 Good morning everybody. Let me turn it over to Ernie Bauer who's going to kind of get things started and then I'm going to introduce the congressman. Thank you John. And welcome everyone. I'm Ernie Bauer. I'm the Symmetro Chair for Southeast Asian Studies here at CSIS. I'd like to thank you all for coming to this morning for the fourth annual CSIS conference on the South China Sea. Today we'll look at the, over the next few days I should say, we'll look at the situation in the South China Sea, developments there, we'll play out some scenarios and talk about policy options for the United States and other countries. I am pleased to announce that we're webcasting this event live and tweeting live from our at CSIS account and at Southeast Asia DC, hashtag CSIS live. So for those of you following us live online and streaming and on Twitter, please participate and we welcome your questions. I'd like to invite the President and CEO of CSIS John Hamry to do the honors and introduce our keynote speaker. John. Good morning everybody. I apologize for our electronics, we're still doing a shakedown cruise in our new building but I think we've got things working and delighted you're here. I do know the air conditioning will work all day. Thank you all for coming. I'm very proud that Ernie and Murray and his team have created the Southeast Asia program in Washington. It's really redefined the agenda and I think in the right way, this was a blank spot in American policy consciousness up until about four years ago and through Ernie's efforts I think we've been able to bring the focus in Washington so that this is understood. This is a very dynamic and important part of the world and we need to have attention to this very critical space. It's very much in America's interests what's happening in this region and we know so little about it and so this is an opportunity for us to learn. And so I want to say thank you to you Ernie and to your team for making it happen. Let me just, I'm going to be very brief because I want to give as much time as possible for Chairman Rogers. Chairman Rogers is a unique man. His entire life he's committed to public service. He started off as a commissioned officer in the United States Army when he left the Army he became a special agent for the FBI where he was in Chicago and championed important investigations to counter corruption and organized crime. That led him to feel that his voice would be strongest if he could be in policy formulation and he became a member of the Congress, the United States Congress in 2000 and during this period he rose and because of his energy his ability was seen to be the right man to be the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the HIPSY. Many ways the HIPSY was a broken organization when he became the chairman and he with his style has created it to be a strong functioning well functioning committee again. The Washington Post said that he is one of the rare examples of bipartisanship in Washington and I've seen that the way he's partnered with the ranking Democrat Dutch Rupersberger and the way he's worked with his counterparts in the Senate with Senator Feinstein. He has made the Intelligence Committee, Oversight Committee strong again and I think that's important for all of us. He's here today really because of his larger policy interests. He's always had a strong interest in international affairs and a strong interest in Asia. We asked if he would come and share some of his time with us, it's awkward to get a chairman who has the opportunity to come and focus on a topic that isn't immediately in his field of view but it's because of his personal commitment that he's offered to be with us today. So with your warm applause would you please welcome Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rodgers. Thank you very much. Well John thank you very much. It's a warm welcome for any member of Congress, I'll take that. My father is fond of saying he has five boys, four turned out really good and he's got one in Congress so any warm welcome I will take. Ernie, thank you for the work that you've done in this area, very accomplished, impressive resume and I think you're really making a difference and an impact on this issue that needs I think more attention so thank you for your work here. And to John and the CSIS crew, thanks for the work that you do, it is important to understand that this organization has a daily impact on the way policymakers think through very difficult issues so I want to thank all of you for the work and the time and the talent, the people that you've attracted to dedicate to try to solving these problems is incredibly helpful so for that I thank you very very much. You know with everything that's going on in the world, I mean I'm really only 25 years old, look at this job has done to me, oh come on people, it can't be like that. You think about all the challenges that face us on a daily basis, the world certainly seems troubled at the very least, a lot of things that take our time and attention and focus, it's easy to miss what's happening in Asia, it's easy to miss when you're deluged with those fairly serious issues about China and its actions in the South China Sea and the East Sea and if you think about where they're going, they're really attempting to change that status quo in the region, reef by reef, island by island, they're trying to change the dynamics and the relationships in the region for I would argue selfish purposes, you know in the last few months China has moved an oil rig the size of a football field right off, right near the Paracel Islands in the waters of Vietnam, artificial islands being built in the Spratly archipelago. If you think about their provocation and that's I think just the beginning, you have to put it in a broader context. So think about where China has been in the last 20 years. They have year over year invested in their military prowess, significantly double digit increases every single year, they've invested in their deep water navy in a way that is impressive by any standard in any measure, their anti-carrier group technology that they've developed that deployed I think for the purpose of preparing for their ability to do the same kinds of things that they're doing exactly today, their militarization of space, serious investment, their investment in cyber, both economic espionage and the ability to understand what their enemies are doing in cyberspace and with that newfound power they've decided to now is the time, the world is distracted, their economy has been on the rise for several decades, now is the time to expand their security and economic issues at least from their perspective in the South China Sea at the expense of their neighbors and for a moment, for at least this moment they're getting away with it, that has to change, our focus has to change, our relationships in the region have to improve not just with individuals who we have friendships today but new opportunities for friends throughout the region, I think if you think about their tactics today it's about that wearing down of international resolve, it's a small island, it's a small reef, it's only one oil rig, it's only one air defense zone that encroaches certainly on Japanese and Philippine airspace, in and of themselves it's something that we could sit down and negotiate and talk about and try to get our arms around and maybe help our allies push back but really if you think about it this is a death by a thousand cuts, every time that they succeed in building a reef that never existed or an island that never existed in territorial waters that no one, no one could find plausible, belong in Chinese territory, it is that death by a thousand cuts because then they move to the next place and the next place, meanwhile the world is engaged as I said before in a whole bunch of other troubled areas of the world and from a distance it doesn't look that menacing, one reef, one territorial dispute, certainly something that we've had for generations and generations both in Asia and the Middle East even here in America but when you start adding the totality of it and looking at those brewing clouds of conflict, this is as serious as it gets. Now there's been some certainly efforts I think that have moved in the right direction, certainly the Philippines innovative legal action, the Vietnamese I think are pursuing the same track, Japanese Prime Minister is his efforts to relax the constitutional restriction on the use of the Japanese military, they're all good but they're not enough in a face of what I think is a more serious challenge every single day and the longer we have ships that are near bumping into each other from different nations and I'm talking ships of war, longer we have military aircraft with harrowing close incursions, the more likely there is to be a miscalculation, the more likely there is to be tensions that lead to confrontation that lead to outright conflict and we're on that matrix and we may not want to see it, we might not want to admit it but that is the state of affairs of which we find ourselves. Our allies are certainly making preparations to try to deal with it, our newly acquired friends which I welcome with open arms have been great to work with by the way and so when we look at this matrix of things that we can do, how can we push back, how can we change China's calculus that it is okay to encroach on its neighbors for its sole purpose of gaining territory and control of resources for its own benefit at the expense as I said before of their neighbors. Well we look at the good work that we're doing, we look at the possibility of increasing sharing intelligence relationships with our partners, allies and friends, we look at these defense cooperative agreements the same that we've done in the Philippines that allows for interoperability training with the US military, where can we expand that and I think we're going to see some serious escalation in our ability to expand that to get better cooperation, interoperation that starts to present a force that looks very different in the eyes of Beijing that they might see today in the South China Sea. It is something that we need to progressively and aggressively pursue and again nobody looks for confrontation, nobody looks for conflict certainly but we must have a deterrence to what China believes the world doesn't care about, their actions with their neighbors in the South China Sea. I'm looking forward to the Japanese state-of-the-art next generation military prowess. It's going to be impressive and with that cooperative effort with this new understanding in the Philippines, new relationships with Vietnam, I think that there finally can be a net that says you may want to rethink what you're trying to do in the South China Sea. It has to happen and here's our thing. For 30 years we've been working diplomatically with China. We have overlooked things that we would overlook with really no other nation on the diplomatic front from human rights issues to blatant disrespect and disregard for intellectual property rights and protection and we did it because of the sensibilities of China. We thought this is a big and growing force in Asia and the rest of the world economically. Let's help get it to a better place so it becomes a productive member and a good citizen of the world when it comes to commerce and trade, accomplishing good things even in Africa, Middle East and other places where they can be very important partners and allies if they want to be and it hasn't been well received. Apparently hasn't worked very well for us. They continue at a breathtaking pace, economic espionage that is ruinous to the next generation of prosperity not only to Americans but every innovative economy. They've continued this push into the South China Sea in a way that is very brazen, very aggressive and very intimidating to those who are seeking to gain at least some economic prosperity in the generations that come for their own nations in the region. I think it's time that maybe we redo this calculus. Maybe we stop being so deferential to the sensibilities, the delicate sensibilities of the Chinese officials. We need to be more direct. We need to be more aggressive. We need to empower our friends and our allies in the region to be more direct and more aggressive in our diplomatic speak because if we can't get that part right you will have a ship that bumps into each other that leads to something that we would all regret. Some sort of military skirmish that turns into a broader conflict and that we are fooling ourselves if we don't think the table is set that the stew is about ready to boil on what's happening in the South China Sea. It's there. Our friends and our allies are telling us have been telling us for months and years of the oncoming challenge from China in the South China Sea. Now is the time to change that calculus, to change our dialogue, to say that we've got some good friends and the allies in the region that we've had long-standing relationships with that are powers in the region and we have new friendships that we look forward to long-standing relationships both in trade and military cooperation and we are going to invest in those relationships and we're going to spend time with those relationships. We're going to engage in this robust intelligence sharing and these military cooperative efforts that show I think China that this is not they are not the sole and dominant power there at the expense of their neighbors because any military in the world that uses its power to bully, intimidate and destabilize the economy of the of the world is not in the United States best interests nor our allies nor our friends. It is of U.S. national interest to help solve this problem to push back on aggressive Chinese efforts in the region and again I think you do that in a way that China is not going to be used to having that more direct dialogue. Disregarding the delicate sensibilities that have allowed us to avoid very hard conflict discussions when it comes to cyber espionage, when it comes to military aggression, when it comes to intimidating their neighbors and it is all for that one gluttonous naked aggression for their own ability to control territory and resources. It is no better than that. So now is our time to make sure that those clouds don't let loose, that ships don't bump into each other and cause further conflict, that our Japanese allies don't feel that they need to unleash some sort of military understanding meaning they engage in some small skirmish to prove their point or the Filipinas or the Vietnamese who feel that their very future and economic prosperity and international sovereignty are threatened. So I'm looking forward to the dialogue that you have here at this conference today. I think it's going to be critically important. It's critically important, A, because we redraw attention that we are a big nation. Yes, we have other problems to solve, but we cannot allow this one to slip away from us. We can't stand in the way and say we have an umbrella let that storm of conflict begin. This is our chance to push back, to change the calculus, to change the outcome. This is our chance to let China understand that they should not question American resolve when it comes to the freedom of navigation, the freedom of trade and commerce in the South China Sea. Forty percent of the world's trade goes through the South China Sea. That in and of itself is a U.S. national security and economic security issue for us to be engaged. So again, I want to thank all of you for giving me just a moment to welcome and hopefully kick off a great dialogue. I hope it's spirited. I hope that no idea is left in the pocket in someone's coat pocket, that everything is laid on the table for a possibility to change this outcome. I don't believe that direct conflict with China isn't about inevitable as I have heard many, many times over this particular issue. I don't believe it. I believe that through this dialogue, through these partnerships, through finally having a direct conversation with China that may hurt their feelings, but save lives at the end of the day is the right direction for the United States. Hopefully your dialogue is going to get us there. If you have a roadmap, believe me, we will take it in the United States Congress. Thank you for your time and effort. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Look forward to your comments. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you very much for kicking off the conference. We will take a quick coffee break while the next panel comes together. See you soon in about five minutes. Thank you.