New Research – Avoiding the Abyss: An Urgent Need for Sino-American Crisis Management
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Jessica Rosenblum, [email protected], 202.800.4662
WASHINGTON, DC – To avoid a potentially catastrophic confrontation, the United States and China must revamp and expand their crisis management structure, according to a new research paper.
Written by QI Senior Research Fellow Michael Swaine, the paper, Avoiding the Abyss: An Urgent Need for Sino-American Crisis Management, offers the most comprehensive and in-depth assessment to date of the problems confronting Sino-U.S. crisis prevention and management.
“The procedures or mechanisms offered for averting or dealing with a crisis are inadequate or nonexistent”, Swaine writes. The paper recommends actions both sides should take to reduce the likelihood of a severe crisis and increase the chance of resolving a potential crisis with minimum damage.
The paper identifies nine such major political-military crises between the U.S. and China since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Today, several key issues between the United States and China could boil over into the next crisis, including the potential for conflict over Taiwan, the North/South confrontation on the Korean Peninsula, a range of maritime disputes, and threats to the U.S. alliance system in Asia.
Swaine presents the findings of years of Track II crisis prevention and management discussions between Chinese and U.S. interlocutors, including former senior officials, policy analysts, and scholars, as well as the results of extensive research materials. He recommends the establishment of permanent and semi-permanent working groups that would allow key U.S. and Chinese civilian and military officials to reach a common understanding and mutual confidence regarding U.S. and Chinese goals, intentions, and practices in a crisis.
With the intensification of security competition between the U.S. and China, the likelihood of a crisis erupting over one of the identified issues has heightened considerably. In implementing this structure though, perilous military escalation between the two superpowers could be averted down the road.
###