The armies of the two leading powers, the US and China, are once again communicating at the highest level, after sixteen icy months. General Charles Brown, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was finally able to hold a video conference this Thursday with his Chinese counterpart, General Liu Zhenli. The content of the conversation has not emerged, beyond the need to keep the lines of communication open to avoid misunderstandings.
Beijing closed in August of last year, following the visit to the Republic of China - better known as Taiwan - by Nancy Pelosi, then speaker of the US House of Representatives. Six months later , the head of the Chinese dossier at the Department of Defense, Michael Chase, made the first visit by someone of his rank to Taipei since 1979, further provoking the ire of the People's Republic of China.
However, Chase himself, along with the Chinese military attaché in Washington, met last month to prepare for the Asia-Pacific summit in San Francisco, which included a long-awaited meeting between Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping. It was then that the green light was given to resume military contact at the highest level.
The United States is above all interested in establishing a communication channel that avoids aerial incidents as well as any escalation in the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea, filled with disputed waters and islets and where the Pentagon has reinforced its access to Philippine military installations since the return of the Marcos family to power.
General Brown became the second African-American to occupy the top position in the US military a few months ago. Meanwhile, his Secretary of State for Defense, Lloyd Austin, has been asking for a meeting with Beijing since June. Perhaps knowing that something smelled bad at the Chinese Defense leadership. The head of the portfolio, General Li Shangfu, was finally dismissed in October, after two months missing, allegedly in one of the anti-corruption purges that bear the seal of Xi Jinping.
It should be said that, regardless of the differences between China and the US, the "limitless" alliance between Xi and Vladimir Putin, in the middle of the war in Ukraine, has made it even more difficult to smooth over differences between their respective defense ministries.
Although the Ukrainian counteroffensive this fall has ended in failure on the battlefield, while Ukraine's candidacy for NATO remains up in the air, the war has led to the extension of the Pentagon's area of influence. This week began with an agreement in Helsinki for the access of US troops to several Finnish military bases. And it will end with the signing of a similar agreement, for three other bases, by Denmark. Sweden, too, despite not having seen its NATO candidacy ratified by Turkey, did the same last month, abandoning, like Finland, decades of neutrality.
It is difficult to imagine better triumphs up his sleeve to reestablish military communication with another contender for the world podium. Although the script of the recently deceased Henry Kissinger, consisting of separating China from Russia, is hardly incompatible with Washington's current policy on Taiwan. Island that, by the way, goes to the polls this January with images of the destruction of Ukraine and Palestine on its retina.
Meanwhile, Li Shangfu's position remains vacant and General Austin has no one to write to him. In fact, the profile of Li's successor in Beijing will have a lot to do with what happens this January in Taiwan. The secession of this Chinese island under American tutelage - and even before that under Japanese occupation - is the reddest of red lines for the Chinese Communist Party.
