Emanuele Scimia

Opinion | If US-China arms build-up continues apace, demons of war will prevail

Despite Beijing and Washington resuming defence talks, military exercises and weapon deployments are increasing the risk of conflict

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Emanuele Scimia

Published: 5:30am, 15 Jun 2024

The Chinese and the American militaries are behaving in ways that inevitably result in each country seeing the moves of the other as provocative. The positive dialogue they say they are promoting does not seem able to reverse that trend.

What happened last week was quite illustrative of the real state of relations between China and the United States. Four armed Chinese coastguard ships entered disputed waters in the East China Sea near the Diaoyu Islands, which Japan calls the Senkaku Islands. The Japanese government said that, for the first time, Chinese vessels deployed in the area were equipped with cannons. The Biden administration has made it clear several times that the US-Japan Security Treaty also applies to those disputed islands.

Days earlier, US forces took part in the Tiger Strike 24 bilateral exercise with Malaysia. The military drills featured joint amphibious operations in the South China Sea, where China has overlapping territorial claims with Malaysia and other neighbours such as Brunei, the Philippines and Vietnam. While Indonesia is not a claimant state, its exclusive economic zone stretches to the edge of the South China Sea, where it has challenged Chinese efforts to fish.

Beijing has repeatedly urged neighbours to distance themselves from the United States, accusing Washington of having hegemonic geopolitical ambitions in the region.

On May 31, Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun and US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin met on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. Austin emphasised the importance of maintaining communication channels between their countries. This certainly sounded good for stability not only in Asia, but for the entire world.

But war preparations by the two rivals tell a completely different story, with the Western Pacific, the Malacca Strait and the Japanese island of Kyushu increasingly resembling a potential battleground. No regional actor can be spared from this dynamic.