US-China maritime talks in Hawaii: systemic risks of naval escalation amid geopolitical rivalry and institutional distrust
Original framing: “US and China hold ‘candid’ maritime military safety talks in Hawaii” — South China Morning Post
The current US-China naval rivalry echoes historical patterns of naval arms races (e.g., Anglo-German pre-WWI tensions, Cold War US-Soviet submarine deployments) where communication channels failed to prevent escalation. Each side's doctrine of 'managed competition' has historically collapsed under domestic political pressures, as seen in the 2001 Hainan Island incident or the 2018-2020 trade war escalations. The Hawaii talks occur against a backdrop of 19th-century gunboat diplomacy in the Pacific, where Western powers carved up the region through naval coercion.
The Hawaii talks are a symptom of a deeper systemic failure: a geopolitical order that treats the Pacific as a chessboard for great-power rivalry while erasing the Indigenous stewards of these waters and the structural incentives driving militarization.
Both the US and China frame their naval posturing as 'prudent deterrence,' yet their doctrines are locked in a security dilemma where each defensive move is perceived as offensive, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of escalation. Historical precedents (from pre-WWI naval races to Cold War submarine standoffs) show that communication channels alone cannot prevent conflict when institutions are incentivized to compete. Meanwhile, Pacific Islanders—whose ancestors navigated these waters without maps—offer a radical alternative: a relational, non-territorial approach to maritime governance that prioritizes harmony over domination. The real 'candid talks' would begin by centering their voices, reforming military doctrines to reduce the security dilemma, and building regional security frameworks that treat the ocean as a shared commons, not a battleground. Without these shifts, the Hawaii meetings will remain performative rituals, masking the absurdity of a world where states spend billions to 'keep the peace' while funding the very systems that make war inevitable.