The United States and China are seeking better communications between their militaries. U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced the initiative in early November 2025 after meeting with China’s defense minister, Adm. Dong Un, during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations defense ministers gathering in Malaysia.
“Admiral Dong and I also agreed that we should set up military-to-military channels to deconflict and de-escalate any problems that arise,” Hegseth stated, adding that they will meet again to finalize details.
Direct military-to-military communication is an imperative confidence-building measure and was used during the Cold War by the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The nations established a hotline in 1963 in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis when they came to the brink of nuclear conflict.
The U.S. used the hotline in 1967 to communicate intentions behind fleet movements in the Mediterranean Sea that Moscow could have misinterpreted as hostile, according to the U.S.-based Arms Control Association. The hotline was used through the 1980s and an offshoot still connects Moscow and Washington.
China cut off direct military dialogue with the U.S. in 2022 and though the countries announced plans to resume communications in late 2023, direct talks have not restarted, largely due to Beijing’s reluctance, analysts say.
For decades, the U.S. has tried to place guardrails on its military relationship with China, Kurt M. Campbell, chairman and cofounder of the U.S.-based think tank The Asia Group, wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine in October 2025. “But despite repeated attempts on the part of U.S. officials to improve military-to-military communications, the Chinese side has resisted establishing and codifying even basic rules of the road.”
The U.S. and China have held military talks, including a September 2024 video call between Adm. Samuel J. Paparo, Commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, and the head of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Southern Theater Command; defense policy coordination talks in Beijing that same month; and Military Maritime Consultative Agreement discussions in Shanghai in April 2025 that “focused on decreasing the incidences of unsafe and unprofessional PLA Navy and PLA Air Force actions.”
The talks, however, “didn’t provide a reliable crisis communications link between the two militaries at either the most senior levels nor at the operational level on and above the high seas in the Indo-Pacific,” the U.S. publication Politico reported.
U.S. lawmakers recently emphasized the need for direct communication.
“You have to set up mechanisms to be able to talk about those disagreements and resolve them in the most reasonable way possible,” U.S. Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state said while leading a Congressional delegation to Beijing in October 2025. “It is dangerous for us not to be having regular communications about our capabilities and intentions so we understand each other and so that misunderstandings and miscalculations don’t lead to larger problems.”