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WASHINGTON—The United States military does not have adequate means of communication with China to deter a catastrophic miscommunication, according to a leading defense official.
The lack of military-to-military communication between the nations could allow a misunderstanding to spiral into armed conflict, according to Ely Ratner, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific affairs.
“We are not where we need to be and not where we should be,” Mr. Ratner said during an Oct. 5 forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
Mr. Ratner clarified that he believed conflict in the Indo-Pacific “is neither imminent nor inevitable.”
Still, Mr. Ratner said, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership continues to demonstrate a “concerning lack of interest” in maintaining open lines of communication and has “declined multiple invitations” to reestablish military communications with U.S. commanders.
CCP Using Military for International Coercion
Mr. Ratner’s remarks follow a series of aggressive incidents last month in which the CCP’s military wing forcefully engaged with Philippines vessels to prevent them from accessing natural resources nearly 1,000 miles from Chinese territory.
Likewise, China has attempted to push U.S. forces from the region when presented with the opportunity.
To that end, Mr. Ratner said, U.S. military leadership is wholly aware of the CCP’s tendency to use its military wing as an “instrument of coercion” and prepared to contend with it.
“We are clear-eyed about the challenges posed by [China’s] growing capabilities and its willingness to use these capabilities in dangerous and coercive ways,” Mr. Ratner said.
“I do think that if we are vigilant, we can continue to reinforce and extend deterrence into the future.”
China Does Not Want Guardrails With US
The CCP’s unwillingness to engage with the United States to prevent conflict stems from the fact that the regime’s geopolitical strategy seeks to prevent the creation of guardrails with the United States, according to Dan Blumenthal, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank.
Far from wanting to help stabilize the relationship with the United States in the region, he said, Chinese military leadership has questioned whether it should tolerate a U.S. presence in the Indo-Pacific.
“Xi doesn’t want a floor [to the relationship],” Mr. Blumenthal said. “He has prepared China for what he calls the ‘great and protracted struggle against the United States.’”
He also said that the United States shouldn’t seek a détente with China when the country is “not willing to reciprocate.”
To that end, Mr. Blumenthal said, China’s communist leadership believes that the United States is in terminal decline and, as such, will not seek to negotiate under most any circumstances until U.S. strength is more clearly demonstrated.
The United States, he said, should, therefore, not undermine its own goals by seeking to communicate with China when there is no apparent benefit to such communication.
Relatedly, he said, the United States must remain wary of moving away from a “realistic and hardened” policy toward China, which could send the wrong signal to the nation’s allies.
“The Chinese want to create crises,” Mr. Blumenthal said.
“The Chinese will take us seriously once and if we complete the work [in deterrence] that Ely Ratner was talking about.”
