Well thank you, John, and thank you to all of you for coming out today for this lecture. I very much appreciate it. Well, China is implementing a well-designed cost-imposing strategy in the western Pacific that is inexorably undermining the position of the United States and its partners in the region. The U.S. needs a competitive response if it is to maintain peace and stability in an area the Obama administration has made a top priority for U.S. security planning. Policymakers facing an emerging and perhaps ambiguous threat must make two assessments regarding the potential adversary. First, what military capacity might the potential adversary eventually develop? And second, what are the potential adversaries' intentions? Is it at least plausible that he, the adversary, could execute courses of action that could put at risk the policymaker's goals and interests? Policymakers are wise to keep their attention focused first on the adversary's future capacity for military action for the simple reason that intentions can change rapidly and unexpectedly. Benign intentions today can become malign actions tomorrow, but those malign actions only become a problem if the adversary has the military capacity to carry them out. China's intentions of late remain ambiguous, but are increasingly disturbing. Top officials in the Chinese government have repeatedly asserted China's territorial claims over the Senkaku Islands and East China Seas, which are under Japan's administration. Along with the vast majority of the South China Sea denoted by China's so-called nine-dash line or ten-dash line now. Further, China appears to be employing salami slicing, small actions each of which are calibrated to be too minor to be a Kazis belai, but which can gradually accumulate over time into substantial geostrategic change. A few recent examples of China's salami slicing in East Asia include China's June 2012 seizure of Scarborough Shoal near the Philippine Island of Luzon. The seizure resulted when China immediately defaulted on a deal former Assistant Secretary of State Kirk Campbell believed he had negotiated between China and the Philippines for both sides to simultaneously withdraw their vessels during a dispute over the Shoal in the spring of 2012. In the spring of 2014, Chinese and Vietnamese Coast Guard and naval vessels engaged in a standoff involving water cannons and boat collisions after a Chinese oil company temporarily installed a large offshore oil exploration rig inside Vietnam's exclusive economic zone. Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea, Chinese paramilitary forces continue a siege of a small garrison of Filipino Marines attempting to maintain possession of the reef. A Chinese Major General termed the tactic the cabbage strategy which he described as the deployment of layers of Chinese civilian enforcement and paramilitary vessels around disputed islands in the South China Sea in an effort to isolate blockade and force the withdrawal of non-Chinese residents and garrisons. China's legally dubious air defense identification zone over the East China Sea declared suddenly in November 2013 overlaps with Japan's ADIS and the Senkaku Islands and thus increases the risk of accidents and miscalculation. So policy makers in Washington and in the region seem flummoxed on how to respond to China's salami slicing, complaints are registered but thus far don't seem to be altering Chinese behavior. China's actions are troubling and raise questions about its future intentions. But what should matter most to US military planners is China's perspective military capacity and here China is implementing a well-designed and cost-imposing military modernization program that by next decade will deliver highly effective capabilities to the next generation of Chinese leaders. China's military modernization program began two decades ago after Chinese officials witnessed the technical proficiency displayed by US and Allied forces in the 1991 Desert Storm Campaign. In addition, the March 1996 Taiwan Straits Crisis exposed how little capacity China possessed at that time to counter the two aircraft carrier strike groups the United States sent to the region during that crisis. Since then China's modernization program has made careful use of China's continental position, the revolution in precision missile and sensor technology and the fact that China's land-based missile forces are not constrained as is the United States by the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. China has thus been able to develop an effective cost-imposing strategy on the United States. This has forced US military planners into expensive and questionably effective concepts and programs in response to relatively modest investments by the People's Liberation Army. One of China's most significant and enduring competitive advantages is its continental position. China can project its air power over the western Pacific from dozens of hardened bases on and near its coast. These bases are protected by what the US Defense Department terms one of the largest forces of advanced surface-to-air missile systems in the world. China has made a substantial investment in variants of the Su-27 Flanker Strike Fighter roughly equivalent to the US Air Force's F-15E Strike Eagle. China's Flanker variants possess a combat radius of 1,500 kilometers exceeding the approximately 1,100-kilometer unfueled combat radius of the US Navy's F-35C and FAA-18EF Strike Fighters. China has produced the J-11B, an indigenous version of the Flanker, and the PLA's inventory of Flanker variants could number over 400 aircraft by next decade. China's Flankers and other strike aircraft, in 2014 the US Department estimated that China's inventory of strike fighters, strike aircraft of various kinds will number over 2,100 aircraft and they will be armed with a variety of land attack and anti-ship cruise missiles, some with supersonic speed, and ranges up to 400 kilometers. By the end of this decade, China is expected to begin forming squadrons of the J-20 Strike Fighter, a stealthy aircraft with a possible combat radius of up to 2,000 kilometers. According to the US Department of Defense, China possesses up to 1,800 theater range, hand-based ballistic and cruise missiles, most of which are mounted on road mobile, transporter erector launchers and are thus capable of hiding and relocating in China's complex terrain. The revolution in missile and sensor technology has greatly increased the accuracy of ballistic and cruise missiles and lowered the relative cost of these munitions. Finally, China is assembling a multi-dimensional sensor, command, and communications network that by next decade should allow it to effectively employ the platforms and munitions in its inventory. It is unsurprising that China is exploiting its continental position and the missile and sensor revolution to craft a cost-imposing strategy on the United States in the Western Pacific. In contrast to China's continental position and its wide-ranging missile forces, the United States faces the burden of operating largely as an expeditionary power, which increases its costs and thus makes it harder to compete with the expansion of China's forces. Further, the INF Treaty, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, prohibits the United States from matching China's comparatively economical land-based theater missile strategy. The US Air Force operates from just six main bases in the theater. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission concluded that five of these bases, located in Japan and South Korea, are highly vulnerable to suppression by China's missiles. US Navy and Marine Corps, Naval and Air Bases in Japan are similarly vulnerable to attack. Although at a farther distance from Chinese land-based forces, the growing complex of US bases on Guam will become increasingly vulnerable to suppression as China's land attack missiles spread to more platforms, such as China's growing fleet of nuclear attack submarines, and increase in range in numbers. There is increasing concern that US surface warships, including aircraft carrier strike groups, will become vulnerable to multi-axis saturation cruise missile attacks and operation we should assume Chinese strike fighter regiments and perhaps its submarines should be able to execute before the end of this decade. Indeed, the first eight issues of the Naval Institute proceedings in this year, 2014, displayed at least five articles that discussed the growing missile threat to US surface warships. In addition, the recent debate over whether the Navy should require the future unmanned carrier launch surveillance and strike aircraft, called U-Class, to be able to autonomously search for and attack targets at very long range in defended airspace, is an acknowledgement that the Navy's carrier strike groups will soon not be able to safely conduct persistent operations inside adversary missile threat zones. The Navy is moving forward on plans to bolster the air and missile defenses of its surface ships, but the economics of the missile and sense of revolution will likely allow China to persist with its cost-imposing strategy. It will be cheaper for China to add more flankers, J-20s, and cheap but smart missiles than it will be for the Navy to add additional ships, radars, and defensive missiles. In the longer run, many are hoping that ship-mounted, directed energy weapons will be able to swing the advantage back to missile defense. But according to the Congressional Research Service, reliably defending against high-end supersonic cruise missiles will require megawatt-class free electron lasers, which at the earliest won't be available until the second half of the next decade. So salami slicing appears to be working for China, and therefore we should expect it to continue. Resisting China's salami slicing could require a willingness to risk a confrontation involving fishing boats, oil rigs, Coast Guard vessels, and perhaps military forces. Whether a confrontation results in armed conflict will depend on many factors, most particularly the calculation each side makes regarding its prospects for tactical success. In the past, U.S. policymakers and commanders have been reasonably confident in their tactical superiority, especially in the Western Pacific. But that assumption is now becoming increasingly questionable as China steadily advances its capacity to suppress U.S. bases in the region and threaten U.S. and allied surface warships. Increasing ambiguity, or even worse, both sides assuming they possess escalation dominance is a recipe for disaster during a crisis. Strategists examining the increasingly hazardous security situation in East Asia have proposed direct and indirect responses to China's growing access denial capabilities. The Air Sea Battle concept represents the direct approach. The concept calls for greater cooperation and coordination among the services to enable U.S. forces to disrupt a high-end adversary's targeting and command networks, destroy an adversary's platforms before they can launch their missiles, and finally defeat enemy missiles before they impact their targets. U.S. Defense Department's Capstone Joint Operational Access Concept, or JOAC, discusses the risks and barriers U.S. military planners and commanders should address in order to make a direct approach such as Air Sea Battle against adversary access denial forces a feasible course of action. JOAC asserted that it may be technically infeasible or unaffordable to acquire the systems and capabilities required to implement the disrupt, destroy, and defeat lines of effort. In addition, JOAC stated that policymakers may be unwilling to implement some of the lines of effort because they may conclude that the escalation risks attached to them would be unacceptable in particular circumstances. The direct approach also suffers from the fact that it would likely be uncompetitive. In the case of China, it would have the U.S. directing its defense resources against the PLA's main strengths rather than China's vulnerabilities. As one example, the disrupt component attacks against China's targeting and command network would very likely be met by Chinese retaliation against U.S. space-based imagery and communication networks. As the expeditionary player, the U.S. would be the loser from such an exchange because it would be cheaper and easier for China, the continental power, and the home team to re-establish terrestrial-based substitutes in place of the lost space-based networks for coverage of a conflict in the east and south China seas. The indirect approach, featuring a distant blockade and applying economic leverage against China, targets what seems to be a particular Chinese vulnerability and does so in a way that appears to avoid dangerous escalation risks. As a substitute for the direct air-sea battle approach, its advocates note that employing U.S. and coalition naval power against China's economy will avoid uncompetitive investments in platforms and support systems designed to attack China's comparative advantages in diversified basing mobile missiles and redundant targeting and command systems. However, a blockade strategy suffers from some serious political shortcomings, which likely leave the strategy executed by itself untenable. A blockade against China would be an economic declaration of war by the United States against the global economy, which would include the vast majority of countries that would begin such a conflict as neutral non-belligerence. The United States would thus immediately make enemies of most of these non-belligerence, which would most likely make the strategy unsustainable for very long. In addition, a blockader must anticipate enforcing his blockade for a very long time in order to hold out the prospect of changing an adversary's behavior. It is questionable whether the American public's patience for a strategy that explicitly imposes global economic ruin would run longer than that of an authoritarian and nationalistic China. As U.S. strategists struggle to fashion a response to China's salami slicing and its competitive military modernization, the interim solution will be to display U.S. commitment to the region by deploying even more largely short-range aircraft and surface warships to already crowded and vulnerable bases in the western Pacific. Regrettably, this stop-gap measure will only further increase crisis instability. For China, the temptation of a disarming first strike during a crisis would rise as the opportunity to destroy even more forward-deployed U.S. platforms presents itself. For U.S. decision makers, the necessity of attacking China's targeting and command systems first will become even more imperative while the logic of use it or lose it will increasingly apply to U.S. forward-based forces. Thus, paradoxically, deploying even more vulnerable U.S. forces at forward positions will likely only increase danger in the region. If the United States is to maintain the credibility of its alliances in East Asia and freedom in the region's commons, the U.S. and its partners will very likely have to take greater risks resisting China's salami-slicing strategy. For that resistance to succeed, the U.S. and its partners will need forces and operational concepts that enhance crisis stability, convince China's leaders that they will not benefit from escalation, and threaten to impose costs on Chinese decision makers in response to actions that place burdens on U.S. and partner interests. As we have seen, there is increasing ambiguity about whether these conditions will exist by next decade. In order to enhance crisis stability, the United States needs to rebalance its portfolio of strike platforms away from vulnerable and short-range systems forward-based within easy range of China's missile forces. For the U.S. Air Force, that means less investment in tactical fighters and more on bombers and long-range air-to-surface missiles based outside the range of Chinese systems. For the Navy, it will mean reconsidering the centrality of the carrier strike group and revisiting whether a long-term goal of 48 attack submarines will be sufficient if surface forces will struggle to persist inside missile threat zones. The U.S. Army and Marine Corps should play leading roles, bolstering the capabilities of allies and partners, America's most important strategic asset in the region. A greatly expanded security force assistance mission for U.S. ground forces can make progress establishing trust among America's partners, expanding their capacities to collect and share intelligence, build, partner conventional access denial military capabilities, and prepare for all forms of irregular and unconventional warfare. The Army and Marine Corps should prepare to execute this critical line of effort. More generally, these steps should be part of a comprehensive approach that assembles political, diplomatic, economic, and conventional and unconventional military techniques into a broad toolbox available to U.S. policymakers. China has vulnerabilities. Its leaders have anxieties, and the United States and its partners can use such a toolbox to create persuasive and dissuasive leverage that can influence Chinese behavior in mutually beneficial ways. The capacity to impose a distant blockade along with the capability to threaten direct attacks on assets and conditions highly valued by Chinese leaders should be tools in the box. These and other military and non-military tools could be developed to complicate Chinese planning, impose costs during a peacetime competition, and hold at risk Chinese interests in ways that enhance deterrence and sustain regional stability. So China is employing salami slicing and the missile and sensor revolution to execute a cost-imposing strategy on the United States and its partners in the Asia Pacific region. The United States currently lacks an effective response, but better find one if it is to maintain stability in this vital region. A competitive strategy would greatly expand the security force assistance effort in the region, rebalance U.S. striking power towards long-range air power and submarines, prepare for the full range of irregular and unconventional warfare missions, and assemble a broad portfolio of military and non-military tools that could provide persuasive and dissuasive leverage against China's vulnerabilities. Many of these ideas are controversial and disruptive to established routines, which explains why they haven't generally been implemented thus far. But if the Asia Pacific region is to maintain the peaceful stability that has benefited all, including China, the United States and its partners will need to steer a new course and soon. Thank you, and now I look forward to answering your questions. Good. Yes? Thank you very much for your time, sir. I have a quick question. This concept of salami slicing of the eight holes in the islands around China and their approach to it, how long do you think it will be before China brings its newly acquired naval aviation assets to the equation and how they would use those to protect what they're dominating currently? Well I think that China wishes to pursue its salami slicing strategy at the lowest level possible. In other words, if they can accomplish their salami slicing goals using just their fishing fleet, their police patrol boats, their coast guard vessels and so forth, that's what they would prefer. And as long as the U.S. and allied response in the region remains befuddled and confused as it is right now, they will be able to continue doing it with those sort of low-level, non-provocative sorts of assets. Now in the longer run, I think that the Chinese strategy has two parts to it. First use the salami slicing technique to over a long period of time, a decade or two decades perhaps, gradually expand their perimeter of control there. And then they will develop simultaneously their high-end military forces, their land-based air power, anti-maritime forces, missile forces and so forth, to then prevent the U.S. and allied forces from being able to subsequently roll back that perimeter. So does that answer your question? I was just curious about how you saw their projection of air power through the use of naval aviation with their new aircraft carrier, how that would play in. Yes, China is developing, under way it's a first aircraft carrier, it's not a fully operational unit yet. I think that for the Chinese, this aircraft carrier and future aircraft carriers are more prestige items for them in the short run because I think they're going to be vulnerable assets to U.S. attack, especially from U.S. submarine forces. I think from the Chinese perspective, looking down the road, they would like to, in the future, probably maybe 15 years from now, be able to maintain a continuous carrier presence in the Indian Ocean region. But in terms of their access denial strategy for the east and south China seas, that's mainly going to be based on their land-based missile power, which is very difficult for the U.S. to attack and suppress. Yes? Just a little bit of a follow-up on that. The latest bit of salami slicing that I'm aware of is really the land reclamation at Fiery Cross Street. Such as this below sea level marker is now larger, twice as large as the largest natural island in the south China sea. So I would think that this would have implications for air power, ultimately, that this is why would they be doing this unless they wouldn't put a strip on this? Yes, these land reclamation projects back in 2002, the countries around the south China sea, thought they had an agreement that none of the countries around the south China sea would engage in land reclamation. But China is now doing that at the location you mentioned and a couple of other locations. And the purpose of that is to be able to station a permanent garrison there of some kind. And this is all part of salami slicing. If you can establish a permanent garrison, then it increases the legitimacy of your legal claims to it. And so it's all part of the gradual process of trying to expand their perimeter there. Yes? Since the pieces of salami are largely not U.S. territory, why does it not make more sense to concentrate on the ability of our so-called partners to resist with aid from us indirectly? Once we get into attacking Chinese, we're down to the big board. But you're not, until they take Guam, we're not in that situation and the tactics of really getting too close to be involved in China seem very risky. Well, I agree that the best course of action, I agree from the implication of your question that the best course of action that the U.S. can take right now is to support its allies and partners in the region. They are the ones that are on the front line of the salami slicing encounters with China. And these allies and partners in the region are the U.S. best U.S. asset. They're small countries. China is a big country. China comes off as a bully during these confrontations and that decreases the legitimacy of China's actions when that is portrayed to the world. So there are many things that the U.S. can be doing to assist the Philippines, Japan, even Vietnam increasingly in the future to improve their maritime presence, to match the Chinese presence, things that can be done with fishing fleets, with Coast Guard vessels, with police patrol vessels and so forth to match the Chinese presence and maybe nip this problem in a bud before it grows to be a much larger problem. So I agree with you. Yes, sir? Yes, sir. And as you go along on this, the one thing that you don't seem to emphasize and I would be here if you have some reservations about is our nuclear subsidy and its capability. It says a deterrent. In other words, you're using our friends and allies and so on as you're talking about very well. But the sub fleet is mobile, it's very protective, and is there a downside to that as well? In other words, I would think that would be pretty scary if things get out of hand that if you have a large submarine fleet that's capable of raising devastation really on the Chinese country. I would think that that would be a good deterrent that's not in everybody's face, it's just out there. Yes, I agree that the plans for the future of the U.S. attack submarine fleet are too small. The end state is for 48 attack submarines in the 2020s and 2030 timeframe. That's too few in my opinion, especially if the U.S. surface ships are not going to be able to operate freely in a crisis inside these missile range fans. So, yes, I propose in my book and I mention it in my speech and elsewhere that I think money should be shifted from surface warships towards submarines of all kinds, both the large hull and the Virginia class hull, and that really hold the Chinese Navy at risk that way. Yes, in the middle there. Sir, you mentioned as one of the symmetries between China and the United States is that China is not constrained by the IRBM Treaty of 1987. Correct. How, in your opinion, might the U.S. be constrained by that treaty vis-à-vis China? What difference does it make vis-à-vis China that we're constrained by the IRBM Treaty? Well, the United States under the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987 was signed by President Reagan and President Gorbachev, eliminated a whole class of land-based theater range nuclear missiles, both cruise missiles and ballistic missiles with ranges between 500 kilometers to 5,500 kilometers. With ballistic missiles and cruise missiles? No, the cruise missiles were, land-based cruise missiles were eliminated by the treaty. Sea-based and air-based missiles are still permitted. So China is not a party to the treaty, only now Russia and the United States the treaty is still enforced. So this precludes the United States from having any deployment or development of land-based ballistic or cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. Now, China is completely unconstrained in this regard and it's a major, major part of China's military modernization program, the build-out of its land attack and anti-ship cruise missiles of theater range anywhere from 100 kilometers range to 10,000 kilometers and everything in between. And the U.S. Department of Defense in their annual reports on Chinese military power say that the Chinese missile program is the most active missile program in the world. So the U.S. is prohibited from competing here at all in this space. What would we want to do? Well, the advantage for the United States would be that it would be a very inexpensive way for us to match Chinese missile power because it would be much cheaper to deploy 100 or 500 land-based missiles in the region on transporter-rector launchers than it is to build fleets of bombers or fleets of attack submarines. Well, you could put them in Japan, in Okinawa, you could put them in the Philippines or elsewhere. They would provide a deterrent to attack and a better deterrent to attack than the vulnerable fixed bases are right now in the region. Yes. There's significant disunity, or at least you read periodically, there's a lot of disunity amongst the factions or sectors of the Chinese government, for example the political end, the economic considerations and military. How does that get included in the strategic planning? It would seem like there could be a divide, in fact, divide and conquer concept in the context of a cold war or not a hot war situation. I agree with you completely. As I mentioned in my speech and I explore in my book, China has vulnerabilities, anxieties, things that it fears internally. There are factions inside the government that debate where China should be going and what its strategy should be, what its external policy should be. These factors that you mentioned should be a greater part of U.S. analysis and should play a bigger part in the formulation of our strategy. As I discussed, the U.S. needs a broad portfolio of tools, military and non-military to be able to put pressure on these Chinese vulnerabilities in order to be able to influence Chinese peacetime behavior and prevent conflict from happening in the first place. There are countries that we would not normally be associated with, particularly Russia and Vietnam, who have conflicts in the area with China. Are we the only ones making a major effort to counteract or are these countries, which are traditionally China's enemies, are they making any concerted effort or any unified effort? And a second follow-up to that, with the constraints, certainly Korea, the Philippines don't have the same constraint on tactical missiles that we do. Is there any effort being made to develop them there? Yes, the first part of your question is yes, these countries that are China's neighbors and are on the front line of China's assertions now are very concerned about Chinese behavior and they are responding to it. Non-Chinese military spending in the region is expected to go up 50% in the next five years. So we're talking about increases in the defense budgets in Japan, Australia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and so forth. This is a response to Chinese activity in the South China Sea, East China Sea. So yes, they are responding. On the other hand, they have a lot of, they have animosities, historical animosities with each other as we see in the case of Japan and Korea and other countries all around the region have their animosities. So they are not cooperating with each other as well as they should. Ideally, they would look to the United States to be the glue that would hold together some semblance of coordinated activity in a better fashion. So this is why I mentioned that our diplomacy and political side of our response in the region is a critical part and there's more we can be doing in that to make that a more effective line of effort. Yes. Is China part of the group that the treaty includes? Do you sign that? The Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty? No, it's just the United States and Russia. Why don't we change it? Well, we could ask China to voluntarily become a signatory but I don't hold out much prospect for that actually to occur because it's such a central part of their military modernization program and a competitive advantage for them. If we don't have an agreement with them, why don't we have to abide by our agreement? Well, the treaty is from 1987 between Russia and China and the United States and well, this could be an issue that comes up in the future but... It's got to be as soon as later. A couple of questions for you. The Japanese government is currently embarking on fairly major enhancing of its military particularly the Navy and Air Force. Do you see that as being developed as a purely balanced force allowing the Japanese to operate independently if they have to with China and mine and Russia? Or are they doing that in conjunction with assuming the US will be providing part of whatever force they're trying to provide? Are they doing it independently to act alone? And then the second question we're of course focused on China but as the other gentlemen brought up the Russians obviously they've been on the move fairly significantly in the last couple of years. Do we see a lot of ASTOC and elsewhere in the Russia Pacific side any similar increase of military or is that mostly on the European side? Well, the answer to your first question is at this point it would be I think sort of unthinkable for Japan to contemplate independent military operations outside without the United States as a partner but will they hedge? Do they see the need for some type of hedging strategy in the future? I think that would depend upon their judgments about the future US external policy in the region. So not yet but we'll have to see how that develops. With respect to and let me one last thing on the Japanese point right now we see the interaction and interoperability between the United States and Japan increasing more exercises together involving higher level capabilities and so forth. So that's the current trend. With respect to Russia Russia does seem to be increasing some of its military activities in the region at least in the aviation area. They've done these long-time maritime long-range maritime patrol operations flying their maritime reconnaissance strike aircraft around Guam and so forth. But in terms of the magnitude it's not up to what the situation posed by China is right now. China is the much larger concern at the moment. Yes sir? You have not yet described Chinese merchant shipping. I think the merchant shipping is the centerpiece of any country's maritime power. Maybe you can compare their shipping now. Well China in terms of its industrial capacity its ability to build ships of all kinds including maritime commercial ships at competitive prices is a hallmark of their economy and we see an increasing presence of Chinese maritime power military and non-military across the board and increasing presence in ports all over the world. And this is a reflection of the changed trajectory of the Chinese economy that's occurred over the past three decades. Deng Xiaoping, the Paramount leader came into office in 1979 and adopted a new economic policy for China which opened up the Chinese economy to the world, to world trade. Previous to that under Mao Chinese economy had been mostly closed to the world. Now the consequence of that over the past 30 years has first been tremendous growth in Chinese economic capacity but second is the tremendous growth in China's imports of raw materials from all over the world and Chinese exports of finished goods all over the world. Along with that comes the need for Chinese merchant shipping and now the expansion of Chinese military naval power to protect Chinese interests around the world. So it all ties together in the bigger story that we've seen over the past 30 years. Mr. Paul, the Chinese just decided we won't carry American cargo inbound or outbound. We don't have very much shipping of our own. Well, one thing that U.S. policy makers and U.S. public have to grapple with as a general matter is this duality of China being a strategic competitor on the one hand and China simultaneously being a very significant trade partner, financial partner. The U.S. hasn't encountered such a strange relationship for 200 years. It was in the War of 1812 when we last had a conflict with a country that was simultaneously a strategic competitor, Great Britain at that time and also our most important commercial and financial partner. It created political divisions inside the United States over what war policy should be during the War of 1812. And now we see the U.S. policy makers and the public are going to have to grapple with the same duality with this current circumstance. Yes, in the back. Well, that's back from activities of the Chinese in the region. It would seem that that's forcing the U.S. and allies in the area to do a carefully selected battle during our fight. So the question that I have is, does this really go poorly for Taiwan in terms of the support that the Taiwanese government currently gets? Are they likely to be a bargaining chip in a battle that we choose not to fight in a way that we have? Well, the Taiwan issue has to be perhaps the most delicate, sensitive, raw issue in U.S.-China relations in terms of the strategic situation in East Asia and the western Pacific. And it's the one issue that guarantees bad flare-ups in the U.S.-China relationship. And presidents ever since Truman and Eisenhower all the way up to the president have had to deal with the sensitivity of the Taiwan issue. Now, Taiwan has to fashion for itself what it's a good defense strategy. That seems to be an issue that's in flux for the Taiwanese leadership right now, what their defense strategy should be. They're making pretty substantial changes in the structure of their armed forces and trying to figure out a good approach, a workable, sustainable approach to defend Taiwan. The U.S., under U.S. domestic law, has this obligation under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act to support Taiwanese defense. But every time U.S. presidents approach that issue, it inevitably results in a flare-up with Beijing. So it's going to be an ongoing issue. And I can say from a military perspective, the one thing that U.S. military strategists would not want to see are PLA bases on the east side of Taiwan because that would break up the first island chain, make it much easier for the PLA Navy and Air Force to access the western Pacific. Whether that will always be the case may be something that is not in American hands. Yes? Could we be brought into war because one of our allies on that treaty created a war? Well, this is another delicate matter among many delicate matters regarding diplomacy, politics and strategy in East Asia. Regarding these disputed claims in the East China Sea, South China Sea, the official position of the U.S. government is basically neutrality. We don't take sides over these disputed claims, over these rock shoals, islands and so forth. We just don't want, but we also say we don't want any of these disputes resolved through coercion or force. So the point of that policy is to allow the United States to not get dragged in to a small country's war. But as China's salami slicing continues and the pressure continues, I think there's going to be forces placed on the next generation of U.S. policymakers to evaluate whether this declaration of neutrality over these disputes will continue to be a tenable policy. You have addressed some of the political constraints that we have. What if any internal constraints to this expansionist policy does China have? Good question. China, in terms of its diplomatic position in the region, is almost the mirror image of the United States. The United States has lots of friends and allies. It's our biggest asset there. These countries want the U.S. to provide the glue for a better security system in the region. China, by contrast, has almost no friends in the region. And its behavior of late, since around 2008, and thereafter, as it becomes ever more belligerent and assertive, it's creating a backlash and a response by the other countries in the region. And that's to our benefit. So Chinese external policy hasn't been as subtle as it could have been over the past five, six years. And that's been to our benefit, I think, in terms of stimulating a response among our allies. What's your thoughts on the future prognosis of laser technology, both offensively and defensively? Well, for the Navy, laser or directed energy weapons, as they're known, the Navy is placing high hopes in directed energy to provide a better defense against a missile attack than what they have right now. And so this is an area that's getting a lot of investment, a lot of research talent is going into it, and a lot of experimentation. I think the problem for the Navy is that the arrival of such technology, firstly, is ambiguous or it's a little bit in doubt right now. And second, its arrival may come after we have to get through some window of vulnerability. So as I mentioned, the high-end threat against surface warships are the supersonic, long-range, highly precise anti-ship cruise missiles. That can be launched from aircraft submarines, other surface ships, shore batteries, and so forth. And they can be masked into these saturation attacks, 100 missiles, 200 missiles coming at a carrier strike group. Now, scientists have held out the hope that a free electron laser powered it with a megawatt or more of energy could provide a more reliable response to such a cruise missile saturation attack. But according to the Congressional Research Service, the earliest we could expect something like that arriving in the fleet would be after 2025. So we have a decade to get through of a dangerous period here. Yes, in the back. With it, the Japanese now are developing a stronger and more independent military treatment service for native regarding re-awaking old Chinese memories. Well, I think they're already awake. Okay. As they are in Korea also. So on the other hand, some other countries who have had bad experiences with Japan, such as in historical memory, I'm talking about the Philippines and Vietnam, they are welcoming in Australia too. They are welcoming the slight re-emergence of the Japanese military. The Japanese government recently changed its policy on weapons exports. They had been banned here before, but now under new government policy, Japanese military suppliers like Mitsubishi and others now are allowed to export their systems, military systems. And so this means that Japan and Australia just recently entered into an agreement for Japan to supply replacement to the Australian submarine fleet, which is a huge development. There's more military assistance occurring between Japan and the Philippines and Japan and Vietnam. So it depends on the country. All of them have bad memories of the Japanese colonial era, but some of them, which maybe feel like they're the most under threat from China, especially around the South China Sea, are maybe taking a little more realistic look at this. Any other questions? Yes. The word bumbling to describe our policies in that region? China's policy, actually. China's foreign policy. A little bumbling. They're a bull in the China shop and it's lately and it's caused a little bit of a backlash. So that's what I meant to say. Yes. It's a burial engagement and actually shots fired as a result of China's extension of its aid is over the Senkaku Islands. So there's actually shots fired between China and Japan over the Senkaku Islands. Does that trigger our treaty obligation to Japan in accordance with our mutual defense treaty? Well, I will take President Obama at his word. A few months ago, he was on a state visit to Japan and stood there with the Japanese Prime Minister and said our mutual defense treaty covers the Senkaku Islands since they're under Japanese administration and that's been longstanding U.S. policy, a continuation of policy under all previous administrations. So how U.S. Pacific Command will actually handle such a situation. I don't have to wait and see, but at least it's the expressed policy from the highest level of our government. The mutual defense treaty territorially applies only to the territory of Japan. So attacks on the United States don't trigger it. Attacks on Japanese ships and international waters wouldn't trigger it. And the Senkaku Islands are just beautiful territory. Yes, but as I mentioned, President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, they've all said explicitly that the Senkakus, they're under Japanese administration and so therefore they fall under the mutual defense treaty. Yes. Do you feel that the lack of U.S. political pressure on China and these salamis-licing matters, do you think that it's an appeasement tactic for their cooperation in putting pressure on North Korea? No, I don't think so. I think that the policy and it's been a bipartisan policy towards China has been what I call forbearance. In other words, hoping and expecting that China will become a responsible stakeholder in the international community and to avoid the so-called Thucydides trap or sort of a rush to conflict. Now, I think that there's an expiration date approaching on this forbearance policy because it's not working out the way policymakers from both parties in the United States had hoped. So I don't really think it's related to the North Korea situation. Well, thank you very much for your questions. Thank you.


Task Force Marne troops train alongside NATO allies during strong Griffin exercise in Lithuania. By Sergeant Caesar Salazar Jr., November 17, 2023. Habrade, Lithuania, Task Force Marne soldiers and their Lithuanian allies hone their combat skills during a force-on-force training exercise at Pabrade training area, November 16-17. Known as Strong Griffin 2023, the exercise saw U.S. soldiers with 3rd Battalion, 67th Armored Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, serve as an opposing fighting force for the Griffin Brigade of the Lithuanian Armed Forces. Which provided the NATO allies an opportunity to share each other's defensive and offensive tactics, strategies, and standard operating procedures. Strong Griffin is an opportunity for us to train together and, build towards interoperability procedurally, technically, and in the human domain, U.S. Army Lieutenant Col. David W. Griffith, commander of 3rd Battalion, 67th Armored Regiment, said. It allows us to train tactics, techniques, and procedures so we can operate better with each other. Task Force Marne soldiers conducted infantry and armored offensive operations against Lithuanian Armed Forces partners, in a series of training exercises across rural and urban environments to test their combat readiness. Lithuanians, in turn, prepared a defense to counter the American attacks. In the training scenario, the American forces worked their way through a forest environment in an effort to seize a town, while the Lithuanians defended the territory. Both armies were able to adapt and adjust to their situations, which allowed them to learn how each other operated as well as their respective strengths and weaknesses in real time. The end goal, of course from the tactical perspective. We check the abilities and the gaps we have within the training cycle, Lithuanian Army Colonel Orielius Alasoskas, commander of the Griffin Brigade, said. So if we see that everything goes so well, I don't think we're really organizing our exercise the proper way. We happen to see some gaps already, which might be training points for the next year. Lithuanian soldiers trained on their light and anti-tank infantry tactics against an armored force with the help of Task Force Marne tanks. We have tanks. We have larger vehicles than they do. In the exercise, U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Jaden Brown, a tank commander with Alpha Aries Company, 3rd Battalion, 67th Armored Regiment, said. Bringing in all that heavy machinery against a much lighter force allows them to develop how they would act against a much better equipped, much larger force. In turn, Task Force Marne tank crews adapted their tactics to the forested terrain, which meant tankers stayed vigilant by looking out for smaller. Light infantry in the tree lines versus much more visible larger vehicles, according to Brown. Having the opportunity to face each other, in a force-on-force exercise during strong griffin, ultimately made the two NATO allies stronger together. The exercise also allowed the two allies to familiarize themselves with the tactics and techniques they'd employed together, as well as similar terrain and environments they might encounter one day on the battlefield together. It's not about fighting, against, each other, it's about fighting together with a purpose. Alasoskas said. So with the U.S. providing offensive capabilities, and Lithuania providing defense capabilities, when you combine those two into one, you have a very mobile, aggressive defense. Which is not letting the forces penetrate you or to maneuver in front of you. So you're leading even in the defense position. This is the main purpose, to lead the battle the way you want to. It's been an incredibly rewarding experience working with the Lithuanians, Griffith said. They've been a great partner here in Pabrade. They've worked together to define each other's training objectives. We built an exercise that allowed us both to reach them. The 3rd Infantry Division's mission in Europe is to engage in multinational training and exercises across the continent, working alongside NATO allies and regional security partners, to provide combat-credible forces to V-Core, America's forward-deployed corps in Europe.