A Pentagon official wrote last year that the U.S. should pursue a form of détente with Beijing, a process that he said could include reopening a diplomatic outpost in Houston that President Trump shuttered in his first term because of its role in facilitating the Chinese government’s espionage programs. He also opposed the imposition on any new sanctions or higher tariffs on China.
John Andrew Byers floated these ideas in an article for the academic journal of a British think tank last month. Earlier this month, he was sworn in as the Pentagon’s top official on issues involving South and Southeast Asia.
He co-authored the article with an executive from Stand Together, a philanthropy funded by libertarian donor Charles Koch. Byers worked as a director at the organization from 2017 through 2023, overseeing its grants to foreign-policy-related programs. During the period that he was there, one of Stand Together’s grantees argued that Trump’s first-term hawkishness on China had helped promote anti-Asian racism.
While decision-making related to the status of China’s diplomatic outposts in America is not within the remit of the deputy assistant secretary of defense for southeast Asia, which is Byers’s new role, it’s a noteworthy idea that suggests that he is out of step with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s hawkish views on China. After the Chinese spy-balloon incident, Hegseth harshly criticized the Biden administration’s “dangerous” willingness to downplay Chinese espionage.
Byers’s essay explores how the United States could achieve a “cold peace” with China, lowering tensions between the two powers. Washington and Beijing could do this, the article states, by generating “cooperation spirals” — or deals by which the U.S. and China would each take steps as part of efforts to lower the temperature in their geopolitical competition.
The Trump administration shut down the Houston facility in 2020, with senior U.S. officials citing its role in espionage activity that “went well over the line of what we’re willing to expect.” The Chinese government shuttered the U.S. consulate in Chengdu in retaliation.
Byers’s article explores the option of reopening both consulates, as the initial steps in a broader détente with Beijing.
“To take one example of how a cooperation spiral might begin, the United States could invite China to reopen its Houston consulate,” the article states. “As part of a secret negotiation preceding such an invitation, China would agree to allow the reopening of the U.S. consulate in Chengdu within six months. Both parties would obtain something of roughly equal value and, assuming these steps proceeded satisfactorily, the groundwork would be laid for additional measures and generally lower tensions.”
The article makes no mention of the Chinese consulate’s role in espionage activity, nor does it offer precautionary steps that the U.S. could take if it were to act on this idea.
Byers also raised the possibility of removing U.S. forces and weapons from the Philippines in exchange with commitments from Beijing to carry out fewer patrols around the Second Thomas Shoal — where Chinese Coast Guard vessels have harassed Philippines supply missions. “If China signals cooperation, the U.S. might dial down its provision of military capabilities to the Philippines and lean on Manila to talk more with Beijing,” the essay states.
That might not presage a shift in U.S. policy toward the Philippines. Raymond Powell, a 35-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force who has served as a defense attaché to Vietnam and Australia, told National Review that Byers’s comments on the Philippines are “a data point, but a relatively minor one as far as these things go,” because he’s not a senior official in the department.
Powell, who is in regular contact with officials from the region and hosts the SeaLight podcast, also pointed to the fact that Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos recently floated a similar proposal, by which he would remove U.S. Typhoon missiles from his country if China were to cease its ongoing harassment of Philippines resupply missions at the Second Thomas Shoal.
Byers wrote that the U.S. “should also try to avoid further harm to its economic relationship with China. This means not adding sanctions or raising tariffs.” He added that the U.S. should try to settle trade disputes with China, instead of “imposing unilateral measures likely to provoke unproductive retaliation from China.”