 I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech on a given Thursday morning, and we have the honor of Bob Garrier, and he is the president of Pacific Forum. And if you didn't know about Pacific Forum, you need to know about Pacific Forum. We're going to know more about Pacific Forum in a little while. It's a local but global think tank right down the block in downtown. It's a remarkable organization with remarkable resources and a very high level of global thinking right here in Honolulu. So if you're concerned about global awareness, it lives at Pacific Forum. Hi, Bob. Hi. Great to be with you this morning, Jay. Thanks for having me. Great. Can you talk a little bit about Pacific Forum and how it was organized and what it does? I think people need to know about that. Sure. Thanks. You know, great opportunity, by the way, to have this chat this morning. So Pacific Forum, now formally called Pacific Forum International, we were formed 45 years ago, and we were stood up by our founder. He's recently passed a re-radiminal, Joe Vasey. And his vision in a nutshell was really to, quote, find a better way. You know, this comes out of his stories from World War II when he was pinned down in a submarine. His captain, his skipper at that time was John McCain, John McCain's father. And, you know, it's a great story. And in a particularly harrowing event, when they actually escaped with their lives, he said to himself, if I ever get out of this thing alive, boy, I got to find a better way. He finished out his career in the Navy, retired as a re-radiminal, and then he founded Pacific Forum. And for many years, again, that's 45 years ago, that 1975 was when we were stood up. We had a partnership with CSIS, upon the largest think tank in the world. Just in 2018, we became completely independent. So now we've always been operating here in downtown Honolulu, right there in Bishop Square. And so, yeah, I'd love to get into all the details. We've been around. It's all, it's a non-profit, non-partisan, private think tank. And I like to think of it as Hawaii's own private think tank, because it is. It is, absolutely. You know, I've gone to your Board of Governors meetings in the spring for several years, and I've always been impressed with the kind of people who were there, the kind of people, the kind of national people. Joseph S. Nye, Jr. of the Kennedy School of, I guess what, Foreign Relations out of Harvard spoke there several times. You've had amazing speakers, and you've had amazing people come and watch. There's a lot of military, foreign service. It's really, it's a hot spot for global thinking. And as I said before, we really need that. So the question is, why do you cover, Bob? I mean, what is your sort of range of intellectual geography? Well, I think, you know, I think of it as geopolitics, probably at large, but very, very specifically, we focus on the Indo-Pacific, I mean, quite literally. And, you know, it starts with Northeast Asia, and it goes down into Southeast Asia, and then we're growing and branching into South Asia, of course, with this whole realization that the Indo-Pacific is a much larger entity than just Asia by itself. So that's the region, you know, all the way west from here, all the way past to India. So that's the backyard, so to speak. And the types of things that we get involved in are regional engagement programs, strategic stability, security cooperation, a thing called preventive diplomacy, which is getting countries to talk before you get into crisis situations, non-proliferation and disarmament, strategic trade controls. And then we have a whole separate line of effort, which is about young leaders and the next generation. We spent a lot of time, and I hope we have a few moments later to talk about that, because we've got fellowship programs that are very active and vibrant. And again, a young leaders program, which is one of our flagship programs. We stood this up, gosh, 14 years ago, probably one of the first institutions to do that. Lots of think tanks are actually copying that model. Over a thousand young leaders now across 56 countries, a wonderful network. These are all aspiring young security practitioners. And then they're getting smart about policy, but we invite them to sit in our conferences and our dialogues, so they get to see how policy is made, how it's being crafted by the experts, by the government officials. And so that really, it removes the mystery for them, and it really empowers them to continue on with their study. So we can get into any of those areas. These people are extraordinary. They're young, they're international. They want to know everything about everywhere, politics is their middle name. But hearing you talk about that, it strikes me that you must have been, you must now be profoundly affected by COVID. Can you talk about how COVID has affected your operations and your reach into the Indo-Pacific? Absolutely. So our main, we do three things, you know, and just to back up a little bit, you know, we research, you know, topics of interest that are current, been out there for a while, that are also emerging, and we connect people in a variety of ways, and then we inform. And that's a bit of a moniker of those three steps, but it's really, so the researching continues nonstop. You don't have to be able to travel to do that. Connect pieces is what we had to become very innovative, like every other think tank out there. We often connect virtually like we're doing now, and I'll talk about how we've changed our modes and we continue to work. But in the past, and we will resume these, we would hold dialogues and workshops and seminars all over the Indo-Pacific. In 2019, my gosh, we had something along the lines of, gosh, I want to say 60 different events, and it was 21 different cities in 12 countries. So there's a lot of physical travel involved. And so that's 2019. So then with the COVID situation coming early this year, we obviously had to curtail that and rapidly adapt, again, like everyone else. So what we do now is we hold virtual workshops using the same platform Zoom or whatever the host countries or recipients are comfortable with, but often it's Zoom. And so we're now doing seminars, a variety of them, some are by invitation only that are very focused. Others are very broad. We've got a maritime discussion series that focuses on lots of the issues in the south. So that on your website, that's a very interesting series and very relevant right now. In that, we've had a little less than 200, 150 plus attending those regularly from all over the globe. I mean, literally we try to pick a timeframe, advertise in advance, but I've got folks from Europe all across into Pacific, but Great Britain, the Netherlands, even in South America, as well as all the countries in the end of Pacific are dialing in to listen about our discussions on law of the sea, South China Sea, and what's happening there with fishing vessels with coast guards, with the Chinese Navy, nine dashed line, all these issues. And it's an opportunity for experts, academics at the talk. We typically have panel discussions, maybe three panelists, and then a moderator, go for an hour, an hour and 15 usually. And it's a great discussion. So we'll have that series. And again, a couple others, we did a COVID series, special series, I can talk about that in a second, if you'd like, here in Hawaii. Well, I just want to sort of examine the network. I mean, from what you say, it sounds like this is more than just a bunch of guys sitting around and researching, more than just a bunch of guys reading newspapers from far away places. You have to be out there. And in the normal, just a year ago, Pacific Forum was traveling, remarkable distances everywhere. Your predecessor, Ralph, last name? Casa, Ralph Casa, and he's our president emeritus, and he's still on board the staff. He works a very busy schedule. And he's part of our team. So it's great to have that network with him with us. He was everywhere. Ralph Casa. He still is. It seems to me that in order to do what you do, you've got to connect and maintain that network. And it's a network of relationships. It's like they say, real estate isn't about land, it's about relationships. As a matter of fact, when you think about it, everything is about relationships, including what you do. So you have to nurture those relationships wherever they are, and you're going to do that mostly in the past by travel. You got it right. I couldn't say it much better at all. Honestly, it's all about those connections. It's all about keeping them alive, keeping them vibrant. I didn't even get into Southeast Asia, which is very, you know, that's right there at the hinge, if you will, of the Indo-Pacific, you know, when we talk about it, and how important the ASEAN countries are. We're one of the founding Pacific Forum. It's one of the founding members of the Council on Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific, CSCAP. And this has been going on as this group of representatives from various think tanks with close connections, typically to ministries of foreign affairs in the region. They've been meeting on a variety of important issues. They typically help inform the ASEAN Regional Forum. So again, this is a deep, there are deep roots here in connections. These are scholars, they're experts, they're government officials. They're working in their private capacity. Again, as I said, we're a private, we're not a government entity. And, you know, they're reading our publications, we're reading their publications. I mentioned that inform piece, you know, that triad of things that we do. On our website, you'll see these PAC nets that we put out, you know, somewhere about 80 plus a year. It's commentary, it's analysis. What's a PAC net now? This is really important, because if you want to be educated, if you're here and watching, you need to know about PAC nets. What's a PAC net? So our memberships, you just subscribe to actually, and we push these out. Anyone can actually get them, but we also have special memberships that invite you to additional events here in Hawaii. But these are out and available for everyone. You go to our website, and you'll see publications. And these PAC nets is just a handle we've been using for decades now. I think of it as a small bite. It's an analysis of a topic that's hot. In the Pacific-specific, it's foreign policy-centric. We don't get into politics. We get into the larger issues. I think these issues, you know, and it's not too hard to stay by the way, you know, nonpartisan. These issues, security, I think it transcends politics in so many ways. There'll always be discussions about how you execute. But we don't get into that level. It's a much larger issue of the security realities that face all of us, not in just the U.S., but the entire region. So these PAC nets, again, they're fast reads, and it's a great place to get caught up on issues. And occasionally, we'll have a back and forth. They represent the views of the authors. They don't represent the views of the Pacific Forum. We want them to be well researched and obviously a high standard. But beyond that, they're out there, and occasionally we'll get a counter fire, if you will, and a back and forth. And we encourage that. That's the essence of a forum of discourse. Yeah, and it makes you unique. I mean, I don't, I really don't think there's anybody else in the world who writes this up the way you do and covers the ground in Asia and Indo-Pacific. But let me ask you this, and you know, it strikes me that in a world where the United States has turned isolationist and nationalistic, you know, the outreach that you, that is Pacific Forum has been doing for 45 years, must be affected by that. The relationships we talked about all over Asia and Asia-Pacific, Indo-Pacific must be affected by that. People probably have a different view of America and the United States foreign policy than they had four years ago. How have you seen that? And how does it affect your work? Well, we get questions many times. And when we were traveling again last year, and we will travel again, you know, as soon as this, this, this two will pass and then we'll adapt to all of us globally. But in our discourse, in our meetings, there's always questions, you know, are you still vested in the region? Do you care about allies and partners? And the answer is, of course, we are. I like to think of it and often what I would respond. You know, politics is often a pendulum. You know this well. And there's going to be tactical styles that are different. I think in the end, I said, watch our actions. That's the most important thing. That's the best read always. You may see, you may hear things that are a lot of, you know, rhetorical things, some of it's bombastic or otherwise. But in the same token, watch what we do. Read our documents. There's a steady undercurrent that's there. And in the end, I think the math of security, of global security, of the general interconnectedness of all things really proves that you have to maintain relations. It's the obvious. To me, it's so logical, but it's the obvious end game for all of us and tackling, you know, problems that confront all of us from global climate issues, from security, from proliferation, from unrest. You name the whole tableau of issues. The way you get to the bottom of them is through dialogue, discourse, and common understanding. There's no unilateral solutions to any of these things. In fact, when you go unilateral, you often create more problems that have to get addressed later. So to me, the math is almost there in the logic. And people, I think, know that. Yeah, well, yeah, it reminds me, all this reminds me of the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Waikiki that was established by Dan Inouye a couple of decades ago. And in fact, recently, Hank Stackball, who was one of the early, you know, presidents of that time. A wonderful gentleman, yes. Wonderful guy. So I just wonder how you would compare Pacific Forum in this regard with APCSS. Well, I'd add East West Center. So I know the director of APCSS is a personal, professional, we're personal friends and time together in the Navy, and Richard Volsteck, of course, at East West Center. So I'd actually, I'd mentioned all three of us, you know, we're small. You know, one has more State Department back in the center, the other is the Department of Defense entity, essentially. So government-sponsored entities, we're non-profit and non, you know, private in that regard. But we do, we do different things, but we all overlap. And we certainly all talk all the time. And so think of defense-centric approaches that APCSS, it's their charter. East West Center, you know, not defense, broader, as you would think along the lines of State Department. And then what I always mentioned to them, because I'm always looking to partner with them in many projects that we have, think of us as coming in with a different layer of contact, if you will, the non-profit, the non-government approach. And as I mentioned earlier, everything's connected. You know, even the security world is not just the conventional way you think of aircraft, ships, and, you know, and those larger militaristic or military-related issues. It's that, it's always, we'll be a part of that, but it's economics, it's information. It's how we're connected. It's 5G. It's what you're reading in the paper. And I think everyone understands that this not just whole of government approach, but the whole of nation approach is really the key to all manner of issues that are out there. So diplomacy, isn't it? Yeah, you come at it from different angles. And so diplomacy, I call it think-tank diplomacy because of the relationships and the coverage and the general missions of all these three organizations. I know that East-West Center is involved in diplomacy. By the way, they have a show with us, you know, and Karina Lyons comes around, does a show every week or two. And further, they cover very current issues, like they've been on it with a relationship with China. They've been on it with the events in Hong Kong. And I wonder if, you know, your mission is overlapping on that because that, to me, is hot news. Absolutely. And it's very, very determinative of our relationships with Asia. Yeah, and the answer is yes. I mean, I think of it as a complementary approach. You know, we've participated in events with them. We've even hosted events using some of their facilities at East-West Center. But the topics that we get into, again, they're all layered. And again, we've come at it from the private nonprofit kind of angle. And with that, each of them have their own networks, these groups. And that has an additive effect. So again, we've spent a lot of time on Northeast Asia working trilateral dialogues between the U.S., Japan, and Korea. We've hosted a Track 1.5 dialogue. And I can get into explaining Track 2 and Track 1.5 dialogues quickly. Track 2 is academics and experts, if you will, non-official. 1.5, I would say semi-official. The Track 1 being official government, press meetings and the like, delegations. So that's a very official. That's what the State Department does. But when they're not talking and you want to maybe make headway below the radar, so to speak, quietly, you move to a 1.5, which is halfway between the academic role, which is Track 2, academic and experts. So this 1.5, we often are funded by typically government institutions in the U.S. for the grants to host these. And they provide a forum off the record, non-official, but with officials who are very well informed, along with academics and experts, very well informed, and have discussions with counterparts in China. For instance, a strategic nuclear dialogue we've had with China for many, many years, this trilateral dialogue amongst our allies in Korea and Japan, coming across where there's friction in that relationship. So these are really needy discussions. You have takeaways. Our work is all unclassified, by the way, non-proprietary. Some of it can be sensitive. But what you do is you make headway in areas that need to be discussed. These are policy alternatives for our officials to consider, and that's how you help move the ball, so to speak, move the needle on some of these tough issues. These organizations and your organization, very important in a time when the State Department has been thinned down, I think everybody tells me that, where you walk through the halls of the State Department and half the offices are empty, and they're not developing foreign policy the way they had, classically. It seems it strikes me that your organization as a non-profit, as a foreign policy organization, a think tank, sort of fills in the gaps on that. You do diplomacy, and you do relate to people, and you do keep the edge off things where it might be much more friction. So I think that's a fair analogy. I don't presume to say or to think that we're any substitute for official diplomacy, we certainly are a complementary additive, another layer of texture, and also as important momentum on certain important issues. When you're not talking officially, gosh, hopefully you're not well better be talking unofficially. That's how you keep the pressure and understand what the other folks are thinking. There's lots of things out there where different sides don't see it the same way. And the way that you help untie that knot is to understand the motivations behind them. And so it's about insight, it's about perspectives, and it's about sharing that and understanding motives, and then coming up with policy alternatives and recommendations for our side. It's that dialogue which is so important. So that's a lot of what we do in this travel. And now that we're adapting this COVID environment that you asked about earlier, we're doing this, again, not at the same tempo, but it's slowly picking up because what's happening is people realize the ability to hold meetings, keeps on getting postponed. They don't want to lose momentum. So how about our workshop? How about getting together? Let's do it virtually. Let's get the discussions on there. What do they want to talk about? Things like that, which are important at least to keep the discourse continuing. Yeah, since we started doing, we, I mean, everybody started doing these virtual meetings, people have sometimes raised the notion that it's not as good as in the flesh that you need to have a drink with the individual. You need to spend personal time. You need to see the sweat of his brow or her brow in these discussions. I have come to another conclusion. My conclusion is right now, I'm getting to know you better than I might otherwise have gotten to know you. And you, in turn, can get to know a diplomat in Asia better than you might otherwise, and without having to fly out there. And it's personal. And it's, you know, it's, it's something very candid about the ability to talk privately on, I say privately, I mean, close up on Zoom. Do you find that to be true? Is it as good on virtual as it was, or has been, you know, in a physical meeting? I'll definitely say it's different and it is good. It's not a substitute entirely, but, but there's actually benefits. You know, I, the way we operate, not just Pacific Forum, but I know other think tanks has changed forever. This is a powerful tool. You've been using it all along with your organization, and are really far ahead of all of us. We're kind of catching up. But the power is amazing. You can now have conferences with hundreds vice just scores. You know, so that there's that reach, you know, I mentioned the global reach literally global that, you know, you can have those conferences, it takes a lot of planning and a lot of travel, the efficiency that this medium, this platform brings is, is staggering. And, and you're right, there's a very focused aspect to it, which, which really pulls you in. It's pretty intense. And so one of the things we learned is when you're doing a virtual version of a conference, we typically chop it up into smaller pieces because these are intense sessions that there are people are dialed in, you're looking right at them. And so it's a different atmosphere than sitting in a large conference room, whether it's a symposium or even in a smaller space, it's a different dynamic as you know. So no substitute, of course, for the personal relationships that you get in physical contact, but absolutely there's a personal connection, but then the reach and then the polling features, there's some great technology pieces with chat with voting. And we're using some of these where you can actually sample the audience and saying, before we start this session, how many people thought XYZ and you do a poll, and it's anonymous, so people are honest, and then they open up, and you have this data now. And so it actually that turns back in, if you do it right, it kind of primes the pump for the discussion. So you get a level of actually reach right and insight metrics that you didn't have in an open forum, you know, with people raising their hand and maybe they get to hear or not. So yeah, very powerful. True, then as time goes by and people get more familiar with the, you know, the Zoom and the webinar Zoom, it seems to me we can do more of this, and we will do more of this, and we'll all get more expert at the polling and the Q&A, but let me move to another subject, you know, one thing I've always admired about Pacific Forum is its Fellows program. Can you talk about that? In my mind's eye, Bob, I'd like to be a fellow, but what does it mean to be a fellow? Well, we've got five different programs, fellowship programs right now, both resident and non-resident. So think of a resident fellowship program where it's funded, and you bring someone in and they actually stay with us here in Hawaii for a six-month period. Sometimes it gets extended to 12 months. They pick up a topic as a collaborative process. You have a mentor from the staff, either one of our senior fellows, working on the staff of PhD or PhD candidate themselves, someone who's experienced, and they coach them along with their research project. Along the way, they help us do some of our work so that they're on the team, if you will, on board. We take them to conferences, and so this is very rich immersive experience. They do research, but they also see applications of how this research can be used in the world, and so it's a great connection. These are competitive fellowships. Again, then there's a score of non-resident ones as well. We have a Vacey, a Kelly, a non-proliferation scholarship, a Honda WSD World Support Development for Peace scholarship, or fellowship rather, and a Korea Foundation. Those five different ones. We also have bring-on interns during the summer months predominantly. Those are not subsidized, and they come into study as most interns do. That's fellowships. Then we have the young leaders. A subset of the young leaders is this Asia-Pacific Affairs Leadership Program, which is even a younger group, typically undergraduates that are from here in Hawaii. If I could just plug that for a second, because it's a direct reach out to young aspiring policy students who want to get a taste of what foreign policy formulation and study is like. That's APAL. That's Hawaii-specific, and we have cohorts. We're in our seventh cohort right now. You think of 10 people that come in, and they work with us. It's a program. It takes a place. It's kind of like a school year. You bring them in in the fall, and they kind of graduate spring-summer time. We invite them to one of our conferences. They get to see this. They travel, and they get to see how policy is formulated and discussed. It's really important. They do their projects, this APAL group, that are connected. We make it a requirement to make a Hawaii connection to the region. This lastly, if I could just say, gets to the larger issue of how you think about Hawaii, Honolulu, and the Indo-Pacific. My gosh, it quite literally is the gateway for the US to the Indo-Pacific. We can really deliver on that. Admiral Vasey had that vision 45 years ago. There's so much more to Hawaii than the wonderful things it already has in the industries and tourism, but there's a richness of thought, of proximity, a place to meet. There's that aloha and light touch with which we bring, but it's a wonderful place to have meetings. We host some of our dialogues here as kind of neutral turf, if you will. All these things, if you will, come together to make Hawaii, you're competing with the East Coast in a long tradition of think tanks and then a DC-centric thinking. That's fine. It'll always be that way, but we can really fill this out out here in Hawaii, and then we really see that role. So, Bob, you're, I'm guessing here, 501c3, you're a non-profit? We are, yes, indeed. 501c3, non-profit, fully a non-profit organization. Tax-adductible donations are help us keep going, that's for sure. So, yeah, I mean, I remember at the Board of Governors meetings, that was a fundraiser, and how it's fundraising going in the time of COVID, and how can we make your organization as sustainable as possible in the time of COVID? No, that's a great thank you for asking the question. So, the answer is, it's tough. We had a cancel. We first postponed our annual fundraising dinner, and that's our biggest fundraiser each year. We really rely on it. We postponed it initially, and then, as you just see, the way things are working, we had to cancel it outright. So, we're in a summer giving campaign right now. Every donation helps. I can simply say, look over our website, www.packforum.org, and there's a giving page in there. Every bit helps. 501c3, fully tax-adductible donations. It makes a difference, and we need it. It's what supplements our operations. We work on grants, government, and private, and then that covers not all of our operating costs. We make up the rest of the shortfalls, as most nonprofits do with fundraising drives each each year. So, it's an ongoing effort. So, every bit helps. Well, I hope people realize that we have got to look beyond our own shoelaces here in Hawaii. We've got to see the world, got to see our role in the Pacific and Indo-Pacific. We've got to see all the changes that are happening, and we have to know about them and even participate in them. What a fabulous opportunity it is for students and aspiring foreign service diplomats to be with you and learn from you. I hope people see this and understand it. So, let me ask you one last question, Bob. Speaking to the community now, the Hawaii community, what message would you like to leave with them? What would you like them to think about in terms of Pacific Forum? Well, my simple message would simply be, please learn about us. We're here to provide support. We're big, big supporters of the quote, next generation and helping develop the next generation. You read the news, and many of us are frustrated. And the way you get in front of that, the way you solve problems, the way you find a better way is you teach and you train and you mentor those that are going to follow behind us. And that's that next generation. So, these are the fellows, these are the young leaders, these are the APAL people that we bring in, each cohort each year. These are young folks in their 20s and 30s that we're coaching along. And this is how you find a better way. This is how you make the news and the headlines less appalling. You get involved and we're doing this all here in Hawaii. So, please, we look to Hawaii for your support. We're a Hawaii's own think tank. We're private, been here for 45 years, and we're trying to make a difference. And we are making a difference. I'll tell you that. Our website is a wealth of information. Graduate schools actually use it for research for their students. There's a lot in there. Bob Garrier, President of Pacific Forum, PacificForum.org. Thank you. Did I hit that right? PacificForum.org. Yeah, it's PACForum.org. Yeah, www.PACForum.org. But, yep, indeed. Thanks for having me, Jay. Really appreciate that. Thanks for coming around, Bob. Really appreciate it. The best to you and Pacific Forum. Aloha. Aloha.