On May 26, 2023, a U.S. Air Force plane was on a routine reconnaissance mission over the South China Sea when a Chinese fighter jet banked dangerously close to it. Several months earlier over the same waters, a U.S. military plane was forced to take evasive action when a Chinese fighter came within 20 feet.
Risky intercepts and unsafe encounters like these between air and naval forces of China, the United States and American allies have spiked in recent years, and there appears to be no letup. In August, China released footage of what it claimed was a near miss between Chinese and U.S. helicopters in the Taiwan Strait. Territorial confrontations between Chinese and Philippine vessels have become routine in the South China Sea, and earlier this week Australia said a Chinese fighter jet released flares dangerously close to an Australian Air Force plane.
The danger of one of these incidents tipping into an actual conflict has never been higher. Yet in sharp contrast to the era of U.S.-Soviet confrontation, there are virtually no reliable systems of real-time communication between American and Chinese military forces to defuse an inadvertent crisis.
President Trump, who plans to meet President Xi Jinping of China next week on the sidelines of a regional summit in South Korea, has made clear that his priority with China is a trade deal.
But trade depends on peace and stability. By working to lay the foundation for durable crisis-management systems with China, Mr. Trump can secure his legacy as the president who pulled the two powers back from the brink of World War 3.
History has shown how superpower confrontation can quickly spiral toward nuclear Armageddon. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis is perhaps the most chilling example.
The United States and China have also come dangerously close to blows.
In 2001, a U.S. Navy spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet in the South China Sea. The Chinese pilot was killed and the American aircraft made an emergency landing on China’s Hainan Island, where the crew was captured. The ensuing 10-day standoff was resolved only after delicate diplomacy that reached the highest levels of the Chinese and U.S. governments.
Whether that kind of crisis resolution can be replicated today is uncertain. China is far more assertive and militarily powerful than it was in 2001, and tensions with the United States are more combustible, amplified by nationalistic pressures on both sides.
The situation between the United States and the Soviet Union was different. Although sworn ideological adversaries, they had the wisdom to put reliable checks and balances in place. They notified each other before missile launches, agreed to a range of transparency requirements so that each side could tell that the other’s activities were exercises, not attacks, and followed safety protocols designed to reduce the chance of run-ins. These safeguards remained functioning even when tensions spiked.
The importance of open lines of contact cannot be overestimated.
In 2015 Russia dramatically increased its military presence in Syria. One of the writers of this essay assisted Ash Carter, then the U.S. secretary of defense, and Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in reopening military communication channels with the Russians that were severed a year earlier after Russia invaded Crimea. We took measures to avoid accidental clashes in Syria, and no such run-ins occurred.
There has been a modest level of military contact between China and the United States over the years, but nothing that resulted in the dependable safeguard systems that existed with the Soviets. And China has repeatedly severed all military exchange out of anger, most recently in 2022 after the visit to Taiwan by then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
President Joe Biden and Mr. Xi agreed in 2023 to re-establish military dialogue. But that agreement came late in Mr. Biden’s presidency and has failed to fully take root. Communication remains precarious and insufficient, consisting of occasional phone calls between top government or military officials and other sporadic engagement. This fragile framework cannot be counted on to quickly defuse potential accidents in the air and at sea the way regular, predictable contact could, and it remains vulnerable to rupture in tense times.
There have been encouraging recent signs. Last month Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called the Chinese defense minister, Dong Jun, the Trump administration’s first real step toward correcting this military blind spot. But one-off phone calls and predictable measures like setting up hotlines are not enough. During the 2001 crisis, Ambassador Joe Prueher was unable to reach senior Chinese military officials at the outset of the standoff: “They didn’t answer my phone call,” he said. And as former Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell has put it, past Chinese reluctance to use hotlines means that American calls have “just rung in an empty room for hours upon hours.”
China has hinted at a new readiness to engage. A Chinese military spokesman suggested in late September that Beijing was “open” to pursuing closer military relations with the United States in the name of “greater stability.” Mr. Xi himself told Mr. Dunford, the Joint Chiefs chairman, in 2017 that military ties can act as a stabilizing force in the broader China-U.S. relationship. He was right then, and the point becomes more relevant with each passing day.
Mr. Trump should build on this momentum by creating a system of routine, sustained, real-time military contact. It could be the difference between war and peace.
Eric Rosenbach is director of the defense, emerging technology, and strategy program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He previously served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for global security and chief of staff of the U.S. Department of Defense during the Obama administration.
Chris Li is a technology and geopolitics Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
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