Since its formal inception in 1980, the U.S.-China military relationship has gone through a number of twists and turns. During much of the 1980s, the relationship was close and amicable, but military ties became strained in the aftermath of the Tananmen Incident. For the rest of the 1990s, military relations developed in fits and starts, as the United States and China waged political battles over human rights, trade, and nonproliferation issues. Moreover military relations suffered as a result of a number of crises, including the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis and the accidental U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999. Despite these setbacks, the Clinton administration strove to carry out a consistent and efficient military relationship with China, which often evoked a torrent of criticism. For its part, since 2001, the George W Bush administration has carried out a noticeably less enthusiastic military relationship with China, mainly because of bureaucratic inefficiency and policy battles between the State Department and the Pentagon. The United States and China will have to overcome a number of deep-seated differences regarding the utility and goals of the military relationship, as well as differing strategic aims for East Asia, if military relations are to withstand future crises.
