The west risks initiating a nuclear dispute with China or Russia because of a “breakdown of communication” with the two countries, the UK’s national security adviser has cautioned.
Sir Stephen Lovegrove, 55, announced that the decline of backdoor channels had improved the chance of an accidental escalation into war.
In an address in Washington at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he announced he thought the deterioration of communication with China and Russia had created a higher risk of “rapid escalation to the strategic conflict”.
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“The cold war’s two monolithic blocks of the USSR and Nato – though not without alarming bumps – were able to reach a shared understanding of doctrine that is today absent,” he announced. “Doctrine is opaque in Moscow and Beijing, let alone Pyongyang or Tehran.”
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Lovegrove, appointed to Whitehall’s most senior defense role in March 2021, continued: “During the cold war, we benefited from a series of negotiations and dialogues that improved our understanding of Soviet doctrine and capabilities and vice versa. This gave us both a higher level of confidence that we would not miscalculate our way into nuclear war.
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“Today, we do not have the same foundations with others who may threaten us in the future – particularly with China. Here the UK strongly supports President Biden’s proposed talks with China as an important step.”
Joe Biden, the US president, is supposed to have a phone call with China’s president, Xi Jinping, on Thursday – their first conversation since March – to defuse tensions over Taiwan.
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Taiwanese troops have practiced fighting off an attack as tensions with Beijing intensified over plans by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, to visit the self-governing island.
China insists Taiwan, which has its own democratically elected government, is its sovereign territory and is determined to reunify the island, by force if necessary.
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Last year, Beijing tested a hypersonic missile that circumnavigated the globe before hitting a target. China, Russia and the US are further developing hypersonic missiles that travel at more than five times the speed of sound and can maneuver in the air.
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Lovegrove praised the White House’s decision to re-engage with China yet further highlighted the risks of technological advances.
“We have clear concerns about China’s nuclear modernisation programme that will increase both the number and types of nuclear weapon systems in its arsenal,” he announced.