U.S.-China Crisis Management and Crisis Prevention, with Michael Swaine

8 snips

Nov 21, 2024

Michael Swaine, Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute specializing in Chinese defense and U.S.-China relations, discusses urgent strategies for managing crises between the two nations. He defines crisis prevention and highlights tensions in the South China Sea, drawing lessons from past interactions. Swaine emphasizes the importance of empathy and understanding to avoid miscalculations, and the role of effective communication in navigating sovereignty issues, particularly regarding Taiwan. His insights underscore the need for clear dialogue to prevent escalations.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Crisis Management Defined

Crisis management aims to navigate high-stakes situations with potential military force.
It requires balancing commitment to vital interests with avoiding escalation.

INSIGHT

Crisis Prevention Explained

Crisis prevention involves avoiding crises through ground rules and confidence-building measures.
It addresses policy-based issues to minimize chances of escalation.

ANECDOTE

Korean War Miscalculations

During the Korean War, miscalculations about China's resolve led to their intervention.
The US failed to heed warnings, highlighting the importance of understanding Chinese signals.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

This week on Sinica, I chat with Michael Swaine, Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for the last couple of years, prior to which he spent nearly two decades as a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he led extensive work on Chinese defense and foreign policy, U.S.-China relations, and East Asian international relations more broadly. He was also a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, where he developed a reputation for rigorous research on Asian security and crisis management. We focus on his recent report, “Avoiding the Abyss: An Urgent Need for Sino-U.S. Crisis Management,” which offers both a framework for understanding the forces driving U.S.-China crises and a roadmap to prevent or manage these crises effectively. He drew on his many decades of experience working on the security dimension of the bilateral relationship, including his participation in many Track II dialogues and simulations of crisis scenarios over the years.

4:51 – Defining "crisis" and "crisis prevention"

10:13 – The possibility of a crisis in the South China Sea

12:31 – Lessons from past crises

20:08 – The problematic moralistic stances and tit-for-tat escalation produced by yǒulǐ, yǒulì, yǒu jié 有理, 有利, 有节

27:37 – U.S. concern over the credibility of its alliance commitments

34:50 – The problem of perception

38:16 – Examples of how each side is sometimes unable to see how its own actions are perceived by the other

41:20 – The dangers of failing to understand and making assumptions about the China’s historical memory

45:42 – Problems of signaling and how best to solve them

51:17 – Mike’s suggestions for a crisis toolkit and his proposal of a civilian-led two-tier dialogue structure

58:41 – Track II dialogues

1:02:47 – The importance of educating leaders up and down the system on crisis management

1:06:08 – The structural issues of the decision-making systems in China and the U.S.

Recommendations:

Michael: Art critic Brian Sewell’s The Reviews That Caused the Rumpus; Robert Suettinger’s The Conscience of the Party: Hu Yaobang, China’s Communist Reformer

Kaiser: The Great Transformation: China’s Road from Revolution to Reform by Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.