 rise of China. I'm Avery Goldstein, for those of you who don't know me. I'm a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, also director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China there at Penn. And let me just offer a few opening remarks before I turn it over to our speakers. Today's event I think is an especially timely one because in the past few months we're seeing a reinvigorated debate among analysts, scholars, and policymakers focusing on the challenge of managing U.S.-China relations. In the United States I think this is reflected in a sharply renewed debate and disagreement about the adequacy of what's been a consistent and I think until recently largely bipartisan approach to dealing with a rising China and its growing military and economic capabilities. Because I think in this new debate despite the disagreements that characterize what participants argue are their preferred policies and based on their different analysis. I think they do agree, regardless of the disagreements, that the approach that's currently in place, one that emphasizes engagement with China in the interest of cooperation where American and Chinese interests overlap, while hedging against the possibility that remaining conflicts may require the United States to push back more firmly against China where American interests require it, that this approach is now no longer adequate. Put otherwise I think what many of the critics who otherwise disagree on their recommendations believe is that the approach that Zhao Maikali once labeled engagement, this combination of elements of containment and engagement for dealing with China, simply no longer suffices. But if they don't think that approach suffices the question is what do they propose the United States should do? I think many of you in the room are probably aware of many of the writings that have been published recently, people weighing in with proposals, some of these from folks who I think probably have visions of appointment in the next administration dancing in their heads. But if I can oversimplify this debate a bit, it seems to me that in fact what we see are two broad perspectives now crystallizing. One is a perspective that sees a looming shift in the contours of international politics. Similarly a historic shift in the global economic and military power relations that are accompanying China's ongoing ascent. In this perspective there's a call for the United States to come up with a more creative and proactive way to cope with the trend that cannot be forestalled. Michael Swain to my right in his book America's Challenge in his regular stream of articles in the China Leadership Monitor and most recently in a piece in the Journal of Foreign Affairs has become a key voice thoughtfully staking out a position from this perspective. The other perspective sees China's ascent in the shift in the regional and perhaps global balance of power, economic and military power as an outcome that can be forestalled and it calls for crafting American policies that aim to prevent precisely the outcome that the other perspective sees as nearly inevitable. The need for the United States to somehow accommodate a stronger China. Ashley Tellis sitting to my left in his many writings on Asian security but most visibly in his recent report for the Council on Foreign Relations co-authored with Robert Blackwell revising US grand strategy toward China has emerged as a key voice thoughtfully articulating a position from this perspective. My role today is simply to serve as moderator or maybe I should say I'm here as a couple's counselor and I say that because I do recall that Michael and Ashley once co-authored in fact in the year 2000 a classic book interpreting China's grand strategy yet in the years since its publication it seems their views have grown apart to put it mildly and I'm not exactly sure why I can't offer any guarantee that this session today is going to bring them any closer to an intellectual reconciliation but I can guarantee that we're in for a treat today and in fact I would argue that we'll be in for an even bigger treat to the extent that they continue to disagree. So finally a word about format looking at the time here I think each of our presenters you have 15 minutes roughly 15 minutes of opening remarks after which we'll turn it over to the audience for some questions and allow the speakers then to engage with one another after you raise some questions. So we didn't agree on who would go first alphabetically that would be Swain. You're up Michael. Thank you thank you very much Avery we appreciate your coming and serving as moderator here thank you all for coming. I don't know how many of you have read or seen the the recent essay that I wrote that appeared in this issue of foreign affairs and there's a longer version of it on the Carnegie website but what I'm going to do today is give you essentially the gist of what that essay says what the argument in it is and it is as Avery said it's an argument about the need for the United States and the region as a whole and by the region I mean in particular the western Pacific to transition towards what can otherwise and what would be called a stable a balance of power and a stable balance of power of some type because the the situation of the western Pacific has never been a real balance of power it's been a situation that has largely existed under the influence of the United States as a predominant maritime power so let me say I'm going to speak a little bit about why I think this is the the the old situation is changing and why it's not sustainable why I think that the alternatives in the way of response to a balance of power are also likely to prove more onerous than otherwise and then outline what I mean by a balance of power and and with a few points about the difficulties of getting to a balance of power which I in no way shape or form would slight so let me start by talking about the changes the United States and China in my view hold very different notions about what is the best means of preserving prosperity and stability both globally and in the western Pacific in particular the United States as I said a minute ago has long favored and has enjoyed in fact a position of predominance in the maritime realm I'm not talking about continental Asia we conducted two wars on the continent of Asia and they both of them came out rather badly the United States I don't think sees itself as a continental power able to exert influence on the Asian mainland this is about the maritime sphere and it's about the sphere within about approximately 1500 nautical miles of China's coastline in that area since the Second World War for the past 70 years the United States has been second to none it's been the predominant maritime power right up to the 12 nautical mile limit of any particular nation in the area including China the Chinese on the other hand have never accepted this kind of situation they've generally generally believed particularly in the last 20 to 30 years that the world is evolving in the direction of multipolar order that there are more than one major powers on the planet and that in the region itself there should be a balance of power of some kind that should emerge over time to provide them with their own security but also to facilitate the continued economic growth that they think is essential regionally of these two perspectives have existed for a long time and they've never really come into conflict and they haven't come into conflict because China has not had the capacity nor has it had the motivation to actually challenge the American position in fact in some respects during the Cold War period in the latter years the Cold War in particular American maritime predominance in Asia was a benefit to the Chinese it served to keep Japan in check it served to keep other historical rivalries in check within the region and it served to allow other countries to focus on economic growth and development the United States provided public goods in the form of security of sea lanes and for the Chinese there wasn't much downside in this kind of a situation given their own very limited capacities at the time but what's happened is that China obviously has become a much more much more involved power a power that has much more capacity overseas as greater interest and has a greater capacity to defend those interests and much of that has extended into the maritime realm and this in particular has happened in Asia and so a situation that in the past the Chinese were willing to accept and the seed to they are increasingly less willing to do so they don't believe that American maritime predominance in the Western Pacific is something that will preserve long-term security for them and stability as well now as Avery said people who look at this dynamic and this change in situation have different responses to it some of them call for America to double down and this I think is a version of what Ashley argues for the United States should keep well ahead of the Chinese that's the only way to maintain stability in Asia so the United States has to increase its defense spending still more it has to increase its presence in the Western Pacific it has to constrain China in a variety of ways without however adopting a full fledged containment policy of the kind we saw against the Soviet Union the other side of the coin on the what I would regard as more extreme side on the Chinese side is that China no longer should adopt the kind of more passive or defensive policy more accommodation policy accommodation as policy it has had in the past it should become more assertive now many people say China today is more assertive but I'm saying that there are people in China who believe the current Chinese government is not assertive enough China needs to be more assertive needs to use its strengths to move more rapidly to defend its interest its growing interest region now both of these arguments to some degree tend to rely on the concept of rising powers and dominant powers on the one side the United States dominant power needs to resist the rising power on the other side the rising power needs to come into its own and establish its own situation my argument is that this dynamic is really in many ways based upon both a faulty theoretical and historical misleading historical interpretations of what powers must or must not do there is nothing that preordains major powers rising powers and status quo powers to engage in hard power striving for dominance at all costs and China in particular is not in my view historically predisposed to seek what I would call hard power dominance in the Asia Pacific I don't believe that China's historical record acts as a basis for making that kind of an argument but even more importantly I don't think that historical record going back to the pre-modern period is a very good reference in any event to understand how China calculates its security interest today I think the historical record provides a much more mixed and nuanced set of possible outcomes for a rising power and a stable or a status quo power the real question is the issue of the bid for hegemony it's not would a power like to be a hegemonic power in control events I think that probably goes without saying the most major powers the question is would the bid for hegemony make sense would it provide more security for a state or less security and there I would say historical record in the modern times clearly suggests it would be less security clearly suggests that effort to rise to make a bed bid for hegemony and displace the dominant power will lead to in most cases as it has in the recent past failure the United States was successful in this regard largely only because it had two very strong assets going for it one it was going up against a weak and democratic power that it had a certain amount of affinity with Great Britain to it did so from an environment of great passivity passivity where it had no threats around this immediate environment China is engaged in a very very different situation it doesn't confront that kind of situation it's much more complex and it's much more challenging for the Chinese I would also argue that neither China nor the United States required dominant influence in the western Pacific to ensure their security and to endure prosperity neither of them requires that the other side be subordinate in order to gain the benefits of a global international order they can both benefit from that order under the existing conditions of the world today so I would say that in general you don't have a drive for dominance on the part of the Chinese at least not yet I think the Chinese could be led into this if the United States believes that the only possible solution for itself is to maintain its predominance even in China's own backyard up to its own 12 nautical mile limit I think the Chinese then would begin to reconsider their strategy and their policy approach let me have a couple of other points though about why I think US predominance is not that advisable I'm not sure it's feasible I think that the effort by the United States to try and stay as far ahead as the Chinese as they would need to stay in order to convey an unambiguous level of predominance that would be clear to all including the Chinese is highly unlikely it's probably not going to be feasible particularly within the area I'm talking about 5,000 to 1,500 nautical miles from China's coastline the Chinese will acquire capabilities that will be perceived to be able to challenge the United States in that area of the world and that perception even if the reality itself is not as clear the perception of that will alter the way countries in the region think about security in the area and if the United States tries to pursue that kind of that kind of alternative perception I think it's without the reality behind it I think it's going to be highly highly destabilizing and even if the United States were able to do that I don't think the Chinese would accept it I think the Chinese would continue to acquire capabilities that would in essence condemn us to a cold war in the region and we would engage we engage in a security competition that would be far more intense than we've seen today now one way out of this of course for a lot of people is to talk about Chinese economic collapse well we don't have to worry about this because the Chinese aren't going to go anywhere they're not going to rise to the occasion I basically just don't accept this argument I don't think the Chinese economy is going to collapse I don't think the Chinese are going to be down to such a low level of growth that they will suffer domestic instability of such a severe nature that it would lead them to really curtail to a major degree their capabilities and their capacities overseas but I think more I wouldn't say it's impossible but one that I would what I would say is that if the United States bases its strategy on the notion that the Chinese will eventually decline and collapse they will have lost the opportunity the United States will have delayed a decision in transitioning to a stable balance and make it far more difficult in the future because they would anticipate a collapse that if it doesn't occur it's going to make it much more difficult so given all these dynamics what do I conclude from this well I conclude basically that the that the only reasonable optimal solution for the United States and China is to transition towards a stable balance of power in the Western Pacific not across the world not globally we're talking the Western Pacific in which the vital interests of both sides are protected and neither side enjoys the clear capacity to dominate the other militarily within at the very least the first island chain so-called that is to say three to four hundred nautical miles off the Chinese coast if not further out to a thousand nautical miles that would encompass Japan Korea Taiwan the mayor all of these critical issues are within this area I think that's the area that will need to have in an essence established at the facto balance of power now what would this require I think it would require the the implementation of a series of CBMs that are far more far-reaching than they are today with expectations of reciprocal behavior that would be based upon a clear understanding about how one might proceed to engage in this kind of behavior now many people have written about this they've written about the need for some some CBMs of various types that go beyond what we have today Jim Steinberg and Michael O'Hanlon recently wrote a book on this subject where they advocated a lot of these types of CBMs Lyle Goldstein who just spoke today at Brookings offers a whole series of what he calls cooperative spirals of different types of interactions that the US and China could be involved in that would lead to greater levels of cooperation between the two countries I think these are all good they're fine as a starting point in some respects but I think they're insufficient because if you're going to transition to anything resembling a stable balance of power you have to deal with the problem of adjusting and anticipating shifts in relative power and that leads countries to test to test resolve whether or not the other side is willing to do this whether or not this side is has a strength to do that in order to make that a more balanced or more stable situation you've got to reduce the propensity for various types of triggers in the region to precipitate confrontation between the United States and China as a more balanced set of relationships what does that mean that means in my view in essence you have to establish what is in effect a de facto buffer zone within this area that is a zone where neither side has dominance as I said a minute ago and neither side can use it to project power but it serves as a basis for reassurance on a certain level of security in the region that one's own vital interests will not be threatened now what does this look like what it means is you need to have a unified and largely neutral Korean Peninsula you need to have a Korea that although it might have some nominal association with the United States would have no foreign forces on the peninsula and it would have an effect a foreign policy that is a good neighbor policy with both the Chinese and the Americans getting to that situation of course is a complex issue and a difficult one but I don't think it's an impossible one given the larger strategic design that one would hope to put in place the second element of this would be a demilitarized Taiwan in which there is an understanding between the United States and China about arms sales on the one hand and specific types of military deployments by the Chinese on the other hand this also faces some very significant obstacles many of them are political and many of them are domestic but I don't see them as being insurmountable the third is in the area of maritime disputes I think there has to be a reassessment on both sides about the the saliency and the importance to vital interests of these disputes for the United States I think there has to be a clear definition of the bottom line for the United States which is a less expansive line that it is currently taking in some respects in dealing with these disputes it has to be focused very much on certain very fundamental issues like use of force like freedom of navigation and nothing else that again is an issue that I think would require a certain amount of understanding over time but I'm prepared to talk more about that regarding Japan people say well how do you establish this kind of an area if the Japanese are right there this would really rattle the Japanese it would make them insecure well I don't think this kind of a transition to a stable balance in this area could occur without some level of strengthening of the US Japan Alliance either that or Japan will go independent and I don't think that a Japanese independent Japanese security posture would necessarily benefit the region people make arguments that it that it's the only option for the long term but I don't think that's correct I think Japan and the United States can establish a relationship that it has a strong alliance but still a very limited alliance particularly in terms of the functions that Japan would perform in the western Pacific beyond defense of the home islands and nearby waters and I think that kind of a strengthening could be acceptable to the Chinese in the context of these other initiatives that I'm talking about and then finally I would say that in terms of force posture what the United States and China need to transition towards is something that approximates what I call a mutual denial strategy that is to say that both countries have the capacity to raise the stakes or the costs of the other side from engaging in some very extreme actions use of direct force attempt to forcibly seize areas and hold them etc they would be able to pose a sufficient level of deterrence to doing that this does not require predominant military capability it requires a very capable largely defensive oriented posture within that area that's why it's called mutual denial this argument has been made by people at the Navy War College and in other areas as an alternative to the past position of offensive based military doctrine which is the core of what the United States doctrine is today in this part of the world at least now before I end let me just say a couple of words about the obstacles to this as you can obviously see there are many obstacles to this kind of a concept this is not a grand bargain this is not something that the United States and China can sit around a table and make a decision on and start moving the chess pieces this is an issue that is going to have to be that's going to have to be developed over time as an incremental process and beginning within the country's concerned there needs to be a serious debate within the United States government and within the Chinese government about exactly what the benefits and costs would be of maintaining predominance on the US side or on the Chinese side trying to in any way achieve that or trying to achieve something less than a buffer zone in the western Pacific and there needs to be a very clear understanding about if there is a need to transition to something else then how do you go about doing that because it has to occur domestically in this country first in the United States as Avery suggested then the reflexive response is predominance the reflexive response is we need to strengthen our position yet further many people interpret the rebalance as being exactly that I don't see the rebalance is necessarily being that I don't think that the United States as I've just said has to commit itself to that kind of what I regard as fruitless objective I think there needs to be more consideration of the real alternatives and that sort of discussion I think is long overdue within the United States within China I think there needs to be also a very strong discussion about how the Chinese government expects to deal with the forces of nationalism over time because as China grows and becomes stronger some of the forces of nationalism within China are going to become more insistent on certain types of behavior and the Chinese government has to establish a policy where it can defuse to the extent possible these kinds of maritime disputes and other issues that serve as such a ready means of fueling this kind of ultra nationalist sentiment within China the Chinese government has no strategic interest in getting into fights with the Japanese over rocks it doesn't serve the interest of the Chinese government it doesn't serve the interest of the Japanese government and the same thing could be held to be true in the South China Sea as well so there I think if there is an alternative in looking towards the future and that this is understood as a possible alternative then the pressures for these kinds of domestic nationalistic objectives I think can be addressed more effectively and that's the sort of thing that I'm trying to recommend through this essay and I will stop there thank you very much you agree thanks Michael so our next speaker is Ashley tell us and Michael stayed within the 15 minute restriction by 15 minutes you mean 20 minutes so you have up to 20 minutes don't tell me would be a 25 I always follow the example of my fearless leader so I'll be happy I'll try and stay with the 15 minutes it's always a pleasure to have a discussion with Michael because I have the highest respect for his intellectual integrity and I'm not saying this simply because we happen to be on the same stage here but I've known Michael for close to 25 years now and I have I appreciate the clarity with which he makes his arguments and his willingness to listen to to the counterpoint what I'm going to do this afternoon is address three questions first what is the strategic problem as I see it the second is why is predominance so critical to achieving American strategic aims in Asia and then the third is what's wrong with Michael about more precisely what's wrong with Michael's solution of creating a buffer zone up to the first island chain so let me let me start with the first question what is the strategic problem as I see it the strategic problem as I see it is something like this thanks to China's being embedded in the liberal economic order in the last three years China has grown dramatically across multiple indices of capability if this growth was restricted purely to the economic it might have caused anxieties but I didn't I do not think it would have caused alarm because China's growth has moved beyond the economic into fundamental dimensions of military capability it has raised alarm in East Asia primarily on the part of the countries that about China in the maritime periphery now because many of these countries happened to be allied with the United States and look to the United States essentially for protection the challenge that China poses through its advancing military capability becomes not simply a challenge to these countries on the periphery but rather to the US Alliance system in Asia because threats to these peripheral countries automatically stress the coupling between the United States and the countries that it seeks to protect and so the heart of the security problem that I see in Asia today is one where growing Chinese power forces the smaller countries to become even more reliant on the United States for the kind of security protections that they seek in order to preserve their own security and their own autonomy in the face of this gradually growing and expanding China and by expanding I don't mean in a territorial sense but in a political sense so essentially what you have is growing Chinese power causing anxiety in the periphery and the periphery then relying even more on the United States for security guarantees in order to protect these peripheral states in the face of Chinese power that's the essence of the strategic problem now why is predominance critical in this context predominance is critical in this context because if the peripheral states can be assured that no matter what capabilities China acquires the United States still has the wherewithal to satisfactorily and successfully come to their defense then the security problem which I just described begins to get attenuated so the heart of the contradiction is essentially an objective one if the regional states begin to fear that US power projection capabilities are not keeping pace with China's coercive capabilities then essentially extended deterrence becomes less and less credible the regional states cannot continue to rely on the United States for their defense and therefore could be tempted to go in different directions many of which do not advance American interest now there are two ways obviously to deal with this problem one way to deal with this problem is simply to change the fundamental structure of political relations in the Indo-Pacific region in a way that Mike Michael described so for example if you can get the Taiwanese to forget about any aspirations they might have for independence or if you can get a unified career to basically say we're going to be more or less neutral or if you can get the Japanese to say oh growing Chinese power is not really a challenge to us because the United States essentially is robust enough the relationship between the United States and Japan is robust enough then essentially what you've done is you've removed the strategic problem Deus Ex Machina and I've no problems with that so if Michael wants to go out and pursue the agenda of actually you know moving to that very ambitious set of goals that he has outlined by all means we should take a crack at it but to be very honest I am not confident that we will be able to solve the problem by that fundamental restructuring of the political environment which in a sense takes the problem away Deus Ex Machina now if the problem is not going to be taken away in the form that Michael has described then the United States is still left with a strategic issue and that strategic issue is how does it make good on its extended deterrence guarantees to a whole slew of friends and allies in the Indo-Pacific region if that is the challenge that the United States is going to face for the foreseeable future because many of the solutions that Michael has advocated are solutions that are going to be possible if they are at all possible only in the far far term we still have a near-term problem and the near-term problem is how do I make credible my security my extended security guarantees so what's the answer to that problem the answer to that problem in my mind is very clearly maintaining America's strategic military and geopolitical predominance and the answer is predominance because the alternative of solving the extended deterrence challenge through the balance that Michael advocates begins to look very closely and very quickly like weakness and if the region is not convinced that the balance that Michael advocates actually advances their own security and autonomy then the extended deterrence challenge that we have to meet is one that we're going to fail so to my mind the reason for pursuing predominance is not because Americans have a fixation with predominance I mean we may have a fixation with predominance but then you know we have to meet the psychotherapists who sits between us for private consultations later right for the moment the real issue with predominance is not because it is an outgrowth of our psychology but the real advantage of predominance is that it allows you to make your extended deterrence guarantees more credible that is predominance allows you to come to the rescue of our allies at lower cost to ourselves and because it allows you to come to the allies assistance at lower cost to ourselves the allies have incentives to believe that American extended deterrence guarantees are in fact credible so that's the strategic logic for actually having predominance now let me make two other points about predominance first predominance is not as costly as I believe Michael makes it out to be first the United States has an enormous power advantage over China where comprehensive national power is concerned I think it is really a myth to think of China as being a genuine peer competitor of the United States no matter how powerful China has become in the last 30 years and that's very clearly true China has become capable it is not a peer competitor of the United States there is still a vast gap between the two countries in terms of raw economic capability in terms of our capacity to mobilize allies and friends around the world our ability to dominate international institutions and the construction of global rulemaking and finally in terms of military power US military power still is head and shoulders above what China can muster even in the western Pacific even in the area that is of most interest to Michael so my point is when it comes to being able to maintain predominance it is not as difficult a task as people often believe and I do not think preserving American predominance for example requires an expansion in our defense budget what it does require is a willingness to confront what our weaknesses in the way that the budget is structured and it certainly requires us to think of a different kind of force architecture in dealing with the Chinese challenge but it does not require us to double or even increase our defense budget very much more beyond the levels that we already have let me make one other point of predominance Michael's argument about predominance being costly is hinged fundamentally to the fact that somehow Chinese anti access in area denial capabilities are so robust that to defeat them we essentially have to break the bank now my argument is this anti access in area denial is not a new challenge for the United States less people think it is we dealt with very robust anti access in area denial that the Soviet Union mounted for close to 30 years in terms of our ability to reinforce our defenses in Europe we know how to deal with anti access and area denial and the Chinese because they have a few more gadgets like the DF 21 D you know the so-called carrier missile killer etc etc it doesn't change the fundamental nature of the game and you know I can talk to you in greater detail about how you can defeat area anti access area denial in the Q&A but my bottom line is this the Chinese can certainly raise the costs to our military operations but there is no inevitability that their investments in area anti access in area denial will ruin the day so we can still counter these capabilities while still remaining within the broad parameters of our defense capability let me go quickly to the third and last question that I promised I would answer which is why is Michael's solution of creating a de facto buffer zone between China and the first island chain not persuasive enough to me let me start with the first point that I made earlier it is going to be extremely difficult to create such a buffer zone because it hinges fundamentally on having major structural changes in the character of political relations in key countries along the periphery and to my mind it is much easier to defeat Chinese anti access and area denial than it is to convince a unified Korea to have only a to have a neutralist position or to reassure Japan that a United States that will not have predominance will actually be an effective security guarantor so when you weigh the challenges that are involved in Michael's solution the challenges I see are extremely exorbitant in the costs and in the implementation obstacles in comparison defeating a to ad almost looks like a simple proposition so that's point number one point number two it's very hard to enforce the kind of buffer zone that Michael imagines because at the end of the day the ability to make that solution stick is simply a function of the relative capabilities of China and the United States if China really begins to grow in capabilities over time explain to me why a China of this kind would be satisfied with the buffer zone when the alternative is that it could have it all now you could make the argument that the Chinese being far-sighted would say oh my god if the alternative to the buffer zone is a conflict with the United States then maybe the buffer zone is you know in our interest and if that is true that's wonderful but if you look at the record of rising states over the last 500 years there have been very few instances that I've seen where rising states have actually foregone the opportunities for short-term gains simply because there are actually long-term payoffs from having a more conservative political strategy now if the Chinese actually do this they would be the first you know in a 500-year cycle and you know I certainly welcome that but you know I'm sufficiently old-fashioned in my expectations of countries and their political behaviors to somehow imagine that the Chinese would be different from the patterns established in the past the third point that I want to make is for Michael's suggestion of a buffer zone to actually stick because it's not enough to simply create the buffer zone you have to make certain that the buffer zone actually endures over a long period of time what you need to have is actually in technical terms a defense dominant environment that is the costs of defense have to be much less than the costs of offense right if you have a defense dominant technical system yes a buffer zone becomes viable because then it just doesn't make sense to pursue offensive strategies because the offensive strategies will never please fail because the defense is stronger than the offense today and for the foreseeable future I cannot convince myself that we are on the cusp of a defense dominant military technical revolution so it is entirely possible that technologies that make offense more viable will actually rule the day and I'll give you a very simple example today it is far easier to build a missile force that can penetrate a missile defense system then it is to build a robust missile defense system that can actually defeat offensive missiles now if you end up in an environment where the offense has the advantage as I described missile forces being able to overwhelm a defensive system then a buffer zone that relies essentially on mutual denial is simply going to prove to be less and less attractive over time the final point why should the United States today sacrifice the superiority that it has in anticipation of the fact that China may over a period of time be able to negate its superiority I mean maybe there will come a point you know 10 15 20 years from now where the Chinese might be able to negate our superiority if that is true my viewers will make the adjustments 15 or 20 years down the line why should I be making preemptive adjustments in the anticipation of a rising China a lot can happen between now and the China of the next 15 years so my argument would be as long as the United States can with the power at its disposal build the capabilities to sustain predominance in the western Pacific it ought to sustain that predominance and if there comes a point where the costs of maintaining predominance are so prohibitive then I imagine that any rational state of which the United States is certainly one would come back and do the arithmetic all over again and make its judgment but today I do not see the cost-benefit ratio being such that the United States really has to rush to the barricades to figure out how it has to adjust potentially to some you know Chinese capabilities that may or may not materialize sometime in the future so as far as I'm concerned predominance is a very good strategy for the United States for a good while longer and when I look at the character of the American economy and I look at the revolutionary transformations that are currently underway in this economy for example in energy in transportation in materials and manufacturing in defense I am actually convinced that the United States will be able to sustain military preponderance in the western Pacific for as long as the eye can see and I would actually be shocked if we lost our pre predominance in the time frame that Michael is thinking about in a way that would cause us to actually revisit our strategy in the way that he suggests so I'm going to end at that note and I'm looking forward to well thanks to both of you we're going to open it up to questions but speaking of the revolutionary changes in the American transportation sector I had to take am tracked down here this morning and so I'm going to take advantage of my position here as the moderator to open the question because you know paid the price here so here's I want to pose a question to both of you first which is something you didn't talk about but I think has to be somewhere in your analysis and your policy recommendations because you both talked a lot about power shifting power or avoiding a shift in power for dominance or balance you also offered recommendations focusing on a process of building up confidence building measures or bolstering extended deterrence but neither of you really made clear to me what are the interests at stake what are China's vital interests what are America's vital interests the area you're focused on is it possible to determine which of these interests on each side should be viewed as legitimate because you're both talking about a part of the world it's not the territorial and political integrity of the homeland you're talking about things outside their borders how do we sort this out what the vital interests are by vital interests I mean things that both parties are really willing to run some serious risks over including the risk of military conflict and once you've told us how you view American interests and Chinese interests in this region are they inherently incompatible and if so why if not why not I just finished grading final exams and so Michael since you got to go first last time I'll let you go first okay okay I'll take a crack at the vital interest question to my mind since the end of the second world war the US has had one very critical interest in Eurasia that is to prevent the rise of a regional hegemon in Europe and to present prevent the rise of a regional hegemon in Asia if we fought a long cold war with the Soviet Union to prevent the rise of a regional hegemony in Europe I imagine we should be willing to do as much if required to prevent the rise of a regional hegemony in Asia now Michael can make the argument with cogency that China has no intention of becoming a regional hegemon if so it solves my problem but I have a sneaking feeling that China's choices in this regard may not be simply a matter of volition that if China's power actually grows it may be compelled despite itself to exhibit shall we say hegemonic tendencies and because I don't know where the China might go in that direction I think it is in American interest to make certain that China never gets to the point where it begins to entertain the possibility that hegemonic control or hegemonic influence might be within reach and so my obsession with preponderance is linked to the objective of creating as wide a gap between US power and Chinese power as possible so that even if China begins to sort of distended capabilities over time it never reaches the point where a grasp for hegemony ever becomes viable well I would agree with Ashley that I think that neither the United States nor China want to see the region dominated by a hostile power I mean in a sense that will that will become if it is not China's objective as well why I mean you have to ask that doesn't that's not a self-referential problem the issue is why well the presumption is that because such a power would act to undermine the other power in this particular case I think China in the United States have the same level of high commitment to a region that is stable and prosperous and prosperous on the basis of essentially an open market system across the region neither country has an interest in establishing an exclusionary sphere of influence within Asia I think people who suggest that that's China's objective based on nothing other than some kind of straight line projection of what they think a hegemonic China would want to see which I think is essentially divorced from the reality of the way the world is operating today so for me the solution is not American predominance the only solution it's what is the best way to maintain stability and prosperity if you do believe as I do that China's capability is not going to flag to the level where it simply acquiesces in a dominant us and much of this argument revolves precisely around that question but if the United if the Chinese have the capacity to develop a capability that they believe is necessary to prevent the United States from constraining themselves it's a classic security dilemma and for me the solution to this dilemma if China is going to continue to grow and expand and have greater capability and capacity is not to dominate China which will be a guarantee for a Cold War in Asia which I think will be inevitably the result of what Ashley is saying the alternative is to establish some level of understanding about what in fact the interests are and I do not think they fundamentally conflict they're both in the same type of ultimate regional environment the question is what kind of system will best maintain that and not lead to the dedication of growing numbers of resources into military developments which I think will be the outcome of what Ashley is talking about the the other issue I'd like to address is the whole question that Ashley began with which is the question of allied expectations because this is so often raised well we have to do because the allies demand it well what are we talking about when we're talking about American allies the most critical ally is Japan in Asia there is no more important ally than the Japanese and as I've said I don't believe that we need to say that it is ipso facto inevitably the case that Japan will regard its only possible way of ensuring its security that the United States dominates China because the assessment will be at what cost what will be the consequences of doing that for Japan itself which itself is the most dependent on China economically more than any other power so you have to think about what the consequences would be of trying to pursue the kind of strategy that Ashley's talking about and if you're not convinced that either a the United if you're convinced that the a the United States will easily be able to maintain its predominance and b the Chinese essentially won't do much about it that will matter then I'd say fine but I think both of those are highly questionable okay thanks you've been a very patient audience we have microphones roaming around somewhere so I will call on I'll begin with stable and Roy up here in the front and there's a microphone coming up from behind thank you both for stimulating presentations I'm not comfortable with the emphasis on dominance and I wonder whether it's necessary to the issue that we're addressing which really is the question how does the United States define its relationship with China it would seem to me if you put the issue differently which is that the goal of the United States should not be dominance in order to prevent a potentially hostile power from dominating the region but rather responsible behavior then you come to a whole different set of conclusions about how you should be dealing with each other I'm uncomfortable with dominance for two reasons one is American political theory which is the basis for all modern political systems is that you don't want concentrations of power because that inevitably leads to abuse of power and we have seen that a period of American dominance that we fought wars in the Middle East which some people don't think were necessary wars for us to fight and the reason was because there was no power opposing us such as we had during the Cold War and therefore we could kind of arbitrarily use our power the second issue is does it require American dominance to keep China from dominating East Asia we were not able to dominate the Western Hemisphere the way that we originally had conceived under the Monroe Doctrine we couldn't keep the Russians from establishing a foothold in Cuba at the height of our power in the Western Hemisphere so with the China surrounded by India and Russia and and Japan and Korea Vietnam and the United States as a permanent player in East Asia it seems to me the risk of dominance of East Asia by any power let alone China is small so the real question is countries ought to be able to rise and improve themselves and benefit their people if they behave responsibly and if they abide by whatever the rules are of the international system and then in a sense the United States goal should be a wealthy prosperous China that plays by international rules uh is responsible in its behavior and that would meet US requirements the dominance concept could be applied to South Asia it could be applied to South America where we should be concerned about Brazil dominating the region etc and I don't see our psychology as thinking that way so in other words I I would like to frame the issue from a fundamentally different standpoint dominance is should not be an end in itself and it perhaps is not the best means to ensure responsible behavior because it's important for us to behave responsibly and I'm not confident that a dominant United States behaves responsibly based on recent I gather that's mainly targeting you but let me thank you Steve always a pleasure to see you let me let me answer the last remark that you made to my mind an irresponsibly dominant United States is still better than a responsible but weak United States because to my mind if there is fundamental American weakness then whether we are responsible or not would be completely irrelevant right right right but the but the point is there is a foundation on which we ought to pursue your goal of responsible behavior to my mind the best way to induce countries to behave responsibly is what Teddy Roosevelt understood over a hundred years ago which is you behave politely but you carry a big stack right and so if your complaint is that we have abused and misused your power I'm willing to plead guilty to the charge but to my mind keeping the American economy keeping the American sword in good repair is really fundamental to inducing the kind of responsible behavior that you argue for the second point I would make and it goes to something that Michael said earlier you know the way China sees itself and its own behavior is fundamentally different today from how the region sees China and that's what is at the heart of the problem that the region today sees China as overbearing muscular and assertive and therefore increases demands on the United States essentially for the insurance and then the question really becomes if we are faced with those demands does a preponderance of power allow us to make our extended deterrence more credible or less or can we credibly service our extended deterrence obligations even with lesser preponderance I mean to my mind the question is answered very simply that more power gives you more flexibility it gives you greater autonomy and if it ever comes to a serious conflict then obviously you have you know many advantages that that are down to your benefit question up front here at all saying I'm the founder and editor-in-chief of fair observer that was born when I came out of the University of Pennsylvania so every might remember me and of course it's good to meet Ashley an old friend who invited me so here's let me simplify since I now live in California let me do it a la California style so Ashley's argument is there are damsels in distress all around China's shores and the nighting shining shining armor the the resplendent chivalrous and muscular United States should ride or in this case should sail to the rescue of these damsels come what may and just as at the end of the Second World War the US was willing to do what it takes to stand up to the USSR so it should do the same with the middle kingdom now two things here first that thought led to 1953 and the fantastic coup of which the consequences are alive today it led to a numerous other disaster it led to numerous other disasters which were ideological in nature so that that to me is an ideological fixation that's a wrong place to begin but more importantly at that point Ashley the US had 50% of the world GDP it had the Bretton Woods system the rules of the game were decided by the US as they are to a lesser degree today so and now you have the AIDB and the Bricksbank precisely because the Congress is not going to pass their forms the US government itself is pleading it to do right so there's been an institutional decay and a lack of imagination and and so what we are seeing is first an ideological red herring which might lead to dangerous implications and two a diminishing of economic capability because the US is now 25 of the world GDP and three the institutional decay within the US itself now when you say will not cost us more you assume that the institutions here have the imagination to function in a more robust manner and come up with cheap alternatives now I don't see these prerequisites yes what you say is fantastic if the US can do it but I don't think it's possible so as a relatively declining power it'll have to give way and the Chinese will have to behave a little more maturely I don't agree entirely with what you said that you know you can have Korea unified and demilitarized Taiwan and you know and Japan is setting I think Japan's demography makes it impossible for it to assert itself in the long term and so I think the situation is complex and messy and these theories do not hold it's that required a response well simple yes or no question no no don't beat around the bush Ashley no I'll address two two points you made first the fact that US GDP has declined from 50 percent to 25 percent is completely understandable because when you compare US GDP at the end of World War II where you had half the world in ruins the fact that we had half the world's GDP was a completely unnatural phenomenon if you look at the stability in fact for me the fascinating thing is the stability of the relative American share of global GDP even with the rise of great powers right I mean it's not that we haven't lost a percentage point here or haven't gained a percentage point there but by and large there has been a stability with respect to US relative shares which have hovered between 20 and 25 percent so that's one point to keep in mind second I have no problem with the fact that we should not accommodate China in different ways including in global institutions we should find ways of doing that and we've been somewhat silly in the way that we've managed you know recent things like the AIIB and so on and so forth but you know I wouldn't get excessively pessimistic about institutional decay in the United States because if you look at institutional decay in many of the other countries that you're talking about including in China where the problem is not decay but institutional brittleness right all of a sudden the United States looks like heaven in comparison so you know many of the contenders that we are talking about also have very serious challenges which I think we ought to factor into the equation it's a question for Mr. Swain and I'll try to pose it neutrally because it's in fact a neutral question I'm Mark Tocalo from the Korea Economic Institute I'd like to get back to the definition of vital interests isn't a legitimate vital interest of China's to be able to influence or veto the behavior of countries around its borders you know there are people who believe it's a legitimate interest for Russia to be able to ensure that Ukraine is not joined NATO or the EU and we'd be better off to accommodate that should we accommodate China in the same way well if you put it in zero some terms like that that anything the Chinese would want to see done would so you really have to get down on the specifics of what you're talking about I certainly think the Chinese should have the capacity to play a role in the region such that other powers around its periphery pay very close attention to what China's interests are now the devil is in the detail there what does that mean to say that now if China's definition of its interests are you need to become a satellite of China they want to have Japan become a satellite of China they want to have Korea become a satellite of China then obviously that's not going to be a welcome or acceptable option the question is how China itself defines its interests in this particular instance and there I do think as I've said in my comments that I don't believe the Chinese necessarily view this as a zero sum situation I do think that they want to see deference to some level from countries around their periphery that doesn't mean subjugation that does mean a lot of economic intercourse and a hell of a lot of economic benefit for the countries involved as well as for the Chinese the question is does that involve that these countries must acquire say the presence of foreign militaries the presence of the United States with basin and other aspects in in these countries all along the periphery well then I'd say that's a problem I don't think that's the United States objective and I certainly hope that that's not what the United States thinks is necessary in order to maintain some stability in the region this is a follow-up question on that but yes you with you said I think you Chinese can you identify yourself sir I'm really a navy I work for navy Chinese have long history that there's only one son in the sky especially in their backyard so I think in like a diplomatic term they may say some stable balance is their goal but if you ask really inside their mind either Chinese are dominance or like US dominance either way I think there is no stable stable balance and also I have one question about your comment if you look at the defense budget of US in China especially in terms of PPP right now it's about our Chinese defense budget is half a dead of US maybe in 2020 it will be almost same and especially in this kind of like military business home game and also away game make a hell of difference some people said to make a to make some kind of balance it costs 16 to 1 okay way away play cost 16 times more so our DOD budget really like a stable flat how we can achieve like US dominance okay sounded to me like that was actually two questions one for Michael about the historical resonance for China and this belief that from China's perspective there can only be one dominant power not shared power and for Ashley the question of really whether it's affordable for the United States to get engaged in a competition in military expenditures China so Michael well I dealt with this in some respects in in my comments my remarks but I mean I we looked actually at the historical record in some detail when Ashley and I wrote a book on Chinese grand strategy and at that time I mean what I understood about China's behavior was that it often sought to stabilize its periphery stabilizes periphery how did it do that it did it in a whole variety of different ways oftentimes it did it through the establishment of relationships that were reassuring in both directions that involved economic benefit in both directions particularly with regard to the peripheral state but some level of deference the Chinese regarded their singular position in the region as one that wasn't essentially military in nature it was essentially based upon the attraction of their culture the attraction of their history the attraction of their economic power and capability there were some arguments about military capabilities as well but I wouldn't say that they were front and center that they were predominant there was a lot of I think if you look at current Chinese behavior and recent history for China I think the biggest issue is not China's notion that it should be the dominant power in Asia the biggest issue for China is its experience during the later 19th and early 20th century the experience with colonialism and the experience with foreign countries and the depredations of those countries on China I think that has created in my view an unhealthy rear-looking past-looking attitude in the recent past among many Chinese that makes them in some respects excessively dependent upon China exercising its rights if you will and that is precisely the kind of thing that I think needs to be redefined to a great extent within China and it can be done I think a China that is stronger is more capable has more confidence in itself and in its environment is not necessarily a China that is going to resort to the kind of aggressive behavior that some people think it will as a stronger power I think it depends enormously on how it calculates its environment and its leverage and its capabilities so you know I'm not as willing as some people are to throw out the window arguments that people make about China's desire to dominate I mean that China's desire to have balance in the region I think it recognizes what the environment is that it's operating under which is very very different oh the difference between the home game and the away game this is not new for the United States I mean we dealt with this throughout the Cold War where the bulk of our military focus was on the away game and we've created essentially a global support system to be able to back our military operations in the away game our military budgets are designed to deal with the away game I mean until very recently we never thought about homeland security as actually stressing the defense budget something we even had to think about so the entire focus of the United States is that of a global expeditionary power so in some sense this is a natural consequence of what we've been doing for the last 60 years so I don't see this as being you know inordinately stressful or something that we don't have experience in dealing with if you look at the way our Air Force if you look at the way our Navy and even you know the U.S. Army now more and more it's focused fundamentally on dealing with the away games and so I don't see this as being something you know that we have to go back to scratch to try to figure out we have the capacity to do it and as I said the issue is not budgets and first I have real problems with PPP comparisons because you know they're among the most fraudulent sort of devices you can you can conjure to kind of force relationships that are not really there but leave that aside the that's 600 billion dollars we outpace you know most countries in defense spending where we have a problem is with the internal allocations of that budget and therefore if we begin to do two things carefully one is to look at internal allocations especially issues relating to personnel costs medical so on and so forth and if you look at force structure changes we can maintain the kind of predominance that we have enjoyed up to this point within the top numbers of the defense budget as we've known them let's try to get a question from this side in the back all the way in the back hi my name is Elizabeth Royal I'm with the CICE Phanelix Corporation this is for Michael Swain I wanted you to clarify a bit more about your statements about our allies you talked about clarifying what our vital interests are in the east and China Sea and keeping it only to freedom of navigation as well as use of force and you also highlighted the importance of Japan as an ally but the problem is we have a number of allies in the region including ones that are weaker and we have conflicts with China such as the Philippines and Thailand so I was wondering how you would address existing alliance we have with them and our alliance commitments thanks well in the case of the Korean Peninsula I've already addressed that issue and I think that alliance ultimately is going to have to be revised considerably if not done away with ultimately as far as other alliances in the region are concerned the alliance with Australia I don't think is one that will in any way pose a problem in fact in many ways it's a benefit for the United States but I don't see it as a central issue in what I'm talking about in this area of the western Pacific I think the alliance with the Philippines is something that will depend very much on how the United States and China deal with this general this larger strategic problem within that area because the Philippines does fall within this area and for the Philippines it could become a situation where they would benefit from having a position that is not as closely tied to the United States but one where this territorial dispute which is essentially the basis for the conflict between themselves and the Chinese in the South China Sea that is going to be the key to dealing with that issue for the Philippines the Philippines has not been in recent history a huge proponent of a close alliance with the United States but it's become more so as Ashley points out because of its concerns about Chinese behavior in the South China Sea if you can address that issue more effectively I think the concerns that the Philippine has about its larger security environment will be more manageable so I think the inter effect the interlocking nature of these issues is very important to understand it's not just a simple question of what do we do with the Philippines it's a question of what context are you going to operate within to develop what kind of longer-term future and how does the alliance function in that regard the alliances that the United States has are not self-justifying entities they're there for a reason they exist to serve the the interests of both the ally and the United States but from an American perspective first and foremost they're there to serve the interests of the United States if the interests of the United States suggests that those alliances need to be modified then I don't I don't see how the views of the ally itself should be the predominant characteristic or consideration for how you go about adjusting those alliances now that is by no means an argument in favor of throwing the alliances out the window but it is about seriously assessing the function of a particular kind of an alliance for a particular type of security in the region and that's what I think needs to be done if there's going to be an effective way of dealing with the changing power reality in the region there has to be a a a desire and open-minded and a hard headed approach to how the United States goes about serving its interests over the long term. Hi Mike McDevitt from cna I want to return to the home game and away game for a moment um you're right Ashley we did play the home game during the entire Cold War but arguably excuse me the away game in the entire during arguably the away game in the Pacific was pretty easy it was not very easy in Europe and for many decades in Europe we depended upon nuclear weapons to be part of the away game when you think about playing the away game in the Pacific to me the more apt analogy is 1941 to 1945 how hard it was to deal with the predominant regional naval power and so the question I have is I am the reason I'm pessimistic is it is so darn difficult to deal with that kind of a geostrategic environment over time and it also makes me think then that actually the salience of nuclear weapons and the fact that both China and the United States have them I think may wind up being the ultimate buffer to prevent any of the more uh apocalyptic uh outcomes that people talk about so if you could both talk a little bit about both the away game and the Asia and then the salience of nuclear weapons in in the current situation in Asia let me start with the last point you made which has to do with the salience of nuclear weapons I agree with the point completely and that's the reason why I believe we need to have a nuclear deterrent that survives in a with all the good characteristics of a nuclear deterrent has to be effective so on and so forth thankfully for us we don't have to do very much more in terms of numbers of weapons and so forth because I think we have quite a bit uh in terms of capabilities but you're absolutely right the ultimate backstop are American nuclear capabilities uh I think this administration has done a remarkable job in terms of investing in these capabilities and I think any administration would continue to do that let me come back to the away game point in the conventional area you're absolutely right that the pacific because of distances and so on and so forth is going to be a challenge but when I think of Chinese a2ad which is what the real test ultimately is right to my mind the biggest value of Chinese a2ad is until it's actually used it's a psychological weapon in peacetime because there's nothing the United States can actually do about it so when people start telling you oh you know we've got df21s and we've got you know widget x and widget y oh that's wonderful who they're all supposed to be alarmed right the moment the balloon goes up we know how to deal with Chinese a2ad I mean there are a whole range of things that we're going to do from the non-kinetic to the kinetic so the question is when you actually come to the ultimate test of war will this system keep us away from being able to credibly service our extended deterrence guarantees my answer is no will it raise the cost yes of course but even as we speak and might you know this better than anybody else the US Navy the US Air Force and even the US Army has gotten into the game of now trying to figure out you know how to defeat Chinese a2ad and the crazy thing about Americans is that once they concentrate you know once the minds are concentrated and they put their resources to work I mean crazy things happen to the business end you know so I'm not worried about that for me the bigger challenge is can we do the right kinds of internal budget reallocations and the right kind of infrastructure development in the Asia Pacific that will support the kinds of capabilities that we need and I think there is now a growing awareness that we do need to be smart in terms of the kinds of capabilities we have so for example emphasizing the long-range bomber component and emphasizing stealthy subsurface warfare where we have a terrific advantage investing in deceptive operational maneuver capabilities so that you don't have to start hitting targets on the Chinese mainland and so on and so forth so there are things that we are doing and you know I'm confident we can actually do it within the budget cap because no one as far as I know is making the argument that in order to defeat Chinese a2ad we need to add another 200 billion dollars to the budget sounds good to me no actually it doesn't sound good to me I have one thing I'd like to add run out of time which is all the characteristics you mentioned of a safe nuclear deterrent is that how you put it I forget exactly actually runs one of them runs counter to your argument for predominance which is it's not enough for the United States to have all the nuclear weapons it may need it's also important that China has enough nuclear weapons that it feels comfortable that it also deters the United States and that's an area where predominance or imbalance in the literature anyways generally regarded as destabilizing so I think you know in one respect maybe a foot noted to the report you might add would be and of course the one area where we'd like to see China build up and and get a little bit closer to the United States would be in the area of nuclear weapons deployments but enough for that nuclear advertisement one in the back there Rob Spaulding joint staff just seems like both of you frame the question about identify yourself please yeah Rob Spaulding joint staff seems you both of frame the question in terms of balance of power between and millet the military sphere between the U.S. and China versus U.S. alliance system in China could you just explain why the the difference there number one and then the other one is is it would it be possible to have a shared predominance say one in the security sphere sphere and one in the economic sphere I'm not sure I understand your first question could you yeah well so we talk numbers but we talk numbers in terms of budget for the U.S. and China versus U.S. and its allies in China well I you know I think that I mean much of this issue about balance of power in the region from a military's perspective revolves around the kinds of things that we've been talking about which is how much capability is enough to provide for security in the region to avoid increasing the likelihood of crises and if crises were to occur to increase the likelihood of of escalation and I guess my argument is that the United States will not be able to feel the force in the western Pacific that will make that even with Japanese support as credible an argument about how it could how it could prevent all those things and deal with that through a position of predominance as many people might think including Ashley I think the presence and activity of the Chinese military and paramilitary in that part of the western Pacific will change perceptions even if there are latent a to a counter a to a do capabilities in certain areas I don't think that that will change the fact that people will believe that there has been a shift and that that shift is moving more towards a balance in that part of the world and that for the United States the tendency will be to try to compensate for that mis for that perception by overreacting in a variety of ways as incidents occur to a show that it that it doesn't in fact operate from a position of parity it makes the crisis stability problem greater to have that kind of uncertainty in the minds of others because it affects the calculus of American decision makers themselves in trying to disabuse others of that situation so transition towards this kind of more perceived balance situation is indeed a dangerous situation which is exactly why I advocate that it has to be addressed much more effectively than it has been before because I don't see the alternative of sustaining the kind of dominance that Ashley talks about as being either practical or from a strategic point of view prudent in terms of the way the reaction will occur in the region and just on that point I mean regional countries themselves they want the United States to be in the region there's no question about it and they want the United States to be strong in the region and they want the United States to be able to deter aggressive action on the part of any country particularly the Chinese but the whole question becomes what is that posture in terms of the relationship with the Chinese this is not a one-sided issue here the Chinese have recourse they can respond and if the United States doesn't position itself properly in the way it deals with Chinese responses I don't think countries in the region are going to be too reassured if they see American behavior leading to an escalating spiral that ultimately leads to a cold war in the region that will not serve allied interests I mean I've had Korean diplomats some of them mostly they talk about the alliance but I've had some of them tell me well ultimately we'll have to end up there we'll have to have a unified Korea that is far less closely aligned to the United States to survive in this environment now you can take issue with that but it does convey that allied thinking is not as clear clear established and as set as Ashley would suggest I think you're going to get the last word on this actually I am going to get the last word he's going to say oh yes it is no the point I would make is I agree with much of what Michael has just said but remember in positioning ourselves for predominance we are not talking of a new cold war in the region in fact if you look at US policy towards the region in three areas right political economic and military the issues where the contestation is possibly greatest is actually in the military in the political area we have a broad understanding of what constitutes a stabilization order in the economic area we are not looking to you know pick sides or destroy any of the integration that has long been underway now for about 30 years it all comes down to the military and the military actually ends up from my point of view being a simple technical problem which is how do I make certain that in the event of a crisis I can operate in support of my allies despite whatever the Chinese bring to the table in terms of their anti-access area denial problem it's a simple military issue and if I can solve that problem through my own means then I end up reassuring the allies I can conduct you know fulfill all my extended deterrence obligations and we can end up with a much more stable Asia Pacific then you know Michael fears we will will be the case well clearly they have not reconciled their differences but I think they've at least illuminated some of the key questions and I encourage everyone to follow the views of these two folks and their writings going forward if you'll join me in thanking our speakers today and thank everyone for attending thank you Avery thanks very much for coming down pretty good you're in California what are you doing in California running fair of zero from there now one thousand four hundred plus right oh wow okay so it doesn't matter where you are right