 The debrief is a production of faculty at the National Security Affairs Department at the U.S. Naval War College. The views presented here are those of the speakers, and do not represent the positions of the Department of Defense or any of its components. Welcome to the debrief, where we deconstruct defense, diplomacy, and developments in national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. I'm your co-host, Theo Malinopoulos. This week, Nick Vozdev and I hosted a conversation with the Honorable Rahm Emanuel, the current U.S. Ambassador to Japan. Ambassador Emanuel has had a distinguished career in public service. He served as a senior advisor to President Clinton and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for three terms to represent Illinois' fifth district. In 2009, President Barack Obama selected Ambassador Emanuel to serve as his first White House Chief of Staff. In 2011, Ambassador Emanuel was elected as the 55th Mayor of Chicago, a city he led for eight years across two terms until 2019. During our conversation, Nick and I spoke with Ambassador Emanuel about U.S.-Japan relations and his career in public service before a live audience at the Naval War College in February 2024. Stand by. Attention on deck. Good afternoon, Newport. All right. My name is Walter Braunohler. I'm one of the State Department's representatives here at the Naval War College. And you know, it's not every day that we get to have someone here visiting us who has kind of hit every major source of political power in the United States. I teach in the National Security Affairs Department and we have, you know, we talk a lot about the White House, we talk a lot about the State Department, we talk a lot about Congress, we talk a lot about, you know, our centers of power and cities and everything else. And so today, it is a great honor to introduce Ambassador, Congressman, Mayor, Chief of Staff, the Honorable Rahm Emanuel who we have today as our guests this afternoon speaking to all of us. So without any further introduction, join me in welcoming Ambassador Emanuel. You left out one title, Father, most important title. The reason I'm here is actually my middle one is going to graduate from school here and when she comes in, I really would, as a father, would prefer if you couldn't bear us the crap out of her. She's coming in also with her younger sister. But let me do a couple things and then obviously we'll go, or as Henry Kissinger said, does anybody have questions for my answers? And we can kind of go, he was serious, I'm joking. So here's, we're at a critical time, I think, in the Indo-Pacific and I do four or five kind of, this is mainly to spark conversation, et cetera, but I'll start with the U.S.-Japan relationship go out to the region and where we are and where I think the politics and the strategy or the kind of leverage exist in the relationship. I think if you look at the last 40 years, you would have described, if you had a look at a label, the U.S.-Japan relationship is alliance protection. It was really built up as not to do more, but we were a protective Japan. We're now in the transition and transformational moment to alliance projection from alliance protection and Japan has done a series of things that is part of that partnership where they're not only on a bike or draft behind us, but they're coming all alongside and they are a force multiplier on defense, diplomacy and development that adds up to a full, complete deterrence. Couple of manifestations of that. They're the ninth largest defense budget. They're going from 1% to 2% of GDP, doing it in five years and it'll become the third largest defense budget in five years. And one thing I know about Japan by this point, like literally they passed the budget. There was a guy the next day with a backcoat digging for the joint command center. They will execute that five-year plan. And of the five-year plan, it's not an increase in headcount. It's 100% equipment and weapons. Second is they're adopting or acquiring 400 Tomahawk counter-strike capability. They did all that. I appreciate this. Not a single protester on the street. No desire for a constitutional change. The fact is to be able to make that kind of 70-year policy changes. I couldn't even pay three communists to go out and protest it. I mean, the country is ready and doing things. Third kind of a manifestation of this kind of historic change. What is China's entire strategy, a pillar of their strategy? Is Japan, Korea and the United States can never get on the same page. Camp David in August, in the history between Japan and Korea, our own history with the two countries. At Camp David, we had a major strategic move forward that changed that. It was a good day for the United States, good day for our alliance, a really bad day for Japan. I mean, rather for China. Sorry, I saw that face there. I was going to see if you were like, I have not slept for 24 hours. I flew in just literally five hours ago. So if I miss an adjective, you'll know why. Look, in my view, you'll have a lot of theory and application. I do politics. And diplomacy is politics in a double-breasted suit. That's all it is. We have a basic theory in the region. We're a permanent Pacific power and presence, and you can bet long on America. China, where the rising power, they're declining, either get in line or we're going to give you the Philippine treatment. Now, you'll study a lot of theory. That's it. Everything we do, bet long, we're here. We're not going anywhere. Them, we're up. They're down. Get in line. That's it. Now, third, I think, in my own view, if you take the last three and a half years, China has made a huge amount of mistakes in the region. And the administration, I don't say this just as an appointee of the president and a fan of the administration, has made the most of those mistakes moving strategically. One, you have AUKUS with Australia, Great Britain and the United States, major move. Two, you have Japan increasing the defense budget, up to 2% becoming the third largest budget, and acquiring skills and capacities that is a false multiplier. Three, you got Camp David. Four, you got what the Philippines have done in opening up to the United States. Five, you got what India is doing in the region as a partner and a strategic partner. That is a lot of furniture in two and a half years to move politically in one region. Huge amount. Now, I think, and then I'll close on this, trying to be, again, these are big broad stroke ideas and points. Right now, when you look, there's really three, I'll make two closing points. There's really three parts to China. We talk about China monolithically. There are three parts. And you got to think of them as kind of, or the way I like to think of them is kind of circles around Saturn and everwinding. The tightest circle is what I call the calm circle, the relationship between the PRC and the Chinese people. That is the one that they need, the legitimacy, they're most nervous about, they're most insecure about because of the economy, the social unrest that's occurring around the economy and the loss in the Chinese dream and the belief in the Chinese dream. And the PRC's legitimacy is hit on that. The second ring is the neighborhood. That one's calm, that one is conflict. They're having a problem with every country in the region. India, two skirmishes already. Philippines, every day. You just saw at the other point with Taiwan on the island. Five missiles into the Japanese EEZ daily violations in the Senkaku Islands. There is no country in the region they're not having either economic or dynamic challenges with. And then the outer ring where they try to express to the rest of the world the charm China. So calm, conflict, charm. It's not monolithic and our job strategically, politically and communication wise is to drive scenes that create problems between the calm and the conflict. The conflict and the charm and make them choose in that area. The other thing is, and this is not just in the region but I think for all of us who do politics, do economics, do strategic, do military. And I can count higher than three but there are also three C's that I think change the world. In the last three years. COVID, conflict and coercion. And every country in many ways is adapting now and changing to COVID, to conflict and to coercion. You can look at the CHIPS Act in the United States, a reaction to supply chain disruption, economic coercion and what happened post COVID. What's going on with Russia in the war. What Europe's doing, you can look at the, not just the infrastructure bill, you can look at the IRA legislation, Japan's 2% defense. Every one of these pieces is a reaction to the three C's that I think are gonna basically play out over the next 10, 15, 20 years as countries, alliances mutate, evolve, change, transform to adapt to new things and new presumptions of the world immediately. And I'll give one last example and then I will shut up. This is what happens when you get no sleep. Having spent a lot of time on what I call international economic statecraft. There were three things that I think are changing now all related to the conflicts. Used to be on international economics, cost and efficiency were the driving north stars. Today it's sustainability and security. Those are the new, those are the two. Take a look at what Apple's doing, getting out of China, going into India. It's not cost and efficiency. They just don't want to be in a country that's ever gonna be put tariffs on or have political problems. You can see the way people are moving resources there. Second, energy used to be a resource. Now it's a strategic asset or a liability. And I think actually we need to think of our energy capacity as a strategic asset, not just a resource. Third, used to measure things by how much you sold. Now you measure them by how much data you collect. Every major multinational company in the world, Pharmaceutical, Financial Services, Manufacturer, is a data collector that may produce cars, may sell financial products, but they collect data. And those three things have changed international economic and statecraft. It's no longer cost and efficiency. It's no longer energy, just a resource. And it's no longer how much you sell that you measure by. And that's just a reflection, like on strategy, like on military engagement, like on national security, like on diplomacy, COVID conflict and coercion are changing the assumptions the world runs on. And we're in the beginning days of that storm. I want to again thank you for the opportunity to be here to speak. My three kids all ask why you guys are here. They have to listen to this at the dining room table. They can't imagine that anybody would show up to listen to this. So thank you very much. Mr. Ambassador, thank you for that overview. I wanted to go back to the Camp David meeting and help us understand kind of the historic nature of that engagement with President Biden and his counterparts in Japan and South Korea, not only in terms of its significance, but also in terms of its role in our deterrence efforts. We don't often think about meetings and statements as components of deterrence, but you have a more specific view on that. Well, I got two, so when I was chief of staff, I'll tell you one funny story in this whole process. I think it's funny. When I was chief of staff, I had worked in part of convincing President Obama to do a trade deal with Korea. And in fact, when they signed the trade deal, the only city that the president of Korea visited besides DC for the signing was Chicago when I was mayor, as a kind of payback because of my role and really pushing it forward. The prime minister in that other life was the, prime minister of Korea was the Chinese ambassador. So we went to DC, so we met a lot at my, literally negotiating the trade deal at my conference table as chief of staff. Fast forward, prime minister is about to go to Korea about a week out, and I was intimately involved in this, et cetera. I'm walking somewhere, I'm wearing sunglasses as sunny outside, and I'm trying to get the Korean ambassador to Japan on the phone. I'm walking very fast, trying to multitask really poorly, and I hit send to get mobile phone, to get the ambassador from Korea to Japan on the phone. It was the prime minister of Korea. And the Korean ambassador is a very good friend, very formal, the guy, the prime minister who I think I'm now speaking to the ambassador because he says, hey, Ram, how are you? I go. That's really informal for the prime minister. I mean, ambassador, you know? We're talking, you know, he's, and so I kind of pull over to the shade, pull my glass, and I realize I'm on the cell phone with the prime minister of Korea as if I was talking to the ambassador, and it was like one of these moments, et cetera. So there's two things that I think sometimes you, I'm glad you, did I make that clear? Because it was, there's like a 10 second delay between that story and your laughter, so I'm a little worried. I think everyone's just impressed you had the prime minister's contact in your phone to begin with. Now I'm on block. So, about a year out, year and a half out, and there's a couple of things I wanna say that I think are really important sometimes that we don't do well, but we did really well, and it's not gonna be what you think, but. One, I wrote this memo to Kirk Campbell and to Jake and to Wendy Sherman. I said, you know, look, I do politics and everything, and I just think this moment is different than other moments, and we have a unique moment. And I wrote a couple things down. One of is, you know, what's the biggest cultural import into Japan? K-pop. You wanna go to Koreatown in Japan and Tokyo or any other city? Long lines of food. What's the biggest cultural import in Korea? Anime. And I just said, and the second thing, and then here's a point sometimes people miss, but you should know the psychology who you're dealing with. The Korean president's father in the 60s studies in Japan. And he's not, at that point, wasn't well. Dies literally two days before Camp David. And so he has a personal connection, and he's very close, and also if you read his biography, very close to his father. But his 60s, your father studying it, you're a Korean and your father studying in Japan, that's a long ball play. Prime Minister Kishida was the foreign minister who in 2015 signed a historic agreement with Japan and Korea. So both of them had some political pedigree, history, capital in that relationship. And I just said, look, and this memo, I said, I just think that things dynamically are different in the countries, politically are different, and they're at a different point. And I said, you know, worst case we fail, but we shouldn't really kind of look back in history and say, woulda coulda shoulda. It's a horrible thing to do. And basic word was go ahead and spend time on it, but don't get your hopes up. And not bad. And I do think one of the things that, collectively, the White House, the president, the State Department, all of us at the Ambassador Oil, we showed restraint. Rather than have Korea and Japan talk through us, we had them talk to each other. Now going in, one of the strategy tactics that we did was we did about 45, 50 trilateral meetings, heads of state, but really Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Deputy Assistant, Secretaries, etc., all these other titles. But you know, when you have these trilateral meetings, you break out and have bilaterals for lunch or for breakfast or for dinner. And by the 40th time, 50th time, you're developing relationships, friendships, you're developing trust. And then we had them just basically through that process get comfortable. And I think the prime minister knew that President Yoon was a unique leader of Korea at a unique time. And I think the same by President Yoon, I don't know that well as the way with the Prime Minister's interpretation, but saw something in Prime Minister Kishida. And then the last point I would say that I think is very valuable, that can never be lost in this. You know, our allies will do the minimum. But if they trust us and they trust the president, they're gonna go past clearing the bar. They're gonna do something bigger. They have a confidence to stretch themselves. That's where diplomacy, that's where the trust comes in. And I think in the end of the day, in the region, that wasn't a two-yard play. That was a massive move that shifted. And I'll close it. All three countries in the last two years wrote new national security documents. Basically, they're the most complimentary documents, strategic views of the region, that you will see three countries separately. And then one point that I think is really important, sometimes gets lost is, you know, I think we can all agree that you look at Europe right now and you look at the Middle East, kind of dark where violence is the only tool you got. What happened in Camp David? I mean, we got a complicated relationship with Japan, history. Japan has a complicated relationship with Korea. We have a complicated relationship with Korea ourselves. Diplomacy and dialogue beat aggression, coercion, and repression. You look at the Middle East, you look at Europe, you got these massive wars, massive conflicts, histories, revisionist look. And at Camp David, dialogue and diplomacy and the future beat rewriting the past through war. I think it's an unbelievably successful metaphor and contrasting point where the United States stood up for, I think, the right way you wanna operate things. Doesn't mean you don't sometimes have to go to war. But I do think Camp David stands out in a pretty dark time as a kind of a bright, shining light of that moment. Besides my phone call to the Prime Minister when I thought I was there. Mr. Ambassador, I'd like to take some of the points you've raised and maybe ask if you could extend on them further. And starting with, we've had the US-Japan Agreement signed 1951, our bilateral treaty with Korea. As you've said, those were signed in an era of we're offering you protection. Alliances are changing. We are now thinking of them not, as you said, not just simply in this protection mode, but alliances for economic security, health security, and you've mentioned COVID being one of these turning points, technological and energy security. You've also talked about this very momentous shift that took place at Camp David, which is to begin to get our partners in East Asia, not just to talk to us, but to talk to each other. The lattice work, thinking of alliances, not just talking to the Americans or through the Americans, but talking with each other. Where do you think this process is headed in terms of our alliance structure in East Asia, in terms of the evolution? Well, I think two things I would say, and I think you hit on the word, we're going from a hub and spoke to a lattice work. And if that's, I don't know if that's gonna be the perfect architecture, but that's what I think it is. And what's interesting to me, you've got the US Japan, US Japan, Korea, you got the Quad, you got Japan doing certain things, you got the AUKUS, but there's gonna be each of these, I'm gonna be careful because we have a state visit and there's gonna be some things that are gonna come and be soon announced. You got India playing a role that's significant. So you're gonna see major different kind of multilateral processes, politically, militarily, et cetera, that will expand the way we look. Now, I think everybody poorly, and if I get one thing out of this, there's no NATO in Indo-Pacific. It's not geographically, physically, or in any other way, set up for that. But there is a level of multilateralism that's gonna be more dominant. And one of the things that is kind of evolved slowly but is happening in Japan, no military exercise they do today is bilateral with the United States alone. We're just four years ago, 20 years ago, that's all we did. Every, we just finished exercise King Edge. Australia was full in with Japan and the United States. Every exercise is multi-control and multinational and probably double the size of the original type. It was just three years ago in the sense of the head count going into that exercise. So you should see that on the military exercise standpoint. You can see that on the diplomatic effort standpoint. And you can see that playing itself out in other different types of economic relationships. What is now CTPP, but the former TPP. It's all in that type of format and conglomeration. So I don't know if Lattice is the metaphor. I agree with that metaphor. We debated often at the embassy, but we are going from a hub and spoke to a Lattice-like system. And here's, and this, when we have this big debate, there's a presidential going on, you know, and we all say it here. I mean, I hope, I don't, maybe some people disagree with this, but you know, diplomatically, economically, and strategically every one of our allies are a force multiplier. When we came to the March, 2022 vote, condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine, eight out of the 10 ASEAN countries voted with the United States and the West. Four of those eight, including Cambodia, were co-sponsors of the resolution. How did that happen? Japan got on the phone with all the ASEAN countries, foreign ministers. So alliances, they can be difficult. You have a lot of time to manage it, et cetera, everybody has a different interest, everybody has different benchmarks, different equities. It's a force multiplier across a spectrum of areas, and I, if you're gonna deal with the Indo-Pacific, you want allies, and allies add to our deterrence capability, and that's exactly how China sees it. That's not a pop quiz for them. You mentioned the upcoming state visit, and I won't ask you to get forward on the skis on lightly. You could, I may have given how tired I am, say something I'm not supposed to, but give it a shot. But I will ask about what the significance of a state visit is, and how. Good meal, good entertainment. And what your role as ambassador is like in preparing for that visit, especially compared to your role as chief of staff at the White House preparing for said visits. Well, it's totally, I mean, I think chief of staff, he would say, well, why this country, why this head of state, and just give me the good logic theory, what it has to do, et cetera. And then kind of towards the end, to be chief of staff, who's invited, why would, not just the head of state, but who's on the guest list, et cetera, et cetera, but, and you go through the deliverables, quote, unquote, there's a lot of other people working every little word, the statement, like as a chief of staff, like you gotta be kidding, I never read those things. You didn't, I mean, if you were reading them, you weren't doing the rest of your 99.9% of your job. Somebody else was supposed to, you know, as I used to say, some propeller head will read that. You know, I'm not gonna read that. But those things count. Now, I'm the loser propeller head reading that stuff. So, no, so here, like you got four pillars. You got a security pillar, a commercial statecraft pillar, you got a space pillar, and you got a people-to-people pillar. And in every one of those columns, and I was actually on the phone with Jake Sullivan about this and Kurt when I landed, it is, if we stop today, we got a major deliverable or two or three in every one of those columns. I just said, look guys, I mean, we could stop today, do the dinner tomorrow night, we'd be fine. We have a potential now given how far ahead we are that I think we can run through the tape and be transformative, where this will become a gold standard of what a state dinner, and a state, really not a state dinner, but a state visit can produce. And, you know, my guess is we'll get, as I said in a kind of a communication internally, I said, nobody should look back and said we left money on the table. We should just like a vacuum cleaner just go through and pick up as much as we can. Because I think this has a potential not just to celebrate the last two to three years, which have been just transformative, but to discern what the road map for the next 30 years are gonna be like. And I think it has a bit, you know, when you look at what's there and you gotta get there, I think it has the potential to do that. And all of those pieces, and I say this in the confines of the War College, we, one point, another point, I keep harping on this at the embassy, stop thinking of deterrence simply as how many battleships, how many jets, and how many missiles you have. What happened at Camp David is deterrence. This state visit, when we do whatever we're gonna do, we've already had five unique agreements with Japan on space, given what China's trying to do with space. Trust me, if we do what I think we're gonna do, that's deterrence. We need to have a 180 degree vision all the way on the periphery to the dead center and our line of sight. What is deterrence? And every one of these pieces, some are big bricks, some are small little tiles, but they're part of deterrence. And you have to have a comprehensive integrated vision of deterrence and how it works on the scene from the other side. So I think in this state visit, I'm gonna become a glorified member of the propeller head class and worry about the communique, which I never read before. Can I ask you to- No. I'll still do it anyway. On the economic side of it, and you're talking about deterrence is not just simply battleships. We talk about compelence and deterrence in the economic side. So a decade ago, China felt it had not only deterrence, but compelence against Japan, rare earths. It'd be terrible if you couldn't get your final manufacturing, if we don't let you get the components. What's happening on that front that you're seeing and how does that fit into the lattice work approach that we're seeing in the region of not just the United States, but our partners being able to push back on China's ability to say, we sit at the center of rare earths, raw materials, components, and how's that working out? I'm gonna make sure I don't get fired answering this question, okay? I like to keep it for one more year. So here's, at Tokyo University about a year ago, as an event, I issued a report on the five case studies of China's coercion. And, you know, not that embassies are supposed to do that, but we never cleared it with the State Department, so we just kind of let it rip. But, Japan did something, and China then used, in 2012, basically used economic coercion. What is economic coercion using economic means to achieve political ends? When the FAD got placed in Korea missile system, defense system in Korea, China boycotted Korean products inside China, supermarkets, et cetera, and really crushed them in tourism, et cetera. When the Prime Minister of Australia had the audacity to say, what's the origination of COVID? There's been a three-year process of boycotting, et cetera, using economics, using market, using things to achieve political ends of punishment. Lithuania saying, recognizing, or having something to do with Taiwan, same thing as related to their products. When you study all of them, and then each of those countries, China basically pulled back after a period of time, sometimes a year, sometimes multiple years. What happens when those countries have allies that work with them economically? China gets isolated, not the country. The whole goal of China is to punish you, isolate you, Australia, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, Philippines. The whole way you beat coercion is you don't let, China is the one that's isolated. So what happened with Russia and their gas into Europe, and the United States energy capacities coming to Russia's, to Europe's defense? Russia became, and why it hasn't worked is Russia lost the European market, major problem, picking up other places, hard to do because they got to do by ship, not by pipe system. But economic coercion is using your economic tools to achieve your strategic political ends. Why did Australia survive China's economic coercion? Or China threw in the towel because Australia's economic expansion with the United States, with Japan, with New Zealand, with other countries, basically immunized them from China's economic pressure. It's coalitions acting together, and then the person instigating the coercion is isolated, not the country. That's the target of that coercion. And until we find a, not a one off of, now, at the G7, Indra Hiroshima this year, the coercion was in the communique. It tells you I read that thing again, but it was in, it was for the first time ever. When Lithuania got targeted by China, Europe passed a coercion set of tools. Now they're only for EU member countries, but that's how you're going to end up, and I will say this, we didn't think of it that way, but when we started to provide energy resources to Europe, we beat Russia's coercion, and Russia was planning on energy as a coercive tool to limit Europe's defense of Ukraine. And because of us, Europe could withstand that pressure. That is what we need to do. Now, in the region, one of the things in, and this gets back to my thing, look, trade is now a dirty word for a lot of reasons in our political system, good and bad and whatever. I think, you know, we went from all trade is good to all trade is bad, hopefully, and I do think the political system as a student of politics will swing back into a more normal place. That said, we need to think, and this gets to my earlier point about energy as a strategic tool. That doesn't mean just LNG, it means SMR nuclear, it means wind technology, solar technology, geothermal technology, a whole host of things because that creates for countries, at least specifically in the Indo-Pacific. If we're all of a sudden doing 15% of any one country's in the region's energy portfolio, they have a reason to push back on China. We're not engaged economically, or really part of another country's economic piece. Our leverage or their independence is constrained. And so economic statecraft has to be revised to fit our strategic statecraft. And I, this probably will get me in trouble. You can't have alliances without allies. Alliances assume allies. And we have a strategic vision, very dependent and integrated where you value allies. Yet our economic strategy is a little short on that part of the platform. And we have to get our strategic vision and our economic statecraft more aligned rather than creating tension in the system pulling it apart in different directions. I think I'll keep the job for about two more months before they find out. You mentioned that you're on the propeller side of things. Well, it's not called that far. I prefer to be a hack, okay? All right, a propeller hack then. In your role as ambassador, I'm wondering if you have some reflections on the differences between leading a country team kind of closer to the ground, compared to your previous experiences as mayor, as the White House chief of staff, keeping the clocks running on time. Are there elements that are similar? Are there differences? And how would you describe them? Oh, well, I mean, yes, there are similarities. You draw on certain skills all the time and there's big differences. Look, I mean, as mayor of the city of Chicago, first of all, constitutionally, institutionally, historically, the mayor of the city of Chicago has the most powerful mayorship in the United States. And I don't just say that as a former mayor of the city of Chicago, but it is. I used to tease Eric or SETI, the mayor of LA, I said, eh, you're a groom on a wedding cake. I mean, come on. Mayor of Chicago appoints and runs the schools, or did. Police, fire, parks, libraries, mass transit, airports, no other mayor has that. It's just that, I mean, that's what it is. So you don't appoint everybody. I get one out of the 1,000 people in the embassy, I get one. Now, leadership, and I think one of the things that I think is, and I don't think it's fully appreciated, everybody always talks appropriately about people in our armed service, their selflessness, their sacrifice. That's also true of our career-form service. They're moving all over the world constantly. I'm unbelievably patriotic, representing the country in good and bad times when America's doing really well and they don't get fully the same sense of recognition. And I'm very lucky with the people that are there. What I try to do, and we were talking to this a little earlier, I don't think the state, inside the state department, I try to give them the sense, look, let's just do what we're supposed to do and kind of do more than what we're supposed to do. And if we screw up, we'll ask for forgiveness, don't worry about it. I mean, it's better to take a risk, better to get out there. Chief of staff, I used to describe the chief of staff. It's the only position in the White House that has two titles, chief, staff. You're both staff and you're both the leader of that staff, outside of the vice president and the first lady or soon to be one day the first husband, you're the ultimate if you have that type of relationship with the president and one of the last people in the room and one of the first people in the room. And so, but you are both, you run the team on behalf of the person you work for. That's not true, it's either the ambassador where you are the person or mayor. So you gotta, they're different, but leadership, one of the things is encouraging people to take calculated thought through risk. We were talking about this story earlier. I got into the embassy, I voted in December but get there in January. The war in Ukraine starts literally one month later. Two weeks after the war started, the Ukrainian ambassador was going to speak at the International Press Club at 10.30 on a Friday. The following Monday, the Russian ambassador was gonna speak. He moved his from Monday to Friday at one o'clock. So I said to everybody, what do you guys think about this? And they go, I said, what do you wanna do? They go, should we send a note taker? A note taker? I said, no, I mean, like, what do you, well, do you wanna do a press release, I said, no. You call up the International Press Club, you tell them I'm coming over at two o'clock, I'm not letting the Russian guy get the last word. They go, well, we have to clear it. I said, no, we don't. I said, we're not gonna take Putin's side. We all read the paper, we all went to college, call him up, I'm going to two, let's write a speech. We know the questions, there's only 10 questions here. Let's go. Now, I ended up answering a question the State Department put on their website, went viral, blah, blah, blah, about freedom. And I do believe this. And I get really, sometimes all of us who live with it, every day, freedom, we get cynical about it. We got people trying to get in our country. We got people trying to get into Japan. People are fleeing Moscow, St. Petersburg, Hong Kong, Tehran, freedom is seductive. It has its own gravitational pull and we should never forget it. All of us get used to it. We grew up with it, we live with it, we assume it. People across the globe want to be part of what we have and take for granted. And we shouldn't lose sight of it. And that happened to be the answer, et cetera, et cetera, but they were like, so you have to lead people to take risks. Lead people now. Sometimes, I know it's hard to believe after an hour with me that sometimes I kind of overgo my own ski tips and do, you know, and I, you know, I got some criticism when I was ambassador about leaning in on LGBTQ rights in Japan. I probably brought a little of my own flair to the subject, but I will note that Japan passed the legislation. So, you know, you got to learn and stuff, but it's better to try than to not try. And part of leading or part of being part of a team that you lead are those skill sets where there's chief of staff to ambassador. I could not be ambassador today if it wasn't for all the other positions and responsibilities I have. Could not. But I do think so often there's this notion, oh, ambassador, double-breasted gray flannel suit with a pipe and long walks in the garden. No, it's like making the wrong phone call to the prime minister on your cell phone. But it's knowing power, it's knowing politics, it's knowing people's motivations, and then how to dial that up and it's about leverage and then taking a team and leading them. Now, one of the things that I've done my whole life, my kids, I don't know, Zach, Alana and Lea are here, I make every, I've been doing this for 30 years of my life. Every Friday, you have to write a weekly report. I get a notebook, a Monday, Jane who used to work for me in Congress who's here, every Friday and on Monday at 9 a.m., your memo, your two-pager is back with my side notes. And A, keeps me on my toes, keeps you on your toes, you can't tell me what you're not working. And if I know what you're working on, I can ask you about it, keep you. And the whole goal is to keep a team focused. So we have weekly reports, there's an end of the year report and then there's a five-year plan. And every year, you have to update the five-year plan. And it keeps organizing, I've done it, senior advisor to Clinton, chief of staff for Obama, congressman, mayor and ambassador. And it just, so there's similar ways of kind of being efficient with time. And then keeping everybody on the same page. So on that note that you have had these different jobs and given your discussion of economic statecraft, which really is an omnipolicy, it's both foreign and domestic policy. And given that you've been on both sides, both at the federal but even at the subnational level, as ambassador, to what extent are you facing outward to the Japanese to say what's possible in the American system and to what extent are you able to communicate back into the American domestic system that these things are necessary and that they have doorstep impacts for Americans? Well, first of all, the last four years, and I think it's pretty, I'm gonna go out on a limb, but pretty much it's gonna be five. Japan's the number one direct foreign investor in the United States for four consecutive years. We are the number one direct foreign investor in Japan. Over one million Americans or a million Americans directly work for Japanese companies. Just the other day, when we decided we're getting all the Chinese cranes out of our ports, Mitsui, Japanese company's gonna be, it's gonna open up a big manufacturing facility in the United States, making the cranes for all our ports. Largest EV investment in the United States, Toyota, $13.9 billion in North Carolina. When Tesla wanted to build a new facility in Texas, Panasonic, $4.9 billion new battery factory in Kansas. So now it leans heavy automotive, leans heavy in the food area as well as some other areas. Largest employer, I'm a foreign employer in Japan, Abia, followed by Micron. So it's very similar, it's very important that I think, I think I'm gonna say this right. So the story of the other day in the Japanese paper that consensus among the top CEOs that for the first time ever, the American market's more important to their growth strategy than China. We're growing, China's not. You also have a country in which numerous Japanese CEOs have been arrested in China. Guess what? That's not really promising an opening, an invitation. Come, we're gonna get arrested here. So, look at the opportunity. Chicken soup in jail, who thought about it? So it has a real opportunity. Now that's a good thing, the conflict for us or the tension conflict is not the right word. Japan wants us inside TPP. The trade deal in the region that President Obama negotiated that we pulled out of. All the countries want us. Why? They want more of America, not less. They want America as a counterweight to China. For a host of economic and other domestic political reasons, the total legit, legit being not that I agree, but we pulled out. We have to figure out a way to not, and let me say this the right way. You have a region of the world that wants more of America, not less. That's not true across the globe. I don't think, and part of our deterrence is bringing all of America assets and resources to this. I say this as a father with two kids in the Navy. We shouldn't put the responsibility for America's strategic vision in the region on those kids on Abraham Lincoln or the Ronald Reagan alone. Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippine, Thailand, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand. They want all of us. And if we're going to bring our deterrence and our opportunities and our values and our interests, these kids are immensely, I'm proud, I'm not talking about my kids, I'm proud of the kids that I meet in Yacowska in Okinawa. But you cannot put the burdens of America's strategic interests just on them. And it gets back to my bigger point about what is deterrence. So if we're not going to do traditional trade, that's a legitimate thing post-COVID, post-conflict coercion to ask, what are we going to do? You have to figure out some way where you're economically bringing your economics, your market, your power to that strategic vision. Now, I'll say one last thing to this point. When the President of the United States announced AUKUS between Graper and the United States in Australia developing their submarine capacity, what did China announced the next day, less than 25 hours later? A, an anti-submarine technology? No. A new missile? No. The next day after we announced this unbelievable new strategic partnership developing submarines for Australia, a new class. China said we'd like to join TPP. They went right to our weak point and they scratched it. So somewhere between all trade and no trade, we have to find a place where our economics, and I do think CHIPS Act, IRA Act are all part of this. The reason Japanese companies or CEOs are now saying America versus China, those investments are bringing their investments. Same way here, but we have to figure out how to be part where economics, statecraft is part of our strategic statecraft. And it's not like the first time they've rubbed against each other. They rubbed against each other all the time. We got to get those more aligned so they're more complimentary and working together rather than sometimes working apart. We're about to turn over to the audience for questions, but I have one last question given that you mentioned your children in the Navy. How have your perspectives changed on the armed services, both from your time in Congress and the White House, now that you are a member of a military family? Yeah, well, I'm gonna put my kids up for adoption as well, I'm gonna do. So let me, I wanna answer it two way, but I wrote a book with Bruce Reed, who's the deputy chief staffer president we wrote back in 2005. So before I get to my kids and it's a fair question. We wrote it about, you know, one of the things I went back and looked at, we wrote about free community college, which I had been as mayor, first city to do, offer free community college. If you gotta be average in our high school, we talked about pre-K, Kira. But a chapter we wrote back then, which I, and I'll say two things in this. I wrote, back in 05, we should do universal national service. And I don't mean just military. Tutoring, cleaning up parks, cleaning up rivers, serving meals to elderly. I think, and I say that for a couple of reasons, and one is, forget my generation, forget the generation in here. We gotta find, you can't have diversity be an asset if you don't have a foundation that people agree on. And our foundation is crumbling. And there's only one way to get it. Just like the greatest generation, just like they gotta all work together from different backgrounds, different ethnicities, different genders, different sexual orientation, different vowels at the last name. Everybody working together on a single project. We need national service in this country. And I think, and we did a little of this in Chicago, not as much as I want, we should turn the last semester of high school into reading, math, et cetera. But 80% of your time is doing six months, five months national service in your community across cities. Everybody in this room knows what we were doing the last semester of high school. And if you weren't doing it, you lost out. Okay. I was doing it and I had a great semester. We all did it. Get these kids cleaning up urban America. Get them doing it. Turn the last semester of high school into four months of service. We have this notion politically, diversity is a strength and it is, but it cannot be a strength if there's not a foundation it grows from. And our foundation is weakening. We're turning on each other. That diversity is being pegged against each other. And I just, I'm a really, I mean, we wrote it back then and I've become even more vehement about it. I'm immensely, if I talk about my kids, I'm a loser. I mean, I'll start to cry. I'm very proud. I'm proud of all three of them. I'm proud that they chose a path, a service, a path to give something. And then to the question of my job, I mean, I don't think anytime advising either President Clinton or President Obama, I was cavalier about anything when we were down in the Situation Room or in the Oval. I really don't. But you do have a different perspective when you're kids are there. You just, and if I said you didn't, I'd be full of crap. You got skin in the game in a way that you didn't before. So, and again, I'm not saying that when I was Chief of Staff or Senior Advisor that I didn't look at politics and look at moments except that's your job. But you have a slightly, it gives you something, it gives you as much as it gives them, but it gives you a perspective. And I think that's important. One of the things, I'm not gonna get the data point right, but I think I'm gonna get it directly. Almost 80% of the kids that are enlisting come from families that have somebody else in the military. I think that's right. I don't think that's just Navy or Air Force, but I think that's across. I don't think that's healthy. I mean, I think it's great that children emulate parents and follow them, but in a democracy? So I'll just tell you guys what I tell them. I just, last, the other day I went, when it was a change in the head of the 7th Fleet, Carl Thomas coming back. We went, so about 20 Japanese Marines ran, about 30 American Marines ran, what only the ambassador can do, which is a 5K. And rule two, no passing the ambassador. Okay? Otherwise, it was the shortest military career you ever had. You know, we have an argument in America who makes up the 1%. You make it based on the fact of how much you acquired. How much you got? I think we should change that. How much did you give? The real 1% of those kids signed up. That's the 1%. These other people are a bunch of jackoffs. About how many jets, how many houses, how big is a wine cellar? That's not the measure. That's not the measure of a country. It's a measure, but not the measure. The measure of the 1% in America are the kids in Yucosca or the kids on the Ronald Reagan. Are the kids sitting in Bahrain? The kids that are in that camp in Jordan that was hit. That's the true 1%. Every one of us, me, we're faking it. That's the real 1%. But if we're gonna have what we're gonna have as a country, you can't have 85% of the country. 85% of the armed forces coming from a sliver of society. The base, folks, is crumbling. We've got to strengthen the foundation. Can I say a close-up one thing? To all of you who serve our country, doesn't get said enough, thank you. Thank you for what you do. Thank you for your families. Thank you for not just your sacrifice, but also your desire to serve something bigger than yourself. All of us who are civilians really appreciate it. Thank you. This could be, if the White House hears this, could be the last day as ambassador. So I really want to thank you. And with that, that concludes our events on behalf of the US Naval War College. Thank you, Ambassador Emmanuel, and good evening.