China-US tensions: The dangers of constructive ambiguity and the need for dialogue

En diplomacy, constructive ambiguity can be helpful. It has its place and even its nobility. But also its limits. China and the United States today maintain a strange relationship: close economic ties and open political-military hostility. Business is open, political dialogue is closed. Is this a position that can be held for a long time?

The United States does not believe in it. The events of the past few days illustrate the dangerousness of the situation. At the end of May, a Chinese fighter surrendered, says the Pentagon, to a “maneuver unnecessarily agressive » against a US Air Force observation plane. It was over the South China Sea, in this Western Pacific over 80% of which the Chinese claim sovereignty – a unilateral assertion not accepted by the United Nations. During the weekend of June 3-4, a Chinese warship risked collision with an American cruiser in the Taiwan Strait.

This type of incident, say the United States, can lead to an armed clash between the two countries – in short, an uncontrolled spiral. The Pentagon denounces the growing aggressiveness of the Chinese in the waters as well as in the airspace of the South China Sea.

fear of emptiness

Washington is calling for a return to the institutionalized dialogue maintained by the two military hierarchies until the early 2010s, before a relationship made up of hostility and rivalry developed between the two largest economies on the planet. “In the absence of dialogue, both parties run an unacceptable risk of sleepwalking into a conflict over Taiwan »said, to New York Timespolitical scientist Bonnie Glaser, of the German Marshall Fund.

At the end of May, during the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual seminar on regional security organized in Singapore, the American Secretary of Defense, LLoyd Austin, proposed a meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Li Shangfu. Beijing’s answer: no. No dialogue until Washington lifts sanctions against Li during Donald Trump’s presidency. The United States is paying the price for the “sanctionism” that drives them inconsiderately.

At the beginning of February, the US Air Force shot down a Chinese observation airship sailing peacefully in the skies of the United States. The fury of the elected members of Congress, in the face of a characterized act of espionage, led the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, to cancel an official visit to Beijing. She was supposed to break months of silence between the two countries. No new date has been set.

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