 Thanks Mike. Truly we inhabit an age of strategy. It must be. Governments and armed services keep telling us so. They are issuing white papers seemingly non-stop with that word in the titles or the text. For example, a short list would include Japan, which just published its first national security strategy in 2013. China issued its first military strategy just last month. The American Sea Services released their refreshed cooperative strategy for 21st century sea power just last March, updating the 2007 edition that was unveiled on this very stage. The refresh marked the Sea Services effort to keep pace with changing times and circumstances. And in the realm of combined strategy, earlier this year Tokyo and Washington revised the defense guidelines governing allied strategy and operations in the Far East. So if generating documents is any sign, governments take strategy very seriously. And strategic thought appears to be on an upswing as well, and not a moment too soon for the United States Navy. After the Cold War, as Frank Fukuyama was proclaiming that history had ended in the political realm, our Navy declared its own end to history. The leadership issued a strategic directive titled From the Sea, declaring that with the demise of the Soviet Navy, no one could challenge American command of the Sea. Thus we could set aside the first and paramount mission of navies, fighting rival fleets for command, and focus on exporting command of permissive waters. We could concentrate on projecting power from this offshore sanctuary. The weaponry, tactics, and habits of mind needed to rule the waves languished in the interim. Now that the end of history has ended, a geopolitical competition has returned with a vengeance, its high time to relearn the art of strategy. The art that lets America, its friends, and its allies, many represented in this room today, survive and thrive in this normal age of power politics. So fostering strategic thought is why this college exists. We help the next generation unlock its gifts for strategic thought, and we then turn these thinkers loose to shake things up. Fittingly then, two of the more workman-like definitions of military strategy come from right here on Coaster's Harbor Island. Our second president, Alfred Thayer Mahan, portrays it simply as statesmanship directing arms. Our students will tell you this is a rare, pithy phrase from Mahan, who seldom used one word when ten would do. Or you can look at the works of Admiral J. C. Wiley, who served here on the faculty after World War II, and who wrote my favorite work of a strategic theory, a Wiley-defined strategy as a plan of action designed in order to achieve some end, a purpose together with a system of measures for its accomplishment. So with that, we have assembled a distinguished panel of experts this afternoon to help us understand how statesmanship should direct arms during our return to history, and what kinds of plans of action we should pursue to fulfill the goals bequeathed to us by our political masters. We have with us today, first of all, to my right, Professor Tom Manken, a stalwart here in the strategy department for many years, a master of the dark arts of competitive strategies, and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for policy planning. To Tom's right, we have a man we would have to invent if he didn't exist, namely, Mr. Ron O'Rourke of the Congressional Research Service. Taken from me, Ron's works must read for any specialist in maritime strategy. Scope those out. We next have Vice Admiral Frank Pandoff, a surface warfare officer returning to the cradle of surface warfare, former commander of the US Sixth Fleet and director for strategic plans and policy for the joint staff. And lastly, but not least, we have a scholar familiar to anyone who follows events in Southeast Asia, Professor Carl Thayer of the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra. I should add that Carl is a graduate of Brown University and thus has close ties right here in Rhode Island. And indeed, if you look at his tie, he's sporting his school colors today. Now without further ado, I will be quiet and I will ask Tom to take the floor and take it away. Thank you, and thank you particularly for that introduction. And since the, I guess the panel is going to be available online, I can play it for my kids later so that they know what I do for a living. Or at least one version of what I do for a living. So, you know, good news is this is the last panel of CSF. Even better news, at least for me, is I get to speak first. And given that, given that this is the final panel, and given that I have spent the better part of my career, and I mean better in both senses of the word, the better part of my career, studying and teaching strategy and also for a time having the great privilege of advising two Secretaries of Defense on strategy, I thought the most useful thing that I could offer in the time allotted is to provide some thoughts on the formulation and implementation of strategy today. And rather than sort of all the laudatory things to really focus on some of the challenges of strategy today. Now, before I do that, I do want to start with a caveat, which is I'm going to say some fairly pointed things. These are not, however, aimed at anyone in particular. The challenges that I will discuss represent some general challenges that obtain when we try to formulate and implement strategy. So I really have three things I want to talk about. First, strategy and what is strategy and the challenges of strategy. Second, who are strategists versus who are the people who are charged with formulating and implementing strategy. And because of that, what are some of the challenges that we face? So Jim offered a couple of definitions of strategy. My own is that strategy is about how to apply limited resources to achieve your aims against a competitor. So you need to have aims. You need to know what you want to accomplish. And you need to formulate a strategy against a competitor. You have to be in competition with someone. And you need to understand your strengths and weaknesses as well as those of your competitor. Now, strategy is important. I guess I wouldn't be in this business if I didn't think it was. But it's not so important that it overwhelms everything else. Strategy doesn't assure success just as its absence doesn't ensure defeat. It does, however, increase the possibility or the probability of success. So you're more apt to do well if you have a good strategy, a sound strategy, than if you are lacking one. Now, one can make up for poor strategy with, to a certain extent, with other things, with resources. And so one can make up for the absence of a strategy if you have a wide margin of superiority over competitors. But conversely, strategy becomes all the more important when that margin of superiority is narrowing. As it is, I would argue, for the United States today. Now, the elements of strategy that I mentioned a minute ago, your aims, understanding of your competitor, understanding of your relative strengths and weaknesses, each of these elements can be difficult to achieve in practice. It can be hard, particularly in a bureaucracy, to come up with aims even harder to assign value to them. It can be hard to speak forthrightly about competitors. It can be hard to name names. And it can be hard for a whole host of reasons to assess our relative strengths and weaknesses. Nonetheless, each of those tasks is really essential when it comes to formulating sound strategy. Now, many people confuse strategy and planning. Strategy and planning are different from one another. I would, the way I would put it is, planning is strategy without an adversary. Or strategy is planning with an adversary. Planning is all about how I achieve my goals within limited resources. I can plan for my children's college education. I can plan a menu for dinner. I don't need a strategy to save for my children's education unless somebody is actively working against it, maybe another member of my household. But that's planning. That's not strategy. Strategy really only comes into play when you are facing a competition or an opponent. And so most documents that purport to be strategies aren't. They are at best plans. At worst, they are an undifferentiated list of desirable aims. Now, the best strategies, in my experience, studying them as much as anything, the best strategies are written by individuals to be implemented by bureaucracies. And each part of that, I think, is important. Strategies are written by individuals. And I'll talk about why individuals matter. But they need to be written to be implemented by bureaucracies. So if no plan survives contact with the enemy, it takes a good strategy to survive contact with bureaucracy. And along those lines, I think the strategy that the United States followed for most of the Cold War, strategy of containment, was a brilliant bureaucratic strategy. It was a strategy in that it was ultimately aimed at defeating the Soviet Union. But it was a strategy that was well tailored to implementation by a bureaucracy. Formulating strategy is hard. Implementing it, particularly in a bureaucracy, is even harder. Part of the reason why it's so difficult to formulate an implement strategy is that not everyone is constitutionally equipped to strategic thought. Now, having said that, I'm not holding strategic thought as some magical power that sets strategists apart from mere mortals. But what I am saying is that the ability to think strategically is like any other mental attribute. Not everyone does it equally well. Not everyone is a strategic thinker. In my experience, some people think strategically naturally. That's true in the military. It's also true in the civilian world. It's true in the government. It's also true in the corporate sector. Some people are just natural strategists. To take, even though I'm in New England, I should say Bill Belichak, I'll say Pete Carroll. Pete Carroll is a natural strategic thinker, although I'm pretty sure that Carroll never took a class in strategy. He just gets it naturally. Others can be educated to think strategically. That is one of the greatest values of this institution, educating students to think strategically. Then there are others, quite honestly, who aren't capable of strategic thought. We find those, again, in different proportions in the military, in government, in private sector. There's a bell curve. Now, as best I can tell, strategic thinking is not a prerequisite for advancement or promotion, either in the civilian or military ranks. Officers aren't promoted based on their capacity for strategic thinking, and neither are civilian leaders. Certainly presidents are not elected based on whether or not they are strategic thinkers. They're elected based upon a whole host of other things. One doesn't become a strategist merely by occupying a job that includes the noun strategy. In other words, we can't count on leaders to be strategists. We can hope for them, but we can't count on it. In many cases, the best we can hope for are strategists to advise leaders. Again, I come back to what I see as the central purpose, the central value of this institution is educating people to serve as strategic advisors. Now, because strategy is hard and because not everyone thinks strategically, we tend to fall prey to a whole series of fallacies. I could spend much longer than I have talking about these, but I want to offer up really a handful of fallacies that I think we encounter repeatedly. We encounter in the United States, other nations encounter as well. The first set, there's three sets that I want to talk about. The first set has to do with fallacies about the use of force to achieve political ends. The first two fallacies are really their fraternal twins. The first fraternal twin is the fallacy of irrationality. This is the belief that the use of force follows from the breakdown of policy rather than serving as its extension. It's a dominant, it's a pervasive belief in American strategic culture. The belief that the only way that a war could break out is out of some act of irrationality. It's a deep denial of the irrationality or the instrumentality of force. Now, its fraternal twin, which also appears quite prominently in American strategic culture, is the fallacy of hyperrationality. The belief that force can be used in a calibrated way to achieve clearly defined, predictable political effects. One sees this going all the way from the writings of Sun Tzu in ancient China all the way up to modern game theory and found its expression both in Operation Rolling Thunder during Vietnam and more recently the Kosovo bombing campaign in 1999. On the one hand, we have this fallacy of irrationality, the other this belief in this hyperrationality. A second set of fallacies have to do with assessment and particularly the difficulty of assessing our relative strengths compared to those of our competitors. Again, we have a pair of fraternal twins here. One twin is the fallacy of overestimation, worst case thinking, prudent military planning, if you will. The desire not to be surprised by an adversary and therefore to think the worst of the adversary's capability and the worst of our capabilities as well. But when it comes to strategy, overestimation makes you discard options that you actually have. Make you ignore viable strategic options. Great example is the end of the 1991 Gulf War, where we understood at the time that the very southernmost provinces of Iraq and the northernmost the Kurdish areas of Iraq were in rebellion against Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime. What we now know due to the captured Baath archives is that the Baath parties hold on Iraq was much less firm than we understood at the time. That every province save one, Al Anbar, was in open rebellion against the Baath party. We actually had much more strategic leverage than we understood at the time. Now, if the fallacy of overestimation tends to be associated with prudent military planning and hence with the military, it's fraternal twin, the fallacy of underestimation. I'll say it's evil fraternal twin. Tends to be more associated with civilian policymakers. If the fallacy of overestimation makes you ignore options that you have, the fallacy of underestimation makes you believe that you have options that don't actually exist. Think about US strategy posts in the Korean War post the Incheon landing, where we grasped for the brass ring of reunifying Korea, something that was beyond our grasp. A final set of fallacies have to do with interaction with our competitors, with our adversaries. Here again, I'll offer a pair of fraternal twins. One, which goes very much with the hyperrational view of the use of force, is the fallacy of the hyperrational adversary. The belief that your adversary is calculating, recognizes, notices every move that you make, every gesture, and acts accordingly. Much deterrence theory is based on that, much strategic bombing theory is based on that, much arms race theory is based on that. Problem is, I think there's actually precious little evidence for hyperrational adversaries in history. Now, its fraternal twin is also fairly prevalent, and that's the fallacy of the irrational adversary. I think it's been applied to most, if not all adversaries the United States has faced in one way, shape, or form. It really stems from an inability or an unwillingness to understand our competitors, understand their motivations, understand their strengths, and also understand their weaknesses. Failing that, failing a willingness or ability to understand our adversaries, we call them irrational. Just because we don't understand or don't try to understand what drives them, we term them irrational. Now, I've cataloged these fallacies. I think what you're expecting me to say now to wrap up is, how do we do better? Well, I think we do better in a number of ways, although I don't know that these things can be avoided entirely. One way that we can do better is through education, but why wouldn't I say that? That's my job. I'm an educator, but I believe in my job. I do believe in the ability of education to make people at least understand strategy. I think going with that, we also make things better when we take the real strategic thinkers and put them in the right positions and empower them, whether they're positions of leadership or as advisors to leader. There's no total solution to these fallacies, but through education and through personnel policies, I think we can definitely raise our batting average. Thanks very much. Thanks a lot, Tom. You've given us a lot to think about as we try to size up rising competitors in the world around us. Admiral? Good afternoon, everyone. Can you hear me? All right. I'm very cognizant of the fact that I'm standing between you and Liberty. There's two speakers left of the last panel of the last day, but I thank you, Admiral Howell, very much for the invitation to share some thoughts today on this very important topic. I want to come at it from a little bit of a different angle, building on what Tom and Ron just did, however. I'd like to talk to the students for a moment about my own experience as a strategist and in strategy over 35 years of service. From that, share five lessons learned or observations that I think have proven true for me as I've helped shape strategy in the Navy and in the joint world and to a lesser extent at a higher level beyond that. In my own career, I've had the privilege of participating in two national security strategies, one national defense strategy for QDRs and the C-Power 21 project that guided the Navy for a period of time prior to CS21. I mention that because there's an empirical base of experience that I was thinking about as preparing for this talk, looking across those different projects to see what were the constants, what was something that came up in every one of those, even though they were done at three different levels of national security making. So five kind of thoughts. The first is that strategy development in my experience is both iterative and inclusive. So what do I mean by that? So if you go back and look at the empirical data, we issue a new major strategy of one of those flavors roughly every five years. Sometimes this is due to legislation, quadrennial defense review, but most of the time it's not. It's because the world changes and as the world changes, there's a sense that the sell-by date has been reached in that version of that particular strategy. Now it's been somewhat fashionable to say, and you heard it from James even earlier, that we don't invest in strategy in any sort of steady-state manner. We go to sleep and we fall asleep for a long period of time. There's a wake-up call and we all kind of rush to write the next strategy. That has not been my experience at all. What I've seen is that the bureaucracy, to use Tom's term, works pretty hard at this. There's a cadre of strategists in this town in Washington. It's not a very big community, by the way. If you get into strategy, you will see the same people over and over again. They're wonderful people. They're very dedicated and they think and work this continuously. So it is an iterative process that builds from one version of that document to the next, almost foundationally. And I think I'd like to make two brief points here. For the students who are about to go out into their respective services, mostly Navy here, but in some cases other countries as well, if you are interested in this line of work, I heartily applaud you getting into it. It's a wonderful line of work. They're great people. I love strategy. I have three tours in J5 and I tell my strategists in Washington, this is the best place in Washington to work. You're making a difference. You're influencing the understanding and thinking of people at very, very high levels. You can contribute. And my second point is just that. If you go out and join one of those efforts as a mid-grade officer, you matter and your voice matters. And the people who are running these efforts, be it writing the next CS21 or the next national defense review, they want to hear what you have to say. So don't ever think that because you're relatively junior and what is probably a relatively senior group of individuals debating these points, that your voice doesn't matter. I have seen time and again in these efforts, the junior person in the room say something that really moves the ball and makes a big, big difference. And in the final outcome of that product that goes to the to the CNO or the chairman of the joints of staff, some cases even higher. Now, because I say it is inclusive and iterative, does not mean that the degree of change from one document to another is necessarily small. I'm simply saying there's a continuum. The degree of change, and I'll give you some examples in a moment, depends on the degree of change in the environment. Now, if there is relatively little change in the environment, yet there's enough change to warrant the new issuance of a document, then it probably is a fairly straight line successor to the one behind it. But there have been some times in our history when the world events have changed significantly. And I'd like to give you a few examples of those and talk to you about how the bureaucracy, if you will, or the services of the nation did in fact tackle the strategic challenge, how they chose to do it, what the product looked like, and I'll leave it up to you to judge whether we got it right or wrong, and perhaps we could talk about that in question or answers. But before I dive into that, I want to share one other thought. And that is this idea that, and Ron mentioned it, the world is in flux. But I ask you, when was the world not in flux? I think perspective is extraordinarily important. We are looking at some very important changes, but this is what we do. So when I was flying up here, I had my staff download a copy of NSC 68, the famous Cold War strategy document that built on Kennan's, you know, Mr. X article. And this is how it begins. This was written in 1949. World War II had ended. Our presumptive alliance with the Soviet Union was clearly not going forward. China had been lost. And South Korea was about to be invaded. So this is a document highly classified at the time, written by the NSC staff for President Truman. And this is how it opens for the President to read. It says, within the past 35 years, I remember the Soviet Union collapsed about 25 years ago. So that gives you a sense of the amount of time that they were dealing with. Over the past 35 years, the world has witnessed two global world wars of tremendous violence. It has witnessed two revolutions, the Russian and Chinese, of extreme scope and intensity. It has also seen the collapse of five empires, the Ottoman, the Austro-Hungarian, the German, the Italian, the Japanese, and the drastic decline of two major imperial systems, the British and the French. During the span of one generation, the international distribution of power has been fundamentally altered. So our predecessors dealt with change, too. How did they choose to do it? So Ken writes this article that says the way to do this is to apply pressure and contain the Soviet Union. It has within it the seeds of its own destruction. If we are patient and we leverage our strengths, time is on our side. Now I want to pick up a point that Tom said a moment ago. That's a great vision. But what's a bureaucracy supposed to do with that? How do you implement that? So NSC 68 was the way the bureaucracy translated that into policy. Now there's an endless debate of whether they got it right or not. Ken and quite frankly, as I understand it, thinks they did not, that they over militarized his vision. But my point is, in 1950, the bureaucracy produced a document the president endorsed that set in chain a number of actions that lasted for the rest of the time, the Soviet Union lasted containment, the new look, selective pressure, multiplying alliances, forward presence, nuclear deterrence, the 1986 maritime strategy, air land battle, all of these flowed from that foundational document. This is an example of how the bureaucracy builds on a strategic framework, iteratively over time. But they all had one thing in common. It was all about the Soviet Union. That was the North Star towards which our policy was oriented. And then it went away. I was in the Mediterranean and forest all the time when the wall came down. The Soviet Navy disappeared from the oceans. And we were literally as a Navy at a loss of what to do. We were sent into port for 30 days. So a challenge, a challenge was issued to the Navy to figure out what it would become. How would it change? And the result was from the sea. And that shortly thereafter forward from the sea. Now, there are a few people in this room probably who were part of those debates. I was not. But they were spirited, heated debates about the very nature of the orientation of our Navy. As we moved from a blue water, war at sea focus aimed at the Soviet Navy to an expeditionary focus about projecting power from one domain, the sea, to another domain on land. Fund flowing from this debate were decisions about budgets. There were real winners and losers in the force structure. The communities had winners and losers. This is an emotional, emotional debate. Why do I bring it up? I bring it up because the Navy had that debate. They made those decisions. They implemented those changes. They put the rudder over and they built the Navy that we needed for the new era. There is an example of strategists doing their job and pushing the ship's bow into the right direction. Now I was involved in C-Power 21. That came about in the post 9-11 period. Why did we think change was, why was there enough change to warrant that document? I would argue the two things that happened that warranted issuing a new, in this case a vision statement. One was we've been attacked. We've been attacked by a transnational networked nodal enemy. And we needed to adopt a vision of a networked Navy. The second piece is that we had the connectivity, the reach and the precision to do that. As late as the 1990 Gulf War, we had to get the air-tasking order ashore, physically print it out, fly it out to the carrier, run it to the office, make copies of it, and run it to the radio rooms. That is how limited the pipes were, the command and control was in 1990, 1991. You look at that campaign, the amount of precision ordinance dropped was about 10%. That was state of the art at this time. Fast forward to where we are today, we are completely networked into a unified battle space and the ability to project precision fires pursuant to the Joint Force Commander's tasking to generate joint effects erases that boundary between the sea and the land. This was the change that warranted that document. And that served us well for about, you guessed us, five years. And then we came up with CS 21. Why CS 21? Well, CS 21 was a, again, fit the times. It was a hopeful document for a hopeful time. We had a confluence of economic factors. We had Robesmont with the Chinese and the Russians. We had threats to the sea lanes in terms of pirates. And we had an ability to leverage a thousands ship navy concept to produce common security for the common good. It was the right vision for the time. And our strategist codified it. And that served us well. Until we get to this environment that we're dealing with today, where we're seeing the emergence of the kinds of issues that Rona Rourke just told you about. And once again, the teams met, they worked through the process, inclusively, iteratively, and they issued CS 21R, which re-emphasizes the warfighting centrality and purpose of the navy, and underlines the all domain access requirement, which gets to the mission to support not only our forces forward, but our allies forward. So when I look at this, I am heartened by the community of strategists and their willingness and their ability. And quite frankly, I think their success in sensing the environment and on a periodic basis, refreshing the visions that we need to guide us. So where are we today? I won't plow the field that you've heard over the last two days. You've seen and talked about the effects of globalization, the flow of people across borders, the intertwining of the economies. You've talked about the spread and dissemination of technologies, which are super-empowering not only individuals, but are allowing states to leapfrog generations of technology to erode some of the advantages that we have enjoyed and used for our advantage. And you've talked about demographics and how they're shifting around the world, leading to the movement of peoples and the mixing of cultures. But as you look at where we are today, I would postulate and these are my, this is my opinion, there's still two major factors we're dealing with. The first are states and states remain the most powerful element in the international equation. States have the preeminent ability to harness power, to focus endeavors, and to provide security. They can provide the greatest potential threat to our nation. And the prescription there is the one it has been and remains. Deter them with force, deny them in their efforts to modify the international norms that we hold dear, and if aggression is to take place, defeat them. Concurrent and simultaneous with the revisionist states that want to change, as Ron would say, key elements of the international order, is the threat posed by transregional, revolutionary, violent extremist organizations. These organizations are not interested in revising elements of the order. They are interested in overthrowing the order. And their threat is not potential, their threat is immediate. The strategy there is to disrupt, degrade, and defeat. Disrupt their planning and operations, degrade their support structures, remove their leadership, interdict their finances, impede the flow of foreign fighters, counter their malign influences, liberate their territory, and defeat them. It is a by-with and through strategy that counts on host nations, and it relies on a large coalition who have a common interest in defeating this threat. John Allen, General Allen and his team have put together over 60 nations that are working this threat every day. The third lesson is the strategies, I think, reflect the military environment. I won't belabor this too much. But tactics matter. Tactics affect strategy. What you want to accomplish in statecraft cannot reach beyond what you can deliver on the battlefield. And as technology has changed, it has impacted statecraft. Think about steam propulsion, submarines, carrier aircraft, amphibious warfare, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, precision guidance, long-range cruise missiles, space-based sensing, and communications. When new technologies are introduced in the battlefield, think Civil War, think World War I. There are strategic effects that flow from that. So where are we today? A2AD, the wide proliferation of precision weaponry, hybrid warfare, space competition, cyber attack and defense. There are major changes coming at us quickly, and they will have strategic impact. My understanding is we didn't talk too much over the last two days about hybrid warfare, so I'll say just a word on that. This is an area that the doctrine folks are still exploring and defining. But it's real. I would offer that it can theoretically come in three flavors. The first is military forces of an established state, assuming a non-state identity and trying to sneak in and accomplish their objectives, their strategic objectives, below the threshold that will trigger state response. Think little green men in Crimea. At the other end of the spectrum is a non-state actor, ISIL, fielding the trappings of a state, rudimentary combined arms capabilities, for instance. Something like we're seeing in Iraq. And a third option, and the one that's most commonly cited, will be the blending of state and non-state actors using a full arrange of capabilities to achieve their common purposes, such as we're seeing in Ukraine. Whatever its form, hybrid conflicts serve to increase ambiguity, complicate decision making, slow the coordination of effective responses. And due to these advantages to the aggressor, I believe we're going to see this form of warfare well into the future. The fourth thing I've come to believe from my experience in strategy drafting and strategy processes is that strategies reflect values. The strategies that our nation produces will be different from the strategies of another nation. So what do we hold dear? Our national interests. And they reflect the values of democracy and human rights, free trade, the rule of law, access to the global comments and freedom of navigation. These are in our historical DNA. And you'll see them again and again and again in the ends part of the strategies over time. In short, we are committed to preserving the international order that has provided so much progress, hope and prosperity to so many. And these values do not change. Therefore, they provide a degree of stability that cuts across all of our strategies. If you read the 2015 just published National Security Strategy, it lists four U.S. and during national interests. The Security of the United States, I'm cutting these down a little bit, a growing U.S. economy in an open economic system, universal values and a rules-based international order. I would argue if you go back and read the Atlantic Charter, they're not a whole lot different. So the stability of the values puts as a foundation in our strategy processes is of an advantage for us. And that leads me to my final offering, is that strategies, not surprisingly, are built to leverage our strengths. And the constancy of purpose and our support for such widely held goals, arms our nation with a set of strengths to which we turn and upon which we rely in strategy after strategy. Example, we leverage wide-ranging alliances and partnerships. Access granted to us by other nations, shared knowledge and cultural awareness, logistical support, shared objectives and common purposes. These strengths are the building blocks or the planks from which we fashion our strategies again and again and again. And we are very blessed to have them. Now I'll conclude with one thought. Secretary Carter gave a speech last week down in Washington where he said something that I don't think is appropriate from our leaders. He said, I am optimistic about the future. He quoted our economy, our innovation, our universities, our energy, our military and our allies and our partners as long-term advantages around which we can fashion our strategies and toward which we can dedicate to achieve our goals. I agree with him and I think as you go out again talking to the students to return to the fleet or to the staffs or to your nations, I think when you get into this line of work you'll find many of these same lessons learned supply and quite frankly we will count on you to take the fine education you've received here and put it to work, sense the environment, look at the military environment, look at our goals and values and help us fashion the next set of strategies for our nation, for our allies and partners. Thank you very much. Thanks for the insight or look, Admiral. And last but not least, we'll turn to Carl. Good afternoon. Can you hear me from here? I feel like the last batsman coming in after a long cricket match and I have to work out a strategy to just keep batting until time's up or do I try to up the score rate? But anyway, I'd like to begin by thanking the Naval War College for the invitation and the time that Cronin began focusing on the South China Sea. I've... Okay, okay. Right. I framed my talk with the guidance I got that described this current strategy form and this is my second. I was here two years ago and told all the white uniform people you didn't have an asymmetric strategy to deal with China and the South China Sea and here I'm back trying to fill in the blanks if I can. But this just suggests that we've already we see up here the international landscape is rapidly becoming more contested and dangerous. And the guidance talks about new domains. Well, I'm going to look at the South China Sea where the Navy is and will be encountering legal contestation by China and non-military instruments such as maritime law enforcement agencies, coast guards, fishing fleets which are state militias, oil industry mega exploration rigs that are parked in exclusive economic zones of other states and this environment will get more contested in military terms as China develops its military forces. So why is the South China Sea important? Here we go. From an Australian perspective but your perspective as well those red lines are the intensity of the sea lines of communication where global trade and energy resources flow to China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. And what's not shown here of course is that Australia is one of the most northeast Asia dependent countries in the world because our resources go to China, Japan, South Korea as well. So our sea lines through the South China Sea are highly important. It's also the transit route as you would know for the American military to come from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean to pivot or to shift as Middle East contingencies, Wax and Wayne and resources are drawn from the Pacific command or return there themselves. The South China Sea passes through the heart of the Southeast Asia region which has a regional organization the Association of Southeast Asian Nations which is trying to claim centrality and being in the driver's seat for the regional security architecture. So what about the South China Sea in particular? It is contested and the Constitution of the global oceans, the United Nations Convention on the law of the sea is being contested and we have a legal contestation that we're facing. We see here nine dashed lines on a map issued by China which have not been defined with precision but we see China's attempts to enforce its notions of sovereign sovereignty and sovereign jurisdiction within those nine dashed lines. We have China in conflict with Vietnam that claims the Paracels and Spratlys as well, Taiwan which actually has a presence there also has similar claims, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei but the interest of Singapore and Indonesia are also affected. The Philippines is our only treaty ally and that is a point I will return to later. How have nations attempted to assert their claims? Well here is a chart from the Office of Naval Intelligence the bigger the ship the heavier its weight and tons. We start with China this is not my color combination because I know it doesn't work for clarity but all the red up at the top is China 200 and fine maritime law enforcement vessels followed by Japan, followed by Vietnam and as the size decreases you're moving from 5, 10, 5 3,000 to 1,000 tons you're coming down very small and then you have Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines with four in the archipelagic state. This is the cutting edge of China's assertiveness in the South China Sea and that's why two years ago I said you can't mix match great ships against white ships that creates an awful lot of problems. So what is and they are accompanied by fishermen who are part of state militia linked with sat navigation systems the Beidou system with the regular Navy a few instances in the last 10 years intervening when necessary but let's take a strategic look we know that since the crisis in Taiwan 1995 China wants to push the U.S. ability to maneuver and operate within that first island chain as far out as it possibly can and that has the South China Sea dimension I'm not going to get into A to A that's Pentagon it's counter intervention from the Chinese point of view but they also have an interest in protecting their own sea lines of communication and they fear what one leader called the Malacca Dilemma that the U.S. could close off choke points in a time of crisis I'm not going to get into that but what I want to do is then focus on Hainan Island which is this doesn't have a laser printer but just above where the word Vietnam appears where China has since the late 2000-2008 constructed a major naval base this base will hold the projected development of China's nuclear attack and nuclear ballistic submarines otherwise they're hemmed in that first island chain they need to get out into the western Pacific and as China develops be able to strike continental United States with multiple independent warheads this naval port will host aircraft carriers as they come because the infrastructure has been built and large amphibious assault groups Hainan Island will host a 2016 new space launch center for heavy space launch vehicles with low satellite orbiting capabilities so China is laying in ground the ability to exert control, sea control over the South China Sea and we now turn to and I will have difficulty I've just written an article no, China is not reclaiming land in the South China Sea that term is misused in ordinary English there's no island features in which have deteriorated environmentally or by human that needs to be restored and it's a term that's not appropriate legally all the features that China has built on has resulted from dredging the seabed and scraping coral reefs to create artificial islands each and every one of them is part of the Republic of the Philippines claim to the arbitral tribunal that argues and asks for a determination of their status according to the Philippines they are either all low tide elevations which is submerged for the army blokes in here or their rocks and the 9-dash line should be declared illegal because it interferes with the Philippines ability of its military and commercial vessels to go through there and we are this in Australia but since you also get the same TV college probably seeing the wonderful photos of the construction that has occurred on here and this is just one of the major ones which in some 2,000 acres if you're from Australia it's 8 square kilometers we deal with metrics 809 hectares or 3 square miles and that's the amount of territory China has reclaimed to use that term Fiery Cross Reef pictured here has a runway of 3,000 meters and is a civilian I just take any Chinese built aircraft presently existing can land and take off from this island in the future Philippine briefers see that Mr. Reef and Suvi perhaps will also have airships in the future it's safe so if we take that and I want to move on China has just announced that it will complete its reclamation project soon as part of its South China Sea construction in parts of the Spratly Islands and once the land reclamation is complete building will begin on facilities that can fulfill the relevant functions and they have identified what military defense needs as one of those functions so why and the speculation could be timing China pushes and aren't we so relieved that they've stopped but they end up with the artificial islands and this is just on the eve of what we just heard from Secretary Paulson the strategic and economic dialogue his expanded one about to be in Washington the beginning in July of the arbitral tribunal hearing this case on what they're going to claim are low tide elevations which have been converted into artificial islands and of course the visit of Xi Jinping to Washington in September so what can we do here since I'm not a strategist I borrow from point okay from a letter penned in March 18th 2015 by Senator John McCain and the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee along with Senator Bob Corker and the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that they sent to Secretaries Carter and Kerry without a comprehensive strategy for addressing China's broader policy they argue and conduct to assert sovereignty claims in the South China Sea including land reclamation construction activities longstanding interest of the United States as well as our allies and partners stand at considerable risk and further in their letter they write we believe that a formal policy and clearly articulated strategy to address these forms of Chinese coercion are essential so what should be the purpose of the strategy well the object in my view should be to convince China there is more to be gained by adhering to international laws including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the peaceful settlement of maritime disputes in the South China Sea than by intimidation, illegal action and coercion and a comprehensive U.S. strategy should be aimed at preventing China from militarizing these artificial islands we can't prevent they're being built they are that is created so how to achieve this Senator McCain and his other signatories set out six areas Ron from the Congressional Research Service can only talk about making assessments and I can venture down into that fraught area as an American citizen having lived in Australia for the last 40 odd years maybe seen it out of touch but I'm also the naturalized Australian and part of this alliance system so I think I can make comments from both the U.S. actions the U.S. can take to slow down or stop China's land reclamation activities this is written in March so China is now going to stop it but one is to assert freedom of navigation overflight by naval ships of military aircraft and I think it is to not recognize the status artificial islands other than features that are entitled to a safety zone of 500 meters simple as that not 12 nautical miles because these Chinese features if they took 12 nautical miles would overlap with the 12 nautical miles of features occupied by Vietnam and so even conceding that is to concede that China is right and I also have some claim to features that are low tide elevations assert the right of innocent passage and that I think means very careful orchestration through this and by the way not just the U.S. I would argue Australia because unlike the U.S. Australia has signed uncloss and there is consideration for political ends that if there is interference by China Australia might be able to take a complaint about its high sea rights being interfered with in a way that U.S. couldn't because it's not a signatory and even Japan and that's how you've added I think into that particular relationship and to conduct relatively military exercises with allies and partners China comes down every year between May and August let's occupy some of those spaces America does is probably aware of the exercise series carrot etc that goes on but it's also with Japan the trilaterals adding Australia other countries to specifically be in that space every year that we too could exercise there and demonstrate a naval presence and I think that's important reassurance reassurance reassurance is what all the Southeast Asian countries I visit except Cambodia want to hear the second to counter illegal strategy with specific actions oh so here we go again there we go this is wondering now where are we right here's one of my more imaginative ones I just throw on the table that could be batted back in 1999 reacting to China's seizure of mischief reef four years earlier and fearful that China would keep opiifying Philippines took a former American LST and beached it it's commissioned to their navy on second Thomas Shull is still commissioned in the Philippine Navy it hosts about eight marines so one of my suggestions is you know they should invite the American counterparts to come from a little maritime reconnaissance exercise on this boat and since we different Tucker food American could help in the resupply from time to time the helicopter this is a commission ship another the mutual defense treaty if it is attacked or interfered with the two allies should consult to see what to do doesn't mean they go to war but it's just a demonstration of our legal warfare in position back at China itself now if I get back on track the next element of the six proposals by the senator what are the benefits of releasing intelligence and the China's stabilizing behavior I read a piece for the center for new American security and I advocated but the policy got published after it was done just that opening up satellite imagery now it's airbus industries that is doing it to a maritime initiative of the think tank in Washington but I argue that the DOD should and I remember in the cold war we got Soviet power and pictures of it and highly specific material it was from a classified sources but made in the public domain we should do the same we should publicize in a timely manner the details of China's unilaterally destabilizing activities in the South China Sea and elsewhere that the annual DOD report to Congress should include the South China Sea section this year as it did I wrote it before it appeared I'd like some more detail that the Pekong posture statements by the commander should include and address the South China Sea issues and that the State Department which last year revived an old Limits in the Sea series and provided a legal critique of China's nine dash line map should be pressed to go from first to fourth gear and we should have them continually as China keeps making legal claims get the best legal minds the State Department has and can consult with to counter China's legal efforts because China is quite adept at that and then I note that Senator McCain has put into the National Defense Authorization Act 2015 a requirement to report on maritime security strategy for the South China and East China Seas so this could be we could play off against that. Thirdly what forms of security cooperation with China would be inappropriate to continue if land reclamation activities proceed and what form of engagement might provide incentives for China to alter its behavior. Here I would caution and not recommend at the moment canceling any activities although Admiral Harris has talked about the possibility of continued bad behavior would be not extending an invitation to the rim of Pacific exercises but I think we have enough dialogue mechanism. Someone mentioned a hundred but issues that touch from the strategic and economic dialogues strategic security dialogue the defense consultative talks with China the military consultative agreement the defense policy coordination talks all these should continue and we should continually press China at each of these levels on these particular issues themselves. We move from a rule of behavior, voluntary on naval activities to move to one of air and I hope that's concluded that would be a start on counters here. So we have existing mechanisms they should be used and we should wait now that China declared it stopping because it preempts the suggestions of Senator McCain and hold that in reserve. For a comprehensive strategy how to help regional I am I going too fast here? Yeah, here we go. Number four the regions of maritime domain awareness needs. One I'm fully aware of theater engagement plans. I've had the honor of being posted to PECOM from 1999 to 2002 so I'm out of touch but theater engagement is there and as I said before when Hillary Clinton said we're back PECOM looked up times that we've always been there what are you talking about? She's going to attend a political meeting but PECOM had been there in the past. Anyway continue current programs providing coastal radars and networking we've done it with Indonesia Philippines etc. That's important. Secretary Carter mentioned Southeast Asia maritime security initiative because Senator McCain was going to write $415 million into the Authorization Act to fund. I'm a bit skeptical that's over five years it's a build up period and it's listed five countries it's hardly enough money so we're back into the resource questions it's a start but it's important signal to China that it could step up. Coordinate with Japan and Australia increasingly we have our trilateral talks before this Shangri-La Dialogue China complained a year ago when I attended those they were being ambushed what not the three got together and each minister stood up made a statement that the Chinese felt uncomfortable well that's what it's all about and Australia and Japan are moving ever closer because of Japan's lifting of its guidelines and on weapons sales particularly and we're considering possibly getting a Japanese submarine for the Polo on for the Collins glass United States has relifted under the ITAR international trafficking and arms regulation restrictions on the sale of lethal weapons to Vietnam on a case by case basis with a focus on maritime security mainly Coast Guard I think that might be expounded if everybody's moving in the big club moving up to Poseidon's and Orion 3's are going to be used cars on the lot there might be some consideration of selling them to countries like Vietnam if they're interested and willing and then cooperate in those patrols with them to put China off these combined aerial reconnaissance patrol I'm thinking of mixed getting get the means operating with the Filipinos getting I know Filipinos have flown with US reconnaissance the same with Vietnam in other words that China is faced that if they want to interfere there's going to be either an American or an American ally alongside partners in the region that should let's contest the environment back in China's face make them begin to one thing to push the Filipinos around or the Vietnamese which we don't have alliance relationships but it's another to start doing when Japanese Australians or even Americans are present comprehensive strategy how to help regional partners enhance their own capability it's more of the same the Southeast Asia Maritime Security Initiative I mentioned straddles both these two areas maritime domain awareness capacity building training etc. more money there is Coast Guard to cooperation but for the Coast Guard officers here you weren't designed and built to go off and do defense Coast Guard cooperation globally and haven't got the resources if you're not too busy already that's important it's in a training capacity the US is providing metal shark boats to Vietnam wonderful but they're rather small Japan's giving small ships to when I'm in Australia I reverse some of my sporting analogies and say the Vietnamese or Philippine Coast Guards are like a high school football team paying the pros you begin the game you're going to be pushed down the field you're not going to score but that's the beginning and then bilaterally so it's more of the same and tailoring the carrot and other exercises for that 0.6 that Senator McCain wanted addressed was what additional diplomatic engagement with others in the international community well continued support if we take ASEAN is the regional association that has the clout and standing we need to back it we got to be careful of going too far in front because they're trying to push a declaration on conduct of parties leading to a legally binding code of conduct with China they're moving closer to the second list of complementarities we should back that because that gives us the legal cover to back a regional association in their dealings with China so we support the ASEAN centric regional architecture right up through the East Asia Summit East Asia summits the ASEAN 10 plus eight dialogue partners and as I go what do the following have in common the United States, Japan South Korea, Australia then you get New Zealand, India Russia and China either allies, close partners and then the two so that's a useful venue because it meets at head of state presidential level itself the US hosted in Hawaii the US ASEAN defense ministers meeting I don't know whether the decision is made to make that annual or regular but I highly support that is one and meeting at the Shangri-La Dialogue so having said all that we're stuck with what I call the wild cards the first it's not on my list because it just happened is the not giving the president the trade promotion authority has put the whole trans-specific partnership in question and it led the Singapore foreign minister they are strategic thinkers they are realists and they are strongly on our side to say that the US credibility in Asia is going to suffer and he said you either you're either in or you're out so this is a marker and I end on the following these are the wild cards we signed this tenure enhanced defense cooperation agreement with the Philippines to rotate American forces in it's being challenged by the Supreme Court so it's either going to be a green light good, bad light, red we have a problem the arbitral tribunal will begin to hear the claim of the Philippines and it has to make its first two decisions do we as a tribunal have authority on the issues before us and two has the Philippines made a reasonable claim in international laws not vexations and they have to say yes on both before they can proceed and then okay I'll come to it later we're having leadership changes all across the board the national party congress in Vietnam in early 2016 just after the fourth of July the White House will be receiving the secretary general the communist party their prime minister will go to the UN in September and pay a side visit up to eight members of their polar bureau may visit the United States to celebrate the 20th anniversary they're thinking all over the place about how they where they're going and we need to help shape and reassure them as they elect new leaders and draft strategic policies national elections in the Philippines that the strong president Kena and his support for us moves back in a different direction which would strategically weaken access to the Philippines itself of course national elections in the U.S. I tell overseas audiences the rebalance has a shelf life of the Obama administration but pay comms presence will continue under another name so don't get fixated on pivot and rebalance the U.S. Navy isn't going home anyway then the sometime in the first half of 2016 the arbitral tribunal could make its final decisions under international law it's immediately enforceable and not subject to appeal but what happens if China brazes it out so that's another contestation in the area in which there's an opportunity for the U.S. for the regional association but we don't know what the ruling is going to be so if we adhere to international law the referee blows the rule we have to factor all this in on our particular strategy and then having sat here coming from down under I didn't tell you the other wild cards what are U.S. commitments to the Middle East in Europe that were also brought up at the seminar so I thank you for your attention thanks Carl let me complete my duties as a moderator and tell you what the cross cutting themes among these four excellent presentations were first of all the greatest strategies that we don't study in any detail here at the war college is Machiavelli Machiavelli tells us that the key act of statecraft is to stay in tune with the times being adaptive as time and circumstances change which leads to the second point which is a clausivitzian point which is it's really really hard to do that clausivitz tells us it takes a newton or a nelson or a napoleon or somebody like that in order to exert military genius master that massive data, detect trends and so forth and indeed he seems to despair of that telling us that sometimes you don't even recognize trends until it's in retrospect and it's too late to do much about it thirdly I think we also heard that it's really really hard when you lose a focal point for your strategy it is possible to win too big for example in 1945 Henry Kissinger wrote his famous excuse me not Kissinger but uh oh trans-oceanic maybe it totally went out of my yeah it's the idea about the trans-oceanic navy and Huntington makes the point that look the US Navy wins too big its competitors are lying at the bottom of the sea and it is strategically rudderless until a new challenge comes along fourthly I think we heard that the ambiguity works on behalf of the competitors of the united states and its allies the admiral talked a lot about hybrid warfare and excellent presentation about the south China sea and China's ability to use that so with that why don't I turn it over we have about 8 minutes left in our meeting and I would like to open it up for a Q&A yes sir please my name is Jay Strouse war college foundation member I'm confused and I'll explain why about 6 months ago here at the naval war college 8 Chinese nationals came here with a program and a PowerPoint presentation titled cooperation I thought I had been delivered and I said my god this is wonderful and what they talked about was the blue economy which in fact is mining the seas and the fish they claim they have 1.3 to 1.5 billion people maybe 2 or 300 million get lost because they have no papers so they have a protein shortage and they must develop a blue economy which means fishing our current coast god cooperates mightily with China patrolling the vast pacific for pirate ships and so forth both countries cooperate mightily and handily so now I see almost a conflict which is not understandable by me these people were sent over here their best and their brightest from their best schools and they were mostly in their mid 30s they weren't children and they presented all this cooperation what happened did the PLA rear its ugly head again or what I see as an semi-enclosed sea and under international law China's duty bound to cooperate with the other states pending a final settlement its also duty bound to protect the marine environment China has polluted the fishing grounds off its coast and depleted them and so has Vietnam and fishing fleets are moving further south but China's 9-dash line has seen intrusions into the exclusive economic zones of Indonesia and Malaysia in addition to the states we've been dealing with where there are large motherships and large-scale fishing Malaysia has chose to play it very quietly and Indonesia is getting upset an Indonesian ship that arrested 8 Chinese fishermen and put them on a law enforcement vessel was accosted by Chinese Coast Guard vessel that jammed it electronically so it couldn't communicate back to headquarters and pointed a gun and the Indonesian captain released the crew China claims James Shoal well to mariners here Shoal's underwater and it's 22 meters underwater but they've translated another map as a sand bank and they claim it's the furthest territory of China and I'm informed now that China's deployed a Coast Guard vessel to orbit around this area patrol around this area so China in its both legal and information warfare promotes cooperation and they have maritime silk roads and one belt, one road to the region at the same time we have to look at what it does it imposes a unilateral fishing ban from May to August every year in the South China Sea that was done to restore the fish stocks but it won't cooperate with anybody the fish don't accept maritime jurisdiction but they go wherever they're wanting to go this is an area that requires joint cooperation but China does it unilaterally so I say well this PLA people may be on the theoretical level of China's cooperation but provincial and other interest in China are pressing because they believe they have the sovereignty and sovereign jurisdiction over the waters in that 9-dash line claim and so they are intruding on the exclusive economic zones and taking the fish stocks to other countries whose coast guards hardly featured on that chart that I showed so that's what China is doing Chuck Kogan Kennedy School formerly CIA our country has a history of jumping into wars 1812 1898 1964 2003 this administration came in with a vow to take troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq later the administration refused to intervene in Syria and more recently the administration renounced the idea of a military conflict with Russia all this adds up to the idea that we must strengthen the role of the Navy and the Air Force which was evoked by General Rourke and I'd like to get his reaction to what I just stated and anyone else on the panel thank you as I tried to illustrate from my own experience that this debate will continue as Chinese behavior either continues or moderates and as Russian behavior either continues or moderates the Congress of the United States will continue to debate what capabilities and how much capacity is needed to assure the defense is an ongoing discussion and I'm optimistic that it will be an informed discussion that ultimately comes to the correct conclusions. Please join me in thanking the panel as I think we're going to have to call it there and turn it back over to Admiral Howe.