War With China ‘Neither Imminent Nor Unavoidable,’ Defense Secretary Austin Says

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin attends the 21st Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore on June 1, 2024. (Nhac Nguyen/AFP/Getty images)

A war with China is neither imminent nor unavoidable, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on June 1 as he fielded questions at a defense forum in Singapore.

Mr. Austin’s comments came a day after he had a conversation with Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun. That was the first in-person meeting between the top defense officials since Beijing shut off contact between the U.S. and Chinese militaries in retaliation for the high-profile trip to Taiwan by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

The meeting in Singapore is also Mr. Dong’s first face-to-face discussion with his U.S. counterpart. Mr. Dong, a former naval commander, was appointed last December to replace Li Shangfu, whose abrupt dismissal after disappearing from the public eye for months came amid what some observers speculated as a political purge at the top of the Chinese military’s rocket force, which is the custodian of the country’s nuclear and conventional ballistic missiles.

While declining to disclose the specifics of their conversation, Mr. Austin said the most important thing was that the communication channel between the two militaries went back online.

“As long as we’re talking, we’re able to identify those issues that are troublesome and that we want to make sure that we have placed guardrails to ensure there are no misperceptions and no miscalculations ... that can spiral out of control,” he said during a Q&A session at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. “You can only do that kind of thing if you are talking.”

According to a summary published on May 31 by the Pentagon, Mr. Austin “expressed concern” about recent “provocative activity” by Chinese forces around the Taiwan Strait and reiterated that China shouldn’t use Taiwan’s recent presidential transition “as a pretext for coercive measures.”

Tensions across the Taiwan Strait heightened in late May as the Chinese military staged large-scale drills involving naval and rocket forces in the sea and air spaces surrounding the island, where a new leadership was being sworn in. The newly inaugurated Taiwanese president, Lai Ching-te, has pledged to maintain his predecessor Tsai Ing-wen’s moderate approach to China and preserve the status quo.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), claiming Taiwan as a renegade province, has long distrusted Mr. Lai and his Democratic Progressive Party and refused to rule out using force to seize the island. The CCP also laid sweeping territorial claims in the South China Sea, leading to direct confrontations with other nations in the region, such as Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

Despite the looming threats, Mr. Austin said the reopened dialogue between him and Mr. Dong would help de-escalate tensions in the region and avoid an all-out war.

“War or a fight with China is neither imminent, in my view, nor unavoidable,” he said on June 1 in Singapore.

“Leaders of great power nations need to continue to work together to ensure that we’re doing things to reduce the opportunities for miscalculation and misunderstandings,” he said. “Every conversation is not going to be a happy conversation, but it is important that we continue to talk to each other. And it is important that we continue to support our allies and partners on their interests as well.”

The U.S. defense secretary said that Washington will continue to defend the navigation rights of China’s maritime neighbors, especially the Philippines, a longtime mutual defense treaty partner.

“The fact of the matter is countries in this region really want to protect their fishing rights, their exclusive economic zones, and they really want to prosper. And we want that for them as well,” he told the audience.

“Our commitment to the Mutual Defense Treaty is ironclad. No questions, no exceptions. Ironclad,” Mr. Austin said at another point of the session, responding to a CNN reporter who asked how the Pentagon would react if a Filipino was killed in a clash with China. He wouldn’t say whether the United States would go to war in that scenario, instead dismissing it as hypothetical.

“Our goal is to make sure that we don’t allow things to spiral out of control unnecessarily,” he told the reporter. “Again, I will not speculate on any one thing or another. I will continue to emphasize that our commitment to the Mutual Defense Treaty is ironclad.”