There are increasing signs that escalating tensions in the US-China relationship are spilling over to military-to-military ties. As US-China relations deteriorate rapidly on a number of critical fronts including trade, technology, human rights and geopolitics, a series of events has inflamed military-to-military ties and increased the risk of direct military conflict between the powers. This…
On April 1, 2001, a United States spy plane on a regular reconnaissance mission over the South China Sea collided with a Chinese fighter jet, killing its pilot and leaving 24 American crew members, along with their plane, stranded on the island of Hainan for nearly two weeks of tension. Although Beijing and Washington managed…
As the United States squeezes China economically through an escalating trade war, it is simultaneously ramping up military efforts to challenge Beijing’s recent strategic gains in the contested South China Sea. The tit-for-tat punitive exchanges on economic and strategic fronts has effectively commenced what some analysts now see as a new Cold War pitting America…
The US’ Hybrid War on OBOR doesn’t stop at the military phase but importantly continues into the informational domain in order to undermine China’s New Silk Roads through the planting of Trumpist “time bombs” in strategic transit states that can only be neutralized by a comprehensive perception management strategy that breaks from the centralized model…
On May 30th, Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced a momentous shift in American global strategic policy. From now on, he decreed, the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), which oversees all U.S. military forces in Asia, will be called the Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM). The name change, Mattis explained, reflects “the increasing connectivity between the Indian and…
At the recent Australia-China Business Council meeting in Canberra, China’s ambassador to Australia Cheng Jingye accused Australia of harbouring a cold war mentality, and said that “less bias and bigotry” was needed if the currently strained relationship between the two countries was to be repaired. Prime Minister Turnbull, addressing the same conference after Mr Cheng,…
