 Welcome to ThinkTech on Spectrum OC16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things in Matterna Tech and Hawaii. I'm Jay Fidel. And I'm Cynthia Sinclair. In our show this time, we'll present the second part of our series on the 2019 meeting of the Board of Governors of Pacific Forum at the Sheraton Waikiki. Last time, we showed you the first part of the remarks of James Dabrides on U.S. Asia and global policy. This week, we'll show you more of what he said and the Q&A moderated by the Forum's President, Robert Juryer. The Forum conducts policy-relevant research and promotes dialogue in Asia Pacific through a network of bilateral and multilateral relationships on economic security and foreign policy issues. Its analysis and policy recommendations are aimed at creating positive change among the nations of Asia Pacific and beyond. The Forum has made substantial contributions to the community of understanding on U.S. policy and relations through its research and reports and articles and programs. With its remarkable professional staff, fellows, interns and supporters, the Forum is positioned to make increasingly valuable contributions going forward. This program was clearly a part of that contribution. For many years, Joseph S. Nye Jr. of the Kennedy School at Harvard University was a regular speaker at the Forum's annual Board of Governors meeting. In more recent years, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage played that role. This year, the meeting featured a talk by retired U.S. Navy Admiral James Dabrides exploring the critical events and issues facing the United States in the development of its policy and relations with Asia Pacific and the world today. The program was moderated by the Forum's president, retired Navy Rear Admiral Robert Juryer. Last week, we reviewed the careers of both men. Here's some of what we said. Now a word about Robert Juryer, the new president of Pacific Forum and the moderator for the Board of Governors meeting. Succeeding Ralph Kosa, who led the Forum and made great contributions to it over many years. Juryer is a retired Navy Rear Admiral with over 30 years of maritime experience in Indo-Asia Pacific partner relationships. He brings high level operational, strategic, crisis response and negotiation skills to Pacific Forum. He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1983. He earned a Master's in International Affairs from American University, a Master's in Marine Affairs from the University of Rhode Island and a Master's in Public Administration from the Kennedy School at Harvard. He was Director for Unmanned Warfare Systems on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations and was responsible for the development, prototyping and demonstration of unmanned warfare systems. He retired from the Navy in 2017. A word about James Stabredes. He's a retired U.S. Navy Admiral, currently an executive with the Carlisle Group and chair of the Board of Counselors at McLarty Associates. In August 2018, he stepped down as Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He serves as the Chief International Diplomacy and National Security Analyst for NBC News. He is also Chairman of the Board of the U.S. Naval Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1976. While in the Navy he served as Commander U.S. Southern Command and Commander U.S. European Command and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, the first Navy officer to have held these positions. He has stressed the need to connect international, interagency and public private actors to build security, lining all of them with effective strategic communications. Since leaving active duties, Stabredes has frequently appeared on major broadcasts and cable television networks to comment on national security and foreign policy matters. He has often commented on NBC, CNN, Fox News, BBC and Bloomberg, and is a frequent op-ed contributor in foreign policy and the Nikkei Asian Review. He has a monthly column in time.com. He has also made multiple appearances at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Munich Security Conference and lectures at Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, the University of Texas and other universities. He has given numerous commencement and graduation addresses around the country. Now this part is very interesting. Stabredes was considered as a potential vice presidential running mate by the Hillary Clinton campaign in the summer of 2016 and as a possible U.S. Secretary of State by President-elect Donald Trump in the fall of 2016. He did not take a job with either of them. Last week we presented the first part of the program. Here is the second part of the program with the Q&A that followed. I think, strangely, we're moving in roughly the right direction here, which is we're drifting away from fire and fury, but the challenges in this region are going to continue. And we ought to be mindful that North Korea is not just a nuclear power. It has the fifth largest standing army in the world, huge chemical and biological weapons. So this is a challenge that will continue. I think it is back to China and the United States and where our interests converge. I think they actually converge in avoiding a war on the Korean Peninsula. I'm going to worry about this. What crop is this? Poppies, opium, heroin, epidemic comes from Afghanistan and parts of Asia as well. And of course it's not just heroin, it's cocaine. This is taken when I was the commander of U.S. Southern Command. This is a very hopeful photograph. This is a drug bust at sea, cocaine. This is a high-tech U.S. Navy vessel capturing a drug runner. This is the bad news. The bad news is the high-tech U.S. Navy vessel is the one on top, the one on the bottom that looks like Batman submarine built in the jungle of Columbia by the drug cartels. When we caught this thing in truth and advertising, there's a Navy destroyer just out of the picture. When we caught this thing, we put our great brave Coast Guard detachment on board to do their law enforcement thing. The Coasties came back and told us 10 tons of cocaine in the hull. Street value, Miami, $150 million. We had to worry about this because it undermines fragile democracies. So in addition to those nations I mentioned, we had to worry about this. We also had to worry about Mother Nature who has a nasty habit about every 100 to 200 years with hitting our species with a pandemic. Top Ebola, upper right patient zero, died in a Dallas hospital. We controlled Ebola so far. Bottom is Zika. We still don't know exactly what's going on with Zika. I put these two here to remind us that for all of our advances in medicine, every 100 to 200 years, there is a pandemic. Here's the news flash of the night. Global warming is real. It's happening. The ice is melting. We could have a debate, I guess, on whether it's human and what the preventative means are to it. But as a simple mariner who has sailed these waters, I tell you the ice is melting and the oceans are warming. We had to be very concerned about that from a security perspective. What really kept you awake at night when you were the NATO commander? Was it Afghanistan, Libya, the Balkans, Syria, piracy, what? The answer is cyber. Cyber security ought to scare all of us. These are the flags of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Republic of Georgia, all of whom underwent a cyber attack from Russia in the last five years. And do you think we're vulnerable here? You bet. Our grid, our electric grid, highly vulnerable. So cyber allows big nations to attack small nations, big nations to threaten big nations. But most concerningly, cyber is the equalizer. It allows small nations to threaten big nations. So cyber, and only cyber, goes from the highest levels of our national security through our finances, our educational systems, our medical to the most intimate details of our lives. What's our problem here in the United States? Gridlock. We have political parties that can't work together. We have branches of government that cannot work together. We have lost the ability to reach across the political aisle and often across the dinner table to have civil conversation. We are diminished by that. And all of that ought to concern us as we think about security in this 21st century. What can we do to improve our security? I'm going to start with this. We can listen better. To create real security, the first thing we should do is not reach for that aircraft carrier strike group, much as I love them. We ought to listen better. We ought to listen to our allies, partners, and friends. We ought to listen to the Aussies and the New Zealanders who live in this neighborhood, our Singaporean friends, our South Korean friends. We spend too much time yelling at the North Koreans, not enough time listening to the South Koreans. We also ought to listen to our competition. We ought to try and understand why the Chinese think, because Admiral Zheng He sailed these waters 500 years ago, what's their argument? We ought to understand that and listen. What else can we do? We can do exactly what you're doing tonight and what the Pacific Forum does so brilliantly, which is to create a venue where people can come together and compare ideas. This is the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. I would argue a place like the Pacific Forum is a part of a network of places where these conversations, this listening function can happen. What else can we do? We can read some books. If you are not picking up book after book to read and building on that education, you are failing yourself, your organization, your nation in the world. Read more. Great non-fiction, including The Economist. People ask me sometimes, gee Admiral, how can I get away from all the fake news? Read The Economist. I spent four years as the NATO Commander. Every day I saw the President's Daily Intelligence Brief. Every week I read The Economist cover to cover. 90% overlap. I'd also read some novels because only in fiction can you dive into another society. If you want to understand upper left, North Korea, this dystopian universe, check out The Orphan Master's Son by Gary Johnson National Book Award, meticulously researched an extraordinary portrait, unbelievable page turner. So listen better, build intellectual capital, read, what else can we do? We can cherish our values. We can hold our values. What are our values? Democracy, liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of education, gender equality, racial equality. We execute them imperfectly, but we should hold them and we should also understand that our nation is not a nation in decline. Upper left, political impact, regardless of how you feel about the current president or the previous president, look at those two photographs. When an American president speaks, people listen. That's political capital. Upper right, our economy for all of its flaws remains a source of strength for us. Upper right, our military, strongest in the world, apolitical, bottom left. Look at that photo. We are a young nation. Immigration helps us. And what's that in the center? That's a fracking tower, folks. We are on our way to energy independence. When you put that hand of cards together, it's quite powerful. You'll see many Pacific flags here, including those of Australia and New Zealand. And I would argue, as I look at the long throw of this century, the 21st century, we have many wonderful traditional allies. I think the Chinese are going to play a very long game with Taiwan, which is to say they're not going to try and precipitate a kinetic engagement. I think they recognize a blockade would do that. They will take a 100-year, 200-year view. The spoiler to that rather pleasant sounding theory would be if the Chinese economy starts to really contract and G becomes under increasing internal pressure, Bob, often when there's no relief valve in a system, pots blow up. So think about putting up a pot of boiling water on your stove. Democracy is like a relief valve. It's like in your teapot. When you get really frustrated with what's going on inside, you change leaders. The safety valve pops. If you have no safety valve, that would be the scenario in which you could see Xi lashing out, creating an enemy abroad. I think that's lower probability. I think China is smart enough to continue to grow at a reduced but not unsustainable pace. Number one, we should recognize that, again, as I said earlier, it's not a war of ideas. It's a marketplace. We've got to compete in the marketplace. So that means offering a competitive vision that gives smaller nations opportunities to engage with us on favorable terms. That means working everything from our private public partnerships to OPIC to our foreign assistance programs. All of those things, I think, are part of the competitive side. Secondly, we had to work with China. We had to think about where can we cooperate with China in medical diplomacy, disaster relief. You saw the Chinese hospital ship, the Peace Ark operating alongside Mercy. We had to find ways not only to compete with China, but potentially to cooperate more with China. And then thirdly, we had to double down on this network of allies, partners and friends. That means working with Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, a very interesting and engaging partner, Philippines, traditional partner, et cetera. So I'd say compete directly with China, offer alternatives, find ways to cooperate with China where we can. I don't think those are in opposition. In other words, don't stumble into a cold war mentality. Find ways to confront where we must, cooperate where we can. And then again, allies, partners, friends, which Pacific Forum in this room represent very well. I'll give you five things that I think are important to do. One is we should increase our intelligence, reconnaissance, and in particular work more with the South Koreans in that regard. Number two, we should put extreme focus on cyber and what we can do and without getting into highly classified things, I'll simply stipulate we can do more in terms of cyber. Number three, we ought to hope for the best and plan for the worst. And planning for the worst means increasing missile defense, both on the Korean Peninsula itself and for the United States, particularly for Guam and Hawaii. Number four, we ought to spend a lot more time working this problem with the South Koreans. We have somehow gotten this into this channel of US versus North Korea. We need to get the South Koreans involved and that brings me to number five, which is China, like it or dislike it. At the end of the day, all roads to Pyongyang lead through Beijing. My view. And therefore, we ought to try and get to four party talks sooner rather than later and get this out of a personality 1v1 with kind of the two worst hair cuts on the international scene, President Trump and Kim Jong-un. We got to get this into the hands of professionals like Steve Big and get it into four party talks as quickly as we can. And by the way, we don't think about six party talks down the road. So I think if we had a strategy that sort of took those things into account, I think we can land this thing diplomatically. And we are vastly better off than we were a year and a half ago, Bob, when it was fire and fury and we're going to go to war. It's important that we look beyond our shores and see Hawaii not just as an isolated island state, but as a multifaceted center of Asia Pacific, a center of education, diplomacy and business, as well as a center for hospitality. Hawaii Canada should be a gathering place for Asia Pacific. This can yield a new global role for us and will serve the interests of the United States and also the interests of Hawaii. Pacific Forum can be instrumental in those efforts. Want to see the first part of this program? See video on demand on OC16.TV or check it out on thinktechhawaii.com or YouTube. Want to know more about Pacific Forum? Check out packforum.org and see how important it is for Hawaii to be aware of and part of U.S.-Asia and global relations. And now let's check out our ThinkTech schedule of events going forward. ThinkTech broadcasts its talk shows live on the Internet from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Then we broadcast our earlier shows all night long and on the weekends. And some people listen to them all night long and on the weekends. If you missed the show or if you want to replay or share any of our shows, they're all archived on demand on thinktechhawaii.com and YouTube. For our audio stream, go to thinktechhawaii.com slash audio. And we post all our shows as podcasts on iTunes. Visit thinktechhawaii.com for our weekly calendar and livestream and YouTube links. Or better yet, sign up on our email list and get our daily email advisories. ThinkTech has a high-tech green screen studio at Pioneer Plaza. 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For lots more ThinkTech videos and for underwriting and sponsorship opportunities on ThinkTech, visit thinktechhawaii.com, be a guest or a host, a producer or an intern, and help us reach and have an impact on Hawaii. Thanks so much for being part of our ThinkTech family and for supporting our open discussion of tech, energy, diversification and global awareness in Hawaii. And of course, the ongoing search for innovation wherever we can find it. You can watch this show throughout the week and tune in next Sunday evening for our next important weekly episode. I'm Jay Fiedel. And I'm Cynthia Sinclair. Aloha everyone.