State Dept's Susan Thornton previews the upcoming U.S.-China Diplomatic and Security Dialogue.

While the annual US Defense Department report interestingly reflects some strong domestic resistance against military exchanges between the two countries, it is mostly a rehash of previous reports, seemingly put together in a hurry by an over-tasked Pentagon.

Both countries must put the common security threat ahead of developing their own cyberweapons — further strengthening cooperation on cyberthreat information sharing, giving full play to the technological advantages of each country’s enterprises in such collaboration to reduce mutual suspicion and misunderstanding.

Philippine President’s Rodrigo Duterte’s trip to China and Russia in half month, try to reduce the Southeast Asian country’s historical dependence on the United States. All of a sudden, however, the imperative of counterterrorism has brought the Duterte administration and its old allies, particularly Washington, back together.

The fruitful Xi-Trump meeting at Mar-a-Lago and the Mattis speech at the Shangri-la Dialogue give us reason to believe that “freedom of navigation” may not be the totality of the US’ South China Sea policy or that of its Asia-Pacific strategy. China-US relations are still on the track of steady development.

How can China and America address the Korean Peninsula crisis? China needs to convince North Korea to disband its ongoing nuclear program. And both North Korea and the United States must reduce aggression in order to ultimately increase stability.

If the DPP continues to create obstacles for cross-straits relations out of its selfish partisan interests, there is ample reason for us to feel concerned about the state of mainland-Taiwan relations in the next three years.

The Asia Pacific policy statement had all the core ingredients of the Obama administration, even though labels such as “rebalance” and “pivot to Asia” were missing. While the sense of continuity was reassuring, if the region is looking for creative and new approaches to maintain regional peace and stability, it must have been disappointed.

Doing nothing is not an option. Taking limited steps in the Security Council like the June 2nd U.N. resolution, while welcome, still lack substantive action to drastically alter the security situation on the peninsula. The hair trigger for a misstep and disaster grows tighter every day that Kim Jung-un remains unbound and unrestrained.

U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis’ speech used the Shangri-La Asia Security Dialogue as a platform to criticize some Chinese actions, but also offer options for cooperation regarding Korea. He reassured allies, reaffirmed alliances, and expressed a generally cooperative stance to resolving international challenges.