 Thank you, Mike. It's a real honor to moderate this panel this afternoon. The topic is on seapower and maritime leadership, and I think we have some of the top experts in the field to address all of these issues. We will go in the order of the agenda, and we will start with Professor Carl Thayer. Professor Carl Thayer is a Merit of Professor at the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defense Force Academy. Carl is a true regional expert on Southeast Asia and has written extensively on the South China Sea. He lives and has lived in the region for many years, and so he will be able to give us truly an insider's perspective of Southeast Asia and of Asia at large. Carl, thank you. Thank you Toshi, and I benefited enormously from your lecture this morning. I'd like to thank the Naval War College for the invitation to visit here. This is my first time. My father was born in Providence, Rhode Island, but he was a West Pointer, which probably accounts for why he never got to set foot on this place. My presentation is in two parts and a conclusion. The first is going to look at the Air Sea Battle Concept and its implication for Southeast Asia and America's Alliance Relations. Then I'm going to look at what I'm terming China's asymmetric challenges to maritime security in the South China Sea, but through legal warfare and changing the norms of behavior on the sea rather than the military asymmetric warfare, and conclude with some comments about US leadership. On the Air Sea Battle Concept, I thought I'd present an Australian view. It is a report by the Department of Defense funded think tank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which I'll call ASPE, and it's called Planning the Unthinkable War, Air Sea Battle, and Its Implications for Australia. That was published in April this year before the release of Australia's most recent Defense White Paper on the 2nd, 3rd of May, and the Air Sea Battle Offices, Air Sea Battle, service collaboration to address anti-access and area denial challenges that was issued a week or so later. Before I get into that, there are some differences, but officially, if I can interpret US policy, the Air Sea Battle is a limited objective concept. It is not an operational plan or a strategy for a specific region or adversary. It deals with global anti-access area denial strategies. It aims at reducing risk to preserving the US ability to project power and maintain freedom of action in the global commons. And the Air Sea Battle provides a range of options to counter aggression from the low end of the spectrum, to enable decision makers to conduct a show of force or conduct limited strikes to the high end, and it also involves integrating partners in that decision making. US investment in the capabilities identified in the Air Sea Battle concept seeks to assure allies and partners and demonstrate the US will not retreat or submit to potential aggressors who would otherwise try and deny the international community the right to international waters and airspace. But this concept is combined with the much broader US government assistance and holo government effort programs. Now I'm going to look specifically at how ASPE treats the Air Sea Battle. It argues that China's military modernization has already changed the military balance of power in the near seas, especially in the Taiwan Strait. It notes that the Air Sea Battle is an operational concept that aims to deter and if necessary, defeat the Chinese military. So it puts an adversary name in a way that the United States has officially refrained from doing so. The ASB aims, according to ASPE, to defeat the anti-axis era denial strategies bywithstanding an initial Chinese attack and then conduct a blinding campaign against Chinese command and control networks, a missile suppression campaign against land-based systems, and a distant blockade against Chinese merchant ships. It's based on the assumption that escalation can be kept below the nuclear threshold and it's also assumed, according to ASPE, that Japan and Australia will be active allies throughout this campaign. ASPE's evaluation, it states that Australia should welcome it because it strengthens US conventional deterrence against China by developing a concept for operations in maritime zones, contested by the People's Liberation Army Navy and the ASB makes a contribution to regional stability by promoting deterrence in the strategic relationship between the United States and China. But the ASPE report goes on to make criticisms and leaving aside the funding questions, they put them at the strategic level. It has been given enormous publicity. The chief of naval operations, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, is quoted as the Air Sea Battle is a centerpiece of the Navy's pivot to Asia. And so it's why the ASB is widely viewed as a US effort to contain China in spite of repeated US denials. It is unclear how the Air Sea Battle fits in with broader US grand strategic framework. We've heard that repeatedly here at this forum to address China's how in a broad strategic framework should the US and allies address China's military rise. In fighting China there are no good options. Conflict will lead to stalemate. What is the relationship then between the Air Sea Battle use in conflict and the political objectives of that conflict? What is it that the US is seeking to achieve? Now yesterday we were given the dichotomy of wrestling or dancing with China. Regional states including Australia do not want to make a choice, either the US or China. They want a US grand strategy that enables them to develop relations with both. Air Sea Battle is optimized for high intensity conventional war between China and the United States and its allies. It applies, argues ASB, in only in extreme cases. A Chinese attack on Taiwan, missile attacks on Japan or US military bases in East Asia were the sinking of an aircraft carrier. In most trenchantly, Air Sea Battle faces the challenge of potential nuclear escalation. Deep penetrating attacks on the Chinese mainland to disrupt command and control nodes could provoke a disproportionate Chinese response. China might perceive such attacks as undermining its nuclear deterrent and miscalculate by taking preemptive action including nuclear escalation. And as I'll argue later in the paper, the Air Sea Battle concept does not address more likely scenarios such as Chinese coercive actions in territorial disputes in the South China Sea. The Air Sea Battle implementation includes conducting engagement activities to build conceptual alignment and partner capacity and to strengthen relationships. So how does the ASB fit with allies' perceptions? And I have to do just a snapshot of each because I've got 20 minutes. Japan is seen as a key enabler by the ASB report and it's not particularly concerned about being entrapped in the U.S. alliance relationship because the pressures from China are so immense at the moment. And Japan can augment U.S. forces in selected mission areas, particularly submarine and air-based anti-submarine warfare, maritime ISR, maritime strike, defensive escort, and ballistic missile defense. And Japan is already in the initial phases of shifting towards complementarity with the Air Sea Battle concept and they have a direct interest in its success, less so South Korea and Taiwan. For South Korea, the Air Sea Battle presents an unwanted risk of being drawn into a conflict with China and having the Republic of Korea's territory targeted, particularly if China attempts to strike U.S. forces there. Nonetheless, the Republic of Korea is concerned over potential Chinese dominance in Northeast Asia and in its own turn is beginning to develop a pretty robust Blue Water Navy. Its main concern is being drawn in by working with Japan at present, given their differences. So it's unlikely, argues the ASB report that South Korea will offer its support for an Air Sea Battle concept unless relations with China deteriorate markedly. As for Taiwan, well that's the centerpiece of what Air Sea Battle really is about, argues ASB. A U.S.-China war over Taiwan is the heart of the problem to be addressed. Therefore Taiwan can be expected to play a key role in the ASB. Taiwan is moving to more asymmetric defense posture to deny the mainland China the approaches to the island. Those are front-line states. Now Australia, and I think it's an important message from a major U.S. ally, is not a front-line states. It's seen as a preferred U.S. partner. It's a reliable political ally. It has a good geographic geostrategic position and the Australian Defense Force, the ADF, is of high standard. So what can Australia contribute, and ASB says, strategic depth. It can give access to the Marine Air Ground Task Force and U.S. long-range strike aircraft. That could be an integral part of operations of the Air Sea Battle concept in Southeast Asia. Australia could provide a supportive role with rear-guard actions for forward-deployed U.S. troops. It could provide tanker aircraft freeing up others. It could provide airborne early warning and control, electronic warfare, that would free U.S. assets. Australia could also provide long-range strike capability, offensive strike operations in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. And it could contribute to those peripheral campaigns, the maritime interdiction of Chinese merchant and energy shipping, if necessary. But, the ASB report argues, fully embracing the logic behind the Air Sea Battle or developing specific military capabilities to underpin the concept's implementation are so far not in Australia's interest. Why? It sends a strong message to China that the ADF is actively planning an equipment for potential war with the PLA. Australia prefers a U.S. grand strategy aimed at integrating China into a competitive Asian security order at the same time as balancing Chinese military power. So, on military capabilities, one of the questions that has to be asked in Australia is the cost of interoperability as the U.S. develops these high-end fighting capabilities across the various domains. The 2013 Defense White Paper, which came after this report, calls for Australia to manufacture 12 Australian-designed and built follow-on-column class conventional submarines that would carry cruise missiles. 12 Boeing EAA-18 Growler fighters, 72 Lockheed Martin stealth joint strike fighters, two Australian-built supply ships, and 24 new Australian-built patrol boats. But the government and the opposition, which is expected to win the September elections, have not indicated where the funding will come from and Australia is now at 1937 levels of defense spending. So, the recommendations that Australia should call on the U.S. to develop an Asia Pacific strategy to provide an overarching framework for the Air Sea Battle concept. It should provide a clear message on how it intends to deal with China's growing military power and what role the Air Sea Battle will play in it. There is no need for the government or defense, argues the Aspen Report, to publicly endorse the Air Sea Battle. At this point, and I'm quoting, we, Australia, don't have an interest in signaling to China that the ADF is preparing for a future military conflict with the PLA. In the unlikely event of a war with China, Australia could not only provide the U.S. with greater strategic depth, but also contribute ADF military niche capabilities without having officially signed up for Air Sea Battle. In the vernacular, perhaps a bob either way. Don't endorse it, but work with it and support it for the larger political ends of not attacking China. So, but Australia needs to seek clarification of the role of the Marine Air Ground Task Force and of U.S. Air Force elements rotating through Australian bases. What point would they play in an Air Sea Battle context? How would they be used in the event of conflict? And Australia should study the implication of integration of the Australian Defense Force into a Southeast Asia Air Sea Battle framework operating with U.S. forces. Now, if we look at Southeast Asia, it becomes prominent in Air Sea Battle as a part of the peripheral campaign, a distant blockade of Chinese forces and sea lines of communications by controlling choke points and anti-submarine warfare, from the barrier from the Ryukyu Islands in the north to the Luzon Strait, but in Southeast Asia along with Philippine islands to the southern exits of the South China Sea. So, regional states looked to the U.S. for support as part of hedging strategies against a more assertive China, but do not want to be roped into battle planning against China. And it's unclear how the ASB would apply to their territorial disputes. The Philippines, which is at the very bottom end of the scale and is modernizing, can offer facilities, bases, to be used by U.S. Navy, Air Force, and Marines to operate in the South China Sea, is building up its own very low-level A2AD capabilities from a low base. It's not much the Philippines other than the facilities that it could provide. Singapore, the government would think twice before committing to an Air Sea Battle operational concept that could involve Singapore in a major war with China, but if the strategic environment deteriorated, Singapore would become an important U.S. partner. It presently housed the littoral combat ships and its Navy and Air Force of high standing. Vietnam is unlikely to provide any facilities for the United States, and in this ASB report, they're quoting my own work, and I'm a Vietnam specialist, and not a Vietnam War specialist, a Vietnam specialist, to make the case. It's building up its own A2AD capabilities, it's getting kilo-class submarines, stealth frigates, all from Russia. It prefers the U.S. to do the heavy lifting and having Vietnam stand back and watch the U.S. do the containing. Indonesia's strategic location, ideally places it to a player role of Air Sea Battle, is part of the distant blockades, but politically, it's unlikely to commit. So the potential for ASB initiatives in Southeast Asia are much more limited than in Northeast Asia. Now, in the time remaining, I want to quickly address the asymmetric threats. In the paper, for instance, of time, I'll abbreviate this and get on to my main point. The China has built up the South China fleet and is putting its most modern combatants. It has a headquarters on the mainland. It's built up a major base on Hainan Island, which is hosted nuclear submarines, and increasingly, in the future, ballistic submarines. Further south of the Paracels, it's built up air facilities. It's wired and connected. All its occupied features in the South China Sea, the land features as well as the mobile Navy and paramilitary forces. And the Air Sea Battle, in a sense, would attempt, for example, if cruise missiles are, in fact, on Woody Island in the Paracels, to address that threat to freedom of navigation and maneuver during times of conflict. But what China has done is, in the Pentagon reports, the Congress had been illustrating this for several years, is practicing legal warfare. They passed laws that restrict American activities in their exclusive economic zones, which we heard about the other day, anti-succession laws for Taiwan. And anytime an incident occurs, they argue it never happened, the other side's lying, or China is merely going about its peaceful maritime enforcement activities. Now these, in terms of the Philippines, has resulted in the annexation of Scarborough Shoal. That was an American target in the siting post during the air war against Vietnam. They've lost it when the Philippines sent a former Coast Guard vessel to apprehend Chinese fishermen who were fishing and poaching illegally. They were intercepted by Chinese maritime surveillance ships and prevented from carrying out the arrest, and these ships have not left. The U.S. tried to broker a mutual withdrawal. The Philippines withdrew, the Chinese stayed, and they've got it. And they've declared a no-go zone virtually and prevent Filipino fishermen from going there, and they've stationed ships around the Shoal. It's theirs. A second incident has now emerged in Aigun, or second at Thomas Shoal, where in 1999 the Philippines imaginatively beached an LST and have kept a small group of Marines to maintain Philippine sovereignty. Over that, China now claims that they're illegally occupying Chinese territory, have brought a frigate, and usually the PLAN has not been involved in any of these exercises, and maritime vessels and have put pressure on the Philippines to withdraw. The Philippines are worried that the Marines will not be able to be resupplied and therefore have to withdraw like its vessels did in Scarborough Shoal. So what I'm arguing is that so far the U.S. can aid the Philippines in building up domain awareness, can help develop capacity, that's going to take years to bring about, but it's the here and now and the encroachment. And the Philippines has taken its case to a U.N. orbital tribunal to make certain decisions, and that's probably causing China to respond to consolidate its position. And in Vietnam's case, when the Obama administration came to office, it found out that U.S. oil companies willing to assist Vietnam were being pressured, not to involve in commercial operations. And they sent two deputies and Secretary of State Defense to Congress, made a very strong point that the U.S. is going to resist those pressures. They've cut foreign-sized McVessels, the cables conducting surveys in Vietnam's waters, and they play pretty hard ball with their fishermen. That's a problem for Vietnam. So throughout the region, and they've conducted exercises, military exercises, fine, but more recent ones have seen scenarios in which a Chinese surveillance ship was accosted by a foreign surveillance ship, and the scenarios are worked out by sending PLA and frigates, aircraft to the area to solve the problem, which is a potent intimidation. And all the argument is on a legal basis, which muddies the water and it's not involving warships. And I don't call it asymmetric because I haven't yet seen a regional or U.S. suggested or led response to that. So let me conclude by looking at, in the last minute here, future global maritime leadership. It is clear that the majority of regional states support a clear role for U.S. in leading in regional maritime security affairs. These states do not, however, want to make a choice between China and the U.S., but they support strongly the U.S. deterrent role against the rise of coercive Chinese military power. Regional states prefer to see the U.S. adopt a ground strategy that engages China and draw it into a constructive role by adhering to established norms and rules of the road to support providing security for the regional commons. The ASPE report argues that the U.S. should develop an alternate concept to the Air Sea battle, one that stresses and plays on American strengths to deny Chinese access to the contested areas inside that first island chain is being a much more appropriate strategy that doesn't bear the risk of escalation. Regional states would like the United States and China to becoming meshed in multilateral security organizations such as the ASEAN Defense Minister's Meeting Plus and the East Asia Summit. The U.S. in its partnership promote norms and legal regimes, codes of conducts, and practical activities in the multilateral organizations, the ASEAN Regional Forum, the ADMM Plus Expert Working Groups, the East Asia Summit, and the U.S. could obtain, play a role in obtaining regional consensus on streamlining the regional security architecture so that when heads of state meet at the East Asia Summit, they can look at proposals served up by defense ministers and act on them. And finally, U.S. leadership is needed to counter China's resort to legal warfare. And here personally, sequestration has meant that brilliant U.S. lawyers, JAG, and people here at this war college have trouble traveling. And their voices needed to be heard. I was recently at two different conferences, and all American defense officials were pulled out because of lack of funding. And their voices need to be heard and heard strongly. They're the people that have been on ships, know the law of the sea, and can make convincing counterarguments to China's legal claims. And they can be joined by Australians and others. But we must not let the information domain in this area be dominated by China. And finally, it's a challenge to use civilian fishing fleets, etc. So the U.S. is implementing long-range plans to enhance the maritime domain awareness and capacity building, and that's well regarded in the region. But China is currently attempting to undermine the Philippine sovereignty. And its challenge also raises questions about the credibility of U.S. security guarantees. And that's why we need a strategy to deal with what I call the asymmetric Chinese attempt to push its control over features in the South China Sea through paramilitary and private civilian fishing fleets. Thank you. Thank you, Professor Thayer. Our next speaker is Professor Andrew Lambert, who is Lawton Professor of Naval History in the Department of War Studies at King's College, London. His most recent books include The Crimean War, British Grand Strategy Against Russia, 1853 to 1856, and The Challenge, Britain vs. America in the Naval War of 1812. Professor? Thank you very much, Tashi. It's a great pleasure to be here, and I thought I'd stand because it's just a nice lectern to stand behind. And it means if you throw things at me, I can duck. I have to thank the organizers of the forum, thank the admiral, I have to thank John Mara and others for bringing me over here and giving me the chance to engage with this very friendly and positive audience. This afternoon, what I'd like to do is to do something that Mahan used to do when he was here, and that is to examine the underlying realities of the last great sea power empire. Mahan's work was in part an homage and in part an emulation of a country that he admired and above all of a service that he considered the exemplar in the field of naval activity. He wished the United States to emulate that kind of navy, to build up a great navy, and of course his dream would come true. Up to a point, Mahan's relationship with the Royal Navy was very close, but he was always an American patriot, so he's a man who understands the value of a good example, but also the importance of differentiating between that example and what his own country will actually need to do, which will be professionally to the same standard, but it will have to be an American and not a British type force. Mahan's case studies, long and detailed as they are, have often been ignored by the argument that they finish in the age of sail in 1815, that the world has moved, that technology has changed, and that people who write about such antique things don't have anything to say to the future. And what I'm going to do today really is to carry on Mahan very quickly, unlike Mahan who didn't do anything very quickly, and go over what the British did for the next 100 years. My opening gambit of course is something that John Mara threw up for us yesterday when he introduced the paper, the page, and that was of course the Battle of Waterloo. The end of that 22-year cycle of Anglo-French conflict in which everybody else in Europe got involved, and the United States got involved too. At Waterloo, Napoleon was soundly beaten by the new Carthaginians, a nation that he and most other Frenchmen derided as mere sea traders and merchants, and therefore neither particularly war-like, nor particularly likely to win, because surely in that story the Romans always win. Everybody wants to play the Romans, nobody wants to play the Carthaginians. But by 1815 the British were saying, you know what, we are the new Carthaginians, only this time we've won. We are the winners in this. J.M.W. Turner, the great artist of Englishness, painted a series of images of the Carthaginians in which he said, you know what, we are winning this war, we are going to win it, and we'll celebrate it by pointing out that we are different. His great contribution to the fighting Temeraire was a celebration of the sheer greatness of that achievement, such a small country to beat such a vast empire. Between Waterloo and the opening of World War I in August 1914, a run of 99 years, Great Britain ran a unique global empire using a mix of naval, economic, and diplomatic power, not military power, applied with relatively high levels of consistency to sustain a favorable world order within which Britain would grow and prosper. It did so through deterrence, arms racing, and the possession of clear strategic concepts. And I stress the word concepts, because Britain never had a strategic plan. British strategy was invariably reactive. Britain was not going to attack anybody about anything. It was going to react to other people doing things that Britain did not wish to see happening. The fact that this went on for so long in a world increasingly militarized, increasingly nationalized, and increasingly aggressive when wars of national unity, wars for the conquest of large parts of continental territory were being waged is truly remarkable when you understand that Britain is less than half the size of France. Britain, the only global power of the 19th century, is a tiny, tiny country by comparison with its continental neighbors at the time. In some, Britain had clear core strategic principles. And I'll go through these as a checklist because that's the quickest way to do it. First of all, maintain the balance of power in Europe. This is absolutely fundamental. The reason the war of 1812 finished at the Treaty of Ghent on the 24th of December 1814 was so that the British could concentrate on the Vienna Congress where the future of the world would be settled. They did something very important. They kept these two processes separate. They insisted on maintaining their maritime belligerent rights regime and they refused to discuss issues like impassment or trade regulations with the Americans, the French or the Russians. After that, they prepared to talk about anything. That was a red line. Everything else could be talked about. Secondly, critical to British security is the stability and independence and integrity of a small Belgian state. If you want to invade England in the 19th century, you will be coming up the Shelt River coming out of Antwerp. If Belgium is part of France, Britain is permanently at war with France. The cause of war in 1793 was a French invasion of what we call Belgium. So creating a Belgian state in 1815, recreating it in New Guise in 1830 and in 1870 keeping the Franco-Prussian War out of Belgium, fundamental red lines for British strategy. If a hegemonic European state occupies Belgium, they will be at war with Britain and they know that. Third, control the world ocean through the possession of a two-power battle fleet. That might sound heretical here where you probably have a 10-power battle fleet, but a two-power battle fleet. Pick your two biggest potential enemies, total them up and build a fleet at least as big as they are and reckon on your guys being better than their guys. That's enough. Britain is a minimal security state, not a maximal security state. It very rarely had a full two-power standard. We relied on the Russians being very, very poor and never being able to mobilize their full strength. Fourth, dominate communications, not just commercial communications, but intelligence, the flow of news and information. It was no coincidence that the British pioneered ocean-going steam navigation. They pioneered the submarine telegraph cable, the wireless network, and of course the worldwide web more recently. The British like to see the world because their own country is so small they have to go abroad to find something interesting to look at. You have a bigger country, you have more choice. I've heard some very interesting regional humor both here and down in Maryland on this trip. Critically, keep the old world, the new world, Asia and Africa separate. Do not allow these things to collide. Sea power allows you to keep continents apart, and if you can maintain that sea power you can keep the Americans in the American hemisphere and the French in the European hemisphere and that reduces your problems. That is what Vienna and Ghent are all about. These last three points all seek economic growth through world trade to satisfy the economic and in part the political ambitions of a growing population. The money is being used to pay off the British national debt. The cost of war between 1793 and 1815 is astronomical. We're worried about costs today. They are pitiful compared to the cost the British state faced in 1815. But Britain was still able to borrow lots of money very cheaply and over the long 19th century the British paid down their national debt by three quarters. And that was the single largest budget item throughout the period 1815 to 1914, paying down and servicing the national debt. This meant avoiding another Napoleonic total war. Britain is not a total war state. It doesn't profit from total war and it doesn't wish to wage them. It tries to avoid them through deterrence and when that failed in the case of the Crimean War in 1854 the British did not wage a total war against Russia. They waged a very limited maritime campaign. They brought the Russians down to the beach and beat them up there. Only a Frenchman or a German or indeed a Swede would invade Russia and march on Moscow. This is folly. If you want to lose your army march on Moscow. It's an oxymoron. The British used limited war because they can't use total war. If the British were going to mobilize for a total war with Russia in 1854 they would have had to change their constitution, their electoral system and the structure of the state and they weren't going to do that. They would rather fight a limited war and accept limited gains. Point seven, coercive diplomacy to open markets. Countries that won't trade with the British in the 19th century tend to get the rough edge of British diplomacy. Two wars with China. They're about trade access. The Chinese won't trade. The British go and beat them up a bit and open up their ports. In 1854 we picked sides in the Crimean War on trade basis. Russia is a high tariff country. Turkey is a no tariff country. We backed the Turks. We trade with the Turks. We lend capital to the Turks. We're going to defend Turkey, a Muslim country against Christian Russia because the Turks are better for business. That's why we weren't overly bothered who won the Civil War because we didn't like the Southerners on the slavery question and we didn't like the Northerners because they were a very high tariff economy. The US government is a high tariff protectionist economy in the 1850s and 60s and that's bad for British business. If you want to be friends with the British, trade with them. If you don't want to be friends, don't trade with them. The abolition of the slave trade, piracy, privateering and all other forms of non-state violence at sea. This is good for the insurance market. It means that world shipping is cheaper and cheaper. After 1815 very few people put guns on their merchant ships because the world ocean is a safer place. That's not the British being good. That's the British doing good business for their own commercial and economic and political interests. They will tell you as Hugh reminders this morning this is some kind of liberal good agenda. It's not. It serves Britain's interest to have a safe open sea which can be used by a cheap merchant shipping. 9. Ultimately trade land for sea control. An empire of ports, bases, communication hubs, cable telegraph links and above all else dry docks. If you want to understand the British Empire, look where the dry docking accommodation is. That is the British Empire right down to 1945. If there's a big dry dock it's an important place. 10. If you're going to fight anybody wage economic war. Something Mahan stressed in the second sea power volume. It's all about the economic war. Trafalgar, economic war, Napoleon beaten. 10. Control costs. This has to be done on the cheap. Britain has spent a lot of money and the population will not stand for large expensive defense or large expensive war. In fact the cost of paying for the Napoleonic wars was higher than the cost of paying for defense for much of the 19th century. Ultimately Britain got very rich and very powerful but in August 1914 it failed to understand the crisis. It did not attempt to deter and having already outraced the Germans in naval armaments it was in a position to issue a strong warning and it failed to do so. It wasn't the question whether deterrence would or would not have worked in 1914. They didn't even try and that is the catastrophe. They then blundered into a conflict and fought it in a way which was entirely un-English. They raised a mass army and fought the main enemy army in the decisive theater of war. The British had never done this before since the middle ages when we had longbows and the French had armored horsemen. It wrecked our system. It damaged our population and it had a serious impact on the way we thought about the world ever after. My key point here is that the seapower model the British Empire was working down to 1914. The economy is growing. The British are dominant in investment overseas investment, shipbuilding, shipping and services. They have a world position which is remarkably strong. The United States it's important to note that historically aware states through history have always realized that decline is a fact of life. Nothing despite what the Chinese you tell you is forever. All powers will decline at some stage in some way and we should be careful not to speculate in one-sided ways. It's all very well to be concerned about what America is not doing right but we can learn some interesting lessons from what other people didn't do right either. The British spent much of the 19th century examining how and why other great powers declined. They became slightly obsessive about it. They studied the Athenians, the Venetians, the Romans, the Dutch, the Portuguese and these texts were familiar. They were familiar to students here and they're actually in the library. They were familiar to Mahan too. Poor decision making however will bring you down. If you make bad decisions you can wreck your system. In 1914 Great Britain held a great deal of American paper. In 1918 America held a great deal of British paper and that is the real story of World War One. The failure to deter Germany in 1914 proved costly and with that the true the last true sea power, great power was set for oblivion. By 1945 the United States had wrecked the British economic and political system across the world as part of the war aims of the period. Britain was broken up. Its economic system was ended and we have been rather free riding ever since because we haven't got any money. We finished paying those debts we owed you about three years ago. So if you want the British to help you the money thing is actually quite important. We do need some. Great Britain was never a superpower. It never had the manpower, the scale or the intention of being a continental superpower on the scale of the United States, the Soviet Union, China and other states we often talk about. It was a very weak small resource dependent state. It was a sea power not because it got power at sea but because it was so weak that if it ever lost the sea it would be starved. Admiral Fisher said this in 1904 if we lose control of the sea it's not invasion we have to fear but starvation and he underlined it three times and nothing has changed apart from the fact that we now have no food supplies in Britain at all. If the sea stopped working tomorrow we would be eating each other by the weekend. We have no food supplies. We also have no fuel reserves so we'd be doing it in the dark and we wouldn't be able to cook each other either. So you can learn something from Britain but you have to be very careful you don't learn too much because you can get the wrong lessons from the British. They did what they did because of who they were and where they operate. The United States by contrast in the modern age is not a classic sea power. It's not resource dependent on overseas. It could manage quite nicely without the ocean and increasingly has a grand strategy that looks towards managing very nicely without. It is a unique naval power. It is probably the only continental state that has maintained a navy of this strength and size in a prolonged period of relative peace in world history. Certainly since the Romans and I would often say that the United States Navy and the Roman Imperial Navy are two very similar navies. They are the navies of great powerful states which use them as tools of power rather than for the protection of something as tedious as trade. The United States doesn't flag its own merchant ships. It lets other people do that. The difference is that between the ideas of Sir Julian Corbett and Alfred Thea Mahan. Mahan is already talking about naval strategy in 1911 and Corbett is talking about maritime strategy. These are different strategies. Britain always maritime using naval power for maritime ends. Thalesocracy the command of the sea is about power and weakness and remember the Greeks associate the sea Thalassa with death. If you get too far out at sea you will die and you will not come back. So it's not an entirely positive thing we're talking about here. Sea power is sea weakness. If you are a real sea power you can die by the sea as much as you can live by it. When Britain lost her strength her sea empire evaporated like a dream leaving behind little more than a memory Shakespeare and that wonderful game cricket. But Britain remains a sea power. It's just not a great power because it cannot be anything else. Certain countries have to be sea powers. Modern Japan is a classic example. Dependence on the sea in ways that continental states simply do not comprehend makes you think about the sea in different ways. Britain is now a medium power if at best reliant on allies and coalitions. But it is significantly in the 21st century building its first large deck flea aircraft carriers since 1945. Two 65,000 ton carriers are in build and one will be at sea quite soon. Britain has a sea power future. It is not as a great power but it is certainly a globally engaged maritime state. When the Australians went into East Timor a battalion of girkers and a British air warfare destroyer were part of that operation. You can't get much further from the United Kingdom than the North Coast of Australia apart of course from the South Coast of Australia. Which is an awful long way from the North Coast if you've ever made that journey. And Britain is globally engaged and globally capable. The Falklands War is not really that long ago. That was when I finished my PhD and I realized that General Gaultier had probably saved my intellectual career. He was followed by Mikhail Gorbachev who completely resurrected it by ending the Cold War. Ultimately Britain was and is as Sir John Sealy remarked in 1882 a world Venice with the oceans for streets. Mahan knew that because he'd read that book. He was engaged in that debate at that time. He met people like Sealy. He talked about these ideas. Sealy's book was in the library here and he referenced it. The past is the only resource we have that allows us to understand these issues in the round and get to the end of the problem. Everything we look at today thinking about tomorrow we don't know. We don't know. They're intangibles. We can work these things right through to the end. We can see where the mistakes were. We can pick out how these processes operate and we can get a really good understanding of something rather than hoping we understand something that we can't be certain about. If we recognize differences and emphasize that no two great powers are ever the same but understand some of those underlying realities it offers answers. Not answers in the sense of what to do next but answers in the sense of ideas that will help you to encapsulate, develop and think about the future. If you know how your precursors handle these issues you'll be better equipped to face them yourselves. So I would say it's an exemplary past. Not one to copy, one to follow or one to think of as a prediction but one to learn from, one to think about, one to ponder on. Different states using similar tools but the one thing that links them is two outstanding professional navies. Thank you very much. Thank you Professor Lambert. Our next speaker is Professor James Curth. He is Professor of Political Science Emeritus and Senior Research Scholar at Swarthmore College. He was a visiting professor of strategy at the Naval War College here and he is currently a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and was the editor of Leading Journal Orbis. Professor Curth. Thank you. In fact we'll conclude. That is to say I'm going to draw from pieces and bits and bricks from earlier presentations try to weave them together as a kind of summary to our conference and also pointing to our last topic here 21st century seapower and global maritime leadership. Now one of the themes of our conference just reiterated a few minutes ago was the relationship between our understanding of history and the present and the future and therefore it's kind of useful I think to imagine how 21st century seapower and global maritime leadership might be looked at if we were imagining stepping back into history, indeed stepping back to a century. Imagine that there was a conference more likely in London or in Greenwich than in Newport at that particular point but imagine there was a conference in 1913 a hundred years ago where the title or the topic 20th century seapower and global maritime leadership and notice what the analysis would look like at the time. Well focusing on power defined as great weapon systems the focus would be on battle ships surely that will be the center of power in the 20th century but very shortly thereafter that is to say a year or two thereafter world war two would show that submarines were more important and world war one would show that submarines were more important and world war two would show that carriers are more important than battleships. So the understanding that people would have had in 2013 probably wouldn't have quite captured what would be the core weapon system in defining seapower. Now suppose we look at power defined as great naval powers rather than great weapon systems there of course the understanding of 1913 would be that the great naval powers were the United Kingdom plus the United States plus Germany and Japan a form of one plus X as our initial speaker William Wuther was referring to but it turned out that this particular formulation one plus X in particular one plus three was in fact confirmed largely by world war one Germany was a major power naval power as were the others it was defeated but then the remaining three powers are confirmed in the Washington and London naval treaties of the interwar period and then once again those four powers were the major naval powers of world war two. So if we were taking the predictions or understandings of 1913 we would have got the future partly wrong and partly right. Now let's turn to the other part of our topic the 20th century global maritime leadership from the point of view of 1913 in 1913 people would look back just as a moment ago Andrew Lambert looked back on the 19th century the British century and this was a century of British maritime supremacy not just leadership in virtually every sea as well as every ocean by however by the first part of the 20th century Britain was being forced to cede and we've discussed about this in various earlier panels maritime supremacy to first the United States and the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean second to Japan in the in the East Asia or the western Pacific but in this particular case they ceded supremacy but replaced it with an alliance a partnership while retaining leadership in other words from supremacy to leadership in regard to France not one of the major naval powers they did something similar they ceded supremacy in the Mediterranean but with a close alliance in which they retained leadership and then with of course Germany they did not confront it with mere ceding let us say accommodation retrenchment appeasement over the United States alliance partnership as they did with Japan and France but full containment containment and confrontation with Germany in the North Sea so when Britain faced a challenge to its ability to maintain global maritime supremacy and had to devolve and diminish itself while still trying to retain global maritime leadership and it did that in three different ways now turning now to 21st century seapower well if you look as power as weapons systems of course i think would be natural that in 2013 now at a conference the naval war college we would focus on the importance of carriers but also submarines especially attack and nuclear submarine nuclear missile submarines but just as carriers displace battleships in the 20th century is it possible that land launch anti-ship missiles will displace carriers uh as i heard yoshi toshi yoshihara's presentation earlier today and i suppose almost everybody in this room has heard it either as a student here at the college or as a guest at this conference as i heard him today the chinese are developing a very effective capacity in which they believe that land launch anti-ship missiles will indeed displace indeed see us carriers now just as submarines proved to be an effective anti-commerce system in the 20th century not predicted is it possible that cyber attacks may prove to be an anti-commerce anti-economic system in the 21st century in other words is it possible that our understanding of what are the central power central weapon systems of of c power might be just as short-sighted as our counterparts would have found them a hundred years ago now when we turn to the other question power as great naval powers well do we have a version of one plus x or one plus one well clearly we do have the us and clearly given our discussion and given what professor yoshihara has discussed and i incidentally agree with virtually everything that he has said and written uh given all of that surely it's one plus two are the other naval powers up to the level of the full digit i don't think so but they can provide certain local threats as i ran in the persian gulf but now turning to the 21st century global maritime leadership that's a very important topic in the second half of the 20th century the american century the us achieved maritime supremacy in virtually every seas as well as every ocean just like the british had in much of the 19th century and we know that that was essentially identified as recently in the cooperative maritime strategy for the 21st century as a goal for the 21st century of the u.s navy but even in the golden age of the united states maritime supremacy global maritime supremacy not just leadership there were four minor exceptions to that general proposition that we had supremacy in virtually every sea as well as the oceans and those four americ exceptions were the very near seas to the soviet union during the cold war seas that were so near and so remote from us and our consciousness that hardly anybody knows much about them except specialists in the navy the barren sea the Baltic sea the black sea and the sea of occult for the most part we assumed that the soviets had effective denial capability in those seas we did not really uh claim to assert supremacy there now turning to the first part of the 21st century at our conference in 2013 what do we see now the united states is global maritime supremacy in all seas as well as oceans faces its most formidable challenge from china as several of our speakers uh professor lane professor mcdougal and professor yoshihara have repeatedly demonstrated i should say this is obviously a controversial issue even amongst the panel uh giver the various presentations but i fully agree with the position given out by professor lanes mcdougal and yoshihara and of course therefore in particular uh china poses challenges in the three littoral seas um it's near sea as they would call it or underlying its extension from land its maritime territories as they call it its core interests as they call it the south china sea the east china sea the yellow or what they sometimes call the north china sea the three china seas and of course as we know most recently from uh professor fayer's presentation uh in these seas there are these seas contain islands or even islands involving conflict which in turn involve us allies the philippines japan and taiwan and within the yellow or north china sea the islands are such as they are matters of conflict between north korea and south korea not south korean china but we do know whenever the u.s engages in big ship capital ship naval operations of the yellow seas the chinese engage in a great deal of criticism and complaint and of course these islands that we've just been mentioning japan south korea philippines and taiwan with a much more ambiguous relationship with us those islands form what as professor yoshihara has pointed out the first island chain which china sees is the boundary of the three china seas and to secure these three seas and to neutralize the first island chain is of course one of their premier objectives now given this challenge to uh united states global maritime supremacy in those three littoral seas professor's lane and professor mcdougal counsel some form of accommodation or retrenchment but professor's warthart and uh and um uh dove zhokheim focus on the u.s alliance and security guarantees and counsel containment and deterrence others on our discussions in the last day or two have reminded us of the centrality and necessities necessity of alliances for global maritime powers and so we do have a fundamental challenge including a fundamental division within the participants in this conference about what should be done about this challenge to us global maritime supremacy as brought down to the level of the three china seas let me suggest some historical and analogical context for these challenges as viewed by americans and especially as viewed by the chinese now the course is a u.s historical analogy to a growing continental power reaching out to claim two littoral territorial seas for its own and for the most practical purposes deny access to other naval powers and this was of course the case in the united states in the late 19th and early 20th century as we took over and extended our control over the gulf of mexico and caribbean this analogy is well known to the chinese there's also a chinese historical analogy they not only have their contemporary terms about these three littoral seas near seas maritime territory core interest but there is a earlier chinese conception that these seas were a natural part of chung kuo the central kingdom the great land uh civilization but there were natural uh the seas were a natural part of that if you take the ancient chinese capital of gian somewhat southwest of beijing the capital of the original uh chinese dynasties and you take a compass and draw a great circle from that you will encompass most of the lands of the ching dynasty all the way from manchuria to the north all of mongolia uh sinjohn to bet uh it down into the borders with india and ending up with vietnam and anam uh down there in the south uh you would also include korea the ryukyu's which the chinese called the luchu's and you would encompass the three littoral seas the chinese conception of a great circle of harmony encompasses these three seas china will not be full until those seas are china's lakes the 18th century was in some ways the chinese century uh the ching dynasty had reached that not the extent of civilization for china but the extent of territorial expansion and but of course the second half of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century 1840 to 1949 the chinese see as the century of humiliation and they also see the second half of the 20th century in the first half of the 21st century i.e. 1949 up to uh and not too far away from a chinese perspective 2049 as the century of restoration or redemption 2049 the end of the century of redemption which brings to an end the results of the century of humiliation 2049 is a crucial date in time for the chinese conception of the fulfillment of china's destiny in reclaiming all of its uh uh appropriate territories including those seas china can therefore be seen as an irresistible force expanding to at least the first island chain but of course there's also not just a china destiny concept governing this uh uh part of the world but there's an american legacy concept it's been 70 years since the end of the pacific war uh and the americas and the navies legacy from the pacific war the greatest war uh war in america's navy history the very war that produced an admiral whose auditorium we set in at this moment that war that war is part of american identity and american naval identity the legacy of that war was to have maritime supremacy in the western pacific including those three laterals seas codified in an alliance system already of 60 years duration uh e japan south korea the philippines and the more complicated case with taiwan in that sense at least from the point of view identity and mentality and legacy the us is an immovable object in the first island chain and even in the three seas insisting upon access even to the point of defending the islets of our allies such as the spratlys in the philippines and the south china sea and the uh they sent kakus dirus as the chinese call it of the japanese in the east china sea their means therefore is impending a collision between the irresistible force and the immovable object or as christopher lane pointed out two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time given this impending collision uh what are the alternatives from the united states well we heard of some of these alternatives in our discussions the first alternative the alternative that we are today engaged in is first to maintain commitments while decreasing us capabilities and even while the chinese are increasing their capabilities continued commitments and decreased capabilities produce the lippman gap that callan derrick talked about we've been there before we've even been therefore in the west of pacific we've even been there in the in the south china sea the lippman gap's first case study from the point of view of lippman was the us in the philippines the gap between our commitments to the philippines and our capability there was aptly demonstrated in 1941 and especially in 1942 at baton and corregidor there was a similar gap with the british in exactly the same place their commitments to their colonial territories in east asia especially malaya and its base singapore vastly exceeded its capabilities and thus it was on december 10th 1941 the prince of wales and repulse the two grand capital ships of the royal navy and that was about all they had in in that part of the world were caught at in the south china sea by japanese land-based aircraft that dosha professor yoshihara mentioned today uh and were sunk to and brought to the bottom when you have a gap especially a widening gap between commitments and credibilities this is extremely dangerous and reckless and it will be dangerous in the future the danger is reinforced within the last two years or so by the recent recent stretching by us officials of the u.s. japanese security treaty to cover this in khakus or dairu's katlin talmadge very eloquently etched out important details political details strategic details and legal details about that case but there's a similar stretching to have the u.s. security treaty cover the spratlys for the philippines and so but we have no capability if it should ever come to a confrontation to really do this in a very painless way so that's a the lippman gap is an extremely serious thing to avoid now let me turn briefly to another alternative increase capabilities this was what professor put forward well we're trying that so to speak there's the pivot to asia and which we will now have 60 of our ships in east asia in the pacific and 40 elsewhere but if we add them all up at the end of the pivot there will probably be fewer ships in the pacific than there were at the beginning of the pivot second the cooperative maritime strategy for the 21st century envisioned this was only six years ago a building the navy to be hunt 313 ships we're actually going in the opposite direction shrinking the navy from the number of ships we had even in 2007 much less going to 313 that was considered by admiral mullen the minimal capability to carry out the cooperative maritime strategy we have the air sea battle concept which has been excellently discussed by carlyle fair but of course this is will issue as robert art suggested in a new arms race a naval arms race with the chinese in that theater and as toshi yoshihara has illustrated the chinese have more and more capacity to have denser and denser capability closer and closer to their mainland in those seas and so and in addition as kyleeber pointed out and as carlyle fair has just pointed out embedded in the air sea battle concept as projected across those seas into the chinese mainland is an escalatory dynamic so with increased capabilities like that this leads also to very grave dangers in addition if we bring in the analysis of christopher lane and some others of course the the building capability to match that of required by the air sea battle concept would require a very great increase in military spending but i totally accept the analysis of christopher lane of the constraints on military spending it's a major move politically when the pro defense party the republican party splits into people who are defense hawks and who are fiscal hawks and oppose each other and in that split the democratic party hardly the pro defense party in the last generation or so therefore can get its way to cut defense spending i.e. cut guns in favor of grandma as we heard in earlier discussions so the political divisions in the republican party the economic and demographic constraints almost guarantee that we will not have the money necessary to build the air sea battle concept to what is required just like we haven't had the money to build the cooperative maritime strategy of the 21st century to what it then defined was required that leaves decreased commitments uh well there are major problems with this uh there are major political constraints despite the fiscal hawks there's a tremendous legacy within our foreign policy and strategic establish and quite rightly so to maintain our treaty commitments it would be extremely difficult to somehow formally and unilaterally break those treaty commitments and yet if we if our capabilities begin to not be up to them we'll probably leave them in place rather than formally breaking them and if we did break them then there is the problem that at least south korea and japan this was discussed earlier are likely to reach for the nuclear weapon and so therefore that kind of decreasing commitment is not going to solve our problems there is one thing we can do following the analysis of catlin town age we can clean up and clear up the commitments in awkward and ambiguous places such as this in kakoo dairu's and such as the sproutly islands i don't have time to go into the details of what she said there are certain important distinctions between recognizing sovereign uh being neutral on sovereignty but recognizing administration um certain analogies with taiwan about uh don't use uh force and also uh china and don't declare independence or don't do anything provocative ally the her distinctions are extremely important i'm less confident that they can be boxed in the chinese to get the result what we want they're very good and subtle at being able to uh undermine and outflank such distinctions but certainly i think we should do what we can to clean that up um but uh given this rather grim prognosis are there any ways out well obviously in toshiyoshi hara suggested this this morning one way is to look at the chinese weaknesses of which there are several and i will very quickly just refer to what's been said by other panelists first there are the um the uh what might be called the civilian or domestic weaknesses these are the weaknesses that were identified what might be called the internal contradictions of china the very the economic weaknesses but the chinese leadership itself caused the three inequalities between rich and poor between uh rural and uh urban between eastern seaboard and western hinterland those three inequalities generate today so much discontent that there's more than 120 000 so-called mass demonstrations by official chinese account account they're reinforced by corruption they're reinforced by growing resentment fear over pollution and so there are those contradictions in addition we heard from robert art of the middle income trap and of the demographic trap so it it could be that we could drop we could draw a leaf from the chinese understanding of strategy patience and persistence weight them out well if we just wait long enough maybe the chinese internal contradictions will solve all the problems that i've just been delineating in some ways that's what we did with the soviet union we waited and waited however of course having a strong military force especially in that last decade where we finally reap the fruits of that waiting with a strong military force uh that could well happen of course the chinese are well aware of this and so they are trying to overcome the political discontent with developing this new ideology of kind of neo-confucian uh uh political theory and a kind of nas chinese national identity and that in turn is more likely to drive them to fulfilling china's destiny in those three less oral seas finally there are the weaknesses that were identified this morning operational weaknesses of the chinese military and anti ship and anti mine warfare we can take advantage of those although they will probably not be strategic game changers but there is also a strategic weakness which the air sea battle has begun to glimpse with this conception of a distant blockade to take advantage of the malacan dilemma and the fact that chinese economy today and therefore the legitimacy of the regime today requires a vast import of raw materials most obviously petroleum but not only that not only three lateral seas but through the straits of malacca and they're through their indian ocean and beyond and even if the united states uh should eventually have to live with some denial at least the capability of denial of access by the chinese to the three lateral seas for every move of denial that they put against us we can trump them tit for tat by denying a comparable access in the indian ocean as long as we do maintain our maritime supremacy there and i do believe that we can continue to have global maritime leadership and even supremacy in the oceans and in most of the seas uh even if we should have to yield full global four maritime supremacy within those three lateral seas but that doesn't mean that we would put up with them denying access it means that every time they denied access there would respond not so much with a frontal assault on them with the air sea battle but where they flank assault a distant blockade so that i've said more than enough we're now conclude because time is precious and the questions i know are coming but uh also the students will be going thank you thank you professor kerf uh let's open the floor up for questions any questions lieutenant commander brad converse us navy i know we have to ask at least two before the admiral will let us leave i've got one saved up on a air sea battle as a naval avid i get pretty emotional when i'm told that i myself can't really do my job so we come up with the concepts to uh you know as a joint force be able to get places to uh ensure freedom of action today air sea battle was mentioned several times and two points really resonate with me one was the comment that the higher level civilian leaders upon its being published had a very negative reaction saying basically that the concept wasn't properly vetted and then professor there's comments really that the the allies that the concept was designed to defend publicly state that they really wouldn't support it so my question is does the air sea battle concept point to a mismatch between us foreign policy and what we're here to talk about grand strategy that's actually your question okay well i think i i try to address that by saying that from at least from an austrian perspective uh it helps stabilize deterrence at a time the chinese navy is demonstrating greater power that's that's a stabilizing factor that china has to put that into into their box and think about it at the same time uh we don't want to then be seen is opposing china and you know containing it or or planning on a conflict with it we need to draw it out that's going to be a long process america's been trying it forever china keeps coming up with three obstacles austria's trying trilateral exercises as a way of bridging the gap uh in other words but we need uh the us i haven't talked about rebalancing but i think the whole thing has been resold and in the region we understand you i keep hearing the word pivot here i was told this band in washington it's rebalancing and it got an overwhelming military edge what we're looking at is the economic and other and the engagement the deep engagement which hasn't been mentioned to pull china out it was already mentioned by sir hugh this morning that austria our largest trading partner is china we don't want to make that choice we don't think we argue in our white paper we don't have to it's bad strategy we can trade with china and we can have the united states as our major ally we can build up capability because at the same time as you engage we must also be able to stand up or resist when core values or access to the global commons are being threatened so it's the strategy has to be to use the the the lever in the break continually so as a u.s mismatch yes i think we've heard from more than just austria an american based in austria uh we've heard from other speakers here today with much more prominent access to washington a greater need to articulate a grand strategy and then particularly for the asia pacific one that addresses the concerns they have to live with china the u.s is a resident power how can we bring it out and work with it so yes the mismatch is that the u.s policy hasn't risen to that higher level to articulate a strategy that makes us feel comfortable how do you deal with growing chinese power but china is going to be continually economically more powerful more dependent on the sea as economy grows and how do we make it see it also has an interest in guarding the global commons and cooperating and in involving itself with multilateral institutions so it's to articulate a strategy like that that other states to feel comfortable with and then if they don't want to formally sign on and say we support an air sea battle as the advice was for the austrian think tank but nonetheless continue to work with the u.s and develop those those capabilities uh so have a bob either way not antagonizing china and the u.s is clear that's why i started out quoting it's not aimed at a particular region it's global other a2 ad threats it's not identifying a specific country other people are putting words in it that's dangerous that's a dick diamond i've been doing a lot of war gaming from the very beginning on air sea battle and we were discouraged at first that you don't want to go there a lot of that's been documented that you're going to have to go into areas that are enemy can range with their fires you have to reload under fire you have to go with ships and fight uh missile defense battles against thousands of missiles with only a few missiles on board and you have to go thousands of miles and reload under fire to come back to the fight so the last couple of games we've had we said we're gonna have to do this we won't go there we'll just do a distant blockade well let me tell you that's not as easy as it sounds because a lot of things have changed since the golden age of sale and british mercantilism you bring in that economic experts that tell you that the cargoes of ships particularly ships carrying energy products may change nationalities and ownerships 20 or 30 times in a voyage so if you clear somebody through the straits of malacca but then they sell the fuel to china a couple miles beyond you end up in this impossible position of you have to escort or arrest every ship on the ocean the u.s navy has not built a navy that's suitable for massive interdiction and then you bring in the global warming part of the future of maybe energy coming over the pole as well as through these southern approaches to china and you just don't have you know age using ages cruisers and aircraft carriers is not a good way to run a blockade the distant blockade turns out to be very difficult and you end up to make it effective having to get closer and closer to the ports where the products are going to end up and guess what that's also in range of those missiles so so far maybe this is smarter guys that can do it different but everybody thought distant blockade was the answer but it was a lot tougher when you get down to actual scenarios i certainly concede that it's a lot tougher than just the phrases and the uh the few minutes that i took to that and i certainly agree that it too should be gamed uh including right here uh and gamed repeatedly to see all sorts of particular iterations uh i also agree with you uh that a distant blockade like virtually like also in its own way a direct air sea battle or virtually any other maritime operational doctrine will require changes in ship force structure to more fine tune the capability so i'm agreeing with all of you agreeing with all the difficulties that you uh said i uh then the only case i would make would be that well it's despite the difficulties the effort to do it to test it out and see if it can be done that is i mean through the gaming uh and that ultimately if necessary uh in the real world it's better than the alternatives if i could just join in there's some very interesting case studies in both the world wars when the british took control of the world shipping system and with the support of the major neutral shipper the united states um invented a system of shipping control in which the united states agreed to certificate every cargo leaving the us as to its final destination so instead of the british having to stop every ship they were able to just stop the ones that leaked through the system it is possible to do this but the problem in the 21st century is that ownership and title and legal rights are much more complex so it would be more difficult and the legal difficulties i think would be particularly significant but china's dependency not just on fossil fuels but on something as fundamental as soya bean uh is so extreme that it would be very very quickly effective china buys most of its soya bean from brazil that gives you an awful lot of opportunities to stop that soya bean leaving brazil the best way would be pre-emptive purchase if you go to brazil and buy their bean then it's not going to get to china that's how the british conducted a lot of their blockade in the first world war they didn't stop ships they bought the ships and the cargoes on the high seas and redeployed them for their own purpose so you will have to get used to eating soya bean if you want to fight the chinese ah great thank you uh my name is dr holt serum from boston and this is a little bit of a different type of question um but you know uh with um let's see the um trying to think of the right way to put this with the uh development of china over the years as we all know you know with growth in china with transportation and commerce we're aware of that and in the context of history with um changes that have occurred popular changes uprising so the arab spring is one example and the fall of the war so packed you know is another example let's say in the past quarter century um what happened to like tianaman square you know the popular uprising then and how that's changed over the recent time with uh the growth of china what i'm wondering is whether um that growth has muted any popular changes in society or whether um there still is sort of an undercurrent of dissatisfaction and we could see at some point in china what occurred let's say with the arab spring yes well as it happened um that particular question that you just ask is a question that uh the chinese leadership have been asking and systematically answering ever since tinaman square and their initial of and continuing right down to the present answer to your question was that to prevent tinaman squares i.e. uh large demonstrations especially i mean the mass demonstrations actually are relatively small more something like anything uh uh more than 50 or 60 in a village but in a village that's a mass demonstration but to really have mass demonstrations in beijing they want to prevent that sort of thing of course or for that matter just many many many mass demonstrations elsewhere and the decision they made obviously was to put emphasis on two new sources of legitimacy the central one was economic growth that makes some relentless even maniacal to continue economic growth and explains why we often get other oddities from chinese economic policy they believe they have to continue to do that and of course that is one of their weaknesses not only domestically but because it means they require all the raw materials for that uh and within that they're very allergic to inflation and every once in a while they begin to lose control of that like with the um the local credit the local governments giving too much credit that's occurring now and so they do have their points of vulnerability but they're very conscious of this and they have systematic studies of it it happened that a few years ago i was in china as a guest of the international apartment of the central committee of the communist party and i was astonished how well informed they were on what are the economic underpinnings uh and the political underpinnings for the end of authoritarian regimes uh the top officials had knowledge comparable to a phd candidate in the united states uh the second legitimating principle they have of course is uh chinese nationalism or that is a uh china as a civilizational nation an even grander nation than those western nations and of course that is the the conjunction of the of the growing economy and of the national ideology is designed to capture the middle class and the children of the middle class to be firmly behind the communist party as at least the best alternative and thus thus far they are fairly successful those are weaknesses but they are weaknesses that actually causes us some problems because their very focus on nationalism causes this kind of sense of completing the hundred years of redemption and they have very emphasis on economic growth means their insistence on building up a blue water navy in the longer run so they can even solve the malacan dilemma uh i believe we have time for one last question few minutes please thank you hi i'm a lieutenant commander uh margaret reid and i'm a distance learning student sir so hopefully that checks the box um so for um we've heard several times that we don't really have a grand strategy right now and that the strategy that we do have is based on uh financial constraints or political constraints um but there also seems to be an agreement that we need a grand strategy so how do you see us getting from where we are to where we need to be that's probably for all three of us but i'm willing to answer it but uh perhaps the others would like to say something yeah the question essentially how do we get from where we are today without a grand strategy to having one um i turn the question around uh i think it's understanding what the principles on which any strategic response will be based the United States is not planning to invade somebody else's country it's not planning to declare war on china you don't need that kind of strategy you know those classical old strategies where you plan down to the last uh ammunition round how you're going to wage war the schlieffen plan of 1914 classic example and these are military solutions to political problems the problems we're dealing with are not military they're political and economic and having a grand strategy which predicates a military solution ends up becoming self-fulfilling prophecy the critical thing is to have the capability to respond to whatever threatens your vital national interests so first of all what are they secondly what are you prepared to fight for and what are you not prepared to fight for what is vital what would you give up if you had to what would you trade for things that you think are more important thirdly what is it about this country that you particularly think is important what are the values that make this country different uh we most of us know what they are from outside or inside but again they're different to the ones in china the chinese have a different set of values and there's a possibility of a clash over those values so it's avoiding getting prescriptive a very great 19th century admiral in britain famously said you know if i know what your strategy is i will beat you because once your strategy is out there i can get to work on it a small child will beat a chess grandmaster if the grandmaster has only one game plan so you've you've got to be flexible and its flexibility its intelligent sophisticated and resourceful flexibility that is successful the best plan in the world does not survive first contact with the enemy clauswitz 101 and he's right where did clauswitz learn this when the best army in europe as far as he went fought the battle with the french they didn't lose they got annihilated by the end of the day he was a prisoner of war and his dreams came crashing down and he spent the next 20 odd years writing a great book to try and understand what on earth had happened to the 18th century army of frederick we're great and in the process he helps us to understand a lot but he says there are no lessons we learn by understanding the past and we think about it do not take the past onto the battlefield or into the strategy room what would napoleon do well he wouldn't do what we're about to do he wouldn't say what would somebody else do he would say i'm going to do this my intuition my judgment my perspective on this is we have to get a grip on the principles and from those principles we can deduce the strategy we need when or if those challenges come if the chinese are going to do this how would we begin to think about a response we will have time to do that it's not going to happen tomorrow and my reading of china is that their internal concerns will always trump their external ambitions if we don't stop them getting into the world and doing that trade they will almost certainly not turn hostile we need to think about what would happen if they did that's just sound planning but we need not to send them the message that that is what we are planning to do and there's a danger with air land battle or any other strategic concept rather like new maritime strategy i'm old enough to remember new maritime strategy fundamentally destabilizing it ended up working but not because it was good strategy but because in fact it was bad strategy and it terrified the russians and their response was to spend a lot of money and that was the end of them i don't think chinese will do that so we need to be very clear that it's about having a very sound understanding of what the vital issues are and the principles on which any response will be based and having the capacity to respond and setting that level of capacity so all of this debate has been about capacity if you have enough capacity you can respond you need to have a clear sense of what you're going to have to do but it's the endless conundrum of defense in a democratic state is something mohan talks about all the time i don't think democracies have the willpower to sustain this level of defense that they need into the long term they will let it slide and the authoritarian the autocratic state will take over fortunately for us he was wrong on that i'll try to be very brief austria just went through two exercises and released a white paper on austria in the asian century that covered every sector of society in austria's interest to develop a roadmap of increasing our asian literature etc secondly the defense white paper of course the opposition says as soon as it's elected it'll produce its own uh those are planning documents that said having been outside the united states on this is the third ship this year uh it's the lack of bipartisanship so one is a kind of leadership retired good heads and thinker strategic thinkers to lead a national effort to get consensus on exactly the vital national interests the values the united states wants to do uh the capacity in the funding for it very broad very broad terms something that the president and congress could sign off on and inhabit bipartisan and not get so prescriptive that it falls apart but those broader things that set out the relationships with other major powers and section by region so asia europe etc so not that you need to replicate the austrian model but in other words that that was a way of it brought in all parties it brought in all sectors of business academia and any other interest group that felt they had an interest in asia to contribute and that was a and it's not a grand strategy for the world but it was a grand strategy for austria and asia and that kind of approach i think bipartisan old heads uh could help okay great i think that that was a great question it's a great way to wrap up this panel and the conference by coming back to the issue of grand strategy will you please help me thank the panelists