Experts Warn Growing Tensions Risk US War With China

Communication mechanisms may not be enough to stop every encounter

As tensions keep growing progressively worse, experts in US-China relations say that the risk of any specific incident escalating into a war is much greater than in years past, saying that intergovernmental communication needs to be shored up.

Every encounter, every US warship sent into the South China Sea, is another risk, and communications are getting worse and worse, leading a Chinese thinktank to  counsel efforts to keep chains of communication open, warning relations could get very childish without that.

Warnings about the state of the US-China relationship have been growing for months, with an ugly trade war, and recent threats by President Trump to totally decouple the US economy from China adding to the mounting risks.

The two major powers got into this situation through mutual acrimony, and it would take a lot of cooperation for the two of them to repair the relationship for the sake of avoiding a costly war. It’s clear no one would benefit from a war, but it’s not clear there is interest in repairing ties.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.