons first to “win” against China in a conflict over Taiwan.
They also continue to claim that Beijing would not use nuclear weapons first, including in a contingency over Taiwan, or any other contingency, and appear genuinely shocked when they hear that Washington questions that claim.
To China, therefore, the idea is that avoiding or managing crises and escalation is the responsibility of the United States. Again, in unofficial dialogues, Chinese participants stress that the United States should “downplay the Taiwan issue” and even “manage the Congress factor” (the latter comment having been made in the context of then speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022).
The message is clear: Chinese participants think that the United States is the troublemaker; if it would only behave, the problem would go away. There would be no crisis.
To a lesser extent, this is also Beijing’s assessment of the “root causes” of US problems with North Korea and Russia.
When in unofficial dialogues US participants stress that the United States now faces increasingly difficult relations with China and outrightly confrontational dealings with North Korea and Russia, Chinese participants recommend that Washington “self-reflect” about the reasons, suggesting that the United States brought these problems upon itself and should receive full blame.
To the Chinese participants, then, China and others are just reacting to issues created by the United States.
This is how, for instance, Chinese participants have explained China’s nuclear buildup. They blame the United States for pressing on with a “big and growing nuclear force” and “the ability to conduct a disarming first strike against us,” forcing China to “take action to ensure the survivability of its nuclear arsenal.”
The bottom line is that, as earlier studies showed, there is little, if anything, to suggest that China considers that its decisions or actions can create problems, including triggering escalation in a crisis.
Furthermore, perhaps due to the worsening of US-China relations and the assertive turn of the Chinese leadership, there is a palpable sense that China today genuinely believes that it is under attack from the United States and that all Chinese decisions and actions are – and would be – purely reactive and defensive.
Put differently, China’s growing military strength and apparent willingness to wield it have not been accompanied by considerations that Chinese behavior, too, could contribute to creating military crises or making them worse.
Poor crisis management record
Given the differences between the two sides, it should come as no surprise that the record of US-China engagement on crisis avoidance and crisis management has been poor.
The United States and China have two hotline agreements in place. Dating back to 1997, the first is a hotline at the presidential level to allow for communication in the event of a serious crisis. At the time, president Bill Clinton said that the establishment of this channel would “make it easier to confer at a moment’s notice.”
That hotline, however, was not used during the 2001 EP-3 incident, when a Chinese fighter jet crashed into a US aircraft and forced it to land on Hainan Island with US service members on board.
The second hotline, called the Defense Telephone Link, was established in 2008 at the defense secretary/minister level and is used for routine bilateral communications on a regular basis. During incidents, however, the hotline has seldom been used. It appears, for example, that the hotline was not utilized during the PLA seizure of an unmanned underwater vehicle in the South China Sea in 2016.
More recently, during the balloon incident this year, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin attempted to reach out to his counterpart, Defense Minister Wei Fenghe, who refused to take the call because the United States had “not created the proper atmosphere” for dialogue and exchange.
It is no wonder that Kurt Campbell, the National Security Council coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, has discussed the merits of hotlines but has also said that a major problem is that they tend to “ring endlessly in empty rooms” when crises emerge.
Exception proves the rule
Still, in recent years, the United States and China have communicated and worked through some issues. At the end of 2020, and in an unprecedented move proving that China does sometimes seek to avoid or manage crises, Chinese officials took the initiative of using communication channels to seek reassurance that president Donald Trump would not create a crisis in the Taiwan Strait to increase his chances of re-election.
Various US-China consultation agreements, despite their limitations, have also worked as expected. At the end of 2021, however, Beijing used the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement to argue that more rules would not facilitate US-China interactions, but that, at root, the solution to crises is for the US military to stop operating within the first island chain.
This suggestion shows that Beijing fundamentally sees little use for crisis avoidance and crisis management mechanisms between two countries that do not have a sound political relationship based on trust. As one Chinese observer put it, “with no mutual or political trust, China finds it impossible to use a military hotline to avoid possible conflict.”
Accordingly, if there is virtually no chance of a US-China breakthrough on arms control in the foreseeable future, the prospects for progress on crisis avoidance and crisis management are not great, either.
Conclusion
“There is no longer any such thing as strategy, only crisis management,” former US secretary of defense Robert McNamara famously stated in summarizing the lessons he and his colleagues had drawn from the Cuban Missile Crisis.
While this view is understandable given the severity of the crisis and the real risks of escalation to the nuclear level, the turn of phrase obscures the reality that even in high-risk situations, including those where the use of nuclear weapons is possible, the parties involved are often pursuing two seemingly incompatible goals: avoiding escalation and prevailing over their adversaries.
This review of the Chinese conceptualization of and approach to military crises makes clear that Beijing is motivated by the pursuit of both goals but is first and foremost interested in advancing its interests and “winning” crises, possibly because it finds itself unsatisfied in the current regional and global orders.
Reducing the military escalation risks is, at best, a secondary consideration. Worse still, Beijing thinks that escalation can be useful due to its deep-seated belief that military crises, conflicts, and wars can be controlled, with the notable exception of those involving nuclear weapons.
Although China’s rapid nuclear modernization may change this long-standing Chinese position, the prospects for successful US-China work on crisis avoidance and crisis management remain dim.
One reason is that China and the United States approach them in fundamentally different ways, with the United States, as the dominant power, having a greater proclivity to try to manage, and even resolve, crises.
A second reason is that, deep down, Beijing assumes that Washington will try to use these mechanisms to enhance its power and influence, especially in the current context where US-China relations are deteriorating at all levels.
What should the United States do in these circumstances?
To begin with, it should not give up on cooperation with China on crisis avoidance and crisis management. It should continue to push such an agenda but be clear-eyed about what these mechanisms can and cannot achieve.
Increasing crisis communication at the operational level would be helpful, given that there are currently no such mechanisms at that level. It would not be a panacea, however, because leaders in Beijing, not PLA officers, make decisions. Still, there is evidence that these mechanisms can work in some circumstances.
At the very least, these mechanisms could help support deterrence by providing in crisis situations a platform for the United States to use to convey its decisions or its resolve.
This is important – even essential – because recent research has shown that China’s default response in a crisis has been “to de-escalate once it perceives an acute risk of confrontation with the United States, a US ally or a country showing a strong will to resist.”
Finally, the United States should invest in Track 2 forums so that US and Chinese scholars can unpack, analyze and discuss key questions together. Focusing on nuclear crisis avoidance and management is particularly critical, given the uncertainties surrounding Beijing’s evolving approach to nuclear weapons.
David Santoro (PhD) is President and CEO of the Honolulu-based Pacific Forum, where he specializes in strategic deterrence, nonproliferation and the geopolitics of Asia and Europe.
This concludes a three-part abridged version of chapter 1 of the new book China’s Military Decision-Makiing in Times of Crisis and Conflict, edited by Roy D Kamphausen and published by the National Bureau of Asian Research, a Seattle-based non-profit institution. Republished with kind permission. Download the entire volume free.