Pentagon: China refuses to talk during crises in bid to spook US into fleeing
Joel Gehrke
Chinese military officials have a novel plan to spook the United States into “get[ting] out of the Western Pacific,” according to a senior Pentagon official: the silent treatment.
“They seem to have the view that crisis communications will be an excuse for the United States to create more crises, so that we can then manage them,” the Pentagon’s Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, told Foreign Policy.
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CHINA FOREIGN MINISTER PLEDGES NOT TO PROVIDE LETHAL AID TO RUSSIA
Chinese military officials have “largely ignored” U.S. efforts to communicate at moments of high tension, one of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s top advisers said Monday. And their silence represents not merely an expression of anger, the administration believes, but rather a calculated effort to raise the perceived risks of continued U.S. military presence in the region.
“And [Chinese officials take the view] that if we want to avoid crises, there’s a simple solution and that’s just to get out of the Western Pacific, and to abandon our alliances and partnerships, and leave,” he continued. “And leave that part of the world to be an exclusive sphere of influence lorded over by Beijing.”
Chinese officials scrapped a series of defense and military communications channels in August when then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) visited Taipei. Kahl’s assessment is “a hundred percent in line with what I hear directly from the Chinese government,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Zack Cooper told the Washington Examiner.
“They view these crisis management mechanisms as a ploy by the U.S. to put more pressure on China,” said Cooper. “They don’t really believe that guardrails help them strategically. They believe that guardrails are good for the United States and bad for them.”
China’s frank ambition to oust the United States from the region has prompted U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific to seek closer defense ties with Washington.
“The Indo-Pacific would not have enjoyed its long, uninterrupted period of stability and prosperity without the U.S. and its security guarantee to the region,” Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong told the National Press Club of Australia on Monday. “As we seek a strategic equilibrium, with all countries exercising their agency to achieve peace and prosperity, America is central to balancing a multipolar region.”
Australia has emerged as a key player in the U.S.’s effort to deter China, perhaps most dramatically through the striking of an agreement to acquire nuclear-powered submarines from the United States and the United Kingdom. That partnership outraged French President Emmanuel Macron since it involved the scuttling of a deal to purchase diesel-powered submarines from France, and it drew a scalding condemnation from former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, an elder statesman in Wong’s party.
“No mealy-mouthed talk of ‘stabilization’ in our China relationship or resort to softer or polite language will disguise from the Chinese the extent and intent of our commitment to United States’s strategic hegemony in East Asia with all its deadly portents,” Keating said last month.
Wong rejected that criticism while touting the need for cooperation with the United States.
“Many who take self-satisfied potshots at America’s imperfections would find the world a lot less satisfactory if America ceased to play its role,” she said. “If any country can make the calculation that they can successfully dominate another, the region becomes unstable and the risk of conflict increases.”
Wong took care to state that Australia hopes to “cooperate where we can, disagree where we must” with China — but also made clear that she perceives China as attempting to constrain Australia’s ability to “vigorously pursue our own national interest.”
“Importantly, China understands national interest as being advanced by favorable outcomes, by reducing the possibility of unfavorable outcomes, and by reducing the space for disagreement or dissent,” Wong said. “We deploy our own statecraft toward shaping a region that is open, stable, and prosperous. A predictable region, operating by agreed rules, standards, and laws. Where no country dominates, and no country is dominated. A region where sovereignty is respected, and all countries benefit from a strategic equilibrium.”
Kahl touted the AUKUS partnership and U.S. ties to other countries in the region as key to deterring conflict with China.
“Our allies, they’re our team. They’re the team that we go into this competition with,” he said. “This is not a competition of countries. This is a competition of coalitions. And nobody is able to marshal the size of the coalitions that the United States is.”
Wong emphasized that Australia views the avoidance of a war around Taiwan or elsewhere in the region as a top priority.
“A war over Taiwan would be catastrophic for all. We know that there would be no real winners, and we know maintaining the status quo is comprehensively superior to any alternative,” she said. “Our job is to lower the heat on any potential conflict, while increasing pressure on others to do the same.”
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China’s distaste for “crisis communications” suggests that Beijing believes that the U.S.-led coalition might be broken by stoking the fear of war.
“The threat of escalation occurring is advantageous to them,” said Cooper. “I think we’re going to have lots of games of chicken.”