Former Australian PM Kevin Rudd says risk of U.S.-China war ‘much greater than it’s ever been’ | The Globe and Mail

By James Griffiths

When U.S. President Joe Biden took office in January, 2021, China’s leaders saw the potential for a reset after years of an increasingly fraught relationship under Donald Trump.

That hasn’t panned out. Mr. Biden has maintained on his predecessor’s more aggressive policy toward Beijing and China’s sticking by Russia over the war in Ukraine has only driven another wedge between the world’s two superpowers.

Multiple factors have combined “to strip away the political and diplomatic insulation from the relationship, so that we’ve now got a bunch of exposed wires and cables,” said Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister of Australia and longtime China expert who has met every leader since Deng Xiaoping. “The possibility that incidents produce crises which lead to escalation and conflict and ultimately war is much greater than it’s ever been.”

In a new book, The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict Between the US and Xi Jinping’s China, Mr. Rudd maps out a potential future for relations between Washington and Beijing. He recently spoke with The Globe from Australia, where he is stumping for his Labor party in federal elections.

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