 Good morning, everybody. Welcome. We're delighted to have you here. I mean, neither earthquakes nor hurricanes nor floods nor locusts will keep away this trusty defense community away. And we're delighted to have you here. Thank you for coming and braving yet another rainy morning in Washington. I don't know about you. I'm starting to go webs between my toes. This is getting a little over much. But we're delighted to have you here and look forward to this morning with you. I'm very pleased that you can join us for this fall season to kick off the military strategy forum. I want to especially say thanks to our good friends at Rolls Royce that make it possible for us to offer this to the policy community in Washington. We're very grateful for that. Thank you, Steve. This is a new thing for us, and I'm really quite pleased that we have this opportunity to introduce a leading member of Congress to be a keynoter on the military strategy forum. In the past, we've largely taken senior leaders from within the Defense Department, but in this case, we reached out to talk to one of the key emerging figures in the security debate in the Congress, and that's Congressman Adam Smith. I think that the timing, our middle name is strategic, and so I like to pretend we do all things intentionally and sometimes it's just dumb good luck that gets us to this point in life. But I think it's an enormously important topic to kick off this discussion, the military strategy forum, this fall. As we're on the front end of what is probably going to be one of the most momentous debates that we've had, certainly in the last 15, 20 years, on where are we heading with the Defense Program for America? What is it that we are going to organize ourselves to do over the next 20 years? That's the question that's now on the table. It's coming at the same week that the so-called Committee of 12 is meeting, and yesterday one of the members said, well, if there's one penny that comes out of defense, I'm walking out. Well, that's a kind of a hollow threat, since if you walk out and the thing collapses, the defense gets cut $650 billion. And it's kind of a, okay, I appreciate your views, but we've got a bigger problem here. We've got to figure out what we're going to do. And it isn't, it's got to be more than just a discussion of numbers. You know, the numbers are important. The strategy has to be relevant to the resources that you have. But you also have to have a vision. You have to know what it is that you think you have to do. And that has to be the starting point of any serious debate on defense policy going forward, especially now. Well, I'm pleased to tell you that I started having this conversation with Congressman Smith over nine months ago, when he sought me out to say, I want to talk with you about what America's going to be doing in its security policy trajectory. And he rightly said, I think we ought to start by looking at Asia. I said, I think that's absolutely right. I think that is certainly the center of gravity for the international system is and has and is continually to shift to Asia. And yet we don't have a policy consensus that really guides us authoritatively on Asia. The way we did for 40 years on Europe, you know, we just don't have that now. And we're needing that. And for him to a year ago start thinking about this question is illustrative of why he's now such an important leader in the Congress for all of us. We need members of Congress that are willing to look beyond that's on fire in the inbox every morning and look out into the future to say, what do we need to do as a nation? Where are we going? And he started this. I'm not sure when he started it, but I know I first interacted with him nine months ago, and we are now going to be the recipients of the culmination of his thinking over this period. And I can't tell you how grateful I am. He's selected this opportunity to share it with us and how pleased I am that all of you can come and to listen to it. So let me not delay. Let's turn to Congressman Smith. Please welcome him, and then we will have an interesting discussion with him. Thank you. It's a great honor to be here, and I want to thank CSIS in general and John Hamery in particular for their help to me. There are a lot of people in this town with a lot of knowledge about national security matters. I've I've joked with a couple of you before the speech that it's a member of Congress's fate to always be asked to speak to a group of people about a topic where they know much more about it than he does. We're the policymakers, but there are a lot of people who spend a lot of time focusing on these issues. And it's incredibly important for us to have access to those people and their ideas. And John has been incredibly generous, not just with his time, but with introducing me to a wide range of folks who have a wide range of experiences in Asia, expertise that has been very helpful to me, hopefully not just for the purposes of the speech, but also for the purposes of my position as the ranking member on the Armed Services Committee. So thank you very much. I will also have to point this out. I'm from the Seattle area where whenever you say that, well, doesn't it rain a lot there? Um, it's in the mid eighties without a cloud in the sky and will be that way throughout the weekend in the Seattle area and assuming Dulles Airport stays above the waterline. I plan to be back there this evening. We'll we'll see how that works. Well, thank you. It's a great honor to be able to talk about this topic and I look forward to our further discussion. Asia is incredibly important to our interests as we all know. But whenever you're thinking about Department of Defense policy at this point, you have to look at sort of three big issues that are going to frame absolutely everything we do. And John alluded to a couple of them. Number one, obviously is the budget deficit. The DoD right now is trying to figure out how much money they're going to have going forward. And there's really sort of two parts to that problem. One is it's hard to plan when you don't know like within $100 billion, what your yearly budget is likely to be next year. So trying to figure that out is difficult. But then also the the crushing reality that given the size of our deficit and the sluggishness of our economy, whatever that number ultimately turns out to be, it's going to be less than we would like it to be and certainly less than we had planned on it. Everything that's going on at the Department of Defense right now is against that backdrop, the deficit debt crisis and the impact that it's going to have on them. At the same time, even if there wasn't that deficit debt crisis, there is a major upheaval within our defense policy, trying to figure out, given all of the changes that have happened in the last 15 years, what should our strategy be going forward? For a very, very long time, the Department of Defense was built on the notion of we have to be prepared to simultaneously fight two major regional contingencies, as they call them, I guess that's another word for wars, in probably Europe and Asia, we have to build our military to fight those major major fights. Well, ever since the Soviet Union collapsed, that's kind of changed, but slowly. At the same time, you've seen incredible transformation technologically. And of course, we've now come to face the threats of irregular warfare. I met with a group earlier this week that was talking about hybrid warfare and what that means and how the DoD responds to it. And then of course, in the midst of that, we've fought two real wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still have over 100,000 troops deployed there. They're going to be coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan in some sort of timeframe over the course of the next few years. What should the new strategy be? How do we put that together? And then against that one specific aspect of that, and that is the rise of the, I'm sorry, I get the A2, the area denial access, anti-access area denial. I knew I was going to mess up that part. And what that basically means is relatively small players going all of a sudden inflict a great deal of pain on a large power. And what does that mean in terms of how you change your strategy? If the development of ballistic missiles gets to the point where they can threaten us relatively easy, cyber attacks can threaten us relatively easily, IEDs, small cheap things can hit us. How does that affect our ability to project power? So those three things are hanging over everything that the Department of Defense is doing. But Asia is incredibly important to where we're headed. It is the number one biggest growing economic power in the world between China and India, South Korea, smaller countries in terms of economies like Vietnam, obviously Singapore is a major power, the Philippines is growing. This is an area where we want to be actively involved. It is incredibly important to our policy. And put simply, our policy needs to be to maintain a strong presence in Asia. We want the countries in Asia to believe that the United States is going to stay there and be an active participant in regional affairs. We need to do that. Now that's easy to say. The tough part, what I've been developing over the course of the last few weeks is, is what does that mean? How do you remain present in Asia? And how do you balance a bunch of different interests there? And at the top of the lists of the difficulty of balancing, obviously is China. I've felt for some time that going forward next 50, 60 years, nothing will be more important to global stability, peace and prosperity than the relationship between China and the United States. And that's easy to say and that's somewhat obvious. But then what do you mean? What are the policies that are going to make that relationship more positive instead of less? And in that regard, China presents some very significant challenges. Now, I'll start with the good news. And this is sort of where my initial orientation was when I first got to Congress. By and large, I believe that all people can get along. I'm a very reasonable person. And I look at interests and say, well, we can balance those and figure out a way to make it work. I'm a huge believer in, well, in family and personal life and everything, keep the peace shouldn't be that hard, and everybody benefits from it. And when you look at China, you can certainly see things that we have in common. China has one overarching goal. They've got 1.4 billion people to feed. And they recognize that that is a restless population that they have to take care of. And to do that, they have to grow and succeed economically. And they can't grow and succeed economically if they engage in conflicts with the region. So therefore, there's an incredibly huge incentive for them to get along, not just with us, but with everybody in the region to keep the peace and not push forward things that are going to create conflict in any way. And you can look at that and go, okay, we're good. We've sort of, you know, we've got mutually assured economic destruction, if you will, and we will find a way to get along. But unfortunately, as someone pointed out to me during the course of this discussion, you know, there was another time in our history when a group of nations had, you know, apparently intertwined economic interests that would make it absolutely insane for them ever to go into conflict. And that was right before World War One. So bottom line is things happen. There are different interests and certainly China has an interest in the South China Sea. They have an obvious concern about Taiwan. They have a whole bunch of interests there that could lead us to make mistakes and miscalculations on both sides that could lead to conflict. So it's not as simple as saying China's economy is inexorably intertwined with ours. So therefore, we have nothing to worry about, and we have a peaceful future to look forward to. And then, of course, there are internal dynamics in China, which are difficult. While China is rising and prospering, they have many, many challenges. One of the biggest of which is 1.4 billion people, many of whom are still living in poverty, and a great many of whom are starting to get restless as they see significant portions of the country begin to prosper. They want a part of that. And if they don't have it, they're going to have a hard time supporting the regime. They have huge environmental concerns. The one child policy is now leading to a coming population challenge. So there are reasons for unrest. And of course, as every nation that I've ever been aware of, nationalism is one of the ways that you try to control unrest. You make people believe in the country, believe in a greater China, or in the case of the United States, and the greatness and the exceptionalism of the United States. Whatever it is, you try to convince the people about the importance of nationalism. And that can bring unity. But when you're talking about nationalism, as China is in terms of the one China policy, various countries, it can lead the country and the people to feel like, yes, you're right, we do have to be a greater power, and that can lead to bad policy decisions. So there is cause for concern. We have to try and balance that. And the other big thing that we have to try and balance, and this was my greatest challenge in trying to figure out how to put this, is when you say that the United States needs to be present in Asia, you have to balance two very conflicting ideas there. One is, in being present with Asia, we want to work with China. We want China to succeed. And that has to be a very important point that we emphasize over and over again. It is in our best interests for China to be successful. We don't want a great deal of instability there that leads them to have to look to nationalism in order to unite the country. We want them to be prosperous. At the same time, the other thing that being present in Asia means is all of the other countries in Asia. And we have a lot of friends in that region. And one of the biggest reasons that people want us there is as an effective counterbalance to China. So that China will not think that it can throw its weight around, whether you're talking about the South China Sea in terms of some of the conflicts with Vietnam or with Taiwan or with Japan, so that they will see a counterbalancing power. But how do you present yourself as a counterbalancing power and a friend? How do you look at the buildup of the Chinese military and say, okay, well, we have to respond to it. You know, if they're building this, we have to build that. Pretty soon, you're stepping down the road of an arms race, which doesn't lead to friendship. How do you balance that? How do you send that message to China? We're your friend. We think everything's going to be okay, but be very, very careful because if you go too far, we're also there to protect the interests of the other nations in the region. You really have to try and strike that balance. Well, the first thing that I think that we should do and try and strike that balance, I like to put it, is get the easy things right. In other words, the basic diplomacy, the basic relationship building, and I think of this in my own political career, as someone once said to me that, you know, this job would be great if we never had to vote. You know, it'd be the easiest thing in the world to represent constituencies. It's just then you, and there are those times when, as the cliche goes, some of my friends are on this side and some of my friends are on that side and I'm with my friends, but you got to go in and vote. And that's tough and someone's going to be upset about it. So that part you do your best with. But before all of that, as a politician, if you're building a relationship, they're very easy things to do. Listen to people. Respond to their concerns. Get out there. Make sure that they see that you're representing them. You know, when they call the office, be receptive. You know, don't push them away even if you disagree with them. That's just, you know, basic diplomacy. And we can do that in a number of different areas in Asia with a number of different partners. There are an enormous number of countries in Asia that we have a positive relationship with and we can continue to build on that. I think one of the most important things, obviously, is economics. And one of the core of economics is trade. Passing the Korea Free Trade Agreement is enormously important, not just to our relationship with Korea, but to everything we're talking about today in terms of maintaining that belief in Asia that America will be a factor, that they will be a presence there. It is already taken longer than it should. I've come to describing the Korean ambassador as the most patient man in the world. But it looks like we may get there. And then after that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is being talked about and there are other opportunities. Once upon a time we were negotiating a free trade agreement with Thailand that fell apart. There are a lot of different countries there that we can improve our trading relationship, build a better business relationship, and build stronger ties. I also think that immigration is an underrated and important policy. To the extent that we have people from Asian countries coming into the U.S. in my own district, I have enormous populations of just about every country in the world, it seems, but certainly in Asia. Koreans, Vietnamese, all across there, that connection between two countries helps give you more reasons to get along and not be in conflict. And our immigration policy right now, frankly, isn't very open, is not open as it used to be. Even the simple matter of getting a short-term work visa has become very difficult. And then also on the diplomatic side, being present goes the other way as well. It is enormously important to Asian countries that the top leaders of the United States spend time there. President, Secretary of State, leading members of Congress that we go there and once again remind them that this region is very, very important to us. And I think that policy will help. Shifting over the DOD side, I think the mill-to-mill relationships that we have with a lot of countries are very important. The presence of U.S. troops in Asia right now is an incredibly positive force in terms of continuing to drive home that point that the U.S. will be a factor in the region. Certainly our largest presences in Korea, Japan and Guam are important, but even smaller mill-to-mill relationships, I was speaking with the Philippine Ambassador before earlier this morning, I did a trip to the Philippines a few years back to visit some of our special operations forces who are over there doing training operations to help deal with the terrorism problem in the Philippines. We have small presences like that in a lot of different places, mill-to-mill relationships with Thailand. So we can build on those relationships to go forward. I also feel that India is a critical, critical piece of this, building up a stronger relationship with India, because there are many things in Asia that are hard and difficult. I think of North Korea. One of the things I was thinking about when I was giving the speeches, but you've got to say something about North Korea if you're talking about Asia. But I don't have any easy answer to that one. We definitely are dealing with a country that is unpredictable, unstable and armed with nuclear weapons. If anyone here has an easy answer for how we deal with that, please don't keep it to yourself. We need to have that conversation. We need to work to negotiate going forward to try to make sure that we can contain it. But the more friends we have in the region, the more important it is. Overall, what this is all about is I believe it does lead us to greater stability. It leads China to see us as that counter balancing presence. And more importantly, all of the other nations that are dealing with China can have some confidence that they have somebody else to work with. And that helps China go down the legal road of resolving whatever disputes they may have, not thinking that they are big enough and strong enough and nobody is there to stop them so they may as well just bowl over. Because keep in mind it's a relatively new thing for China to be such a growing power. And when you're trying to figure out how to throw your weight around, you can occasionally make mistakes. It's good to have the U.S. there with a very positive relationship with all of the nations in that region. I should also mention that Australia and New Zealand are two very, very important partners in the region that we need to continue to work with. And if we do that, I think we can move towards the direction that all of these conflicts that you're very familiar with can be resolved in a peaceful way instead of us having to wonder how far China is going to push it and whether or not we're going to go forward. And of course, one of the big conflicts in dealing with that is in dealing with Taiwan. I think it is very, very important that again, we build relationships going forward. And I think very positive things have happened. The last time I was in Asia was actually in 2002 and there was considerable concern about that time about how Taiwan and China were going to get along. And I think both nations have made very positive steps. The economic trade relationship between the two has improved dramatically. When I was there, you couldn't even fly directly from mainland China to Taiwan. We had to go through Hong Kong and then now they have flights. They are building that relationship. And that's the key. Do not force the issue on trying to resolve what Taiwan's long-term future is and how it's going to relate to China. Build up the ties. Make the connections so that it's more likely that that is resolved peacefully. And I believe that to be in China's best interest and in Taiwan's best interest. And I think they're moving in that direction. The United States needs to facilitate that. But we can't walk away from Taiwan. It's an incredibly important relationship. And we need to make sure that everyone in the region knows that it's an important relationship. Which brings us to sort of what the overall DOD posture should be. When we're trying to be present in Asia, I'll close with two broad areas of points. The first thing is, as I've said at the outset and as everyone here understands, Asia is incredibly important to our policy going forward. And to be present in Asia is not inexpensive. Those troops that I just mentioned cost a fair amount of money. Having an aircraft carrier battle group located over there costs a fair amount of money. Paying attention to that region does cost money. So we're going to have to make choices. And that's what I would really emphasize is to make those choices there, we have to make other choices in another place. And I'll explain what I mean by that. Everyone when they're trying to set priorities, I think does it wrong. When they're trying to set priorities, they talk about what their top priorities are. And there's usually a long list of them. But if you're going to set priorities, it is even more important to decide what you're not going to do. Where you're going to save money so that you can actually support your top priorities. And that has implications both in the broader budget debate and then also within DOD. As everyone knows, we have been very cent-com focused for understandable reasons in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we're going to have to make some shifts in that. And look around the world and say our mill to mill relationships in Asia are more important than mill to mill relationships in some other places. Therefore, we're going to need to emphasize that. But then on the broader budget question, this brings us back to the senator's comments that John referenced earlier. If we're going to deal with our budget deficit without crushing defense and all other non-entitlement spending, then we're going to have to address the other two big pots in play here. Revenue and entitlement spending. And as long as Congress in this country continues to insist that we can't touch entitlement spending and we can't raise revenue, then guess what? That 38% of the budget, which over half of which is defense, is the last thing standing. That's what happened in the debt ceiling agreement that came down. The non-entitlement portion of the budget got devastated. Now, we appointed this super committee that's supposed to fix that. We didn't have a lot of luck in July. I'm not sure how things are going to change between now and Thanksgiving, but they need to. And in order to get there, in order to make sure that we're not forced to make horrible choices in the Department of Defense, and by the way there's other non-entitlement spending that I care about as well, infrastructure, education to name just a couple investments and innovation. If that stuff's not going to get devastated, we're going to have to step up to the plate on the entitlement side of the equation and on the revenue side of the equation. And we had a hearing yesterday with some former chairmen to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Representative Cooper and I made this point and both of us making this point, the Joint Chiefs demerred and said, hey, not our area. Okay, we're not interested in revenue and we're talking about defense. But the point is, if you don't build the political support to make those changes and that's the reason those changes haven't been made, 80% of the country doesn't want to touch entitlements, 70% of the country doesn't want to raise taxes. Don't imagine that it's just because Congress is quote unquote dysfunctional. It's because we have not built the political support to confront the challenges and choices that we have and not confronting those choices leaves defense and all other non-entitlement spending as the last person in line at a buffet that's running out of food. So if you care about those issues, if you care about defense, you've got to start caring about those other things that are going to help us get the deficit under control. And lastly is what the DOD strategy should be. Assuming that we win that first argument and we don't wind up getting cut by $100 billion a year and having to make what are now unimaginable choices, we're still going to have to make some choices about how to confront this problem. And there is a great deal of concern about that area denial anti-access, the way around anti-access aerial denial problem over at the Pentagon. And I picked up a little pamphlet the other day, the Air Sea Battle idea, which is supposed to confront this issue. And I was optimistic because it was entitled Air Sea Battle, which led me to believe that there was a thing called Air Sea Battle and there was in fact a plan based on that. Turns out not to be the case, actually. What the pamphlet said was it's a big, huge problem that countries like Iran and China are developing missile technology that can threaten our forward operating bases and can threaten aircraft carrier battle groups. That it is an enormous problem and we really have to try to figure out something to do about it. Then you turn the page and it goes the end. I'm like, you're supposed to tell us. What? The point is, we don't know for sure. But this is a major, major strategic question and I would suggest just one basic parameter in dealing with it. And this gets back to the issue of how do we treat China like a friend that we want to succeed and then try to convince every other nation in the region that we are going to be a countervailing force to them. How do you strike that balance? One way to go on this is to say, well, if they're building up missile technology, if they're building up technology that's going to threaten our forces, then we've got to ramp it up. We have got to get to the point where we can credibly go to China and say, look, if we go toe to toe with you over the course of a two, three, four, five year war, we're going to win and we're going to win because we've got you utterly and completely dominated. As you can tell by my tone, I don't think that's the best approach because that really pushes you into the Cold War arms race way of looking at things and makes all the other stuff that I've talked about earlier that much more difficult because then you're in a military competition. I always remember the bumper sticker that when I first met my future wife, I saw her parents at the bumper sticker and said, you cannot simultaneously prepare for and prevent war, Einstein. And I looked at it and said, yes, you can. And it's true, you can. But it's a very, very delicate and difficult thing to do. And if we look at it from the standpoint of, oh, my goodness, China's building an aircraft carrier. Therefore, we have to build all this stuff. Or China's building this missile technology. Therefore, we have to come up with some way to completely defeat it. We're going to get into an arms race. The number one, I don't think ultimately we can get to the point. I mean, weaponry has simply advanced to a level that makes it difficult to be guaranteed that you're going to stop another power from being able to inflict pain on you. But what we can do is we are not going to have what we had before, which was basically completely unchecked access. Back in 1996, when there was a problem in the Taiwan Strait, we sent two aircraft carrier battle groups in there. Wasn't anything China could do about it. And we said, you know, basically didn't say anything. We just sent them in and it was understood. Now we're worried about what can happen to that. What happens if they decide that they are going to attack us? And it wouldn't be a wise choice, but sometimes people don't make wise choices in situations. But the one thing that we can make absolutely clear with our military is no matter what happens, if they step over a line and if they actually do that kind of an attack, we need to make sure that our military is strong enough and it's clear that we're strong enough to inflict a significant amount of pain in return. Not necessarily defeat them over a long, long period of time, but that we will have the weaponry to defend ourselves and also to make the cost of such action way, way too high. And the good news about that is that's relatively easy. We do have that capability in that technology. So when we're looking at those weapons systems, I don't think we should try to get in an arms race. We should try to be strong enough to defend our interests and the interests of other nations in the region. And I think we can make that work. This is an incredibly important region of the world. It's the number one most important thing is to make sure our policy makers understand that. Whether you're talking about trade, diplomacy, immigration, I also neglected to mention development, which I think is critically important. One of the things that has really improved our standing in that part of the world is our response to natural disasters, whether it's the tsunami and earthquake in Japan, the tsunami in Indonesia and Thailand, the earthquakes in Pakistan, our ability to respond and be helpful has been noticed all across. I think it's the only time, for instance, that our public opinion in Pakistan of the United States actually went up was when we were helping during the course of the earthquakes. So that's an important part of it as well. We can do all of that, but I think we also have to be aware that this is a complex set of issues. I have not even begun to scratch the surface of all the issues that come into play when you're trying to figure out how to make sure that we have the right policy in Asia. But number one, understand how important it is to our interests. These are some of the biggest economies in the world, certainly the fastest growing economies in the world, and what our presence has meant simply is stability. Not just for us, by the way. It's, we're underappreciated, as is often the case, for the fact that that stability that we've brought, the fact that not just the United States can go through the critical shipping lanes in the Strait of Balak and the Strait of Hormuz, but that everybody can, because of the stability that we help bring to the region, is a very, very positive thing. We can't walk away from that, and if we're not gonna walk away from that, we're gonna have to make some hard budget choices to make sure that we're in an economic position to not walk away from that. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you, and I look forward to answering your questions. Thank you. Congressman Smith, thank you. Very thoughtful, very comprehensive discussion, and so many of the questions that I was anticipating, you frankly answered in your speech, but let me just kick it off, and colleagues, I want all of you to feel free to ask questions. We'll have people that'll walk around with microphones, just give me a signal. I'm just simply gonna cue them. I'm kind of an early bird. Okay, I've got first one registered, and so we'll take it from there. Let me, but let me just ask the first question, if I may, one of the, you didn't say anything about nuclear weapons, which I think is right. Unfortunately, this is a theater that we never turned into a dangerous nuclear theater. We in the Russians kind of collectively went crazy and built up massive inventories that we're now trying to get rid of. China always had a fairly reasonable and measured view of the role of nuclear weapons, but you have a feeling the whole world is kind of very uneasy now, and of course with North Korea in this posture. Obviously, we don't want to concede that North Korea is a nuclear power, but we keep slipping year to year with it having nuclear weapons. Do you, I don't have a, I'm not driving to a point, I'm trying to ask, how do you think about this? What do you, how should this be featured in our thinking in Asia? I, it's very difficult. I mean, the short answer is, you know, non-proliferation is a good policy. It's recent for that. You don't want any more countries to have nuclear weapons as absolutely necessary because it leads to no end of dangerous situations. Now, you know, we've managed to stop some, you know, pretty strong economies like Japan and South Korea, for instance, from going down that route because we were their guarantor of their protection. Now, you know, you don't want to be explicit about these things, and that's one of the problems with the lines that I had in my head that I didn't use in my speech was when we're talking about, you know, how do you balance with China? How do you make sure you're strong enough to stand up to them? But you're pointing out that you're a friend. Is it, you know, strategic ambiguity is an important part of our policy. You know, whether you're talking about, you know, relationship with Taiwan, whether you're talking about how we're going to confront China militarily. In fact, that was the joke I came up with earlier this week was, you know, I'm going to say that because of how complex it is with China, strategic ambiguity is, you know, the single most important point we need to play in order to maintain that, I'm going to say nothing. And I look forward to not answering your questions. But where nuclear is concerned, I think it is a huge concern. Now the obvious answer to this is we have to do something to contain North Korea's nuclear weapons. And that's great, but as I mentioned earlier, I have yet to see what can do that. I mean, what could do that is if China decided, I mean, if China decided tomorrow, number one most important thing, North Korea cannot move this forward, they have the leverage points to do that, but they have a different calculation and haven't made that decision. So absent that, I think we have to continue to work with our partners and our allies in the region to make sure that they know that we are a guarantor of their safety. And if we don't, and that's again, gets back to the whole we have to be present, and in little things matter, you know, if we don't pass the Korea Free Trade Agreement, if we were to come out with some new defense policy that says we're going to cut in half the number of troops that we have in Asia, if there's any sort of sign out there that we're backing away, then one of the consequences is, you know, some of the countries in the region who feel threatened by North Korea or to a lesser extent by China, may we look at the nuclear question and we could walk our way back into an arms race. So making sure that we guarantee the safety of the region is one way to stop proliferation. Thank you. Our first question is right here in the back up. We have microphones behind you. Please stand up, identify who you are and questions only. Lectures, I'm going to shut you down. Okay, thank you. This is Lalit Jha from Press Trust of India. Can you give us a sense of what kind of relationship you'd like to have with India and where is India placed in a scheme of things? I think India is enormously important and I'd like to have a better, you know, more positive relationship. I think we have a positive relationship. I don't think we do as much with India as we should. Diplomatically, mill to mill in a variety of different ways. I think there are enormous opportunities for us to build a stronger relationship with India. Now, India has not been as active a regional power as China. They haven't been regional global at this point. I mean, China is everywhere, Latin America, Africa. You know, India, while they've grown significantly economically, they've kept it more internal. I still think they're going to be a major, incredibly important player. You know, largest democracy in the world. You know, we have a lot in common and I think we need to work hard to build that relationship. There's been hiccups through the years. Certainly the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan, you know, has given pause on occasion but we have so much in common, so many opportunities to work together. I think we need to really focus more on India. Look for ways. You know, I thought, you know, the nuclear agreement that we reached, there was a whole lot of criticism of that. Lost in that was the importance of what I just said about the relationship with India. This was a positive way to work with them to show some progress, you know, and I don't think we handle that as well as we should. I think we have to do a better job of building up a stronger relationship with India. They're going to be an incredibly powerful regional and global player for a long time to come. Okay, my first question, the Philippine ambassador back here and then I'll come down to you, ma'am. Then I go to Ernie, then I go back to you in the blue shirt and then I'll come down here. Q and people up here. We have a microphone coming right here, sir. Thank you, Mr. Congerson, for that very enlightening speech that you gave us. In the recent US-China strategic dialogue, China made it clear that they would like the US to be out of the, not to be involved in any of these discussions on the disputes in the South China Sea, but the Asian countries like Philippines, Vietnam, would like the US to continue to be involved to play a countervailing force to ensure the peace stability of the region and to ensure freedom of navigation. But can the US still maintain its friendly relations with China and still ignore the demands of China, not to be involved in these discussions? The Chinese want the countries to negotiate on a bilateral basis, Philippines, Vietnam. We don't think we can negotiate on a bilateral. We want the multilateral negotiations with China. Obviously, we can't negotiate between China and Philippines or China and Vietnam. It's like a David and Goliath type of negotiation. So how do you- Of course, David did wind up winning that particular tussle. I'm sorry? I said David did wind up winning that particular tussle. Yeah. But I take your point. So I was wondering, how can the US in fact play that countervailing force when China saying, do not get involved in the South China issues? Well, having a positive relationship with another country or another person for that matter doesn't mean that you always do what they want. And I think we need to make it clear that free access to the South China Sea is a global issue. It is not something that's simply left up to the countries that are in that region. And therefore, the United States has a legitimate role to play in participating in those discussions. And I think we need to make that clear. And if we want to say, look, if you want to find a peaceful way to work this out that respects the rights of the nations around you, like Vietnam and the Philippines, great. But if there's a conflict here, it's a conflict that we have a responsibility and a right to be involved in. And so I don't think we should back away from that particular concern. As I said, with China, there's going to be some things we agree on, some things we disagree on. That's natural. Right down here in the front, red dress, please. Microphone's coming. Please identify yourself. Thank you, sir, for the enlightening speech. I have a question. My name is Nadia Chow from Liberty Time, Taiwan. I think it's obviously that even though the US has committed to the Taiwan Relations Act, but it's so obvious that the armed cells to Taiwan become such challenging issues with the rising of China. And we saw that in the past few years, that recently, especially like the F-16 CD cells, it's become such a controversial burden, even a burden for the administration to make a decision. I wonder that whether the rising of China current arms sales policy can continue? And if not, can US still maintain credible deterrence in Taiwan Strait to keep the balance? Thank you. Thank you. That's one of the things that I studied in the lead-up to this speech and did not address, because there is no easy answer to that question. And I don't have the exact right way to balance this. We certainly have to have a credible threat to make sure that China does not feel like they can take military action against Taiwan. Military action is Taiwan. It's something we have to try to prevent. There's a variety of different ways to prevent it. As I said earlier, I think the Taiwanese government has done a great job of building stronger ties and closer relationships with China in a way that can resolve their differences peacefully. But there has to be some sort of credible threat against that. I think we've done a limited amount of arms sales to Taiwan. I think it's important that we continue to do that. On the specific questions of the F-16s, my personal position is I think that's a sale we should make. Now, there are others who disagree with that, others who go in different directions. And yes, China will not be happy about it, but I think it continues to keep us in that strategic ambiguity, that balanced point between those very difficult positions. I think it's the right thing to do, but it is going to be difficult going forward. And again, I will simply say, greater integration in other ways and making sure that China knows how important stability in that region is to them and how any hostile action towards Taiwan would just completely destroy that stability and jeopardize the Chinese economy and jeopardize their ability to continue to provide for their people. I think that's the most important point to make. Ernie Bauer? Thank you very much. I'm Ernie Bauer with CSIS. I run the Southeast Asia program here. And first of all, Congressman, I wanted to say I think our friends and partners in Asia would be much assured if other members of Congress could like you talk like that without notes. I was pretty amazing speech. Thank you very much for that. I wanted to ask you about trade policy. You've been very active on trade and a leader on the Hill. I wondered what you heard last night from the president. And I noted that our friends in the East Asia summit, which President Obama will attend for the first time this November in Indonesia, have been in town. It's an outstanding thing to do, by the way. That's really part of showing the commitment. They've been in town asking for us to talk about economics and trade to balance the security and political agenda in the EAS. And I wondered if you thought about that and what your views are. Thank you. Well, first of all, I thought it was very encouraging that the president included trade in his speech last night. As any member of the Democratic Party will tell you, that's no easy thing to do because it's a very controversial issue within our party. So in his big economic speech, the fact that he specifically said we need to pass these trade agreements, I think is a positive step in the right direction. And I think there's just so many opportunities in Asia, certainly the Korea Free Trade Agreement. But I think the Trans-Pacific Partnership is an enormous opportunity. Now, it's a big challenge. I mean, there's a whole lot of countries that want to get involved. How do you actually make it happen? It's going to be difficult. But if we could do that, if we could sort of get out of this, the FDAs are fine, but the one off, one country, another country. If you bring in seven, eight countries, then you're starting to get to real scale and scope and make progress. I think it's a great opportunity. The remaining challenge here, and I'm not gonna, I spend a lot of time talking about trade policy. And I'm not gonna give you my big huge trade policy speech here. But we have made considerable progress in our trade policy, and yet we still have a country that is deeply distrustful of it. I think what has happened is as global competition has increased and made it more difficult for America that was once the completely dominant economy. My trade speech always starts off by pointing out that in 1948, I believe the correct statistic is we were responsible for 90% of the world's manufacturing. I mean, when you're in that dominant position, it's all good. I mean, there's just no end to things you can do. Now, I like to point out to people that if you look at that and go, well, that's when we had the right policy. No, that's because World War II, something of a historical accident, we wound up sort of the last man standing. All the other industrial powers were reduced to rubble. And we enjoyed that advantage. And then global competition kept up. First Europe, then Japan, South Korea, Taiwan. So it became more difficult, but that's not because of trade policy. That's because of global competition. But unfortunately, the challenges and the very real challenges, and from a union family, blue collar father, and I understand those things, they've been lumped on to trade. That's what's made it so difficult. Even something as obvious as the career free trade agreement becomes very difficult to accomplish. We have to somehow, some way, convince the American people that the global economy has to be dealt with in a variety of different ways, but it is not the fault of trade agreements that we face that competition. If we could do that, if we could get that greater political support, there is an endless array of opportunities in Asia for us to improve our trade relationships. And keep in mind, these people are not standing still. And they are throughout Asia, they're cutting trade agreements with each other, cutting trade agreements with Europe, they're cutting trade agreements with Latin America. We are losing that sort of initial advantage that we always used to have because we're not engaging. So I think we need to do that. I was pleased to hear what the president said. Okay, third table back, blue shirt, blue stripe tie. Stand up so we can give you the microphone. I'm sorry I don't know you, and that's why I had to describe you. That's fine. My name's Anthony Smith. I'm the political counselor at the New Zealand Embassy. And congressman, thank you for your remarks this morning. I want to ask a question that's very similar to Ernie's, or perhaps tackling this from a slightly different angle. Your presentation has been very much focused on elements of hard power in the Asia Pacific. And I'd like to ask you about multilateralism more broadly, institutions like ASEAN Regional Forum, EAS. First of all, how important do you think those things are? And secondly, what sort of deliverables do you think the United States should be seeking from those sorts of organizations? Well first of all, I didn't want to say that I believe soft power is very important. And I did talk a lot about, I believe trade, diplomacy, all of that, development assistance is a variety of different ways to be helpful in the region. Yes, I think multilateral organizations are incredibly important. One of the biggest reasons they're important is you need to maintain the idea that the United States is a Pacific Asian power. Now, we're a little ways away geographically, but there is no question that we have a direct interest and a direct tie to what goes on in Asia. And the degree to which we participate in multilateral groups over there, that drives home that point, that keeps us present. As far as what can be accomplished by these groups, I think we should have fairly large ambitions that these are the places where we should resolve issues like the South China Sea, like the drilling rights if there's discoveries in different places in the ocean and it's not clear which boundary side it's on. Like North Korea, I really think we should look at those multilateral institutions as a place to resolve those differences and inaggressively push them as being very important. Down here, George Middleton. Right over here. Sure, thank you for an excellent presentation and also thank you for everything you've done for special operations. I know for Admiral Olson and General Brown. In June, Dr. Hamery moderated a panel at their annual session and it had the former chief of staff of the Air Force, General Fogelman, David Chu, and Sean O'Keefe. And one of their biggest concerns, they said when we've had these drawdowns in the past, there's been a floor out there. We can say, okay, there's been a floor of requirements. It was global war with the Soviets, we had to be able to do that. Then we went to bottom-up review and base case and they're concerned, correct me if I'm wrong, Dr. Hamery, they said, there's no floor out there. You've talked about strategy, I guess the secretary Gates had said that there was supposed to be a strategy that was gonna be delivered this fall. Now I understand it's gonna be delayed until next year. Without that strategy, without knowing the floor is going to be out there, how are you all going to reconcile priorities or effects that need to be achieved? Yeah, there's an outstanding point and that was one of the sort of, what I led with in terms of all DOD policy has those three issues and one of them is exactly that. What is the strategy going forward? I think there's a fairly widespread agreement that we need a new one. There's not a widespread agreement on exactly what that looks like and what the choices are contained. Now the president has put in place a major strategic review that Secretary Panetta is focusing on, that our entire national security apparatus is focusing on and we're going, it's not quite zero based budgeting but it's going back to first principles and saying what should our requirements be? Because one of the things that I've learned about the way the Pentagon and the military industrial complex works is the requirements are the key. And once you toss that snowball at the top of the hill it creates no end to problems and we have all these requirements built in. The most impressive chart that I've ever seen in my life was the Pentagon budget planning chart that they showed me. You know, I was like, hey, really? Wow. And the scary thing about it is every single one of those little bubbles and little words, they work along that. That's what they do. And once those requirements get put in place, you know, you wind up funding them. I mean, the expeditionary fighting field calls a great example of it. You know, why did we so stubbornly go down a road that seemed problematic, shall we say? Well, because it was in the requirements. You know, we have to have this and if we don't have this there's gonna be some member of Congress who's gonna stand up and say, you're making our, you're threatening our national security because you're not meeting our requirements. And there they are. What do they mean? Well, who the hell knows? But they're in that chart and we're not meeting them. So we have to go back to first principles and figure out what those requirements are. Now, the easiest way to think about it is the great strength of America is the projection of power. That is what we've done since World War II. Now, there's a debate. I think, I can't remember the guy's name but someone wrote an article in the Atlantic six months a year ago basically saying the projection of power has been a complete waste of time and hasn't done anything for us and it's cost us an enormous amount of money. I think he's wrong about that and I think he's demonstratively wrong about that. I mean, just a couple of examples. You know, where would the Middle East be if we couldn't, you know, if we hadn't been able to stop Saddam Hussein at Kuwait. There's also like to point out if it wasn't for the American projection of power right now we wouldn't have a problem with North Korea. We'd have a problem with Korea. So there have been in thousands of other ways we have guaranteed stability in a more prosperous world because of that projection of power. But if you start ramping the budget down, are you able to continue to do the forward bases? Are you able to have the carrier battle groups? And then at the same time, you have the other side of that and that is the counter terrorism effort. The direct effort to confront al-Qaeda and other forms of militant Islamists and that's where I've done a lot of it. We've really ramped up our capabilities there. But what are the requirements? Do we need, you know, how many ever different types of, sorry, I can't think of them, predators. This might bring my staff. I have to have these occasional quotes come up. You know, do we need all those different platforms? We don't have that set of requirements. What we have, well, it's not true. Right now we have requirements that add up to about at least twice as much of the money that we're gonna actually have. So we need to reset the requirements and my hope is that we will do that strategically in keeping with the group here instead of, you know, just sort of, well, we can only fund half of them. This one got here first, so we'll fund that one. We can cut this one more easily because of some obscure legend. I'd like to see it be done strategically but it's not gonna be done strategically if we stand up and say, you know what, we've looked at it, we have to do everything. We can't, we gotta make choices. Okay, I've gotta make choices. Unfortunately, we've got five minutes left. I've already had three people. I can't take any more requests. I'm gonna take this and you're all gonna ask your question first and then I'm gonna let the congressman pick if he wants to answer it or ignore you, start with you. Short questions, please. And I'll give a quicker answer there, sorry about that. John Zan with CTI TV of Taiwan. This is a follow up to an earlier question. Are you and your colleagues being consulted on the F-16 CD sales to Taiwan? Is it still on the table or off the table already? How would the US Congress react? Should the administration decide not to sell the F-16 sales, it would cost US anything. You may make a few bucks, you know. We got the question. Okay, let me get right back here. Second question's right, the second table back. Didn't you have one? Yeah, right you, yep. Okay, you get to answer that question, they just called a vote. So I'm sorry, I apologize. Really? Yeah, so I'm sorry, we just had a roll call vote, so. Okay, there's been some consultation with Congress, we do not know what the administration's gonna do. If the administration knows what it's gonna do, they have not yet told us. If they were to decide not to make the sale, there would be some kind of protest from Congress. You've already had a number of members of Congress, Mr. Berman, couple senators who have written letters expressing support for the sale, so if it didn't happen, you would have a little bit of a kerfluffle, if you will, in Congress. What we could do about it, I don't know. But I think they would be concerned. I'm sorry to have to cut short. He's got to vote, let's thank him with his applause as he's walking out the door. Thank you very much.