 Good afternoon and welcome. My name's Lisa Grande. I'm the head of the United States Institute of Peace. Congress established us in 1984 as a nonpartisan public institution dedicated to helping prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict abroad. We're delighted to welcome everyone today to a celebration of the second anniversary of the Indo-Pacific strategy launched two years ago. This strategy is one of the most important in U.S. foreign policy. The strategy commits the United States to work alongside our allies and partners toward an Indo-Pacific that is free and open, connected, prosperous, secure, and resilient. We have a number of senior distinguished representatives from our allies and partners. Please allow us to pay our respects to you and to welcome you most warmly. It's an honor to hold this event in collaboration with the Department of State and a privilege to welcome Special Assistant to the President and National Security Council Senior Director for East Asia and Oceania, Dr. Mara Rappupur. To welcome also Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Donald Lu. To welcome the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, Dr. Ely Ratner, and also the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, Camille Dawson. The Indo-Pacific strategy is important in so many ways. It embraces the recognition that the United States is an Indo-Pacific power. If implemented successfully, the strategy will help to ensure the continued vibrancy, security, and resilience of the Indo-Pacific region, home to over half of the world's population and which drives two-thirds of global economic growth. The strategy pledges to support regional connectivity, to support trade and investment, and to deepen bilateral and multilateral cooperation. Most importantly, it recognizes the centrality of the allies, friends, and partners who are working together to strengthen the collective capacity of the Indo-Pacific to respond to both threats and opportunities in the coming decades. Once again, it's a pleasure to welcome all of our guests today to discuss the diplomatic and the economic milestones that have been achieved because of this strategy in the past two years and to look forward to the years ahead. I'm very pleased now to hand over to Senior Advisor with the Asia Center, Vikram Singh, who's gonna be moderating the panel discussion. Thank you. Thanks so much, Lise, and thank you all for joining us. This is a terrific crowd, and I particularly wanna thank members of the diplomatic corps who are here with us today. It's really a delight to see all of you in person and a really warm welcome to our panelists. I'm not gonna do extensive introductions. We are gonna cover a strategy that is America's approach to the bulk of the world's population and economy and do it in a little about an hour plus with some time for questions and answers. So just to all know, to my immediate right, is Mira Rapp Hooper, Deputy Assistant President, she's Senior Director for East Asia, Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia, Dawn Lu, who has served throughout the region with distinction and is a great friend and partner, Deputy Assistant Secretary Camille Dawson, who I actually listened to give a nice exposition on the two-year anniversary of the strategy, and Dr. Gilay Ratna, our my old friend and colleague, who has been really spearheading a reorientation of how we approach the region from a defense perspective, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs. So welcome to all of you. The way this is basically gonna run is I'm gonna give everybody a few minutes to talk about their part. So for Mira, it's everything, and then as we move down, you've got different parts, for Eli, it's kind of everything too. But we're running from India all the way to New Zealand with this strategy. The strategy is a toddler, it's two years old, it's not just out of the gate, and it has achieved some remarkable things in these two years. We are seeing investments made in resilience and economic growth that are relatively unparalleled. Really recently we saw the DFC making big loan guarantees for Port and Sri Lanka and an energy project in India. We are seeing a reorientation of our military capabilities to focus on the Indo-Pacific as the primary theater and the area where we need to focus most of our attention. Huge innovations with allies and partners like AUKUS, who knew ways to do cooperation in many lateral ways like the Quad, which is Australia, Japan, India, and the United States. And across the five pillars of this strategy, you can see really landmark progress. And it's very exciting as somebody who's worked Asia for years to have all of you here and to hear from you how it's going and where the challenges are. And so we're essentially gonna proceed down the line and you have a few minutes and I'm gonna try to get it a little spicy at some point, see if we can elicit some of the inter-agency debates that I'm sure you've worked out entirely by now and have full agreement on, but we'll try to do that. But so, Mira, let me start with you and just give us the big picture from the White House, where we were, where we're going, what some of the big successes are and how you see things shaping up. Thanks so much Vikram, and before I jump in, thank you so much to Least, to Vikram, to the whole team here at USIP and especially to our friends and partners in the diplomatic corps who are with us today. It's really wonderful to have this occasion to talk through and to celebrate the two-year anniversary of the Indo-Pacific strategy. If you are me or if you're Camille Dawson, anniversaries are the Indo-Pacific strategy or something that you really like to celebrate. But it's great that we have so many friends and partners to do it with us as well. So just to kick us off on kind of where are we with the IPS? I do think it's fair to say that two years into the strategy's publication, of course, just three years into the first term of the Biden-Harris administration, we have made some significant gains through this strategy. And you can see that because we in that strategy laid out our homework for you to be graded. If you take a look back at the strategy, you'll see that we had within it an action plan of things that we intended to get done during the first many months of the strategy's implementation. And if you give us a grade against that action plan, we are doing pretty darn well. Just to name a few things that we've been able to check off the list in a relatively short amount of time. We have elevated our quad to the leader's level in a really path-breaking new grouping in the Indo-Pacific that brings India into the fold with some of our closest partners and allows us all to lead alongside one another. We've launched the AUKUS partnership, again, another completely innovative defense program alongside AUKUS and the UK. We have seen a historic breakthrough between two of our closest allies in Japan and the ROK that allowed us, in turn, to be able to host the Camp David Summit, bringing the trilateral relationship between our countries to a truly unprecedented level with an incredible amount of future potential. The United States has re-engaged in the Pacific Islands and started to make good on its pledge to really return there, making our presence felt once again in a really meaningful and important way, although lots more to do. We've reinvested and reinvigorated our ties with ASEAN while at the same time, taking our alliances and partnerships with the Philippines and Vietnam to new heights. And that's just to name a few of the items that were on that checklist. There's many more that I know we'll talk about over the course of our discussion today. But in many ways, the watchword of the Indo-Pacific strategy was and continues to be a term that Lee's referred to in her opening remarks. And that is the idea of building collective capacity. The theory of the case of the IPS is not that the United States alone had the power to transform the region or alone to accomplish our objectives that are laid out in that strategy, but rather that by reinvesting in and modernizing our alliances and partnerships, by reinvigorating our ties to key regional institutions, and by promoting cross-pollination between the Indo-Pacific and other regions, we would generate more capacity to bring about a region that is free and open, connected, resilient, prosperous and secure. And I think thus far, the strategy has paid dividends. Now, in some ways, the strategy has actually done quite a bit better than those of us who got to work on it might even have reasonably expected. And that of course, refers to all four of us up on this stage today. And part of the reason for that is because I think that this affirmative vision that we lay out in the IPS, not only correctly identified this pathway of building collective capacity to achieve shared objectives, but presented an affirmative vision that allowed a wide range of partners to buy into it. So while, of course, the United States has a clear set of goals in the region that we lay out in the strategy and that we continue to work towards every day, we laid out a strategy and have implemented a strategy that is easy enough for a wide range of partners to see themselves in and to see their objectives in. It makes it possible for partners, whether they're in Northeast Asia, South Asia, South East Asia or the Pacific Islands to recognize lines of effort that are meaningful to them and to hopefully want to be a part of it. And that's why I think we've seen some of this progress accelerate faster than we might have hoped. Finally, one point that I just wanna mention before turning the floor over to my colleague, Don Lou, is to note, and this is less as a policymaker and more as a lapsed academic with my former academics hat on, that it actually is a remarkable thing to be talking about the continued successes of a government strategy more than two years after its publication, three years after its drafting. I had the privilege of working with this team since the presidential transition and it is actually a pretty amazing thing to remark that many of the ideas of how we would reinvigorate our role in the Indo-Pacific, how we would invest in the region were the same ideas that we talked about during that period that were penned into the Indo-Pacific strategy, into its implementation guidance and continue to guide our work to this day. So that really is a reflection of a genuine strategic vision that I think was commonly held by this interagency as well as commonly held amongst the United States and so many of our partners in the region. That's great, thank you. Don, how are we doing in South Asia and how is South Asia looking at our progress and partnership and how it's changed? So folks haven't figured it out. There's a line right here that divides South Asia from East Asia. We put the Indo and Indo-Pacific, we like to say. Let me first just thank Leeds for hosting all of us today. It's wonderful to see so many of the ambassadors from this region here mixed together with so many of the great academic minds who work on South Asia and East Asia. I'm gonna take this in a little different direction rather than give you a list of accomplishments. I wanted to tell you a story and Americans love a comeback story and so in the region I work on there is no greater comeback story than the story of Sri Lanka. If you will go back with me in time a year and a half you will remember a country in crisis. You'll remember mass riots in the streets. You'll remember lines for petrol and for food snaking around the corners. You'll remember the seizing of the president's home, protesters swimming in his swimming pool, protesters cooking food in his kitchen. If you've been to Sri Lanka lately it's a very different place. The currency is stable, food and fuel prices are stable. They've gotten reassurances on their debt restructuring and the IMF money is flowing. How did they do that? That's the question I wanted to explore with us a little today. The answer I would offer is they did it with a little help from friends and this Indo-Pacific strategy is based on the premise that the United States and like-minded partners are gonna try to offer a better proposition. Let me explain that in the context of Sri Lanka. In the beginning, Sri Lanka really needed humanitarian assistance. What we saw was countries like India coming forth with concessional loans that allowed Sri Lanka to continue to bring in vital supplies of food and fuel during the most difficult times. Our USAID during those same days provided hundreds of millions of dollars in agricultural inputs, fertilizers and seeds so farmers could grow their own crops. On the debt side, if you follow Sri Lanka at all they have a really heavy debt burden. The creditor committee led by Japan, France and India negotiated for months to find a formula to allow Sri Lanka to restructure its debt in a sustainable way. And that formula put pressure on the Chinese to go along with those debt reassurances. That opened up IMF funding and the changes that you see in the economy today. And Vikram mentioned this $553 million loan from the US Development Finance Corporation just announced in November. That was a loan not to a government. It was a loan to the Colombo Port West Container Terminal. That's a private sector project that's gonna make money for the Sri Lankan people. It's not a loan that balloons out bilateral debt. It's an actual profitable project that's really based on private sector investment that we are supporting as well. Lastly, I would say part of what Sri Lanka really needs is all of us to be there to help support its sovereignty. One of the ways that we are doing that from the US government is by providing patrol boats to the Sri Lankan military. And we are also this year set to deliver a King Air aircraft that will help Sri Lanka to patrol its coastal waters. Lastly, on security through Mira's work and others, we have this Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness Initiative which is a complicated way of saying we're gonna provide free, near real-time commercial satellite data to countries around this broader region, including in South Asia. And in South Asia, we're doing it through the Indo-Pacific Information Sharing Center that the Indians have created. This is gonna be transformative. This will help countries to figure out how you defend yourself against piracy, against drug trafficking, against illegal fishing. So just to circle back to where I started, Sri Lanka has made this amazing, sort of historic comeback. How did it do it? It did it with a little help from all of us. Thanks. That's great. And I think that collaborative element and all of the initiatives that we've seen reinforce that. And I guess the question is, is it a better proposition? I often look at the five pillars of the strategy. The one that stands out, of course, is free and open because that's the one that really doesn't happen without the United States and its democratic allies and partners being, you know, driving something. And that might be the part of it that's a better proposition for the countries in the region. Camille, let's turn to across that line. We're not gonna call it a line of actual control. We're just gonna call it a line between your chairs. Friendship bridge. Yeah. Well, I also wanna join in thanking USIP for hosting us and for all of our friends from the diplomatic community and the think tank and academic community for being here today. And as Mira noted, I like to take every opportunity to celebrate anniversaries of the Indo-Pacific strategy or really any opportunity that I can to speak about it because I really do believe it is the guiding light. It is our roadmap for what we are trying to achieve in the region. And as Mira highlighted, really the key principle is that the challenges facing the region are so significant that no one country can address all of those problems or challenges alone. But when we come together and pool our collective capabilities and resources, then we start to get at really building that collective capacity to address the challenges of today and also tomorrow. So that is really what we are focused on. And as we marked the two year anniversary of the release of the strategy on this past Sunday, a number of agencies across the US government released fact sheets outlining particular accomplishments of the Indo-Pacific strategy. So we have a very lengthy State Department fact sheet, which I commend to you all, but I'll mention just a very small number of highlights from the fact sheet that we put out. The first thing that I want to note is that we have really focused on building up our diplomatic representation in the region. We know that being present physically is a huge driver of what we can achieve in the region. So we have expanded our staffing around the region and we have opened new embassies in the Solomon Islands, in Tonga, not in my region, but crossing the friendship divide here I will mention in the Maldives as well. And we look forward to opening a new embassy in Vanuatu in 2024 and we are in the process of discussions with the government of Kiribati about our intent to open an embassy there as well. Mira mentioned the Quad and are elevating the Quad as many of you know, the Quad has both a leaders level track and a ministerial level track and we cooperate closely across those various tracks and all of the working groups. But at the ministerial level, we have held six ministerials just in recent years and have delivered through those discussions and the ongoing work of our experts, a number of key deliverables to the region, including humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, a framework for how we will cooperate in delivering that in a time of disaster. Dawn noted our work in the maritime domain awareness space. We have launched a number of programs in the education or fellowship space and many others that are demonstrating the way in which the Quad is able to deliver really tangible benefits that match the priorities as outlined by the region itself. We've also launched partners in the Blue Pacific in order to support the priorities identified by the Pacific Island countries in their own 2050 outlook for the Blue Pacific. And then I want to note that we often hear that the region sees the United States as a strong security partner and I'm sure that Eli will focus on that element and that is absolutely true. But we are also an indispensable partner for the region in economics, in people-to-people ties and in our diplomatic relationships. And on the economic sphere, I want to highlight just a couple of things. The size of the economy of the Indo-Pacific region was already mentioned, but sitting here in the United States, it's also important for us to reflect on what that means to the American public. We generate a tremendous amount of economic benefit from our relationship to the region. We, in a document we just put out earlier this week, noted that exports from the US to the region and investments from the region to the United States generate four million jobs for Americans. And that's a really important thing to keep in mind. Also, we have just done some work through an organization called Aid Data and they put out an interesting study that shows that over the past 10 years, the sum of US investment in the region, including not only government investment in the region, but private sector, philanthropic sector, has grown 18% and there has been a shift from the US as an aid provider to an investment partner. And I think that's a notable trend as well. And then lastly, I just wanted to note as a key highlight of our recent efforts in the Indo-Pacific strategy, we hosted of course APEC in 2023 and throughout the course of the year held over 400 expert level meetings, 10 ministerials and delivered a number of really significant agreements and benefits that bring tangible result to the region as a whole. So I'll stop there. Great, thanks so much. Okay, Eli, you go back across the divide because you have to secure and help our partners maintain peace and stability across this vast and complicated territory. So talk to us about the defense vision, what we've accomplished. I mean, there's some really obvious greatest hits like AUKUS and other things, but just give us your take on where things stand in terms of preserving the peace and enhancing deterrents and things of that nature. Yeah, well, thanks Vic from, and I'll just add it's really wonderful to be here. I'm glad you used that word vision because what we talk about, what Secretary Austin talks about is a shared vision that we have with our allies and partners. I think the degree of strategic alignment between the United States and our major allies and partners really throughout the Indo-Pacific is unprecedented and that is what has enabled so much of our success here. Part of the shorthand that we use when we talk about what we're doing in the region is that we are aiming to be, and I think we have achieved, being more capable, being more forward, and being more together. In terms of being more capable, of course we are making really significant investments in terms of our own military, but also taking a lot of steps to support ally and partner capabilities really throughout the region. We've been able to work closely with the Japanese on their historic decision to acquire counter-strike capabilities. Vikram, as you know, we've been working very intensely with the Indian government on their efforts to deepen their indigenous defense industrial base through some really exciting co-production, co-development opportunities in areas such as jet fighter engines and armored vehicles. So we're doing a lot more in terms of bringing more capability and capacity to the region with our allies and partners. We're also more forward to Mira's point. This is something not only that we talked about during the transition, this is something academics and think tank experts have been writing about literally for decades about how we need a more mobile, distributed, resilient force posture in the Indo-Pacific, and that is something we have made enormous strides on down from through Japan, the Philippines, Australia, Papua New Guinea, and elsewhere. 2023 stood as the most transformative year in our regional force posture in a generation, and there's more to come in the years ahead. And then finally, in terms of doing more together, this is something I hope we'll get into in the conversation. Camille mentioned the Quad, Mira mentioned the Camp David Summit. We have been doing a lot more with collections of our allies and partners in really new and innovative ways. Just to take one example, in terms of the US, Japan, ROK, Trilateral Relationship, Historic Summit last year, tasked the Defense Department with a few go-dos in terms of developing a new effort to link together early warning missile data between our three countries, and we delivered that before the end of 2023. Another go-do from our leaders was to develop a multi-year exercise plan trilaterally to make our trilateral exercises and activities more frequent and more regular, and we achieved that by the end of 2023 too. So a lot of really important ways that we're starting to work in new ways with our allies and partners, but there's a lot more to do. And so looking ahead on something, issues like AUKUS, which was mentioned, we're gonna have to deliver on AUKUS in 2024, and that's very high on the priority list. We're gonna have to keep delivering on the force posture front. Again, last year was a historic year, but the job's not done, and we're gonna have to find a path forward with Congress to get COFA funded this year as well. So lots of successes to talk about, but we gotta roll up our sleeves and keep at it this year. You mentioned COFA at the end. We have a very knowledgeable audience. We have a broadcast out on the internet, so Compacted Free Association. This is the relationship we have with Keep Pacific Island partners that's very unique. Do you wanna just, since you mentioned it, do you wanna just go a little bit deeper on where COFA stands and why that matters and how it ties into the president doing two Pacific Island summits and all the upgrading of relations, opening of embassies in the Pacific and out with the Pacific Islands? Yeah, I'll speak to the COFA piece in particular and maybe kick it back to State Department and its C colleagues to talk about the whole of government approach, because DOD really only has a particular role as it relates to the Pacific Islands. But look, I'll say this. Securing COFA funding is one of the most important things that the administration can do this year in terms of our Indo-Pacific strategy. This is really a strategic territory in terms of having assured access in the region. This is an area where State Department colleagues have successfully negotiated a new 20-year agreement. It's also the fact that citizens in the COFA territories are participating in the U.S. military at very high rates. And so look, this is something that matters. It's something where there is strong bipartisan support. This is an opportunity for Congress in the administration to work together this year and we just have to get it done. I just want to flag thank you to Ambassador Joe Yoon, USIP, a forever-present USIP person and a great diplomat who negotiated the compacts. Any of the rest of you want to touch on Pacific Islands and compacts? You can bounce from COFA to broader Pacific Islands. Yeah, I'm happy to do that. And we're just, you know, vial in agreement with everything you said. Getting COFA funded is really second to none in terms of our strategic task that we have to take on this year and it just simply must be done. COFA and the COFAs are a traditional set of relationships that are particularly strong for the United States and the Pacific Islands. They represent some really deep and continuing historical ties. And the reinvestment in COFA is really a reinvestment in those ties and in our role in the region. But of course, the United States over the course of the last few years has recommitted to the whole of the Pacific Islands region in a number of new and important ways. As Vikram mentioned, President Biden has hosted not one, but two historic Pacific Island Leaders summits in just the last couple of years. The last one was known as a Pacific Island Forum Summit because the members of the Pacific Island Forum were all in attendance. But what these summits are designed to show and I think have shown is the fact that the United States is not just saying that we're back in the Pacific Islands but that we're actually doing it. And at each one of these summits, we have rolled out a historic set of deliverables ranging from new forms of climate assistance to new types of development projects to really exciting infrastructure projects including submarine cable projects and new marine wharf projects that we're going to be undertaking alongside some of our closest allies including in particular Australia where we're tightly partnered as well as with New Zealand. And the purpose of course of all of these projects is to show as Don alluded to earlier that the United States and our closest friends have real alternatives to offer. We are a lot more than just talk when we say that we're back. We are able to show you that we can use our diplomatic tools, our foreign assistance tools, the whole toolkit to bring outcomes to the people of the Pacific Islands that are better, that are higher standards that are more dependable than what you can get anywhere else. So delivering on all of those summit pledges really matters. And that is work that we are continuing to implement to this day. Institutionalizing our Pacific partnerships including partners of the Blue Pacific which is a relatively newer grouping really, really matters. Keeping up the energy to continue sending our highest level leadership to the Pacific Islands and to hosting them here at home really matters. And of course most of all I would agree that funding the COFIS this year really matters. Great. I'll add just a few points because I agree 100% with everything that Mira and Eli have said already. So we'll repeat those same points but we'll just add that as the Indo-Pacific strategy was being developed and for those who don't know Mira Rapp Hooper was doing the developing at the time and as she was engaging in conversations which I was fortunate to be a part of with many of our diplomatic partners she was asking the question what do you need from the United States? What do you want to see from the United States in our strategy? And from our Pacific Island friends there were many similar threads and some of those Mira has already touched on in terms of climate resilience, connectivity but there were a few things that were very specific and addressed by certain US government agencies two of whom are not here so I want to give a shout out to them and the first is Peace Corps. So the desire for additional educational opportunities and time and again we heard about the importance of the Peace Corps and what that has meant to our friends in the Pacific Islands over the years and the Peace Corps has really been doing tremendous work to get back to the Pacific Islands following COVID and to really delivering on that desire for enhanced educational opportunities and building up those people to people ties on a similar note we heard that there is a desire for additional opportunities for young people in the Pacific Islands to develop leadership skills and specific skill sets that are applicable to developing the local economy. So through the State Department's Young Pacific Leaders Program we have expanded the offerings that we can provide to people across the Pacific Islands, Australia and New Zealand to not only develop their own leadership skills but also to develop networks with one another that will help to ensure a connected future in Oceania. And then lastly I want to mention the Coast Guard and what we heard from our Pacific Island friends about the very positive sentiment they have towards the Coast Guard and the training and capacity building that the Coast Guard has offered and has committed to offering more of in the future. And I think that's a critically important element of enabling the capacity of Pacific Island nations to be able to better patrol their own waters and ensure their economic viability in the waters. That's great. So a subtext here, we haven't gotten very explicit about it. We've talked a little bit about an alternative positive vision. We've talked a little bit about challenges and why we're maritime domain awareness, et cetera. What I'd like you all to hit on is, I mean, clearly there's a big appetite in the region for the US to be heavily involved, to be a security partner and more than a security partner. That obviously is driven in part by sense of insecurity or threat or challenge. So if it's climate, it's driven by, you know, for the Pacific Islands in particular and Maldives and places that are really the forefront of the impact, the bearing the brunt of climate change, it's that kind of a threat. But for a lot, it's about these long brewing territorial disputes. And we all talk mostly about China, Taiwan gets the most attention. There's territorial disputes all the way around. In fact, on, you know, not just China, India, Pakistan, India, disputes in that area, all potential flash points, all areas where we presumably hope our investments are helping to deter bad behavior that could spark conflicts, that could spiral into something catastrophic, nuclear powers in many cases in these areas. And, you know, DPRK also would be in that basket. So can I ask each of you to just hit on some of the friction points and that piece of it, you know, and the sort of the challenges that they're facing, that countries are facing in the region. And then after that, we'll come back around and we'll talk about what cooperation can also look like that goes beyond just the allies and partners. But who wants to start with friction points in their parallel? Don, I want you to start because we've been doing the Pacific Islands. We got to save it. You mentioned a couple in the region I work in, the India-China border conflict, the, you know, the historic, deep-seated conflict between India and Pakistan. But the one I actually spent a lot of time on is thinking about Bangladesh and the Rohingya refugees who are there and the effects of instability in Burma and what it means for the region. And I see the Bangladesh ambassador to the United States here. We spent a lot of time working with Bangladesh to try to be supportive of the generosity Bangladesh has shown to over a million people who have been living now in Bangladesh for years. I had a chance to visit the Cox's Bazaar refugee camp. It's biggest refugee camp in the world. And to see the, again, the tremendous generosity but also the willingness of the international community to work together to find a solution to house these refugees until it's safe enough to go back. I'm not an expert in Burma. I have colleagues here who are. The situation there does not appear to be getting better. And what worries me is that this refugee crisis, the security problems that it's creating for Bangladesh and potentially for India as well could get deeper in the coming days. I think it's something we all have to watch out for and we have to be enabling our partners in the region, in this case Bangladesh and India to be able to cope with those stresses without it boiling over into instability in their countries as well. And indeed India is locking down their traditionally porous open border with Myanmar. Similar Flashpoint drivers are upgrading the alliance with the Philippines, something I worked on a long time ago and has seen sort of a rapid acceleration is also in the face of them having real, real life on the water confrontations and tensions. So I know Eli, if you wanna take that and then Camille also. Yeah, I'd be happy. We can talk about the Philippines and that I think is an important story of the administration and an area where Secretary Austin himself has been really invested. I think as I was thinking about your prompt there, Vikram, though, I think one of the things that I have learned in this business working with and for great thinkers like Patrick Cronin and others is, we have these, we are global power, we have a global military, we take on global responsibilities, we have grand regional visions. Our allies and partners have more particular challenges that they're dealing with that are all different from each other and so yes, there is a shared vision about what they want the region to look like, but when we are working with them on their partnerships, they are thinking through what are their particular challenges and for us to really meet them where they are in that regard, I think has been part of the elements of our success here and we see patterns, whether it's from India to the Philippines to Australia to Japan, Vietnam and others. What we see are partners who in the first instance again are investing in themselves and how are we enabling them to do that in a way where they are acquiring capabilities, number one that they can afford, number two that actually meet the type of challenges that they're facing. They are also investing in their partnerships with the United States. So again, almost across the board, our bilateral relationships are stronger than they have ever been because we are working with countries again whether it's India or Australia and their new guided munitions effort, whether it's with the Philippines on some of their maritime security issues, whether it's Japan on counter-strike, we're working with them within the alliance on the particular security challenges that they're facing and then they're doing more with each other and so we're thinking about how are we bringing together partners in new and interesting ways to help manage some of these issues. So in the instance of the Philippines, we have been working to build opportunities to bring together more allies and partners in new ways to manage issues, for instance, associated with the South China Sea. So for the first time ever at the Shangri-La Dialogue last year, the ministers of defense of Australia, Japan, the Philippines and the United States all met in person for the first time. Mira, I'm sure I can talk about some of the trilateral work between the Philippines, Japan and the United States that the White House has been leading and that is leading now not only to meetings and dialogues but to actual operational activity. So I think that whether it's mini-lateralism, networking, lattice work that you described, it's a really, really important trend. Again, we ought to talk about that in a little more detail but as we think about how you tailor your defense approach to these sub-regions into particular countries, again, really meeting them where they are is vitally important. That's great. Do you have anything to add? So I think Burma and Philippines and South China Sea have been touched on a bit already and you did mention briefly in the question the DPRK. I think it's an important issue to touch upon. Not only does the DPRK continue a large number of unlawful missile launches and the development of its WMD program but we are also seeing the very concerning development of a strong relationship between the DPRK and Russia and I think that's something that all of us in the international community should be watching closely and that we should be concerned about and we have certainly from the US government called on others in the international community to speak out with a unified voice and to ensure that we are using every possible channel to get that message through clearly to both the DPRK and Russian governments. Yeah, I mean, that's a really interesting development. Obviously, the DPRK has been pretty assertive. There's a lot of concern here. We've been writing on at USIP about, you know, the increasing feeling of instability. I wonder how you guys see, maybe Muray, you can answer this, that Russia DPRK nexus that's growing. You know, a lot of people view it, it's kind of sad that Russia is dependent on Iran, DPRK and China now for supplying its war machine but of course Russia has a lot to offer back including technology and other things that can enhance the capabilities of those other, of those countries that are, you know, fundamentally hostile to our allies and partners and overall stability. So I'm just, I would love, Muray, really quickly, your just take on things with DPRK. Obviously, UN administration's heading to an election, a national assembly election shortly but tensions do seem high and I'm curious what you guys are thinking there. Yeah, happy to speak to that, Vikram. Look, as Camille says, the growing relationship between DPRK and Russia is deeply worrisome. You know, I think it has been made public, we have made public some of the cooperation, certainly that Russia is getting from the DPRK but exactly as you indicate, Russia has a lot to offer back to Pyongyang and this relationship is growing fast enough that we have to be worried about the types of changes that they could support one another in making, not just now but over a period of years. There are obviously limits to what I can say on this stage but suffice it to say that I think for many of us on the stage, this growing relationship takes up a lot of our time in the office every day. Now, one of the silver linings is that this too has been a catalyst for new forms of cooperation. We obviously already had a really strong framework in the Camp David Summit for U.S. ROK-Japan collaboration but out of a national security advisor's trialat that was held in Seoul in December, we are now much more energetically cooperating across our agencies and departments to share information about and seek to combat the challenge posed by the DPRK-Russia relationship and that is really important. There are no three partners that more need to be working together on this challenge but I will also say that this is one where these lattice works that we've been talking about today are really kind of showing their colors. A few years ago it would have been hard to think of some of our European partners being as interested, as focused, as eager to cooperate and stand up as our European partners are right now on DPRK-Russia cooperation but it is very clear to many of our NATO partners to our EU partners just as clear to us that not only is this cooperation very dangerous, it is kind of unpredictable in the direction in which it heads so we've also had some really meaningful engagements with European partners who are eager to draw closer to some of the work that we're doing in other settings as well. Of course, as you indicated, we are also concerned about some of the rhetoric that we have heard out of Pyongyang but also believe that as I've indicated we have what we need to continue to reinforce peace and stability on the peninsula and in the Indo-Pacific writ large that certainly involves the trilateral cooperation, some of which Eli was speaking about today, really extraordinary new defense steps that we have taken together just since the Camp David Summit that are able to demonstrate trilateral deterrence and cooperation as well as our rock-celled alliances with both the ROK and Japan which continue to be forces for peace and stability and again, we believe we'll be able to provide for them. Yeah, it's great. I mean, look, you said it's things that would have been hard to imagine and just a few years ago, the Quad at the leader's level with this many engagements, with this depth of cooperation with practical things happening with everyone putting in resources, AUKUS, the notion that we would actually make AUKUS happen and be pursuing nuclear submarines with conventionally armed nuclear powered submarines with Australia and a bunch of critical technology cooperation, most of these tech partnerships would all have been things that you wouldn't really have imagined. So maybe we could take a minute on the latticework maybe, and I would ask, perhaps Eli Mira maybe give us some on AUKUS and if there's anything else you wanna touch on on the core trilateral, we've hit Japan, ROK, U.S. a lot which is, of course, the one that I think was most unimaginable to me from prior experience but where AUKUS is headed and that and then Camille and Don, maybe you guys can hit the Quad from both sides of the divide there and what we're achieving with the Quad. So maybe Eli to start. Yeah, I'll leave the whereas AUKUS headed to Mira but look, I'll say a couple of things. I think this trend broadly, again, it's something folks have been writing about and talking about for a couple of decades now but it's happening now in terms of not only in the U.S.-Japan, ROK relationship and the Quad, but really it's a new regional phenomenon that at least to me is the most exciting and important trend in the region right now and I think what we are seeing is the birth of a new regional security architecture that is just in very early formations but it's going to be, it's not going to be NATO, it's not going to be a singular counterbalancing coalition that's not what we're aiming for, it's going to be something that is uniquely built and tailored to the challenges in the region but it's really exciting and it's really significant. So we've talked about, Camille mentioned obviously Quad and the Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness Initiative. We've talked about the U.S.-ROK, Japan relationship. We've talked about AUKUS, I just mentioned this quadrilateral of the U.S.-Japan, Australia and the Philippines. Another very, very important component in this, probably the most advanced actually from a defense perspective is the U.S.-Japan-Australia alliance or sorry, trilateral relationship which has been, again, really exciting to watch develop. We've had a series of leader-level meetings and we have a real operational program going forward but that has been enabled not just by the United States and not just in a hub and spoke way but by the relationship between Japan and Australia growing so strong. One element of this just to be specific is a reciprocal access agreement that those two countries have signed with each other that has enabled new forms of military cooperation and just last year, for the first time ever, Japanese F-35s visited, deployed to Australia later in the year, Australian F-35s deployed to Japan and then trilaterally, we have agreed and announced that we will be integrating Japanese F-35s into U.S.-Force posture initiatives in Northern Australia and what a powerful from an operational perspective from a strategic perspective to be adding to our capability in deterrent in the region and I think if you think about the where that could go in the future and not just between that constellation of countries but between other networks of allies and partners accessing each other's facilities working together more, our major exercises in the region some of our marquee, what were once bilateral exercises Garuda Shield with Indonesia now referred to as Super Garuda Shield with over a dozen countries Balakaton with the Philippines now a multilateral exercise Keen Edge with Japan now with other participating high-end partners so we're seeing this trend of a really interesting, very dynamic multilateralism and it's one of the things that gives me real hope that we're going to maintain peace and stability and deterrence in the region. That's great. Do you want to talk future where AUKUS has headed? Sure. Happy to say a bit more about AUKUS and then just to embroider on some of Eli's great comments generally with which I violently agree, no surprise. So on AUKUS where it's headed towards the optimal pathway that our leaders announced last March when they met in San Diego when it comes to pillar one of the program that is a major massive defense industrial undertaking that is going to take us years to get right and make no mistake all three leaders all three governments are fully committed to getting this right but this is just an incredible undertaking both in its vision and in the level of cooperation that is required, demanded and fully expected amongst all three of our governments going forward. So I think there is actually quite a clear vision on paper that came out of that optimal pathway for the work that we'll have to do together on the sub portion of AUKUS but it really does require some massive changes and new patterns of cooperation within the US government never mind with the UK and Australia that will certainly be the work of many administrations to come beyond this one. Then next of course there is a pillar two of AUKUS, right? This is the advanced capabilities work that will look at a number of different types of projects potentially bring in other partners and this is another place where we're hoping to make good progress in the very near term because we think that without necessarily being a part of pillar one at all, we have a broad swath of allies and partners who really have a lot to contribute to some of this very exciting cooperation on advanced capabilities that we'd like to do with the UK and Australia as well. But beyond AUKUS and beyond just the sort of acronyms I really do want to footstomp Eli's point about this emerging as a new form of architecture in the region, the set of overlapping latticeworks and coalitions where we are kind of fit for purpose and we're pursuing different projects, different deliverables, different types of outcomes and different groupings. Eli mentioned one other that we continue to think is really promising and that we'll continue to work on a good deal this year and beyond and that's the US-Japan Philippines partnership where our sort of shared vision as maritime democracies that think a lot about the East China Sea, the South China Sea and how we can reinforce one another has us with an incredible program of work in front of us. One of the best meetings I've sat in in government over the course of the last three years was the first trilateral meeting amongst our three countries national security advisors because the program of work that just flowed out from that really was the stuff of many years. So that's another grouping that I expect will continue. But I do want to emphasize one point that I made earlier, Vikram, and that we should talk about a little more and that is the fact that institutionalization of some of these efforts is not guaranteed, right? When we talk about these different groupings of partners we have a lot of work that we have to continue to do as a US government and with our partners to ensure that the structures we're building really do stay on the test of time. Part of that is for very good reason. We are mostly in these collections working with other democracies and we all expect political change to be part of the fabric of how we operate but we need to do the work both within our bureaucracies and with one another to create the expectations, the protocols, the procedures to ensure that what is this incredibly strong group of partnerships looks just as strong if not much stronger five or seven years from now. And I think we have really begun the business of doing that work but certainly for my team and I know for many of the teams of my friends on stage this is a lot of where we're focusing our attention in year four of this administration making sure that many of these big groupings that we have built are really built to last. Yeah, that's a really important point because it has to, things can be initiatives and then they fade away when the proponents of those initiatives move from the scene and go to their next thing. So hopefully you losing Kurt Campbell from the White House and you guys gaining, your gain of Kurt Campbell is a part of institutionalization within the State Department for a lot of these efforts and activities. So, okay, let me like, we've managed to go this long without mentioning China outright. What I wanna do is like all of these things we've just talked about, which are clearly embraced by the allies and partners who are partnering with us on them are portrayed of course by the Chinese in a very different light as containing China as directed against China as aggressive towards China. And to me the thing that makes itself evident that that's not the case is that all of these other countries are so eagerly participating with us on these things. These would not be things the region was excited about if it was just about the U.S. trying to pile on and bully and constrain China. But one of the things we've been working on here actually with the Philippines has been just sort of Chinese misinformation, disinformation, and the sort of relentless ability to portray a lot of this as militarization. This is even as China is actually building military outposts on disputed territories or it is actually sparking actual combat with the Indians on their disputed border. Even though that's what's happening, there is this sort of really difficult information space that all of this plays out in. And so I think, I can't go down the line because I think you all have a piece of this. You all see this or everywhere you work. But how you can take the China portrays this or how we with friends and partners are managing this new world of sort of rapid AI propelled sometimes, social media propelled, whatever you wanna take on. But like the information space in which we're operating and how we're perceived beyond the elites and government officials and business leaders that you're partnering with to run these things. How we're perceived more broadly. I'm happy to go first, but I will note before I do that Camille is our real public diplomacy and disinformation, misinformation expert. So I'm gonna save the firepower for her. Look, when it comes to the way that the PRC may choose to message US or other partner initiatives, I think we have found that staying focused on this affirmative vision really is the best defense. It's not really helpful to engage that narrative all that much mostly and above all else because we are confident that that's not what this is about, right? The objectives laid out in the Indo-Pacific strategy in that public document are the United States objectives in the Indo-Pacific. There is an implementation guidance that the US government uses to implement that strategy. And in the implementation guidance, those same five objectives are our objectives and our same lines of effort are fleshed out. Truly and deeply what we are seeking to do is to maintain a region that is free, open, connected, prosperous, resilient and secure. And by keeping ourselves focused on that positive framing and doing all the great work we're talking about here today but not making it responsive to the way that the PRC is framing things and not framing it as though it is a direct response to what the PRC may be doing, we make it easier for others to join us and again to take the pieces of this that work for them. And I think that it also allows us as a US government to remain focused on this genuinely positive work that we are doing to make our partners feel like they are stronger, more capable and able to contribute to those same regional objectives. So above all, I think that affirmative vision is our inoculation. Can I take Amira's affirmative vision and put it in a country context? So two weeks ago I was in the Maldives, one of the most beautiful places in the world. I have kids who are teenagers that they are not usually jealous of my travels. They were very jealous that I got to go to the Maldives. It's a place where China, the United States, India, lots of countries are competing for influence. The way we will prevail is by offering a better proposition. And when I said to the government of the Maldives look, we want you to have good relations with all of your partners, including China and India. But my view is China will be a good partner when there's actual genuine competition. If there isn't competition, what we have seen over and over again is the Chinese offering unsustainable debt for unprofitable projects. And in the Maldives, there are some really serious sectors that we all have to step up on to help that country to be successful and to thrive. This debt issue is serious for the Maldives as it is for many countries around the Indo-Pacific. In 2026, if the Maldives doesn't get debt restructuring, they will owe more than $1.3 billion in debt payments. That's more than the budget of the government every year. It's a huge amount of money. In our opinion, what they really need are investments into sustainable, profitable, private sector-led investments. And when you go to the Maldives, you can see there's so much potential there. Tourism is everywhere, and you can imagine all the profitable things you can invest in. We are in the process of negotiating with Maldives on an investment agreement that would allow the U.S. Development Finance Corporation to offer this sort of funding. What you may also know about the Maldives is it's a chain of 1,200 islands encompassing territorial waters of 53,000 kilometers. That's roughly the size of France. It's a massive country. You think of the Maldives as tiny. It's actually enormous in terms of the need for defense. How do you possibly protect the sovereignty of a gigantic part of the Indian Ocean? You do that with technology. You do that with training. You do that with equipment. And I think it's on all of us to see how we can support the Maldives. I mentioned this effort that Mira and others have put together to provide real-time commercial satellite data. That's part of the puzzle. We have recently committed four patrol boats to the Maldivian Navy. We are in discussions about aircraft. They're going to need all that and more to protect this territory. The last thing that's very obvious when you visit the Maldives is it's an island chain that's sinking. That all of the climate change activities that the world has been responsible for are having a really dramatic effect in this island chain. And it's for all of us to recommit to the goals that we have of clean energy transition to prevent the worst outcomes, but also to support countries like the Maldives who, if we do not provide financing and technology, are just going to vanish from the planet. Their islands are built right at sea level. If sea level goes up just a small amount, they will be submerged underwater. We need to protect that. And the United States has committed to this. We need to commit as a group of friendly nations. Come here. So, as Mira noted, when we look at the challenge of countering disinformation, misinformation, or foreign information manipulation and interference as some call it, there are many approaches that can be taken, but we have really done extensive research and that in every way we look at it comes back to the same key point, which is that the most effective tool to address the disinformation or misinformation is fact-based information that lays out an affirmative vision. So, from the United States perspective, we know that we are best served by identifying what disinformation narratives exist so that we are able to put out the information about what the United States and our partners and allies are doing. And whenever possible, it is best if we can identify specific actions that we are taking and how that is addressing a challenge that is facing the region. So, we work hard to do that both within the U.S. government and increasingly in alignment with partners and allies. We are working together with our partners in the Quad to identify narratives and other issues of concern under the foreign information and manipulation stream of things. We know that there is a narrative that is pushed out by the PRC, Russia and others that identifies the Quad, Aukus and the Indo-Pacific strategy as seeking to undermine the PRC and others. And when we see these narratives, we know again that our best offense is to outline what we are doing through the Quad, Aukus, the Indo-Pacific strategy, our bilateral, minilateral and multilateral relationships. We have been working in increasingly coordinated fashion to share best practices in encountering foreign information manipulation. Just recently, we were very pleased to sign memoranda of cooperation with the ROK and separately with Japan to shore up our coordinated work in this manner. And we know also that in order to defeat these false narratives that we are best served by messages that are coordinated, sustained and tailored to the local audience so that we are speaking in a way that resonates with the audience themselves. Can I ask you about speed on messaging? Because it seems like what's happened a lot with Russian and largely Chinese, but certainly with Russian misinformation is kind of disaggregated. It's a lot like effective political communicators in democracies where they sort of have their people who go forth and just sort of independently spread things. But then as governments we coordinate and that is that a challenge or how are we meeting that in the day-to-day PD world and what you're focused on? Yeah, I mean there are many ways that we are addressing it. One of the things that we are doing, which we think holds the most promise, is seeking to ensure that the information environment itself is more resilient. So that media environments, information environments in countries around the Indo-Pacific region have access to independent news content, to training for media outlets, to equipment needed by radio and television stations. And so we are working to provide that where there is a demonstrated need and interest and doing that in a transparent manner where we are not giving content that outlets are required to use or certain storylines that they are required to use, but rather providing access to independent media content so that journalists, media outlets have access to more balanced information. So we do think that one of the most critically important things that we can do is to build up that overall resilience. And we are also working with partners both within the Indo-Pacific region and beyond who similarly believe that one of the best investments we can make is ensuring up information environments in countries where they are particularly at risk for disinformation. So Eli's not militarizing everything? Look, I think those were all really great points. I think the only thing that I would add from the DOD perspective is that these narratives really matter in terms of public support out in the region for what we are trying to do. And that ranges from narratives about the future of the economic order in the region to narratives. Victor, as you said, of the United States is the one who's pushing allies and partners when that's so obviously not true in terms of the degree to which we see a real demand signal for American leadership. Just on that point, it's worth noting that several countries and organizations in the region and in Europe as well have issued their own Indo-Pacific strategies. And guess what? They look a lot like ours in terms of that kind of shared vision. So the idea that somehow this is all a U.S. program or a U.S. conception just doesn't bear out in the facts. And I agree. Look, demonstrating the alternative, having the positive vision is really important. But that shared understanding and that resilience of what's occurring in the information environment is really important too. And we do know that the PRC, including the PLA, have been increasingly invested in this space in the last several years. They see it as a central part, not sort of an add-on part of the competition, but a central part of the competition. They've been getting more organized. They've been acting with greater intensity. And we ought to identify these narratives and talk about them. Another piece of this that is perhaps newer than just old-style PRC propaganda are the means through which they're doing it. And we know that too in terms of how they're manipulating social media, how they're using artificial intelligence, how they're starting to use deep fakes. And where we need to get to is that publics in the region, journalists in the region, experts in the region and here in the United States, when they see those things, they don't parrot them as if they're fact, whether it's coming from the MFA podium or coming out of another offer bought on social media, that how that is seen and referred to and reported on is, oh, there is one of the PRC's false narratives. We see them using these particular tactics to try to expound this false information. So I think the positive narrative is absolutely right, but I think we have a little more work to do as a government in terms of exposing both the false narratives and the methods through which the CCP and Beijing are propagating them. That's great. I think everybody in this room by now can say free and open, connected, prosperous, resilient, and secure. Those are the pillars. The ten of the ten things we take through most of them. I give us pretty high grades across the board. The areas that we haven't really hit on, and it's a little unfair because we don't have our commerce and trade colleagues here, but before we turn quickly to audience questions or maybe as we turn to audience questions, there are clearly some economic investments happening. There's clearly the DFC is active. There's a lot of new activity. Partisanal blue-pacific is happening, but the anchor that was announced in the resourcing world and the trade world, one big part was the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. The IPAF, I think, has had a lot of uptake. It has a lot of, you know, plant-holder membership, but I think the general consensus is it has, it has not gotten to where we've seen some of these other mini-lateral and other initiatives go. I'll give any of you a chance to just talk about economic and trade cooperation in the region and what that looks like or pivots of questions, and I'm sure that will come up in questions too. Yeah, I'm happy to take a crack at that one, Vikram. Look, I think as you indicate, IPAF has generated some real excitement and had real uptake in some really important areas. I think the area where we've seen the most energy and enthusiasm from our partners, where we've gotten quite far at this point, is in our supply chain agreement, which is really quite substantial. And major ground covered in pillar three and four of IPAF as well, but there's also no question that we still have quite a bit more work to do, and we're committed to doing that. We know better than anyone how much the region counts on us as a leading economic partner and wants to see that an innovative new agreement can deliver in innovative and new ways that are really meaningful to their people, so that work absolutely continues. But I would note, as I think you did, Vikram, that there are a number of ways in which we are also innovating and helping to generate investment in the region that are not captured in any one framework and are really, really important to note. You noted some big blockbuster DFC projects, which are really important. For my money, when I talk to our partners in the region and hold interagency meetings, probably the agency that is most in demand, which may surprise some of you, is USTDA. Just an incredible partner that is able to conduct on-the-ground work to help some of our partner countries identify projects, conduct feasibility studies, and do that early pipeline work that helps them figure out how to make an idea into a reality. If I could sort of plus up or give more energy to one US government agency, it would probably be TDA. And particularly in the Pacific Islands, they've had just incredible impacts. But I'll also point to some of the work that we have been doing in the infrastructure space that really involves partnerships amongst partners, including through the latticeworks we've been referring to here today. I've had the chance to work on a number of different really exciting submarine cable projects. Since I've been at NSC, a couple of which are partnerships between the US, Japan, and Australia. One of which is a partnership currently between the US and Australia that has tons of room for growth and others. And doing things like providing reliable, secure sub-cable connectivity to the Pacific Islands is, it's hard to be more valuable than that, right? And some of the work that we have been able to do by working together to leverage our private sectors, I do think is genuinely path breaking and is something that we can sustain and build upon including by bringing other partners in. That's great. I'm going to open it up, guys. I think we can pull off three or four questions, please. State your name, a short question. If you have one, you can direct it to any of our panelists, but there will be mics brought around to you when you ask. And Peter, I think it's a little hard for me to see people, so here it comes. Peter McCoy, ExxonMobil. Thank you for this great discussion. And, you know, you give a bunch of talent to people like you, the ball. You're going to score a lot of points. It's surprising the Indo-Pacific strategy is doing so well. I want to take up your grade challenge, Mira, and from a commercial point of view, so I'm with ExxonMobil now, but I work with other businesses operating in the region. From a commercial point of view, we would not give the Indo-Pacific strategy an A. We may be given an A minus or a B plus because you have created a peaceful operating environment, an environment where democracies are thriving. I mean, we had a great election in Indonesia yesterday, and the rule of law is promoted. And the U.S. plays a huge role in promoting that, and we really, the business community appreciates that. And the U.S. government itself provides tremendous assistance to us. Every time we go in to see Dan or Don or anybody there, there's always a tremendous help, not to mention the embassies overseas. Fantastic. In commerce. Where we do have a challenge is, again, on the trade and investment plank, because we could, if the U.S. backed up agreements and infrastructure for higher standard trade and investment, we would have a much more even playing field to compete against countries and companies that are very comfortable operating in a low standard environment. And that would really benefit the people in these regions. So you all know that, you all get that. You recognize this as a missing link. And I'll just say one more thing from our sector, the energy sector. I'm going to have to give you guys a C. Now, we're not always the most popular company, so I recognize that. But the policy, the energy policy overseas of the Biden administration is very inconsistent, herky jerky, and really is very confusing. And I see, we see a future in the region where decarbonizing energy is likely to be controlled by China unless the Biden administration really thinks this through and enables American companies to create a really proper decarbonized energy structure in the region. Thank you. You know, we could have gotten deep on the technology piece where decarbonization would play in and energy. We could have gone deep on the free and open piece, actually. Each of these could be their own multi-hour seminar, each of the 10 areas. But maybe, because you opened the door there, decarbonization, what about cooperating with India, Dawn, or others in the region who have their own ambitions to meet their climate goals? You know, I know Jeff Payet was just out there with you in India at the IUF, so maybe we can take advantage of talking a little bit about how the U.S. government is looking at partnering with countries in the region to help them decarbonize or help partners to help other countries, third countries even. So if you allow me to start, I'll quote my son who's in college. He says, sees get degrees. So see is good enough for him. This clean energy transition, there is no more important place on the planet than India right now. Right? India, third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, an economy that is booming, that is on track to become the third largest in the world, and yet all that development of their energy capacity is still before them. And will that be based on coal, or will that be based on renewables? And Prime Minister Modi has set out a really ambitious agenda for how it's going to be based on renewables, but he can never get there without the support of the world. Not just some narrow group of partners, but the world working together will have to make this possible. It will have to pool financial resources. It will have to pool technology. It will have to be much more open and flexible in the way we do business. My history with India goes back 30 years. I can remember the beginnings of the Bangalore, Silicon Valley, software engineers on both sides starting to flirt with each other to create something that has really changed the way we live. That software revolution touches all of us every day in our lives that will need to be a revolution on that scale in energy transition with India at its heart for us to make it to all of our goals. Is that Nalanti? Thank you. Nalanti USIP. My question is about the Indian Ocean segment of the Indo-Pacific. The most important segment. How are our speakers' views of US interests approaches to the Indian Ocean? How are they evolving in the past two years, if at all? One of the real challenges that I see as a government person is the Indian Ocean in government is all cut into pieces. I do a piece of it because I do South Asia. My colleagues who cover Africa do a piece of it. In many parts of the US government, Pakistan is treated as a separate part, so there's like a division between Pakistan and India. It makes a coordination more challenging. We are coming to grips with that. We are finding ways to work together. I was just at a conference with other colleagues here including Camille in Hawaii at Indo-Paccom where we brought together colleagues who were working that part of the puzzle from Africa, as well as people who were working on it in East Asia and in South Asia. It's a tricky piece of the puzzle in part because we're a big force in the Indian Ocean. China is a much bigger force, right? Sorry, not China, India. If you're going to get this right, you need to work with the Indians and make sure what we're doing is consistent with the direction that they're moving in with respect to the Indian Ocean. They are historically the big player and so we are having really interesting talks, including talks that will launch at the end of this month about Africa to think about how we're working together, particularly in those littoral states of Africa on the Indian Ocean to make sure we have more commonality in the way that we're approaching the region. I completely agree with just a quick additional piece of flair on Don's very good answer. This seam that runs down the Indian Ocean is totally vexing. It basically you know, falls through three combatant commands, right? In the U.S. system. But there is a flip side advantage to that which is that some of partners elsewhere in the world define the Indo-Pacific differently and for them, they often include the whole Indian Ocean in their definition of the Indo-Pacific and their Indo-Pacific strategy. So if you talk to friends in the EU or you talk to individual European countries like the French they have a very unified vision for the Indian Ocean as we are increasingly developing as well as the unified set of capabilities and initiatives that they're bringing to bear on it. So one of the benefits that I think we can continue to pursue through the great coordination we do with our European partners is to work in areas like the Indian Ocean where some of them may have a very long tradition of working on a set of partnerships that either we can build upon or where we can de-conflict efforts and really keep them in the lead. Anything to add on Seam? No, I thought that was a great answer. Our office cuts across at least out to Pakistan, not further west and obviously not to Africa but there are three combatant commands. What's been interesting is to see a country like India obviously within the Indo-Pacom area of responsibility but interested in cooperating more with AFRICOM potentially with CENTCOM and I think from an operational perspective as Mira said different partners in different ways are going to be operating in the Indian Ocean with different strengths whether it's geographic or related to their capabilities some in the west, some in the east and it continues to be an area of focus and I think from an area where there is recognized of increasing importance and from a security perspective as the PLA is working to increase its presence throughout the region but certainly in the Indian Ocean and in the maritime domain we see littoral states wanting to respond to that and strengthen up their own security so it's a lot of interest throughout the region. Asfandiar? Thank you for that. Short question How do you see the PRC responding to the strategy if at all? Thank you. Camille? To the Indo-Pacific Well we certainly see it pop up in a lot of media narratives that they are pushing out and as I noted when we see something like that reference to the Indo-Pacific strategy, the Quad, AUKUS we actually know that our actions are successful because they are raising some level of sentiment on the part of the PRC that they need to counter it in some way. What we see is that the actions that the PRC is taking though I certainly wouldn't expect they are intended to do this are having the effect of advancing our Indo-Pacific strategy because partners, allies, friends within the region and beyond the region are reacting to the increasing aggression of the PRC around the region and so we see this greater alignment as Eli mentioned of Indo-Pacific strategies from countries across many parts of the world and we see an eagerness to cooperate with and to find means of coordination with the United States and partners and allies to ensure that we actually can advance our Indo-Pacific strategy so the effect is one that is actually positive for us though I know that's an unintended effect on the part of the PRC. We can do one more and who wants to be the last question? Rakita. I have a question from our online audience from David Brunström at Reuters so how does the United States have the possibility of a summit between Japan's Prime Minister Kishida and Kim Jong-un is there a concern that North Korea might be trying to disrupt trilateralism? The last one. Who wants it? Mira. I'm happy to take this one. Hi David first of all I think this question may be responding to a different news article that was published recently that was about supporting an interest in that particular summit right now but what I will say is that engagement with the GPRK is something that if either the United States or any of its partners wanted to do, had a reason to do we will support and work together and consult with one another but again I think this is perhaps a reaction to so with that I just want to say we really could do a seminar I think I might have lost my microphone at the end there, we really could do a seminar on each of these items we could do a whole day you guys have been able to be put through your paces here and you've earned some time at the reception I hope you can spare a few minutes please join me in giving a really warm vote of thanks to our wonderful panel and please join us for a reception right outside