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.
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.
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.”
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 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.”
