 The U.S. Naval War College is a Navy's home of thought. Established in 1884, NWC has become the center of Naval seapower, both strategically and intellectually. The following issues in national security lecture is specifically designed to offer scholarly lectures to all participants. We hope you enjoy this upcoming discussion and future lectures. Good afternoon and welcome to the fifth issues in national security lecture for this academic year. I'm John Jackson and I will serve as host for today's event. This series was originally conceived as a way to share a portion of the Naval War College's academic experience with the spouses and significant others of our student body. Over the past years it has been restructured to include participation by the entire Naval War College extended family, to include members of the Naval War College Foundation, international sponsors, civilian employees, and colleagues throughout the Naval Station Newport area. I'd now like to offer the podium to Rear Armour Chatfield for her welcoming remarks. Ma'am. Hello. I'd like to thank all of you who are here in person and quite a few others who have joined us in our virtual environment. Thank you for logging on to our issues national security lecture series. I'm looking forward to Professor Jim Holmes, a wonderful lecture this evening and I won't delay his start any longer but thank you again for your kind participation. We will be offering an additional 11 lectures between now and May of 2022. It's faced about two weeks apart. An announcement detailing the dates, topics, and speakers of each lecture will be posted by our public affairs office. Our next event will be on Tuesday, December 7th, 2021 and we will commemorate the Pearl Harbor attack and the Pacific War with a fascinating lecture by Dr. John Maurer. Okay, on with the main event, please feel free to raise your hand to ask questions or use the chat function of Zoom and we'll get to the questions at the end of the presentation. I'm very pleased to introduce our guest speaker, Dr. James Holmes. Jim is one of the most prolific writers here at the college and is known by virtually everyone in the maritime security business. He holds the JC Wiley chair of maritime strategy here at the college and previously served on the faculty of the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs. A former U.S. Navy surface warfare officer, he was the last gunnery officer in history to fire a battleship's big guns in anger during the first Gulf War in 1991. He earned the Naval War College Foundation Award in 1994, recognizing him as the top graduate in his class. The latest version of his widely read book, Red Star over the Pacific is a primary selection in the Chief of Naval Operations Professional Reading program and most recently he published a brief guide to maritime strategy. I'm not exactly sure why but former Secretary of Defense James Mattis considers him troublesome. His talk this afternoon will explain why it is so hard for the U.S. Navy to prevail in strategic competition or warfare in the Pacific even though it remains stronger than its competitors. I'm pleased to pass the baton to a friend and colleague, Dr. Jim Holmes. Jim. Kevin Jackson was my last boss on active duty. I think that tells you something about how long we've been around these halls. I mean my very last boss in the in the college of distance education of good grief 26 years ago I guess. So I thank you all for coming out and I want to talk to you not I'm not I'm not going to claim that China's Navy's made up of zombies. You'll see I hope I will explain the rationale why I bring this sort of this sort of mad cap of analogy into the presentation. Zombies are bad ideas that you run into over and over and over again when you when you discuss maritime strategy how to design a fleet that's big enough and capable enough to accomplish U.S. and allied aims in the wider world in on and on. So it's it's it's it's something that I have encountered quite a few times in my life. Let's see if we can get going here. This is a this is a project that's been going on for about 12 years when the when the South Korean Journal Global Asia asked me and my and my friend and co author Toshio Shahara to explain how to count the size of a Navy. So we put together we put together an article in concert with Robert Kaplan whose works you may have that you may have encountered and we basically we basically concluded that it's not all a numbers game you should you should not only count numbers of halls numbers of munitions of manpower and also sort of quantitative variables but but but also count or consider the the power that you could put in place at the decisive place in time of battle because that's where really where the rubber meets the road. So from there why don't I just launch right into it and explain how how I get here from there. This is a I will tell you that over these dozen years sometimes I feel like Rick Grimes of course that of course the hero of the of the walking dead on the American movie classics again certain ideas about about sea power they appear over and over again you know how it is when you fight zombies you shoot you shoot down 10 of them and 100 more like them come by come behind them and ultimately you simply get swamped sometimes you feel like sometimes you feel like that when you have this sort of this sort of debates about sea power. So here's a very simple agenda that I'll use this afternoon to talk to talk with you all and set us up for some Q&A at the end. First of all strategy let's start with the big ideas successive administrations arguably reaching all the way back to the bush the second administration but certainly since the Obama administration have argued that the United States should pivot to Asia we should we should unbalance our force to favor to favor the Asia Pacific or the Indo Pacific as we now call it. So I'll start off with talking about about the big ideas behind that then I will consider then I will consider whether the assets that we have put in the Indo Pacific region are enough to win should we get in a tank with China or perhaps with China and its partner Russia and lastly and in the major the major part of the presentation will be about how to win a way games it's really hard to win in a way game even if you have a very sizable sizable and capable fleet man by some by my skilled crews it's still hard to win in somebody else's backyard which is really which is really what we face as we go into the western Pacific and face off against China. So first of all strategy as I said I'll give the war college a little bit of a plug these are our most recent three maritime strategy documents the one on the left was unveiled on the stage here in 2007 just about right where I am standing. They have this is a bipartisan thing successive administrations seem to agree on the dimensions of the challenge and the proper responses to it but although Albeida says China's maritime buildup has progressed these maritime strategy documents have taken on increasingly worrisome and increasingly hard edged overtones as you guys you can imagine but nonetheless I think I think there are some common themes and in fact I'm going to go all the way back to the 2007 document because I think it most clearly and succinctly states what the United States sees at stake in the western Pacific and elsewhere in the end of the Pacific. First of all the 2007 maritime strategy vows to stage credible combat power in the in the region for the foreseeable future I think we could we can interpret this as saying that the United States is going to remain number one the US Navy Marine Corps and Coast Guard the sea services together are going to remain number one in the region for the foreseeable future. Secondly in more operational terms the document declares that the United States reserves unto itself the option to impose local sea control to take it to take control of anybody of water in in the region at times and places of its own choosing preferably with allies but perhaps perhaps not it might it reserve the right to do this alone should this should it see the need and lastly this was this was kind of a new addition to this particular maritime strategy the United States sea services see themselves as custodians of this of the system the system of liberal sea going trade in commerce this is something that's under threat at peacetime from weapons proliferators piracy and so forth and obviously in wartime as well so this this was a new ingredient in the maritime strategy and it's something that it's endured in the in the other succeeding documents that I showed just a minute ago so that I hope this I hope this gets us oriented to try to see what we are trying to accomplish in the end of the Pacific and try to see whether we have a forced structure manpower and so forth to actually make that go this is this was a document I really enjoyed back in 2015 during the during the late Obama administration this Asia Pacific maritime maritime strategy a statement appeared and it said this is page one of it it said we we we will fight for freedom of the seas we aim to to defend freedom of the seas against all commerce in international law no one owns the sea with very small exceptions codified in the international law of the sea that this law of the sea is actually under challenge in places like the South China Sea and the Black Sea these days in particular in the United States is trying to rally coalitions to defend it to defend the principle that no one owns the sea that's what the Obama administration meant when they said we try to safeguard freedom of the seas if we let that go if we if we had met the principle that a coastal state because it is strong and ambitious that it can own the sea that's a really dangerous precedent precedent to set because if we let the if we let our competitors get away with it today I can see no reason that some some big ambitious coastal state might not do the same thing in the future and they'll say and thus potentially unravel the entire system as I said it's a bipartisan thing this is out of the Trump administration the Pentagon Pentagon confirming that again the Indo-Pacific is the priority theater it is theater number one in importance for the for the Trump administration as for its predecessors and indeed for the for the Biden administration thus far we haven't seen too many documents come out yet because it's still the early days for the Biden administration but they have been very stalwart about saying that we will do these things do these things in the Indo-Pacific and I would expect to see that codified in print as they start putting out their own strategic documents so what does that translate into that in practical terms under the ever since the Obama administration this is basically translated into saying that we will unbalance the US force structure roughly 60 40 in favor of the Indo-Pacific so some some forces will go from other theaters primarily the Atlantic theater in order in order to bulk up the force that that's present in the in the Indo-Pacific and hopefully give it hopefully give us some margin of superiority sufficient to deter aggression or when if we if force to it is that enough though it's I mean it's and here we start getting into into the difficulties measure measuring C power relative to your adversaries is a really really difficult thing with tons of variables some are some of which are really concrete and easy to count up other other such as the human factor which are which are harder to harder to gauge but and yet that's the task before us as we try to match policy with strategy in the Indo-Pacific and with operations and forces capable of executing that strategy and this is where we start running into zombies again bad idea well not necessarily bad ideas there's just sort of the partial ideas about C power it's sort of sort of simple mnemonics that the various contenders to public debates will say if if the United States Navy is X then it's good to go it's it's just radically over oversimplifies let me show you what I mean about that the very the first of the zombies the first of the the first of the the uh dubious ideas out there I would describe as the idea that he who spends the most wins if you if you go out in there if you go go out in the public commentary you will oftentimes hear the idea that the United States the Pentagon spends more than the next X countries are combined usually it's somewhere like 10 or 11 or 12 something like that the United the idea being that if our defense budget is so big we automate we automatically have enough combat power to go into regions where we need to go and prevail over our adversaries yeah here you go in this case in this case it should this diagram was showing that the United States spent a little bit less than the next combined 14 14 countries and again this is a talking point that you run into over and over again especially in election years but also in years like this when we're trying when we're trying to figure out what the size and the shape of the future force ought to be and how much it's going to cost how much we are going to spend on it but I mean I mean think about think about some of the things we I mean it's it's it's expensive to be a global superpower like the United States operating in theaters all the all over the across the globe where our adversaries are remaining mostly concentrated close to home such as such as China such as Russia such as Russia to it to an extent as well but also the systems that we have to buy in order to to remain a global superpower cost a lot this is a this is the USS zoom walk the first of our three ship class it's a highly advanced stealth destroyer sitting over up here to about think I think back in 2016 they stopped in they stopped in briefly that's a seven billion dollar asset that's a lot of money about or how about our newest class of aircraft carriers this is a USS Ford off off the coast off the coast of the east coast of the United States this summer having apparently successfully ridden out its shock test and looking looking good it's about a 13 billion dollar asset and that's before you put airplanes on it that's before you put munitions supplies people on it if you I think I think when you I think when you consider all that stuff which is essential to its combat mission you're probably looking at about a 20 billion dollar asset not counting escort vessels and and all the things that go into a carrier task force again we're a worthwhile system but one that really costs a lot it cuts it and cuts into the it cuts into that that defense spending the defense spending the figures that go into this kind of this this kind of analysis or you anyway when you talk about putting airplanes on that this F-35C carrier based variant of our of our stealth air power goes it goes for about I think about 106 million dollars a piece multiply that by a couple of a couple of squadrons and again you're adding billions to the cost to the cost of the home itself and if that's not enough we are actually we are actually facing the need to replace our ballistic missile submarine submarine contingent which was built during the Cold War and immediately after which is aging which is aging out because of the age of the of the power plants and then the halls and so forth and by the way partly this is happening happening within ice shot up here over a coincident point in the in the Narragansett Bay the hold the holes are being fabricated for this new Columbia class submarine class which will be the heart of our nuclear deterrent into in the coming decades each one of these things I think runs about seven billion dollars a piece we want 12 of them seven times 12 sounds like 84 billion dollars right there and again that's something that is really expensive but we have to have it this is the Navy's number one shipbuilding priority and I think it just I think it just has to be that way and it's a I think that just just as for the for the wild guys on the BBC title that the top gear series they that they hired very high-cost labor like the Stig this professional driver who was always testing cars for them the United States Navy does not hire does not hire low-cost labor unlike our adversaries in fact I think the estimates are something that the China's PLA Navy can put about eight or nine sailors in uniform for this for the for the salary and benefits of one American sailor so again this this is something that this this is something that would cut into the differential between between US defense spending and that of other countries overseas and I think I think we need to we need to take care of our sailors indeed the Navy has always been attentive to that but nonetheless financial the financial impact is something that would cut into this idea that he who spends the most wins because it need not be the case again this defense budget figures are meaningful but they they buy no means tell these tell the full story the second the second fallacy the second zombie that I would bring to you I think it would I would use this as the metaphor the idea that seems to be he who weighs the most wins what do I mean by that well I mean here's here's Robert Kaplan again standing right out right on the stage like he was standing right over there a few years ago talking about sea power and he's one of the greats in the field by the way this is not this is not a hit on bot but he but he did say so he did say this and this kind of perked my ears up he said the I mean he made the point that the United States is an emeritus nation and so forth but then he said the Navy is the largest in the world by far the U.S. Coast Guard would be the 12th largest Navy if you if you wanted to measure measure it by certain metrics well I mean this this is only about four years ago when he said this at that point we were already debating when China's Navy was going to get be larger than the United States Navy in terms of numbers of halls you know other metrics so to say that it was the biggest by far I mean that wasn't true unless I unless I unless he's talking about something a little bit a little bit out there this was a this is something that would have come to a to as a surprise to Captain Jim Finnell who a few years ago through CMSI the China Maritime Studies Institute wrote a wrote an excellent chapter estimating that China's that China's Navy would number about 500 halls by by the year 2030 it said at the same time in which we are trying to figure out how to get to 355 or even just over 300 so I think that and by the way depending on this year here this is it's this is it's 2021 report on Chinese military power in which depending on basically he basically basically lines up with Captain Finnell saying that the Chinese Navy is 355 today destined to be about about 424 years from now and hitting 460 by by the year 2030 and again we're trying to figure out how to have to have them how to match up with that how well do we match up with that so again so again what are what are we getting at and here's a here's another grade in the field the Michael Hamlet down at the Brooklyn Brookings Institution rightly noting that the Navy has chosen to put more technology into smaller numbers of halls in hopes of generating sufficient combat power but again and here's where the rubber meets the road he says he points out and this is this is really the nub of this discussion our aggregate tonnage is three times of China's well I mean I mean size I mean size matters I mean we know we know that the United States if we want to fight hundreds if not thousands of miles away our ships need they need fuel storage we need to bring all our stuff in terms in terms of ammunition food and supplies I mean that that's how you need you need larger vessels in order to do that as opposed to a coastal state that's fighting close to home and which which which can fall back on its own basis if if need be but but again I would say so what that is not that is not necessarily something that gives the entire picture for example I mean if they if size if size if tonnage is all that matters this is this is the most powerful warship on the planet the MMRS got out of out of Denmark a freighter that displaces about 550,000 tons or five times the the displacement of the USS Ford the aircraft carrier that I showed a few minutes ago obviously obviously that is nonsensical I mean that's just that's just absurd this is an unarmed freighter but yet that's where the logic of the self simply looking at tonnage figures takes you I'm kind of glad that Coach Belichick took a Mack Jones and this guy when he was when he was looking for some combat power for the Patriots this year but again this guy's got but this guy's got bulk but I suspect he doesn't have a lot of combat power to for the Patriots line or anywhere else if this is the metaphor I mean if this is the metaphor for tonnage if the United States is like the sumo wrestler if the US Navy is like the sumo wrestler it has a lot of combat power and a lot of size if that's the standard that we can meet then I'm all I'm all about that especially if we can swing around the PLA Navy and give it a wedgie like he seems to be doing with this with this young Japanese guy but in any event I would I would submit to you that he who weighs the most need not win again this is another valuable data point but it does not tell the entire story here's a here's another one and this this of course is the great white fleet steaming around the world in 1907 through 1909 this would this would be the idea in fact in fact I would describe this as sort of dueling down zombies especially in election years you get into this back and forth between between the opposite sides of the aisle about numbers of halls one side says numbers of halls or everything and the other side that seems to seems to deprecate the idea that numbers of halls matter much at all first of all and this is this this is the sort of the key talking point that you get mostly in election years the Navy is now smaller than it has been since 1917 which which happened to be which happened to be the time during World War one that the Navy set out to make itself a Navy second to none under the Wilson administration so again there's political here's political fact trying to take that apart and again this is something that comes up a lot here senator as senator wicker of Mississippi a key ship building state making making the point again numbers of halls are now smaller than it than in any year since 1917 it's actually 1916 that was the year that the legislation was passed not sure where 17 comes from but you get the you get the idea we are now going back to being a regional Navy is the implication so be because of numbers of halls now and of course on the other side on the other side people will fire back they will defend their ideas this is Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus who was the Secretary of the Navy for President Obama's entire presidency and here's what he has to say about this idea he's firing back about about this talking point about 1917 he points out he says well you know that the 1917 comparison is pointless because ships today are so much more advanced than their predecessors from a century ago and he's right about that but again when you hear this guy when you hear this kind of this kind of claim you never hear anybody say well you know what the strategic environment the operational environment is not some 1917 anymore either our adversaries have kept pace with technology and things are at least as lethal out there for navies as they were in 1917 I mean for example the Chinese PLA PLA Air Force fielding stealth fighters this is not something that the great white fleet would have to worry about I think this I think this is a use of history that is just not terribly helpful numbers are numbers do matter I would say but they are not all all meaningful and therefore please ask the please ask the tough the tough questions when you get it when you encounter these debates or if you get into if you get into them yourselves and try to get to try to add some nuance to these discussions I think that in the last one I will go through you before we start doing some geopolitics is that is the idea that seapower is all about ships I mean the idea that you sort of flip over if you want to figure out who the strongest navy is you flip over in your your copy of the jane's fighting ships or your favorite so your favorite manual about that lists ships and weapons and so forth compare them and you figure in you know who it is but this is an age of joint seapower land-based weaponry is able to reach farther and farther out to sea all the time and influence influence events on the high seas it's not just about navies meeting each other in action the way the way the way the German and the British navies met at Jutland in 1916 I think this I think this is the sort of imagery that people have in mind if there's a naval battle you basically you basically have two fleets that will meet offshore in a particular set of coordinates and having gunfight well that may have been true back then but it is less and less true today as I'll show you as I'll show you for the balance of our time together today because sea battle is more than seapower and sea battle is about more than fleets these days and in fact about more than navies air forces strategic rocket forces and other and other forces can put units of combat power on battles at sea and thus have to be factored into the overall military balance in order to get any any real sense of who might prevail if we get if we get in a fight just a just a little eye candy for this this line of this line of missile armed PLA Air Force or PLA Navy fighters can range hundreds of miles out to sea all armed with anti-ship missiles meant to do the United States Navy and our allies harm but it's a it's actually even a little bit it's actually even a little bit more foreboding than that China China's military the PLA has developed the a family of the first the world's first anti-ship ballistic missiles such as this df-21d these are these are ballistic missiles able to reach hundreds of miles offshore and target movie moving ships at sea from land so again land can reach out and help control the sea there's a there's actually an even longer range variants of oh i'm sorry the df-21d has a range depending on says about 900 nautical miles so that's enough to reach over japan and into the expanses outside the first island chain that we hear so much every day the df-26 a newer a newer anti-ship ballistic missile Pentagon estimates this has a range of about 2000 nautical miles that would be enough to reach out beyond Guam and say they essentially start the meeting out punished but to us forces head for heading for the region west of wake island so again this is something that we we really must figure into the naval balance in order to have a real sense of what's what's going on out here just to just to translate this into a geographic terms this is a by the way that the if you're interested in missiles this is out of csis the center of the center for strategic and international studies in washington that has a wonderful page about this here's right here's what they show let me let me trace out the missile arcs looking out looking out from chinese coastlines just to show you exactly how far what the threat of the envelope is for our maritime forces operating in the west of pacific of course the outer radar that would be the df-26 and the inner one would be the df-21d again these are these are being fired from chinese soil and they can read they can reach out great great distances and threaten to do us harm so again this is this is something that we have to factor into the naval balance it's not just about ships anymore and of course and of course the pla navy also means it maintains what she could call it two tiered fleet yes there's the standard battle fleet that looks a lot like our own but at the same time the pla navy feels lots of diesel submarines all armed with anti-ship missiles as well as small craft so small surface patrol craft as such as this to type 22 hobay catamaran again all armed with anti-ship missiles suitable for lurking offshore within that within that threat zone and and doing us and doing us damage as we try to close in china on china sea coast whether it's to defend taiwan or do something in the south china sea protect the sink copy while and whatever the contingency might be so again this is part of that layered defense that we see china erecting which i i just like this this one's kind of garish comes out of csba the the center for strategic and budgetary assessments but it makes the it does make the very simple point visually that as we close in on china sea coast we go from sort of a green zone to a yellow zone to a red zone as we as we come in within reach of more and more chinese defensive weaponry and this and this is something again we that we need to we have to factor it into any meaningful assessment of the military balance thing that thinks i end of course china has done some really unconventional things in the in recent years such as improving islands basically dredging up islands and making military bases in the south china sea where they can anchor forward defenses well out into that expanse in a way that they that they could not until recent years they also i mean they also have a really unconventional asset such as the world's largest coast guard and also a maritime militia embedded within the chinese fishing fleet we see this and we see this every day the way the way that china the way that china is able to merge these unconventional elements sea power into their overall maritime strategy in order to make it make life difficult not only for ourselves but especially for our friends and allies in the region so again you have to consider these elements of sea power as well and part of the overall force mix to do any to do a good comparison between ourselves and then the adversary so again just to just to just to sum this one up just remember the strongest fleet need not win we could be the strongest fleet and yet be outmatched by by this array of weaponry that the PLA has fielded in recent years the strongest force wins it doesn't matter whether unit of combat power that the decisive place in time comes from a missile from land or from a ship at sea it's still a unit of combat power and that's what that has to be that has to be part of the discussion as well because as Einstein once noted not everything that we can count counts and not everything that can that counts can't be counted some things we can count and some things we that some things we really have to we really have to branch out and and estimate some of the imponderables when you sum up all when you sum up these uh sort of the partial ideas or bad ideas you get this kind of thing again from another one of the greats in the field of political science and international relations this is John Meersheimer well-known professor out at the University of Chicago has been for many years and is in his most famous and his most recent work about the tragedy of great power politics this was it this is what he says he essentially says the United States is 10 feet tall the U.S. military is 10 feet tall let me unpack that and explain why he says that well he says the fact is the fact is that China does not possess meaningful military power today which seems a little strange when you read the when you read the news but why is that because it's its military forces are inferior to those of the United States he seems to think he's backing up his first point with that point and I would like to spend the the rest of our time together examining this claim because he concludes that Beijing would be making a huge mistake today if it tangle with the United States so what he's basically saying is that if the Chinese military is still inferior to that of the United States the China simply cannot win let's go let's go through and see why that is not the case I think that's a I think that's a very dangerous prescription that Professor Mirsheimer offers and I don't I don't think that we ought to be taking that as a strategic guidance why because away games are hard and the United States military only plays away games we only fight in other other people's backyards let's go let's go as we start getting into this discussion let's go let's do the best of all sources Carl von Klauswitz the grand master of strategy from from 19th century Prussia in a fixture in the curriculum here at the war college here's what Klauswitz has to say about absolute and relative strength which is really what we're talking about here he says I mean this sounds sort of like bilo cell high type stuff the best strategy is to be very strong go to go to gold's gym you know build up a build up a lot of forces and and train yourself very well so that you are the strongest military force on the whole but he also but he also points out that superiority is relative when you start talking in operational terms who actually wins battles who wins campaigns which is what he's talking about when he says the decisive point it is possible for the weaker point to be stronger at that decisive point so that it can win an engagement for example it's I can't count all of you but I wouldn't like my chances very much if I challenge you all to a fistfight here in the auditorium but you know what I stay I stay in pretty good condition if I could catch you all as you exit from the auditorium going through that door over there I might actually stand some sort of chance of actually defeating a whatever fraction of of you all I thought I needed to actually to accomplish my aim so again I could be I could be stronger at the decisive point even though I'm obviously far weaker in aggregate than you all are together here's what he says that being the case if you if you build up the biggest and the strongest armed force keep it concentrated so that you are actually at the scene in stronger force than your opponent so again this this this makes perfect sense but again he comes back and he points out that even if you were not stronger in absolute terms you can still be to say you can still be stronger at the excuse me at the place and time of battle when you're actually going to face off against your adversary even in the absolute absence of absolute superiority you can be you can be stronger when it matters and where it matters so again I think we can sum this up a contender can be locally locally superior even though it is it is weaker in global terms that I think is the dilemma that is before the United States and his allies today let's turn our attention to the Indo-Pacific a little more specifically man I love this I love this view off of off of Google Maps you can barely see any land at all but that's okay because we know that we know that zombies swim they can swim to Asia and and plague us over there as well let's start let's start just a little bit of geography always start with geography when you start thinking about strategy the Indo-Pacific is a big theater which is which is quite apparent from this map out of the of the Fortune Atlas of World Strategy in 1943 if I throw this up here because it depicts what Imperial Japan was trying to do during that war essentially it wanted to carve out the western Pacific and then south east Asia as a zone of Japanese superiority but actually but actually suzerainty and it would follow this so this sort of rough defense perimeter enclose it most of the western Pacific and southeast Asia as a zone as a zone for Japanese resource extraction as well as well as political supremacy as well that's that that is a really ambitious that's what that was a really ambitious strategy for a for a small island state off the northeastern coast of Asia but there is a bigger theater that one's a big one but there is a bigger theater there is a bigger theater let me show you that right there shows it shows the waters and it's essentially the Japan had its eye on the waters at the waters at the water shoreward of the first island chain and then the waters reaching out to the second island chain and points beyond but guess and this is I would say this is a rough parallel with what China is trying to accomplish right now it wants to establish itself as the as the prime power in the western Pacific roughly within these same waters and skies guess where the United States military operates what theater we operate at I tell you what this makes it really this is makes it really easy for China to concentrate power because they know that we are dispersed doing things all over the globe whether it's the Persian Gulf trying to face down Iran whether it's the Black Sea or the eastern Mediterranean trying to keep Russia in check we have we have commitments all over the place and thus we tend to disperse ourselves into packets of combat power whereas our whereas our adversaries tend to stay concentrated and thus improve their ability potentially to to fulfill that cause of its enaction actually and that you can be stronger at the decisive place in time even if you're weaker yeah it's 20 it's one thing for Moses to come off the mountain side with the commandment to remain concentrated but it's really really hard to do in practice especially for a global superpower like the United States why is that well I mean I mean if you think about if you think about the decision-making that goes on in Washington and the White House and places like that if as you as you gaze around the globe at all these different theaters you're going to incur heavy opportunity costs if you if you decide to concentrate most of all of the US military in the western Pacific to face down China because every every theater is going to have a constituency that's going to argue that argue against that politically speaking it's going to be a very very difficult thing to do as well as this in practical practical terms not necessarily being a desirable thing to do would we would we want to write off the Mediterranean sea for example for the sake of the South China Sea these are some of the imponderables that that faces it's really hard for a global superpower to cut the two cut loose commitments for the sake of concentrating somewhere else I think that's a dilemma that's that's with us every single day the journey of distance is a huge is a huge thing and this is a perennial factor inhibiting in the United States from executing executing a strategy at a reasonable cost here again another map from the world that from the fortune atlas in World War two just basically showing looking down from the pole how hard and how convoluted and simply how far away different theaters are from forces for forces coming from the US east and west coast man look at that shooting around it's shooting around the South Africa and Eurasia it's just long it's just long distance to get to get through it's also convoluted territory that could be contested in more time it's just a really really hard problem we are we we also have to we also have to have a base network to boost essentially to boost our power projection away from American seacoast and this this by the way we'll go into those cost calculations that we talked about a little while ago this is the this is my favorite metaphor coming from basic physics for projecting seapower out from our seacoast this is a this this depicts the inverse squares law in physics the idea the idea of being if you have a radiation source the the strength of that radiation diminishes not sort of in a gradual linear manner but but it goes off a cliff it declines by the square of the distance from the radiation source and therefore if you want to if you want to if you want to propagate it further you have to have some way to boost the signal our base network our allies and so forth are the way that we do that and this is this is another part of the of the complications that faces when we try to mount superior combat combat power do all the stuff that we talked about in the maritime strategy in somebody else's backyard so again it's a one thing for cause of us to talk about the highest and simplest laws but again obeying these laws is very difficult and this leaves aside the adversary as we look at our adversaries we know that the adversary is not a potted plant the adversary is not an inert mass on which we work our will the other the adversary has every incentive has as many brain cells as we do it has a has a desire to frustrate our strategies and you can darn about you can darn well bet they will do their utmost to walk our strategies thinking I think about this this is this is actually my this is actually the face I usually see when I start thinking about an adversary who's very imaginative this is a Paul or excuse me general Paul van Rijper who back in 2002 he was allocated during a war game war game near named millennium challenge he was given essentially the resources that would that he would have if you were if you were commanding the Iranian military and he was facing off against the US Navy carrier task force out in the Persian Gulf he was so he was so created with those forces that he was actually he was actually able to defeat a US Navy carrier task force even though even though we would that we would have thought that Iran was woefully outmatched by by such a by such an advanced force although it worked out okay for the Navy because they just went back and changed the rules so the van Rijper lost and everything was happy but in any event the red to the red team gets to get to vote in our strategy and is undoubtedly going to cast that vote against our success it's very hard I mean it's very hard to be like the great Bruce Lee and go into somebody else's dojo like he did in fists of fury 50 years ago and yet that's sort of the that's that is sort of the task that's before us it's very hard to go into somebody's home stadium where the home team has the advantage this is Texas A&M down down in the college station where they claim to have invented the 12th man basically the morale and advantages that go to the home team the ability to harass the other team by yelling at them and disrupting their signals all the all the all the advantages that the home team enjoys in football or if you prefer a basketball metaphors say the same thing goes in in Cameron Auditorium at Duke University where as you can tell as you can tell they are vicious the fans are vicious and again can it can interfere with it can interfere with that with the opposing team so translate that into strategy I mean the home team will have most of its manpower nearby its faces will be on hand as I said as I said it will have larger amounts of weaponry potentially on hand these translate into an advantaged over a visiting team such as ourselves that's coming from very far away so so there is a method to my madness and relax so heavily on sports metaphors and it's a it's a it's actually a free-for-all I mean it's I actually I actually love this because it shows just how lightly policed what world what is it what do they call it wwe wwe professional wrestling these days there is nobody to police to police this game this geopolitical game and assume that and assure that both sides that both sides are actually going to play by fair rules China or any home team will deploy all the assets that its man and in fact it would be remiss not to use all the advantages it has just as you just as you hear with this this poor guy game getting tossed out of the ring and probably built it with a chair or something like that that's how mill that's how military conflict is again I can guarantee I can guarantee you the the United Nations are the United Nations or anybody else is going to police this just as that rather ineffectual referee is standing in in watching all this happen again the enemy gets a vote and the enemy will almost certainly cast it against us so let's let me start closing us down so we have time for a little Q&A and I think we will go to the best the best for talking about maritime strategy this of course is a caricature of my hand our second president or I'm sorry our president twice during the the 1880s and then the 1890s or second president and served twice he was the most influential American strategist of the 18th century according to the British military historian John Keegan and it is often credited with being the most influential non-fiction author writ large in the entire 19th century in the United States here's what he has to say about this and it's this is actually a really valuable little formula for thinking through it for thinking through all these these issues that I've raised with you and trying to dispel the zombies you're trying to shoot them down and finally defeat them he says if I'm trying to figure out how to size a fleet to accomplish its goals so I'm facing off against a hostile fleet or a hostile force here's how I do it any sketches he says it's a broad formula first of all they're sort of the net assessment type stuff comparing numbers comparing comparing us tonnage compare armaments and so forth so this would be the sort of net assessment type stuff that you think about when comparing navies who has more ships who has more aircraft and so on and so forth so that's that's clearly part of the part of the the dilemma of trying to size a fleet you have to you need to put enough assets on the scene in order to fight with reasonable chances of success against the largest force in which you are likely to encounter so there's an element of risk in this I mean you have to think about your own risk tolerance what is a reasonable chance of success and I mean how much how much of my force do I need to allocate in order to bring about something that's within my risk risk threshold scape so there's an asset there's an aspect of risk in this as well as a sort of quantitative measures of sea power and this to me is the most the most interesting one I need to I need to plan against the most the force that I am most likely to meet on the field of battle or out at sea in this case that's kind of that's kind of interesting isn't I mean how do I figure out how much of my of my adversary's force that force will commit to battle against me that's I mean you have to you have to really know you're out you know to know your adversary know what that adversary values know what you know what commitments it has we're on the map you know I know how much it wants its goals in a particular expanse of water I mean these are these are things that will determine the proportion of the of its military force and naval force that it will commit to battle that becomes the standard of adequacy for the United States and its allied forces so there's there's geopolitical calculations there's social and cultural factors there's just a lot of human calculations that go into this as well estimating how much the adversary wants its goals and therefore how much how much magnitude of its military forces it will commit is something that obviously demands a lot of judgment but yet mehanda demands that we undertake that judgment just to sum up a little bit what he says obviously you need to do the the basic blocking and tackling and net assessment again counting accounting up stuff trying to try to estimate capabilities manpower and all these sort of physical capabilities secondly though how much I I mean estimate how much cost each contender has to play and what opportunity costs it will pay by undertaking a particular engagement opportunity costs of course being what I what I am not doing because I am doing this particular engagement what could I be doing with those resources so you see you have to you have to look at that whenever measuring a course of action and lastly again thinking about risk and thinking and thinking about the commitments that each side has a has a work and so on and so forth so there's a there's a political energy of political calculation that has to go into this seemingly straightforward quantitative aspect or process of trying to measure c power and figure out who is going to be stronger and I think that would just leave you with this question I think this is really sort of in the operational terms this is where we are who wins when a fraction of us forces goes up against the entirety of an enemy's navy potentially backed up by its air force and backed up by in china's case by its strategic rock and force which I showed you some pictures of and I think that I think the answer to that question is far from obvious and I think that's the question that's that we really need to exert ourselves to to answer as we try to think about how how large the navy the marine point the coast guard should be how they should conduct themselves in action all the all the all this range of questions that goes into executing us strategy in the end of the pacific and it's not this is for this is far from easy obviously and that would be the biggest point that I would leave with you just don't let people oversimplify things for you and I think we'll all be smarter yeah exercise a little self a little bit of self judgment for taking very very simple judgments about military and naval matters at face value because a lot of times a lot of times and in fact I would say almost always the story is much more complex and with that why don't I why don't I turn it over feel whatever questions you have to have to have for me these these young ladies I want you to ask some questions and or we can do it through the chat as well thanks thank you Jim tremendous as usual are there any questions here in the live audience that would like to ask yes sir and please use your microphone thank you oh thanks good afternoon sir thank you for the presentation lieutenant commander lairway a us navy oftentimes these comparisons between the the chinese navy and the us navy fail to include either the armies stdc or the military seal of command which not only would perhaps provide a true representation of the us's naval power naval force but also highlights the chinese lack of organic logistics specific ships I believe that last count they only have 15 or 20 dedicated supply ships whereas military seal of command alone has over 120 can you explain briefly how their lack of of logistics capabilities would prevent them from projecting power or sustaining operations in theaters outside of the south china sea specifically the indian ocean which we know is a is a region of growing importance for them yeah no I couldn't agree I think my mic is off okay okay yeah it's a great point it's a question that comes up a lot and I think you're right I mean think about the velocity at which china has done what it's done I mean it's only about 25 years ago did it really resolve to make itself a do a seafaring power of note uh after the after the after the after the missile test saw off taiwan during the elections on that island in 1995 that made the president clinton set a couple of carrier task forces to the region of or to the area of taiwan and this really threw a shock into to the chinese communist party government because they could not only could they not threaten our carriers they couldn't find them this was really the event that set in motion uh the the impressive naval buildup that we've seen ever since then so again they've concentrated as they do this they've concentrated on what matters most which is which is trying to set matters in order as they see it in places like the south china sea basically an east agent they want to they want to revise the international order in the south china sea the east china sea and and so forth and obviously retake taiwan not only because they see it as national territory but also but also because it has geopolitical value in breaking through the first island chain so they so again they've set priorities i mean strategy is about setting priorities uh at its most basic and they've been reordering uh events close to home has really been what they've focused on now so yes so yesterday right they haven't put a lot into the logistics fleet they haven't done a whole lot in the with the amphibious suite until and so fairly recent years but uh but yeah so i think that's probably that's probably the next big phase the interestingly i don't know that they're actually wedded to specific timelines to make themselves into the world's dominant sea power or at least a purer of ourselves but they do see they do seem to think that uh 2049 is the approximate amount of time that they would want to have all these sort of capabilities and become a global sea blue water sea power that can operate throughout the indian ocean metatraining sea sometimes they've been talking about bases in the atlantic in uh in east africa so i think that's probably next after they after they put things in order uh close to home which again is what is always going to matter most to to any military or military or naval power controlling your own surroundings and then you can think more broadly but yeah i think they've come a long way in a short period of time but yeah but yes they've done they they have neglected some of those another one that's another one that's uh actually a little bit uh and i think they're starting to get this right anti submarine wharf has not been it has not been an area of strength this is another capability they've they've started working on a lot more something because they understand they need that we still have the world's dominant submarine force and we can make things very difficult on them around the first island chain which is probably where the action will happen in the coming years if it does if you believe admiral uh davidson who last year said it would be about six years before you might have a fight in taiwan i mean that's that's sort of the timeline and then after that they can look more broadly uh at other places and think about logistics they also and they also they also have the ability to uh well they have they have the world's largest shipbuilding industry so you converting merchantmen and so forth i think i would i would expect to see them do something like that but uh yeah just just just a few random thoughts about china good afternoon sir and i am commander carlos garcon from mequodoria navy thanks for your original presentation china plus uh zombies i can then wait and to see the how how you relate these these two subjects and speaking about the capabilities of china you already say it's not uh navy force against navy force it's also land-based i want to um give a question about uh the cyber capabilities and the um outside capabilities will make you think maybe later to uh do another lecture about zombies plus aliens and what's your guess about it yeah there was a movie a few maybe 20 years ago called cowboys versus aliens the other you can have a lot you can have a lot of fun with those silly things like that yeah well you know what you you probably haven't yet because you look like you're much younger than i am but uh when you start when you start getting older that i think you start reaching a point at which you sort of age out of new technology and it starts seeming like magic the the science fiction author author arthur c clark famously said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and i think i'm starting to reach i'm starting to reach my point with cyber and things like that uh i mean cyber is a cyber is a fascinating one the uh and we're starting fortunately the navy's actually kind of leaning on the war college to get much better at it so i think we're still and this is all to the good we're actually starting to see a fair amount of research and gaming going on right around here on cyber i mean i mean is it a domain what exactly is cyber i think we still do still debate all that all that kind of thing it is certainly certainly something that that china or really any military power can turn to its advantage uh let me tell you just a quick a quick not an anecdote but to sort of give you an overview of a concept in chinese war fighting strategy they call it systems destruction warfare the idea being that if you're if your adversary fights in a system whether the system is a fleet an air force an army division or whatever the case may be and the and the elements of that fleet are some distance from one another and they are and they are connected probably by the electromagnetic spectrum but you know could be by sight or anything else if you can just if you can disrupt what what binds that system together what have you done you've basically taken that fleet and you splintered it into into individual units or individual small small units which can be overpowered one by one and this is a very malice and this is a very malice approach the idea being that if i can break up my adversary's force i can i can then pounce on each one of those ships one of those planes whatever that whatever the units of combat of power are and and eliminate them one by one and thus over time i tried my adversary so that i emerged the stronger competitor and win it's kind of it's kind of my my sort of go to uh silly sci-fi sci-fi example on this is the the first episode of the the i think that's sort of in 2005 the the new version of bal star galactica with james edward james olmos as a commander adama that's exactly what happens that's exactly what the silence the inhuman machine cyborgs this is what they actually do to launch an attack on a human fleet they smuggle in a computer virus into into the fleet uh and disable communications and command and control among the fleet what have they done at that point they can go after the ships one by one they might not they might not be the stronger fleet at the outset but you know what they've done systems destruction warfare and they destroy that fleet except for the white except for the one surviving ship that is not networked and so forth and is highly resistant to a cyber warfare so i think that's that's the kind of that's the kind of force multiplier you can get out of cyber warfare but uh i think you'd have to get you have to get somebody who's a little bit better versed than i am in order to get into the real specifics i don't know about the aliens but yeah i'll think about it commander ross you have any questions from the audience uh virtually uh we do uh the first question is uh is it realistic for the us to believe that we can protect taiwan i think i think the way to i think the way to phrase it is that i think it is really realistic as long as taiwan takes uh ownership of its own destiny and whenever whenever i'm in taiwan they always ask this question i mean i can can we actually rely on you to come to our assistance in time of need and i always tell them help us help you they need to they need they need to they need to really they're always talking about becoming asymmetric i mean looking looking for low cost systems they can they can inflict heavy penalties heavy damage on a stronger adversary which is what the PLA is going to be for the foreseeable future in the taiwan strait and elsewhere around taiwan's periphery but they and they do that they have done some of this but they but they have a love affair with with big glitzy platforms they've they've recently stood up their first air wing of our most most advanced f16 fighters for example they pour a lot of resources into that whereas what do they really need to do what does taiwan need to do strategically in order to defend itself and to assure that us reinforcements and potentially japanese and australian reinforcements so give it a talk we hear out of out of those places these days what does it need to do china needs a quick victory in the taiwan strait in order to prevail it needs to prevail before we can actually reach the battle zone in time to reverse aggression but and so taiwan it has low cost options for doing that it could arm itself to the teeth with anti with anti-ship missiles fired from the coastline taiwan has very rugged coastline there's a lot of places to conceal such things around around the periphery so if it can do that it can it can make things very difficult for a pl a navy forces trying to come across and land troops on the island which is what they would have to do in the end if they can do that they can slow them down they can give themselves time they can they can also more or less pay pay imitation or imitate some of the things the pl a navy has done such as with small small coastal patrol craft they can do stealthy patrol craft they can secrete them around the periphery hide them in civilian fishing ports and on and on in order again to fan out into the taiwan strait to make things difficult on on the pl a navy especially to develop normal amphibious uh transports that that would be needed to carry troops across they can sew minefields they can study history i mean there there was about 20 years ago there was a fascinating study out of the rand corporation affiliated with the us air force they actually went back and looked at the beaches at normandy maps of the beaches at normandy and then mapped them on to the potential landing beaches in taiwan they were almost exactly the same size and almost the exact same configuration which makes it which makes this very very tough on landing site so again this so again taking advantage of terrain uh low cost weaponry all these sorts of things are things that taiwan can do to give itself time and by the way the existing more conventional force they need to figure out how they can help us get into the theater uh if they can if they can take the sort of the capital ship fleet of which they still have some uh from the cold war they can figure out how to how to open up a corridor to the east so that we can get into the battle zone at low cost to the united states and its allies that actually that actually makes it easier on president biden the leaders of japan australia whoever joins the fight to actually commit those forces because the i mean they were you really have to want your goals a lot in order to commit a lot of forces if it looks like that we are going to lose a lot of forces in an afternoon in the taiwan straight or elsewhere around the periphery that's going to be very that's going to be difficult for president biden to give that order the taiwan can reduce the cost of the united states of of coming to taiwan's aid again that's something that that's something that's going to be very very powerful for that island so i painted a pretty bleak picture for you here tonight i always do but but we we should also not uh sell ourselves short we do have advantages we have we have the terrain along the first island chain between japan taiwan and the philippines i mean that we do have advantages that we that we can exploit if we play our cards right and if we keep our keep our mind on our goals which is to to balk china strategy keep they keep them from coming to the island long enough for us to intervene and hopefully and hopefully overturn aggression gary any other questions uh maybe we'll just go with one more um uh a watcher asked is the chinese mandated integration of the ccp political commissars in their military command structure a significant strength weakness or is it negligent oh you do you talk about having a political officer on a ship who's equal and ranked to a captain i think that's it is i think that's what they're talking i i would say that's a disadvantage i mean i think i think about being a skipper i mean if you have you if you have your own command if you have to look if you have to look over your shoulder for a political a political approval for anything you do that's going to tend to make you rather gun shy uh it's going to tie i would say it would tend to make you uh you know perhaps timid not very venturesome you have to see you have to stay within the political the political boundaries set by by your masters back in beijing i would i think that was a significant uh a significant drawback for for the soviet navy during the cold war they had the very same same arrangement as well we hear we hear in the west and our friends who come to here to the war college we're pretty promissive about uh encouraging encouraging our subordinates to go out and exercise their initiative i think but i think putting a political officer on a submarine or on a ship and or so i think it's going to take away a lot of that initiative so again we do we do have advantages i would say that's actually a self-defeating thing that the chinese have done but i think they i think they're doing it just because of who they are dr holmes thank you very much it was excellent thanks for coming out