US, China crisis could spiral into ‘hot war’, Kevin Rudd warns

A dangerous political and strategic cocktail makes risk of armed conflict between the US and China ‘especially high’, former PM Kevin Rudd warns.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and US President Donald Trump look set on a collision course over the South China Sea. Pictures: AFP/AFP/Supplied

Kevin Rudd has warned a crisis between the United States and China ahead of the US presidential election in November could spiral into a “hot war” that could “torpedo the prospects of international peace and stability for the next 30 years”.

The former prime minister and China scholar said the risk of armed conflict between the US and China over the next three months is “especially high”, amid immense domestic political pressure on both Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.

In a journal article for Foreign Affairs, Mr Rudd said the “dangerous political and strategic cocktail” of US-China relations could be sparked by an incident over Taiwan, Hong Kong or the South China Sea.

“The once unthinkable outcome — actual armed conflict between the United States and China — now appears possible for the first time since the end of the Korean War,” he wrote.

“In other words, we are confronting the prospect of not just a new Cold War, but a hot one as well.

Next three months ‘critical’

“The risks will be especially high over the next few critical months between now and the November US presidential election, as both US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping confront, and exploit, the messy intersection of domestic politics, national security imperatives, and crisis management.”

The stark assessment came as Labor’s defence spokesman Richard Marles declared Australia should continue its defence co-operation with China, saying “one of the only places where there remains high-level contact between Australia and China is in the military realm”.

“We have an annual dialogue between our Chief of Defence Force and theirs which is continuing. It’s probably the highest level engagement between the two nations right now,” he told the National Press Club on Tuesday.

Just days after AUSMIN talks in Washington where Australia and the US blasted China’s “coercive and destabilising actions across the Indo-Pacific”, Mr Marles talked up the value of Exercise Pandaroo – a small bilateral defence exercise with China – while blasting the Morrison government’s handling of the China relationship.

He said the government had been unable to articulate its position on China, Australia’s biggest trading partner, despite Foreign Minister Marise Payne’s forceful push back against the US at AUSMIN to declare “we have no intention of injuring” the nation’s relationship with China.

‘Toxic’ turn

In his Foreign Affairs article, Mr Rudd said domestic politics had “turned toxic” in both the US and China, inflamed by a long-list of friction points – including cyber espionage, “the weaponisation of the dollar”, Hong Kong and the South China Sea.

“In this environment, both Beijing and Washington should reflect on the admonition ‘be careful what you wish for’.

“If they fail to do so, the next three months could all too easily torpedo the prospects of international peace and stability for the next 30 years. Wars between great powers, including inadvertent ones, rarely end well — for anyone.”

Xi leadership under pressure

Mr Rudd, who is working on a PhD on President Xi at Oxford University, said China under Xi has become more nationalistic and more assertive, while a slowing economy and the COVID crisis “have placed Xi’s leadership under its greatest internal pressure yet”.

Domestic politics in the US were also inflaming the bilateral relationship ahead of the November poll, with China now “central to the (presidential) race like never before”.

Mr Rudd warned any US escalation of the Taiwan issue by the US, such as a US naval visit to a Taiwanese port, would be “incendiary”, and “politically impossible for the Chinese leadership to ignore”.

South China Sea risk

The South China Sea also “presents a far greater risk of military mishap in the months immediately ahead”, he said, after the formal rejection by Washington and Canberra of China’s disputed maritime claims.

“The South China Sea has thus become a tense, volatile, and potentially explosive theatre at a time when accumulated grievances have driven the underlying bilateral political relationship to its lowest point in half a century,” Mr Rudd wrote.

“The question for both U.S. and Chinese leaders is, what happens now in the event of a significant collision? If an aircraft is downed, or a naval vessel sunk or disabled, what next steps have been agreed in order to avoid immediate military escalation?”

He said WWI showed how a relatively minor incident – the assassination of an Austrian archduke in Sarajevo in late June 1914 – “can escalate into a war between great powers in a matter of weeks”.