US-China conundrum: Can hotline diplomacy work if trust isn’t a goal?
Shortly after the U.S. Air Force shot down a Chinese balloon that had traversed the continental United States for several days last month, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin placed a call to his counterpart in Beijing.
At his disposal: a special hotline intended to help the two increasingly competitive global powers to prevent sudden tensions from deteriorating into full-blown crises.
The call went unanswered.
The Pentagon later lamented the lost opportunity for the two sides to talk out the balloon flare-up before it devolved, as it soon did, into a diplomatic imbroglio.
For its part, China’s Defense Ministry confirmed that its chief, Wei Fenghe, had declined to take the call because the U.S. by its action had “failed
