“Our goal should be to never go to war with China.” John E. Hyten, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, emphasized the dire consequences of the United States if it goes to war with China and Russia in a conversation with scholars on Sept. 13, local time.
The Brookings Institution invited Hyten and Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the think tank, to discuss the state of U.S. defense, military modernization and other issues on Sept. 13, the former will step down from his post later this year, according to Chinese media, citing the website of the Brookings Institution, a leading U.S. think tank.
O’Hanlon asked Hyten: Are China and Russia equally worrisome to you in terms of assessing the so-called “military threat,” or are you mainly focused on China at this point?
And Hyten, referring to U.S. defense strategy, called Russia and China a “pacing threat” and that the United States is beginning to discuss China “under more certain conditions.
He replied that the current administration leadership, including Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Austin, has made it very clear that China is a “pacing threat” that the United States must be concerned about today, in the near term and in the long term. But that doesn’t mean they don’t see the potential threat from Russia, a country with a large nuclear force, as important.
O’Hanlon further asked how to assess the possibility of some form of war between the United States and China, referring to the “Thucydides trap” proposed by Harvard University professor Graham Allison.
Hyten said that we always have to worry about the “Thucydides trap,” but the United States had already gone through the same thing with the Soviet Union, where the two powers had the most serious confrontation of their time, and it was the first time that two powers had huge nuclear weapons at the same time. But there was no major war between the two sides throughout, “because we kept deterrence and didn’t cross the line.”
He added: “So when it comes to what happens between the great powers, our goal should be to never go to war with China and never go to war with Russia. Because that would be a terrible day for this planet and for us as nations. It would destroy the world and the economy and be a disaster for everybody. So we have to make sure it doesn’t go that far.”
He also acknowledged that we have to recognize that China is a very different competitor than Russia, with a huge economy, and that the allies and partners the U.S. wants to develop also need to work with China.
Beyond that, Hyten more than once stressed the importance of dialogue with China: “We do have a fundamental common goal, despite our differences, and that is to never go to war with each other, because nuclear war is a bad thing.”
