The end of the line Peter Sellers stars in 'Doctor Strangelove'. It's not quite the nuclear hotline out of Dr Strangelove, and nor is this the Cold War, but Beijing and Washington are inching towards the sort of military communication that both sides hope might prevent accidents from getting out of hand. The reigning super power and its aspiring challenger tested the defence hotline for the eighth time last month, according to sources briefed by a senior Chinese military officer. Now then, Dimitri, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the bomb... US President to his Soviet counterpart in Dr Strangelove. The idea is that a well-placed phone call might prevent any one of the flashpoints that are proliferating on China's periphery from escalating into full-blown conflict with the United States. The US has noticed a warming of relations with China's People's Liberation Army. Photo: Getty Images/Feng Li Australian military officials say they have no greater interest than encouraging military communication between its ally, the US, and economic benefactor, China. And a high-level circuit-breaker between Beijing and Washington has never been more necessary. Earlier this year a maritime dispute escalated to the point where Japanese leaders accused the People's Liberation Army Navy of locking missile guidance radars on Japanese targets. A Chinese surveillance ship sails in front of a Japan Coast Guard vessel near disputed islands in the East China Sea. Photo: AP/Kyodo News Sino-Japan tensions have since eased - to the point that the street alongside the residence of the Japanese ambassador to China is now open to pedestrians for the first time in more than a year - but they have escalated elsewhere. If we were having this conversation five years ago, the No. 1 flashpoint would be Taiwan and No. 2 would be North Korea and there wouldn't be anything else," said Scott Harold, associate political scientist at The RAND Corporation, who has studied US-China military relations. Today, Dr Harold said he could list about eight potentially serious flashpoints. Last week the PLA Navy managed to upset almost every maritime country in south-east Asia by practising amphibious landing drills near the Paracel Islands, claimed by Vietnam, and the Spratly Islands, parts of which are claimed by Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia and Brunei. At the James Shoal, just 80 kilometres from the Malaysian coast but 1800 kilometres from the Chinese mainland, Xinhua reported that sailors gathered on the helicopter deck of China's most advanced amphibious vessel and vowed to "struggle arduously to realise the dream of a powerful nation," echoing the political motto of China's top leader, Xi Jinping. Analysts in the region saw it as a show of force designed to assert sovereignty over the entire South China Sea as defined by China's infamous "nine-dash line." The PLA and the US Armed Forces have also tangled directly in the South China Sea due partly to different interpretations of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The US and the Soviet Union used to place nuclear-armed submarines directly off each other's shores, just outside the 12-mile territorial line, but China argues all military activities including by unarmed surveillance vessels and aircraft should be excluded from its claimed 200-mile "exclusive economic zone." Chinese and US military relations have been been minimal, at best, but since October last year, US analysts and officials have noted a marked warming of relations with their PLA counterparts, coinciding with the leadership transition to Mr Xi. "It suggests that there has been a directive from the top that the military relationship needs to make more progress and the PLA is expected to reach out and be more amicable," said Bonnie Glaser, a China security exert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. This is now a pattern, across the board. In Washington on Tuesday, former prime minister Kevin Rudd described the South China Sea as a tinderbox on water. "The political, security and strategic environment in the Asian hemisphere is now more fractious than at any time since the fall of Saigon," he told a think tank. Last month General Fang Fenghui, the relatively amicable Chief of the General Staff of the People's Liberation Army, used the hotline to tell his new counterpart, Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, that China was "willing to strengthen its communications with the US military to enhance mutual trust, handle differences properly, and deepen co-operation," according to Xinhua. General Dempsey told him that building solid US-China military ties was one of his most important tasks and he was looking forward to his visit next month, according to Xinhua. A spokeswoman for the US Defence Department, Catherine Wilkinson, said the department "has regular communications with the PLA over the Defence Telephone Line." But the telephone line between the PLA and the US Armed Forces is far from the circuit-breaker that was established between Washington and Moscow after the Cuban Missile Crisis and tested in several crisis situations. Whereas the US could establish contact with the Soviets almost instantly, with a very clear expectation that a top officer would pick up the phone, the 2008 agreement with China merely arranges a call to be put through to the "Zhongnanhai Telecommunications Directorate," which then has discretion as to whether to forward the call to the foreign affairs section of the Department of Defence or the PLA's actual command headquarters at the August 1 building in West Beijing. And the Chinese have cut off the hotline twice, for extensive periods, in protest against US actions, during precisely the times of tension that it might be needed most. Ms Glaser said this cumbersome version of the Soviet-era Red Telephone was a function of China's committee-style governance, where individuals were unable to take individual responsibility for major decisions. "No one person, wherever that person sits, even if that person is Xi Jinping, can make a decision by themselves," she said. "The only thing an individual can do is listen and say, 'I'll get back to you', [and] that would be humiliating," she said. "The hotline has some utility in peace time but probably in a crisis all bets are off," she said.