 Good morning everyone, who's that? My name is Bill. Good morning everyone. I do like to call some salons and we're going to end Carl too. Well, thanks Tom for the introduction and thank you to both of you for being here today and for your leadership with this program today. Ambassador McClendon, Donald Saunders, Donald Chatfield, distinguished guests. Ladies and gentlemen, we begin again in our request to acknowledge and it is my privilege to welcome you to this landmark gathering of our second Newport Art and Scholars Initiative, hosted by the U.S. name of War College. And this initiative reflects this institution's commitment and the commitment the U.S. made to a strong and enduring partnership with your nations and the U.S. individually and collectively as one heart. I want to first express my deep gratitude to the entire Newport College team and everyone who had a hand in making this seminar come to life. You know, pulling them off on a day like this is truly a team effort and I'm grateful to be part of it. One thing in the state of Newport College, we're here for this initiative all of you and your heads of the Navy for your leadership, your dedication to learning and most of all, your friendship. All our nations and the Navy's with exceptional Russia are here today. A subtle reminder that our actions on a both-stage and influence relations among nations and the Navy's within the Arctic. I'm hopeful, however, that at a time we can turn to faith and focus not solely on the things that divide us, but the challenges, the opportunities and the responsibilities that unite us along our northern shores. A place where both great power competition and great power cooperation converge in the fate of humanity lies the Arctic Ocean region. The task of learning about the Arctic lies with leaders of every nation in the large and small. For great power is having a monopoly on knowledge. Great power competition is not the only source of tension and the Arctic can be the icebreaker race and not the only arms race in the Arctic. Even subtle miscalculations and accidents between military forces are dangerous and increasing the icebreaker. The quest for knowledge like the quest for peace is a responsibility of every nation and the Navy and we must remain committed and aligned. For the value of this initiative to work is not dependent on the existence of conflict. Nor can learning come from just a three-day seminar. Rather learning is learning from one another a daily and weekly, a monthly process, a process we will pursue. Gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding assumptions, quietly building new knowledge. And however one dramatic pursuit of knowledge that pursuit must go on in all our nations it may be true to take part. The fact remains that as an articulation band has a great power. The United States and more specifically the United Sea Services, the Navy, the Marine Corps and Coast Guard team have special responsibility in the Arctic and that responsibility is fruitful. It's a responsibility to our own citizens, to the responsibilities of the people, the Arctic and those outside of the Arctic who are impacted by our decisions and the responsibility to the next generation. I believe Russia also has these same sacred responsibilities and those responsibilities require our two nations and the Navy's focus less on our differences and more on ways and beings that we can resolve them peacefully. Yet despite our many disagreements we have in recent years agreed on rules for response, on search and rescue, on managing shipping routes and on sharing scientific data in the iron world. I believe that Russia, the United States and our northern neighbors all of you can achieve further agreements in the Arctic which spring from our shared interests to prevent conflict and believe it or not this year 2020 marks the 24th anniversary of the Ottawa Declaration which established the Arctic Council. Recently however I questioned and asked myself whether or not we can actually design that Declaration today particularly when we listen to the words and watch the actions or something but that same foresight that same courage that brought our leaders together nearly the fourth century ago is necessary once again to forge a stable, constructive and results for a security relationship in the Arctic and ultimately security is a political choice a choice that leaders have to make and who is committed to supporting every country's interest in the Arctic while upholding a strong rule-based order an Arctic in which security is not a cost but an investment an Arctic region in which security propels a sustainable road an Arctic in which all of us benefit from the freedom and security that we need to deserve our vision of Arctic security is not for some it's not security for most it's security for all great powers and emerging laws Arctic and Arctic states citizens and indigenous peoples everyone everywhere because security is an end in itself because it's a fundamental right and it's a means to peace and prosperity it's one of the reasons why we created the Import Arts Scholarship and this collaborative research program is the first of its kind that brings together sailors and scholars from Arctic nations to study and report on important questions asked by our heads and maybe and the many people who care deeply about the future of the Arctic it brings together real world operators, practitioners those that have taken this fear with leading academics some of the brightest minds in the world of many people and we have an impressive class this year many disciplines and services from submarine commanders and cheer drivers to scholars and speech writers but the real strength of our work is that despite our differences we're still able to come together around shared goals to educate and inform leaders to improve regional readiness and foster lasting security relationships and partnerships in the world and as Apple Shackville mentioned earlier I will see you lose value in your war college over a century ago as a face of original research all of our questions related to war the statesmanship when they have to do war in a fair phrase legally important and never so relevant today to the prevention of war that's our focus for NASA and our work last year reinforced the answer to this quote in the 2007 there was a maritime strategy that many wars is just as important as what we know Dean Mango mentioned April 2018 during our opening seminar we debated and decided early on in our studies in our collaboration that crisis and conflict runs contrary to the interest of all our patients and therefore should be avoided at all costs and it is in that same spirit that we will conduct elaborate research on critical questions related to conflict prevention and security cooperation in the Arctic so we came together 18 months ago and concluded our work with over 30 principles of art and security in areas of awareness, confidence building measures and capabilities principles that are setting a new set of guidelines and norms to ensure that the Arctic remains a notion of peace rather than a theory of war and these principles for the most part reflect consensus among experts there are meant to be aspirational and forward-thinking there are meant to be inclusive and conservative for the voices of all our patients and they provide a means and a basis for decision making and action and action in that transcendent governments or administrations or time but let me be clear these principles like the findings that will develop this year and do not represent official policies nor do they represent the official positions or views of anyone in your nation rather they provide starting points for discussion and engagement we started our journey exploring strategies of our patients in the 80s and identifying common security challenges we met again at our midway seminar in Newport and we debated and drafted principles we traveled to Germany and partnered with the George C. Marshall Center and we engaged with other leading Arctic experts from Europe and Russia and in April 2019 we concluded our work in Bergen, Norway where we presented our principles of security to the heads of the 80s and postcards in the Bergen Senators from the Arctic principles dealing with awareness serve two purposes to make us understand the physical, strategic and geopolitical changes in the region and to inform leaders of the shared interests and challenges facing our patients in the 80s our work on conference voting measures or CDNs focused on the types of activities the 80s and nations can take to reduce tension, misperception or miscalculations and ultimately the likelihood of conflict and our work on capabilities to offer new pragmatic ways Arctic states can develop and employ capabilities while keeping tensions low and as much as I'd like to dive into all three principles I'll highlight just a few of our framework efforts this week first we found that security challenges that will face in the order of multifaceted and very much interconnected Arctic security combined traditional concepts state defense and sovereignty public safety and economic prosperity and the well being of communities and indigenous peoples as well as the preservation of the environment we also found that military activity in the Arctic is wrong in response to growing strategic security interests and economic interests in the region and in the years to come maritime security forces of Arctic states and non-arctic states will play a more prominent role in their own nation's interests finally concluded that a certain folder of government destruction in the Arctic is fairly well established however, as was alluded to where later it doesn't necessarily include things can facilitate cooperation and dialogue on all hard security and defense issues in the world this recognition was parallel to believe that tensions between major powers and instability in other regions look very well like the slower in the Arctic our work on common strategy those measures craft the integrated framework of rules and norms that other states can adopt our role and mechanism whereby accidental conflict and unintended escalation can be prevented and you'll hear a lot more about the CBNs later today but I'll leave you with one final thought on regional regimes now we're concluded that while existing mechanisms provide a good starting point for our security cooperation we suggest the development of something new or the strength of the ones that are in place today so building off this principle and the feedback from national capitals and heads of navy this is where we start our work in 2020 the world is waking up to a changing article whether we like it or not all of us, especially of articulations in the ages who call the Arctic home have responsibility to make sense of this change those calculations, the friction points and the catalyst of instability that could arise when this changes so the question therefore is what frameworks are optimal to maintain open lines communication, prevent and manage conflict and increase security cooperation among the nations in the Arctic that is our intellectual challenge and in doing so we must ask ourselves why is security cooperation important to our national interests for regional interests to global interests we must ask ourselves how can our security watch our cooperation be conceptualized and understood there are at least four cooperative security frameworks that are relevant to our work today and that's alliances, collective security it's regimes and security communities and while our security cooperation can take on many forms and be pursued for many reasons our focus is on security dialogue and conflict management, new forms of military cooperation whether we're talking about existing frameworks strengthening those our creative efforts for new ones, our findings and recommendations and the policies of today and tomorrow must be rooted in risks and benefits and advantages and disadvantages we must understand the official and unofficial reasons for intervention and whether the activities pursued by the frameworks of today actually address the security issues we face tomorrow and we cannot for a new knowledge on our cooperative security frameworks without indigenous peoples without those on the front lines of a great power competition in the Arctic full deep-seated knowledge on how to adapt and we should include them into our collaborations as many of the things that I've learned by listening to indigenous peoples during my travels across America is that they are close to the sea they benefit from the sea they also have an obligation to secure the sea as themselves that's the moment when you realize that if you organize your maritime forces without traditional knowledge if you train your maritime forces without traditional knowledge and if you equip your maritime forces without indigenous knowledge your actions can actually do more harm to them so it's clear to me and I think many of us in this room that the Arctic Council plays critical roles in keeping the Arctic safe and clean but when it comes to security and defense when it comes to understanding the world and the influence of sea power and the sea ocean there has been a big role in the study cooperation and engagement until now and through the people, artists, scholars initiative we our nations and babies have developed new knowledge new friendships, new norms that has made all of us stronger, smarter and safer and so I want to thank my fellow sailors and scholars for your commitment to this academic partnership on the Arctic and given the extraordinary progress we've achieved already in this initiative I'm confident that we'll continue our momentum and send it on and beyond so let's share let's think big and let's write and if we do all this and if we do it right confident that we will have a lasting impact on our nations and babies for years to come because when we help other nations and babies is when we can truly help ourselves and with that I'd like to turn it over to my colleague colleague and dear friend Arnold Thomas to share his knowledge with us thank you