Statement on Averting a New Cold War Between the United States and China
October 2020
1. The United States and China have entered a period of intensified economic, political, and military competition that can only be characterized as a New Cold War, with a very real possibility of becoming a hot war – even a nuclear war.
This is not merely an intensification of long-term trends already evident during the Obama administration, but represents a tipping point, a shift from one state of affairs to another, with profound consequences for both countries and the entire world. We have gone from a period of deeply intertwined economic, financial, educational, and scientific relations that allowed for relatively cordial competition to one of mutual hostility and combativeness.
This new Cold War competition is having disastrous impacts on human security, most immediately through the failed international response to the coronavirus and the urgent need to overcome the climate crisis. By failing to exchange information on the virus in a timely manner and pursuing a competitive rather than cooperative approach to the search for a vaccine, the two great powers have contributed to Covid-19’s calamitous spread; by failing to cooperate in reducing carbon emissions and seeking clean energy alternatives, they are deepening the climate emergency.
Human security is also endangered by the growing military hostility between the United States and China. Both countries are expanding their military capabilities at a frightening pace, diverting funds from critical human needs to military purposes and igniting a new nuclear arms race. Both, moreover, are increasing provocative military activities in the western Pacific and in relation to Taiwan, increasing the risk of a violent clash resulting in uncontrolled escalation.
2. The New Cold War is unfolding on many fronts:
Geopolitical contestation: This includes U.S efforts to isolate China by pressuring states to downgrade their ties with Beijing and by strengthening its military ties with nations surrounding China, including South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, Vietnam, Thailand, and India.
Taiwan: Involves increased U.S. diplomatic and military ties with Taipei plus an increased U.S. air and naval presence in the area, signaling Washington’s increased backing for Taiwan’s independence; China, for its part, has increased its own military muscle-flexing in waters off Taiwan, for example by sending combat planes into Taiwan’s airspace.
Military provocation in contested areas: An increase in U.S. naval show-of-force operations in waters adjacent to China, especially the East and South China Seas. These actions are intended to intimidate and humiliate China, which lacks a symmetrical capacity to threaten the United States. China has, however, stepped up its own naval maneuvers in these waters.
Arms buildups and base construction: Both China and the U.S. are engaged in a costly arms buildup aimed at warfighting in the Asia-Pacific area, with a focus on acquiring advanced ships, planes, and missiles as well as sophisticated space and cyberwar systems. Both have also established new or are expanding existing bases in the region, such as the Chinese bases on artificial islands in the South China Sea and U.S. bases in Australia, Guam, Okinawa, and the Marshall Islands.
Economic and trade: This includes U.S. efforts to “decouple” the U.S. economy from China, forcing U.S.-based multinationals to relocate their supply chains in the United States or in friendly countries like Mexico and Canada. It also includes U.S. efforts to stifle Chinese exports to the U.S. by imposing stiff tariffs on imported Chinese goods along with Chinese retaliation in the form of high tariffs on certain U.S. products, including agricultural goods.
Technology: This includes U.S. efforts to prevent China from reaching technological equity with the United States by blocking access to U.S. technology by Chinese firms like Huawei, and by closing the U.S. economy to Chinese apps like Tik Tok and WeChat. China has blocked access by its citizens to Facebook, Google, and other U.S. tech platforms.
Education and Scientific Exchange: Mutually beneficial educational, scientific, and technological ties that have been woven between the U.S. and China are being ripped apart. The Trump Administration has broadly accused Chinese students, scholars, and scientists of being spies, fueling anti-Asian racism; in China, the Xi Jinping administration has suppressed criticism of government policy. Both countries have denied visas to journalists, reducing an invaluable resource for people in each country to understand one another.
3. If allowed to proceed unbridled, the New Cold War will have calamitous consequences for both countries, in terms of:
A world divided into hostile “camps”: As during the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, countries around the world are being forced to take sides with either the United States or China, with severe penalties for those who chose the “wrong” side (as viewed from Beijing or Washington). This is evident, for example, in U.S. efforts to create an “Asian NATO” made up of partner states in the region.
War: A relatively minor incident in the East or South China Seas could rapidly escalate into a major military clash between the U.S. and China, creating widespread destruction in China and nearby U.S. allies, such as Japan and Taiwan. Even if limited to the Chinese periphery, such a conflict would cause immense damage to the economies of all Asian countries and the world at large.
Nuclear War: Because a major U.S.-China military clash in the South China Sea or over Taiwan would likely involve American air and missile attacks on the Chinese mainland, China could face a threat to its strategic defense capabilities and so place its nuclear forces on high alert – setting off a chain reaction of nuclear actions on both sides resulting in the actual use of atomic weapons. Whatever the chain of events leading to nuclear weapons use, the outcome would be catastrophic for both countries and the planet as a whole.
Economic stagnation: The campaign to decouple the U.S. and Chinese economies and the ongoing trade war undermines global economic vitality and prevents a coordinated response to future recessions in the world’s two largest economies. Restructuring, rather than de-coupling, the U.S. and Chinese economies is needed for economic security and to address soaring economic inequality.
Inability to overcome global problems: As described above, eliminating avenues of scientific, technological, and diplomatic collaboration undermine the two nations’ and the world’s ability to contain and prevent the existential dangers of pandemics and climate change, along with other threats to human security.
Increased repression, racism, and xenophobia: As antagonism between the two countries intensifies, surveillance, repression and racism directed against targeted minorities is increasing along with demonizing of the Other. In China, the Xi Jinping regime is silencing dissidents, crushing the pro-independence movement in Hong Kong, and intensifying its brutal subjugation of the Uighur people; in the United States, fear is growing among Chinese, Chinese-Americans, and other Asian-Americans as they face increased discrimination and personal threats.
4. The emergence of a New Cold War between the United States and China is being fueled by a dynamic of seemingly irreconcilable assessments of each other’s behavior. In an environment in which a formerly marginalized but now rising power asserts its interests against those of a long dominant hegemon, each side can assert ostensibly legitimate reasons for actions it takes that the other side considers illegitimate, leading to escalating tensions.
In the South China Sea, for example, successive Chinese regimes have asserted sovereignty over the majority of these waters and the islands lying within them. At the same time, an Arbitral Tribunal in the Hague has ruled that those Chinese claims are illegitimate and that other claimants to the islands, including Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines, have legitimate development rights to areas within their Exclusive Economic Zones as defined by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The U.S. supports those nations in their struggle with China, and also insists on the “freedom of navigation” through waters adjacent to Chinese-claimed inlands in the area, which Washington says have been illegitimately militarized by the Chinese.
Similar competing claims can be found in other U.S.-Chinese disputes, such as those over Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Tibet. This dynamic frustrates efforts by regional and international bodies and concerned people in both the U.S. and China and throughout the region to de-escalate conflict and achieve peaceful outcomes. Peace can only be achieved through mutually beneficial diplomacy that resolves the mutual antagonisms.
5. We seek to avert the risks and hardships that can be expected from a U.S.- China Cold War and to promote the mutual interests of both countries and neighboring nations. We seek to promote mechanisms for their peaceful resolution in a manner that provides the maximum benefit for all sides.
Peaceful alternatives that address the needs and interests of the American, Chinese, and other Asia-Pacific peoples can and must be pursued. For example, in the South China Sea, we advocate talks between senior leaders of the United States and China aimed at finding mutual de-escalation steps intended to reduce the risk of unintended conflict. These might include a pledge by the United States to cease its “freedom of navigation operations” in close vicinity of Chinese-occupied islands in return for a Chinese pledge to remove anti-air and anti-ship missiles from those islands. This could be accompanied by renewed talks between China and neighboring states aimed at creating a code of conduct for maritime activities in the area and an agreement for joint development of undersea resources in the South China Sea, while leaving the delineation of boundaries for future negotiations.
6. A New Cold War between the United States and China will prove calamitous for both countries and the world at large. We appeal to those who share our concerns to join us by:
Informing the public and members of Congress of the dangers posed by a New Cold War.
Investigating the divisive issues in U.S.-China relations and seeking peaceful, mutually beneficial solutions.
Encouraging Common Security diplomacy among the United States, China, and neighboring Asia-Pacific nations in which security is achieved not against an adversary but together with it.
Supporting Track-2 diplomacy among citizens from China, the United States, and elsewhere intended to devise peaceful, mutually beneficial outcomes to dangerously divisive issues.
(Co-authored by Joseph Gerson and Michael Klare)