Why the US must revoke sanctions on China’s defence minister – now
- While progress has been made on the diplomatic and military front, US-China military-to-military contact remains frozen
- US sanction on Chinese Defence Minister General Li Shangfu is a sticking point that must be resolved to avoid the risk of dangerous miscalculations
This is ridiculous. China’s military trade with Russia was not in violation of any international regime and such trade between two sovereign states has nothing to do with the United States.
A frivolous sanction on China’s defence minister is closing a window that both countries would benefit from keeping open. Just imagine that during the five years of his tenure – longer than the tenure of an American president – China’s defence minister won’t be able to visit the United States and he won’t invite his American counterpart to visit China. There will be few, if any, exchanges at other levels.
Imagine for another moment that the Chinese and American military leaders don’t talk on a hotline which was established in 2008 and is supposed to play a crucial role in the most dangerous situations, be it in the South China Sea or in the Taiwan Strait.
Admittedly, the military-to-military dialogue between the two countries sometimes resembles a conversation between people talking at cross-purposes, but it is better than no talk at all. The absence of communication will inevitably lead to misunderstanding and miscalculation.
Such a situation wasn’t even seen during the Cold War. In spite of absolute hostility, the two superpowers maintained open lines of communication and established a series of confidence-building measures, some of which, like the New START nuclear arms control treaty, are still in place, despite the Ukraine war.
Washington suspects that Beijing is using no communication as a strategy for reaping benefits. At the Shangri-La Dialogue, Austin said, “dialogue is not a reward. It is a necessity”. But for Beijing, American sanctions constitute a precondition itself and create a sour atmosphere even before talks start.
The US position that the sanctions do not technically prohibit a meeting between Austin and Li and therefore there is no need to remove them, is a textbook example of American hypocrisy.
Technically speaking, lifting sanctions on Li is not very difficult in that the sanction is an executive order that the Biden administration can revoke, but it might be politically challenging for US President Joe Biden, who doesn’t wish to appear weak towards Beijing in the eyes of China hawks, especially before the election in 2024.
There has been much discussion of whether we have slipped into a new cold war. But if the two largest militaries don’t talk to each other in the next five years, this situation would be more dangerous than anytime during the Cold War.
Senior Colonel Zhou Bo (ret) is a senior fellow of the Centre for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University and a China Forum expert