How to Stop the United States and China from Sliding into War 

As anyone who has been paying attention to the increasingly fraught Sino–American relationship knows, the chance that the two nuclear powers could end up in a serious crisis, and possibly a major war, is significant and growing. Most notably, increasing tensions between China and several of its neighbors — including U.S. allies and partners from Japan to Taiwan, the Philippines, and India — have resulted in escalating incidents involving military and paramilitary forces that threaten to draw Washington and Beijing into a direct confrontation.

For example, recent violent clashes between the Chinese Coast Guard and the Philippine Coast Guard and Navy near the disputed Second Thomas Shoal and Sabina Shoal have repeatedly pushed the Philippines to the brink of declaring the clashes as “armed attacks,” thereby activating the U.S.–Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty.

The danger of this situation is made worse due to the deep distrust that now exists between the two powers, their growing reliance on military deterrence over diplomacy in conducting bilateral relations, and, most importantly, the fact that they hold antagonistic views toward issues of high national interest on both sides, such as the fate of Taiwan. Taken together, these factors pose a major challenge to future efforts to avoid or defuse a Sino–American political-military crisis and thereby avert a major conflict.

In response to this dire situation, Beijing and Washington have in recent years undertaken several notable measures to avert and defuse a future bilateral crisis. These include the creation of a crisis hotline, voluntary protocols for on-the-scene operators to avoid or de-escalate accidental clashes at sea or in the air, and a military-to-military crisis communication working group to discuss how to improve crisis management.