The new Pentagon strategy is a throw-back to Cold War thinking and contrary to the world view of America’s founding fathers. It may pose a new barrier to developing new major-power relations in a multi-polar world, unless all sides seek a cooperative approach.

Given the accepted narrative of the space environment as congested, contested and competitive, the U.S. has been told to deter, defend and defeat Chinese challenges in space. This rhetoric wrongfully assumes challenge and elides preemption with prevention.

A changing world requires China to take a clearer, more comprehensive approach to its national security. It strikes a balance between maintaining national security and promoting socioeconomic development, between internal and external security, between the security of territory and people, between traditional security and non-traditional security, and between security of a single country and that of all countries.

The latest U.S. National Military Strategy has provoked a strong but misguided reaction in Beijing. U.S. policy makers are not forecasting an inevitable a war with China and identify areas where the two countries’ national security interests overlap sufficiently for bilateral collaboration.

Despite its serious concern about information security, the US displayed more impressive diplomatic courtesy than in previous sessions, helping the two sides to build trust, reduce suspicion, and restore collaboration. That contributes to a constructive atmosphere for the upcoming summit meeting of the two countries’ leaders.

It is no surprise that China’s recent military white paper emphasizes “enhancing joint operational capabilities”. The first step of cooperation could be in military operations other than war.

China and Cuba are longtime economic, military and political allies and last week’s arrival of Chinese General Fan Changlong in Havana caused speculation about their relationship. More serious is Cuba’s public insistence during the negotiations that the United States return the naval base at Guantanamo Bay.

Talks on the bilateral investment, the South China Sea and military-to-military relations should help leaders and people in both countries confidence in each other and make China-US relations stand the test of challenging times.

Just as U.S. President Bill Clinton expressed to Chinese President Jiang Zemin in 1996, both countries need to rely on the common interests of combating climate change and strengthening mutual security. This can happen with improved and people-to-people interaction.

Despite tensions in the South China Sea, Chinese General Fan Changlong is in the United States, being hosted by the Pentagon. Mil-to-mil exchanges been taking place since the mid-1990’s, despite opposition from U.S. congressional war hawks and Chinese hardliners. To build political support for productive U.S.-China mil-to-mil exchanges, such programs will have to produce real results, and soon.