Once again the annual assessment is filled with unfounded suspicion and smears. Nevertheless, with relations at low ebb between China and the United States, relations between the two militaries will be the key to peace.

War often begins with security frictions. Taiwan and the South China Sea are powder kegs.

Top American and Chinese defense officials will lay out rival visions for the Indo-Pacific region as they meet in Singapore this week amid a bruising global trade war, tensions over China’s push for technology leadership and the specter of stalled U.S.-North Korea nuclear talks.

The Trump administration has begun applying military pressure on China, not only in traditional areas of friction such as the South China Sea and Taiwan, but using arms control. Recent American withdrawal from the US-Russia INF Treaty may be part of a strategy to draw China into a potential new nuclear agreement.

The U.S. effort to deny China access to advanced Russian weapons is understandable and, arguably, preferable to more direct attempts to decelerate China’s military modernization.

Tensions between the two countries flared on military as well as economic fronts.

China consults with the U.S. over again participating in the multinational military exercises this summer.

It’s important to be clear about what the U.S. and China’s new communication framework isn’t – it isn’t a crisis resolution mechanism, something that nominally already exists. Rather, the framework will set up a dialogue between the two countries’ joint military staffs to complement existing bilateral dialogues. What this dynamic suggests is that it is the United States, as the initiator of these measures, is the country most concerned about “miscalculation” or crisis escalation.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday said he expects military relations would become a major stabilizing factor in Sino-U.S. ties.

China-US military relations have reached another crossroads with Donald Trump as the new US president. Whether the two sides tend to have more competition and friction or more dialogue and cooperation will shape the two countries’ overall relationship in a major way.