OPINION — “President Biden and President Xi [at their November 2023 meeting in California] announced the resumption of military-to-military communication that had been frozen for more than a year. The Chairman of our Joint Chiefs of Staff has now spoken with his counterpart, and we’ve restored a number of critical operator-level mechanisms. The question now is whether that will continue even in the face of future turbulence. We, for our part, will continue to make the case that military-to-military communication is critical at all times but especially in times of tension.”
That was National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, speaking last Tuesday at the University of California San Diego at a conference on U.S.-China Relations co-organized by the Council on Foreign Relations and the 21st Century China Center.
Sullivan had opened with remarks built around the idea, as he put it, “We expect that the PRC [the Peoples Republic of China] will be a major player on the world stage for the foreseeable future. That means that even as we compete, we have to find ways to live alongside one another.”
He then said, “Competition with the PRC does not have to lead to conflict, confrontation, or a new Cold War. The United States can take steps to advance its interests and values and those of its allies and partners on the one hand, while responsibly managing competition on the other. Being able to do both of those things is at the heart of our approach. And in fact, the United States has decades of experience talking to and even working with our competitors when our interests call for it.”
Some 60 years ago, when our main competitor was the Soviet Union, I heard somewhat the same approach when I worked for Sen. J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.), then Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And Fulbright taught me to look closely at what people said, as well as what they did.
So, let’s analyze what Sullivan said about the U.S. dealing with China, compared to what the U.S. is doing.
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First, I must point out that while Sullivan covered almost all major issues related to China, there was one that he did not mention – nuclear weapons — which was, and still is, at the forefront of Washington’s relations with Beijing as they have been with Moscow during the Cold War and since.
Sullivan did describe China as “pursuing the largest peacetime military buildup in history,” but he did not tie those words, as he has done before, to the PRC being on track to having as many as 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2013. He also didn’t repeat, as he has done in the past, that China has so far declined to share the size and scope of its nuclear forces, or to provide missile launch notification or thus far agreed to substantive dialogue on arms control.
Last June, at the Arms Control Association annual meeting, Sullivan said, “Simply put, we have not yet seen a willingness from the PRC to compartmentalize strategic stability from broader issues in the relationship. And that compartmentalization, as I noted before, has been the bedrock of nuclear security—indeed strategic stability—for decades.”
Setting aside the important nuclear issue, Sullivan said that beginning last May, “we launched a period of intensive diplomacy. It was an all-hands-on-deck effort across the Cabinet spanning the full range of our relationship with the PRC. The goal was not to paper over our differences. Our aim instead was to address misperceptions and miscommunication, to avoid major surprises, to reopen defunct channels, and to more clearly signal to each other about our respective positions and interests. And we sought to increase not just the quantity but the quality of our communication.”
He added, “This intensive diplomacy was about managing tough issues rather than patching up the relationship. We were direct about our differences, including PRC support for Russia’s war against Ukraine and cross-Straits issues.”
The first military-to-military talks took place last December 21, when Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. CQ Brown Jr., spoke by video teleconference with China’s PLA Chief of the Joint Staff Department Gen. Liu Zhenli. As Sullivan said last week, they discussed global and regional security issues and Gen. Brown reaffirmed the importance of holding bilateral Defense Policy Coordination Talks.
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On January 8 and 9 of this year, PRC’s Major General Song Yanchao, Deputy Director of the Central Military Commission Office for International Military Cooperation met at the Pentagon with Dr. Michael Chase, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia, in what was described as the 17th U.S.-PRC Defense Policy Coordination Talks.
Along with other defense-related issues, Dr. Chase “underscored the importance of respect for high seas freedom of navigation guaranteed under international law in light of repeated PRC harassment against lawfully operating Philippine vessels in the South China Sea…[and] Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine and expressed concerns about recent provocations from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” according to a Pentagon release.
On January 11, Global Times, the Chinese Communist Party newspaper, referred to the Pentagon meetings and other bilateral talks saying, “The simultaneous exchanges at the military, diplomatic and civilian fields are remarkable in this period as China-US relations are stabilizing and rebounding.”
Initiating of military talks has not, however, affected continued military activities on both sides. On January 24, the U.S. guided-missile destroyer USS John Finn sailed through the Taiwan Straits, the first to transit following Taiwan’s presidential and parliamentary elections.
A week later, on January 31, China Central Television reported Beijing’s Eastern Theater Command Navy recently conducted an anti-ship missile assault exercise in a coastal region of China’s Fujian Province, just across from Taiwan, with several transporter erector launchers commencing live-fire missile attacks. At almost the same time, the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) held a live-fire missile exercise along the coast where it can cover the Taiwan Straits, “sending a warning to ‘Taiwan independence’ secessionists and external interference forces,” according to the Global Times.
Sullivan said, “None of this will be easy, and there will be times of tension. That’s inevitable in a competition like this that is simply not going to resolve in a neat and decisive end state.”
Proving his point that the U.S. side was still alert to Chinese questionable activities, the day after Sullivan spoke, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray, appearing before the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist China, claimed that Chinese hackers associated with the Chinese government had been “positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities.”
Before Wray’s testimony, the FBI had disclosed that last December, it had obtained court authority to access U.S. computer servers that had been infiltrated by Chinese malware known as Volt Typhoon. Wray told the Select Committee, “The Volt Typhoon malware enabled China to hide, among other things, pre-operational reconnaissance and network exploitation against critical infrastructure like our communications, energy, transportation, and water sectors.”
“Working with our partners,” Wray said, “the FBI ran a court-authorized, on-network operation to shut down Volt Typhoon and the access it enabled.”
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Gen. Paul Nakasone, the outgoing Commander of Cyber Command, put it more bluntly to the Select Committee: “When we have discovered them [Chinese hackers] in our critical infrastructure, the first thing that we need to do is to make sure that we get them out…The second thing is that we need to have a vigilance that continues onward. This is not an episodic threat that we’re going to face, this is persistent.”
That very same day, January 31, the Defense Department added more than a dozen Chinese companies to a list of firms allegedly working with China’s military as part of a broader effort to prevent American technology from reaching the PLA.
Back in Beijing last Tuesday, before Sullivan began speaking, the China-U.S. Counternarcotics Working Group had started long delayed talks on cutting the flow of ingredients to the drug fentanyl from China. Last Wednesday, State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters the U.S. delegation “emphasized the importance of multilateral and international cooperation on chemical precursor scheduling, information sharing, and other measures.”
Miller also pointed out, “The PRC has already started to take steps to dramatically curtail the supply of fentanyl precursors, including taking regulatory and law enforcement action against dozens of PRC‑based synthetic drug and chemical precursor suppliers.”
In his talk last week, Sullivan said competition with China “does not have to lead to…a new Cold War.” For those not around in that period, I use George Kennan’s description of that time as requiring “firm containment designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counterforce at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world.”
In contrast, Sullivan said, “We cannot treat the rest of the world as proxy battlegrounds the way that I think the U.S. and the Soviet Union too often did during the Cold War,” where Washington’s aim was to prevent governments from turning Communist. He also said, “We realize that efforts, implied or explicit, to shape or change the PRC over several decades did not succeed,” an implied criticism of more recent efforts change China’s form of governance.
Sullivan concluded by saying “none of this will be easy, and there will be times of tension. That’s inevitable in a competition like this that is simply not going to resolve in a neat and decisive end state.”
China’s Global Times on February 1, referred to Sullivan’s speech as describing the U.S. on “a tightrope walk” when it comes to its relationship with China, “with the key technique lying in maintaining balance.” The newspaper also noted, “This year is the U.S. presidential election year, and negative topics concerning China will be further magnified and intensified.”
Sullivan closed by pointing out what I believe could be an obstacle to maintain that balance beyond the current Beijing government. He said that while this Biden administration approach is “uniquely American and rooted in decades of history, diplomacy, and hard-won experience…It’s also rooted in bipartisanship… because when the United States deals in a strategic competition from a position of strong bipartisan support, of all pulling together in service of the country, we always come out stronger for it.”
If there is one thing the U.S. lacks today it is bipartisanship which, ironically, could make domestic partisanship the reason Washington may fall off the China tightrope.
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