 Okay, thank you, Mike, and good afternoon and welcome to the last panel of the first day, and at least sitting in the seats in spite of the humidity. I think it's been a fantastic first day. From a professor's perspective, my last bit of guidance to our students is, if you don't remember reading Woolforth or Dewick or Art, go to the website, usnwc.edu slash csf, and there's a selection of readings there that the conference has provided. Our first speaker probably needs no introduction here at the Naval War College. Bob Art is a professor of international relations at Brandeis University. If you don't remember reading his work, those of the seminars in the National Security Affairs Department that pursued some sort of selective engagement grand strategy, well, this is the man who coined that term in grand strategy, Bob Art. And Bob, just as a point of context of the five archetypes of grand strategy, we study in the National Security Affairs Department, selective engagement proves to be the most popular, as we see, in your exercises. So those of you that still have questions about selective engagement, its applicability, please ask Bob that. But I'd like to turn it over to Bob. Thank you. Thank you. Can you hear me all okay? Okay, you've been very patient. I'm going to try to be succinct if not brief, although that reminds me of a time I testified before Congress, and William Proxmire said, Professor, can you please be brief? We have to run off for a vote. And I said, Senator, I will try, but brevity is not an occupational virtue of academics. So try to do my best. You want me to see my notes or speak into the microphone? Which do you want? There's a trade-off here. Okay. So what I'd like to do in the 15 or 20 minutes that I have is the following. I'd like to give you four benchmarks to outline both the domestic and the strategic or international situation as I see it. I'd like to say a few words about grand strategy and particularly grand strategy versus foreign policy, and then discuss briefly the differences between selective or deep engagement, depending on which adjective you want, and offshore balancing or restraint. And I think one of the things I want to argue is that there's a degree of overlap that between these two different types of grand strategies that may be missed in the translation. Then I'd like to talk about the strategy of selective engagement, and particularly some amendments to the strategy in the era of fiscal austerity. So let me start with my benchmarks, and I have four. The first is obvious that you all know about, that is, the United States is going to have less to spend on defense and foreign policy than it has had in the past. I think that when we look back historically, we will call the era of maximum American power from the fall of the Soviet Union to December of 1991 to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September of 2007. And this was an era in which the United States was riding high. It was victorious in the Cold War. Our military power was unparalleled. China was not a military challenge at that time. Our economic model was the model for the rest of the world, and we had a lot of ideological peel and soft power. I'm actually not a big believer in soft power in the sense that Sam Huntington, once put it, if you don't have hard power, you don't have soft power. And I think the more hard power you have, the more soft power you have. At any rate, I don't think that era is going to return again in my lifetime, nor perhaps in yours, but my guess is as good as yours. As I understand it from reading the newspapers and economists, the United States has solved a good chunk of its fiscal problem anywhere from $2.5 to $3.6 trillion that we needed to achieve in reductions through either tax increases or reductions in spending. That is, reduction in the deficit in order to stabilize the cumulative surplus at a tolerable level. The problem is, as I understand it, is we've solved that in the short term by eating our seed corn, and we haven't dealt with our long term fiscal problems. Again, as I understand it, social security is not as big a problem as people make it out to be. There are reasonable fixes to that. It's Medicare taking care of people like me who have to pop lots of pills every day to stand up and go to work. So we haven't done the hard work necessary in order to get our fiscal house in order. We have a short-term fix right now. If we really bite the bullet to get our fiscal house in order, I can't conceive how defense is not going to make take more hits. So in thinking about a proper grand strategy, you have to think about resources available. Second, I think the current trends in the global distribution of power magnify the effect of America's economic troubles at home. The world today is bipolar economically, and it will soon be tripolar. The GDP of the European Union roughly equals that of the United States. I'm not certain that I believe in the utility of purchasing power parity that it's necessarily better than nominal dollars, but if the Chinese continue to grow at 7% a year by the rule of 72, they're going to double their GDP in a space of 10 more years. I'd just like to note, however, that the Communist Party is not predicting double-digit rates of growth for the foreseeable future. But we face a situation, I think, where our economic power is going to be challenged and is being challenged by other centers in the world. The third benchmark is that the United States, in my view, will retain dominance in the military realm for at least the next decade to two. But I think ultimately some form of military multiplicity is likely to emerge. It's not all that important, as a point that Bill Woolforth made at the outset of today, whether China challenges the United States in terms of equal GDP, whether it builds a navy that is half as powerful as the United States. The point is, as long as it continues to channel economic power into military power, it's going to require the United States to deal with that, to channel more resources. We are basically, in my view, in a qualitative arms race right now with the Chinese that may turn into a quantitative arms race. The bottom line is that our military resources are going to be challenged by the planning and the deployments that the Chinese engage in, even if they do not equal America's maritime and air capability. And that will affect our military presence in the rest of the world. The fourth point I would like to make is that if I'm viewing the situation in the future that there is some diminishment in America's position measured by hard power assets, the situation is not entirely grim. The United States, as you know, will age less rapidly than all the other great powers, including China. China is sitting on a demographic time bomb, and it's going to have all kinds of ramifications for growth in the future. We are still a center of economic innovation and economic competitiveness. If fracking continues at the rate of growth that it's now going, we're going to have cheaper energy. We still retain a considerable share of the world's manufacturing base. As an aside, let me mention to you that manufacturing as a percentage of America's GDP was 24 percent in 1970. It dropped by 11 points to 13 percent in 2010. But I'd also like to point out that the decline of world manufacturing as a percentage of world GDP dropped from 27 percent in 1970 to 16 percent in 2010. What does that say? That says that the drop in manufacturing as a percentage of America's GDP mirrors the drop in manufacturing as a percentage of world GDP. In other words, it's happening everywhere. And finally, it's not self-evident that China is going to escape the middle-income trap, whether it can continue the rates of growth that it wants to. It's not self-evident. Other countries in the world have fallen into the middle-income trap, whereby they essentially don't achieve the level of economic development, particularly per capita income. So when I look out over the next 10 years, I think the United States will remain the world's most powerful state, but I think its relative edge will wane to some degree. I think global power will become less concentrated. And as a consequence, I think the United States will have less freedom of global maneuver than it did in what many people have termed the unipolar era. So we don't know how successful America will be in fixing its economic and fiscal ills. But when you look around, we haven't done so badly, even though we've done it in a stupid fashion in the short term, we haven't done so badly compared to other countries. Do you want to trade America's position for China's or even for Germany's? Nevertheless, I think that prudence dictates some adjustment in America's international ambitions. Second, grand strategy in foreign policy. I like to make a distinction between these two. Foreign policy, to me, is here are the goals that you want to achieve, here are your national interests, and here are all the instruments of statecraft. How do you best deploy them and integrate them? What kinds of tradeoffs do you make between the military, the economic, the political propaganda to achieve your goals? So foreign policy is all those great things you'd like to achieve and integrating all the instruments of statecraft. To me, grand strategy is something special. You posit a set of interests, and then you ask yourself, how is military power relevant to achieving those interests? So I have a definition of grand strategy that forces me to specify what I think America's interests are in the world with some degree of specificity, and then ask how is military power relevant to achieving those. Now, 20-some years ago, I laid out in an article, I think it was called a defensible defense, essentially the strategy of selective engagement, and that strategy consisted of three features. First, six national interests that I conceived to be in America's interests. Second, a prescription for a forward defense posture. And third, the necessity of U.S. leadership. I haven't changed my mind on any of those, either because I'm very stupid or maybe I hit it right. I'll leave it up to you to determine which is the case. I laid out six interests in that article and in a book which subsequently came out about 10 years later. First, the prime directive for you, Star Trekies, the prime directive of any grand strategy is to protect the homeland from attack. A second interest that I laid out was to keep a deep peace among the Eurasian great powers. Third, to preserve assured access to stable supplies of oil. Fourth, to preserve an open international economic order. Fifth, to spread democracy and the rule of law and the protection of human rights and to prevent mass murders. And sixth, to avert severe climate change. Now I'm going to take those as given, although we can debate them, and some of the offshore balancers do not accept all of those. In my view, in order to best achieve those interests, a forward defense posture that is the retention of America's key alliances, the deployment of American troops abroad, both onshore and afloat in three key regions, East Asia, the Middle East and Europe, was better suited to realize these interests than a grand strategy of either isolationism or offshore balancing. There are really two alternatives for the United States today. To do engagement, selective or deep, depending on whatever term you want to use, or offshore balancing slash restraint. Part of the problem in trying to analyze in my view offshore balancing and restraint, to me a true offshore balancing strategy is a strategy which basically says the United States is going to pull all its troops home. It's going to get rid of all of its alliances, to be a true offshore balancer, and go back to a region only if necessity requires it. And there would be very few reasons to go back to a region, one of the main ones being the emergence of Eurasian hegemon. Nobody, I think, takes that position today. So the question really is, how much should the United States do, and how much more does deep engagement, or selective engagement, prescribe than do offshore balancers slash restrainers. And that's what I would like to get to now in the five or six minutes that I have left. In my grand strategy article in book, I argued that forceful promotion of democracy, that is using military means, and by that I don't mean providing arms to rebels, I mean U.S. military intervention with combat power, was not a very cost-effective way to spread democracy. And I said basically we should rely on political military means. I thought that we did a good job in the 1990s and we're doing a good job up until 2003. I don't think the strategy of selective engagement should be condemned because a president made a wrong choice in my view about where to intervene. Nonetheless, if what I said at the outset is the case that the United States will have fewer resources in the future to deploy and to use for its military, we're going to have to cut back somewhere. And therefore I think that there are four core interests that the United States should concentrate on. We should avoid in general forceful state building, forceful spread of democracy, and instead we ought to concentrate on four core goals. And these four core goals in my view are global collective goods. Each one of these core goals requires power projection in some form. The first is preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and secondarily biological, but that's a tougher problem. Second, keeping the deep peace in Europe, deepening the peace in East Asian, if possible keeping peace in the Persian Gulf. Third, we should preserve two elements of a stable framework for an open international economic order, freedom of the seas and assured access to Persian Gulf oil. And finally, we need to continue to contain, if not also destroy al-Qaeda or any other group that plans terrorist actions against the U.S. homeland. Let me take less than a minute on each one of those. The idea here is if the United States, in terms of its four core goals, supports and undergirds global collective goods, this should be good not only for the United States, but for other countries. Because most other countries in the world, unless I'm naive, sign on to these interests. So what we're trying to do is align other countries' interests with America's interests and pick those things that benefit both. Now this is a major point, preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. This is where selective slash deep engagers really profoundly differ from the offshore balancers, the present day offshore balancers or the restrainers. The reason we have troops in South Korea is to make extended deterrence credible. That's why we have American troops there. South Koreans can take care of themselves. But a South Korea bereft of American troops or a South Korea bereft of an American alliance facing North Korea would have very strong incentives to acquire nuclear weapons. Similarly, a Japan that no longer relied on the American nuclear umbrella because we said, bye-bye, we're going home is a Japan where it seems to me the likelihood of nuclear acquisition is significantly increased. Now as I understand it, the offshore balancers and the restrainers say yes, that's right and that's not a problem. I would feel a lot differently about America's role in the world and would prescribe a much more circumscribed strategy if I didn't worry about nuclear spread. And Bill put his finger on it. It's something I wrote 25 years ago because we're taught as deterrence theorists that the spread of nuclear weapons to countries that experience conflict is actually a good thing. It's destabilizing. It prevents not only nuclear war but also conventional war. Acquisition of nuclear weapons by countries that have severe conflicts is less likely to produce war, any kind of war. So how do I square that with a position that I do not want to see the spread of nuclear weapons? Because I have this simple, perhaps simple-minded view that the more countries that acquire nuclear weapons, the greater is the possibility that nuclear weapons will fall into the hands of other groups, particularly non-state actors, that we don't want to happen. So my position is I would like only one country in the world to have nuclear weapons, that would be the United States if I had my druthers. But I believe it's extremely important to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. And America's alliances are in fact anti-proliferation mechanisms. If Iran goes nuclear, the United States will extend guarantees over its Persian Gulf allies. It will have to unless it wants to see these countries acquire nuclear weapons. Keeping a deep peace in Europe, in East Asia, and if possible preventing war in the Persian Gulf, it seems to me is to the interest of the United States because security competitions lead to increase in armaments and can lead to the increase in the spread of nuclear weapons and biological weapons. And peace is what America is interested in. So the function of our alliances and forward defense posture is to reinforce deterrence, to reassure our allies, to make clear to potential adversaries where we stand. The United States has an interest in an international economic order for obvious reasons. We now have 22 percent of our exports and imports as a percentage of our GDP. We are the world's, nearly the world's most open economy. And as a consequence, if not the most competitive economy, usually ranked in the top three or four, we have a benefit and an interest in free trade. E.H. Carr once said that all economics presupposes politics. By that he meant that a political framework is necessary to give an economic order stability and meaning. If you need a domestic government to provide the framework, the legal and political framework for a well-functioning economy, don't you need the same kind of framework for an international economy? And it seems to me the United States has provided that framework. Finally, with regard to Persian Gulf oil, the United States is not needed very much Persian Gulf oil for a while now. Problem is, is that our allies do. And since the price of oil is set in a global market, what happens in terms of access to Persian Gulf oil will affect the world price of oil. We might do well, but our allies with whom we trade will not. And there's no substitute at this point for U.S. naval power. If I can just have another 20 seconds about al-Qaeda and terrorism. Most governments oppose terrorism for obvious reasons. A few sponsor it. But most governments oppose terrorism. Al-Qaeda central is clearly down. But before we say al-Qaeda central is out, I think we have to think about the longer term consequences of the exit of the United States from South Asia as well as the spread of some very powerful regional groups. This also requires a forward defense posture on the part of the United States. We can't simply play a home game. We need to play in a smart fashion and away game also. Bottom line, these four core goals are where the United States should concentrate its more limited resources. These are collective goods. Great powers have always provided collective goods historically. Great powers have always tried to shape their international environment in ways most conducive to their interests. The trick is through diplomacy to convince other countries that it's in their interests too. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Art and taking those last few moments to really pull together the theory. And so you can see why it was increasingly popular among our students. Part of the discussion of grand strategy always includes the role of allies. And so to address the role that alliances play in grand strategy, we have Dr. Caitlin Talmadge. She's currently an assistant professor at George Washington University. Right now she is working on a book regarding military effectiveness. And so I'm sure Dr. Talmadge would benefit from any student comments after this panel to discuss that. So Caitlin. Thanks so much. And I'm told that this automatically turns on. Can you hear me? Yes? Good. Thank you so much. Of course, it's a huge privilege to be here to speak today, although I have to admit when Professor Maurer called me up and told me the topic of today's panel that we would be standing up on a stage making public prognostications about the future of the 21st century and security challenges that we might face, I was a little hesitant only because I think I've been chastened by the great words of that sage Yogi Berra, that prediction is hard, especially about the future. And so I come to this with some humility and I think as Dove's remarks in our last session nicely illustrated, there are good reasons for humility. If we look back at our record as an analytical community, and I'm speaking broadly here about both policymakers and academics, of course, we at times want to be a little bit cautious about our ability to predict what's coming down the road and we want to be careful not to assume that the future is always just going to be a linear extension of the present. But that being said, by the same token, I think sometimes we may be a little bit too eager to dismiss the lessons of the past and too tempted in ignoring some of the enduring realities of international politics. And so what I'd like to do in the time that I have up here is to make a case for continuity rather than change to argue that some of the core security challenges that the United States is going to face in the 21st century are in fact rather similar to those that it faced in the 20th century. And in fact, some of them are fundamentally quite similar to those that other great powers have faced across many centuries, even going back to the ancient world. And I'd like to explore this idea by examining, as Derek mentioned, what I believe will continue to be one of the United States most vital and prominent foreign policy tools over the next century, and that is alliances. As some of our other speakers I think have already nicely illustrated, in all but the very most restrained and sort of minimalistic visions of American grand strategy, alliances will continue to be integral to American foreign policy for the foreseeable future. And so what I'd like to do is offer some thoughts on how we might handle this enduring security challenge. And more specifically, I'd like to emphasize with some preemptive apologies to our allied friends in the audience that the enduring centrality of alliances to American foreign policy and grand strategy isn't categorically a good news story, at least from the US perspective. What do I mean by that? Well, we tend to think of alliances, I think, in a fond light as benign relationships with friendly nations who share common interests and values, which of course is true after all. By definition, an alliance implies that there is some third party or set of third parties out there whose intentions and actions concern us and other members of the international community enough that we band together in response. And of course, this is why especially dangerous enemies can sometimes make very unusual friends among very different states. This was the logic many of you are probably familiar with that Winston Churchill pointed out in World War II when of course Britain and the United States were allied with the Soviet Union that, quote, if Hitler invaded hell I would at least make a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons. Now, Churchill's comment is obviously referencing a very extreme case, but I think it does nicely show that even though alliances absolutely are a critical tool of foreign policy, crucial to maintaining presence, extending influence, preventing problems before they arise, which I think is something that Bill pointed out, managing crises when they do arise and of course winning wars, they are fraught with their own set of potential challenges and even dangers. And this is especially the case, I would argue, in alliances between great powers and smaller ones, which in my estimation and in contrast to the World War II case, for instance, will be the typical form of most American alliances going forward, especially in two regions that we've already seen come up a bunch in our discussions here. And those are first, the Persian Gulf, and secondly, East Asia. Now I'm going to talk a bit more about Asia in my remarks here today, although perhaps we can discuss the Gulf or other places in Q&A. But in both of these regions, I think the United States is likely to face the recurring and enduring dilemmas that great powers encounter in alliances with smaller powers. The great power must guarantee the security of smaller allies without writing blank checks for them to take escalatory or provocative measures that entangle the great power well beyond what its interests merit. But the great power simultaneously has to use these relationships, which after all, it's motivated to form, in order to deter adversaries or potential adversaries while being careful that these relationships and the forward presence that they often necessitate doesn't create new enemies in regions where they didn't exist in the first place. In other words, the great power has to reassure without emboldening and deter without provoking. Now, I think that this balance, in fact, can be struck. But if we look back historically, it's not obvious that it always has been. So for those of you about to graduate, how many of you have had the privilege of reading Thucydides, sometime during the past year? Yes, I know you thought Thucydides was over, but in fact, I think if we look back and think about the origins and the course of the Peloponnesian War, which there will be no quiz on after this lecture, but if we think back to that and even think of some modern cases, such as the origins of World War I, I would argue that the management of alliances between great powers and smaller ones is, at a minimum, not necessarily easy. And in both cases, I think you can argue, and some historians certainly have, that mismanagement of these alliances between great powers and smaller powers has contributed to the escalation of crises and even to war. Now, my point today is not to litigate these historical cases, especially since I know one of my fellow panelists disagrees with that interpretation of World War I, so we won't get into that. But simply to note that this problem isn't a radically new one in world politics. We see it in Thucydides' discussion of the Athenians' relationship with Corsaira, with the Spartans' relationship with Corinth, and even in the Germans' relationship with the Austro-Hungarians in 1914. So awareness of these potential dilemmas and careful thinking about how to avoid them really is going to be central to an American grand strategy that depends on alliances. And I think this will be particularly true, as I mentioned, in Asia. So why is that? What's special about Asia? Well, I think for most of us, we recognize that Asia's importance to America's interests, its prosperity, is virtually undisputed. And as we all know, the Obama administration has really underlined the primacy of these interests through its so-called pivot or rebalancing over the last couple of years. Although many would argue that the United States can't really go back to the Pacific because the United States has never left the Pacific. The United States has had a robust and enduring presence there ever since World War II, epitomized as we know by its forward defense posture and its tight relationships with many key states in the region. Most of the discussion, however, of the pivot or the rebalancing, at least in Washington, where I spend most of my time, focuses on U.S.-China relations, discussions of Chinese intentions, exploration of which types of U.S. policies can signal resolve in the face of growing Chinese power, and so on. And there's absolutely no doubt China is central to the story. China is very important. But a single-minded focus on China in thinking about the pivot and U.S. policy in the region is somewhat akin to those who read through citities and come away as though the only two city-states discussed in the book are Athens and Sparta or who look at World War I and believe that it's only a story about the rise of Germany. When, in fact, in both cases, I think other seemingly less powerful actors do play pivotal roles in the processes that lead the great powers to war, although you can debate to what extent. So in light of this, we want to pay attention not just to China when we're thinking about these future security challenges, but also the relationships with our key friends in China's neighborhood and their relationships with one another. Just as an example, and this is one that's already come up briefly, I think today, the U.S. relationship with Japan and the relationships between Japan and other key states in the region, especially China, Taiwan, and South Korea, will be central to any remotely successful U.S. efforts to rebalance to the region and maintain peace, stability, and prosperity there. And so management of these relationships, I think, holds promise, but it also holds some peril for us. On the one hand, the U.S. alliance with Japan is absolutely critical to maintain a robust forward presence in the region that signals U.S. commitments. Japan is a long-standing ally. It's a democracy. It's a vital economic partner and one of the closest friends that America has. But on the other hand, if not managed properly, I do think this relationship also has the potential to entangle the United States in conflicts where its core interests are not at stake and which, in fact, risk escalation and even serious conflict with China. And this is something that Bill talked about about this morning that I want to go into in a bit more detail. Avoiding some of those potential problems that he alluded to, I think, will be one of the central challenges of the pivot, one that could be met. But it will be difficult because although we often think of America and Japan as moving in lockstep in the region because they do have such a long-standing alliance, Japan actually has very different, and in a number of cases, much more tense relationships with several other key states. Again, China, South Korea, Taiwan will come to mind. And nowhere is this clear, I think, then in the evolution of Sino-Japanese relations, particularly over the last several years when we've seen a pretty precipitous deterioration. Now, I think, as most everyone knows, there's significant underlying animosity between China and Japan because of the period of Japanese imperialism that ended in 1945. And it really is remarkable how deep these feelings run in the region. If you look at public opinion data, for instance, on Chinese citizens, it shows that they hold dramatically more negative views of their Japanese counterparts than they do of people from any other country in the world, including the United States. So there is sort of a deep-seated underlying hostility. But then on top of that, as we've already discussed a little bit today, there is a current dispute going on over these uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, known as the Senkaku in Japan, the Diaoyu in China, and the Diaoyu Tai in Taiwan. Even this dispute, though, which I'll discuss in a little more detail in just a minute, still relates back to some of these historical dynamics, though, which we, as Americans, sometimes overlook, because it was Imperial Japan that annexed these islands at the end of the 19th century when Japan was also colonizing Taiwan. So from China's and Taiwan's perspectives, which interestingly are rather aligned on this particular issue, Japan's claims are automatically rooted in an ugly period of history. As most of us know, the United States came to control these islands during the course of the Pacific War and treated them as part of Okinawa from 1945 onward, which now has the consequence that they've been incorporated into the territory that's covered under Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. And so this means, again, that these uninhabited islands are part of the territory that the United States is obligated to defend under the treaty, even though administrative control of those islands, rather than sovereignty, was transferred back to Japan along with Okinawa in 1972. So given this sort of background, one wouldn't think that these issues would necessarily come to a head now, but they have in the last several years, as tensions over the islands have grown. A Chinese fishing boat in 2010 rammed a Japanese Coast Guard vessel in the area, which led to the Chinese captain being detained by Japan. Tensions have risen further over the last year with the Japanese government's purchase of three of the islands from a private owner, which again led to both intense anger in China and also increased Chinese maritime patrols of the area. Those patrols, in turn, have resulted in an incident in which a Chinese patrol locked its firing radar on a Japanese destroyer in the area, which obviously the Japanese considered to be very provocative. And so there's been a number of moves back and forth. They haven't escalated, but it seems obvious that given the traffic in the area and the tensions that they could. And unfortunately for the United States, what we tend to see as a Sino-Japanese dispute that doesn't concern us over a bunch of abandoned rocks is really seen by first the Taiwanese and Chinese as an American issue or at least an issue directly involving America because of its Article 5 commitments. In fact, China referred to the Japanese government's purchase of the islands as a U.S.-China issue despite the fact that the United States explicitly advised Japan against the purchase. Of course, Japan also views the islands and the territory issue as a U.S. concern or a U.S. issue because it's seen as a litmus test of U.S. commitment to the alliance in the face of an increasingly assertive China. So the result is that the U.S. really does have a situation where there are dual dangers. On the one hand, it can't afford to look as though it doesn't support its ally, Japan. And many Japanese in particular fear that if the United States backs down on the Senkaku issue, it doesn't support Japan heartily that it will be read in Beijing as a license for further territorial revisionism including in other areas. And they emphasize that the U.S. position on the Senkaku really is a litmus test of U.S. credibility. But on the other hand, from the U.S. perspective, there really is little or no strategic value inherent to these territories and the United States doesn't want to be in a situation in which Japan moves aggressively to gain control over them and assert sovereignty in a way that provokes a larger conflict with China where American security guarantees will be invoked. So what can the United States do given the complexity of this situation and the realities of the alliance? How does it reassure without emboldening and deter without provoking and making the situation worse? Well, I think this is a balance that the United States actually can strike and is striking. U.S. policy needs to emphasize and I think is emphasizing that the United States is actually neutral on the question of sovereignty of who should own these islands, so to speak. But it's not neutral on the question of use of force. In other words, the United States should emphasize that it cares much more about the process than the outcome of this dispute. I think American diplomats already are emphasizing these realities, but a lot of the work in resolving this issue or at least managing it, again, is not so much to be done with China but with our ally, with Japan. And I think the U.S. stance on Taiwan over the last decade, as others have noted, exemplifies how this sort of alliance management could actually work in practice. The United States, in its relationship with Taiwan, for instance, has made it very clear that it will defend Taiwan in the event that it is attacked by China. But that Taiwan cannot expect help from the United States in the event that Taiwan declares independence or takes provocative actions that invite conflict with the mainland. So the result is that U.S. policy does credibly backstop Taiwan's security and does, I think, deter China from aggression. But it also creates strong incentives for Taiwan to refrain from challenging the status quo in ways that might lead to conflict. And in fact, we've seen some interesting trickle-down effects from this policy on Taiwanese domestic politics where the more pro-independence party really has been marginalized in recent elections. And instead, we've seen parties come into power that have advocated and implemented growing economic and cultural integration with the mainland. So cross-strait relations are not resolved, but they have been managed in a way that maintains alliance credibility and also serves peace and stability. And I think the United States can employ a similar approach in its position with Japan and other allies in the region on territorial disputes, that the United States can guarantee Japan's fundamental security if it is attacked without provocation. But the United States will not support aggressive or offensive Japanese assertions of sovereignty. And there's plenty of evidence that the United States is already starting to implement this approach. It has increased its presence in the region during periods of heightened tensions. It's conducted regular exercises to strengthen Japan's defense capabilities on its southwestern islands and its maritime surveillance capabilities. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in January of this year, just before she stepped down, warned that the United States would oppose any unilateral actions that would seek to undermine Japanese administration of the Senkaku, so not sovereignty, but administration. In other words, the United States supports the status quo. One of the signs, I think, that this policy is working is that this statement from Secretary Clinton made both parties very upset, both China and Japan. China viewed it as evidence that the United States was taking sides, while Japan made the opposite complaint that the United States has not done enough to support Japanese sovereignty claims, which in my view is exactly right. So Washington should want Beijing to worry that forceful attempts to end Japanese administration of the islands wind up engaging US treaty obligations to defend Japan. But Washington should also want Tokyo to worry that if it moves aggressively to do more than administer the islands, it may find itself alone and without US backing in an escalating crisis with a very powerful neighbor. And so where both parties, including our ally, perceive that they have more to lose than gain from the use of force, peace and stability are likely to prevail, even if the underlying issue is not necessarily resolved. So just to sum up, what does this all mean? What I hope you'll come away with is that when it comes to alliances, which I think many of us in this room think will be an enduring feature of US grand strategy, the challenges are certainly real, but they're not necessarily novel and newfangled and nor are they insurmountable. But alliances are kind of like string instruments. If you want them to make music, you've got to tune them very regularly. And so it takes careful calibration, I think, in management for the United States to credibly extend guarantees of security to its friends, guarantees that I would argue ultimately do benefit the United States, while also ensuring that US commitment and forward presence contribute to peace and stability rather than undermine them. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions. Yeah, thank you, Caitlin. I think another enduring feature of grand strategy will be that of the role deterrence plays in nuclear weapons. And so to address that, we're fortunate to have Kier Lieber. He's an associate professor at Georgetown University, has deep expertise on nuclear issues. He's currently working on a book, Nuclear Weapons in International Politics with his colleague, Daryl Press, from Dartmouth College. I'll note the last time they got together and wrote something, their piece on nuclear primacy caused great outrage and concern within the Kremlin for the implications. One of the few academic articles that break out like that. So we look forward to the book and your talk. I'll stand up here. I remember the good old days when provoking fear in the Kremlin was a good thing, not a bad thing. I don't know about fear, but anger maybe is the appropriate term. Thank you for having me here. I am grateful to be here. And as a sign of my gratitude, given that it's the late afternoon, I will try and be provocative. And if I'm not provocative, at least I'll speak loudly and sometimes excitedly to keep you awake. I have a pretty simple message, which we were asked to talk about the security challenges of the 21st century. To me, there's one great security challenge and it involves nuclear weapons. And I will also then talk about two exacerbating factors, which make that basic challenge even worse than we might think. Both of those factors are things that the U.S. controls and can have an influence on. And therefore, I think it's really important for us to think about what we might do to mitigate the problem. So the greatest security challenge of the 21st century, I think, is going to be for the United States how to fight conventional wars, regional conventional wars against nuclear armed adversaries without those wars escalating to the use of nuclear weapons. And specifically without triggering escalation by the adversary in response to U.S. operations. If we begin with the premise that the U.S. Alliance network is likely to be an enduring feature of international politics, I think it will be. We take American grand strategy, that alliance network. The fact is that many of our closest allies face threats that come from nuclear armed, perhaps soon to be nuclear armed, regional adversaries. Which means that the prospect of conflict in which the United States is facing nuclear armed states is far from remote at this point. And the core problem here, and this is kind of a good news story, the problem lies with U.S. conventional superiority. We are very strong. When we fight conventional wars, conventional wars, we do very well. And this is just the record since the post-Cold War world, since the Cold War ended is quite good on this. But the problem, that is a major problem for our adversaries. Because regimes facing the prospect of defeat have huge incentives to use nuclear weapons. Why? Not out of anger, not out of vengeance, but to coerce a halt to a conventional conflict before it's too late. Right? They will see the writing on the wall. If the United States gets involved in a war on the Korean Peninsula, it's going to be a route at the conventional level. This is escalation in the name of stalemate that we're talking about. And I want to argue it's a rational strategy for very dark times. In the interest of time, I won't run through a whole scenario, say a North Korean scenario. But again, you can give a very easy abbreviated scenario here one of these provocations leading to conflict, the outbreak of conventional war. The North is using artillery against the South. The Combined Forces Command, the U.S. and ROK forces, launch counter-battery attacks, air suppression, suppression of enemy air defenses. We turn back the artillery attack. Maybe even if it was a North Korean intrusion into the South, we turn that back. We cross the DMZ at a minimum to go after the artillery north of the DMZ. And again, with air attacks in the rear, continuing on, et cetera. The North Korean regime, I've been calling him Kim Young-in for so many times. I kind of forget how to actually pronounce his name at this point. But let's just say Kim Young-in looks at his prospects and they do not look good. Right? I mean, Kim probably reads the newspapers or at least watches TV. And he's seen what happens to leaders of regimes in recent history that have lost wars to Uncle Sam and his allies. It's not pretty. Gaddafi, right, dragged from a culvert murdered along with his sons and most of his top leadership. Saddam Hussein hung on the gallows in a dank basement. I don't even know if it's a basement or not, but it sounds good. Dank basement surrounded by his worst enemies screaming at him, right? Noriega, go way back. Noriega in prison. Milosevic dying in prison. Right? This is not a terribly good prospect for leaders of regimes that lose conventional wars to the United States. And at that point, unless there is some other out, and the most obvious out for the Kim regime would be a golden parachute. And perhaps the Chinese come along and offer some dacha in a Chinese province. I still don't know the Chinese term for dacha, but if anybody knows that, come tell me. A place where several hundred of the top Kim folks can go and escape and live a nice life. If that option doesn't exist, and I fear that we haven't considered that option seriously enough for alliance, political reasons, and other reasons, then escalating to the nuclear level makes a lot of sense. And I'm not talking about strikes against Los Angeles, right? There's a whole spectrum of escalation that could occur, ranging from a detonation on North Korean territory, on its own territory, to signal what's to come. It could be a strike on Osan. It could be a strike on Kadina, on U.S. forces in the region. It could be a Japanese city with a threat, again, of four, five, six more strikes to come, unless the combined forces halt their march to Pyongyang. And in that circumstance, the combined forces commanding a U.S. president has got only bad options, a set of grim options. And it's because we would only have bad options that North Korea, again, would face incentives to do this. Look, let me, when you talk about nuclear weapons these days, and you lay out this scenario, there are plenty of people who would shake their head and suggest that maybe I'm living in La La land, that even though this logic seems clear to me and the danger seems clear, many analysts can't shake the belief that nuclear weapons are basically irrelevant and that they would not be used. The argument is that nuclear weapons are relics of the Cold War. Deterrence is easy. If you have nukes and I have nukes, you using nukes is suicidal because I'll use nukes back. It's suicidal. It's irrational. And therefore, nuclear weapons lack any real utility when both sides possess them. They may even lack utility when only one side possesses them, if you think that the nuclear taboo restrains nuclear use. Maybe this is a different audience and other than my academic colleagues who might think this, nuclear weapons are essentially irrelevant. This is the core meaning of the nuclear revolution. But I want to just point out that most of the theorizing about nuclear deterrence, which I learned, all stemmed from the Cold War and was all about peacetime deterrence. So do I think that Kim will wake up one morning and think, what a great day to nuke the South or nuke US forces? No. This is not a bolt out of the blue nuclear attack of the kind we've worried about with the Soviet Union. This is deterrence during war, intra-war deterrence. And the evidence that we have here is very compelling that this is a real danger. For one thing, and again keep in mind the idea that this is only a strategy for irrational or delusional dictators, it was US policy in the Cold War. We, the United States of America, thought we were the, and NATO, thought we were the conventionally inferior power vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. And we feared that the Soviet Union was going to invade Western Europe and if it did that, we thought we were screwed. Now again, our perceptions of our own capability or the military balance may not have been as bad as we thought, especially early in the Cold War. But our response to that, our plan, was a strategy of coercive nuclear escalation. We were going to deliberately, and at times slowly and at times not so slowly, escalate to the nuclear level to coerce the halt to the Soviet invasion of Western Europe before it was too late, before we lost Western Europe. And if the United States was prepared to do this on behalf of our European allies, think what the incentives are to do it on behalf of yourself, to coerce the halt before it's too late. Again, the evidence from conventional campaigns since the end of the Cold War involving the United States, the fate of those leaders is not great. And if we look at contemporary nuclear doctrines today, you can see evidence of this strategy of nuclear escalation. Pakistan's official nuclear doctrine is just this. If India, Pakistan, the conventionally inferior power, gets in a war with India and India is winning that war, and Indian forces cross the border, Pakistan has said that it's prepared to use nuclear weapons, not again against Indian capital or Indian cities right off the bat, but against forces in the field and other military targets in order to compel India to stop. Now, unfortunately, India kind of knows this strategy and thinks it's a real strategy, and so it's come up with this cold start strategy, so it might start using nuclear weapons off the bat. Anyways, that's a disturbing scenario. But the point is, Pakistan's got, this is its official doctrine, Russia sometimes suggests that this is its doctrine vis-a-vis NATO today, that it's conventionally inferior and has to make up for that by relying on nuclear weapons. So when we go around the world saying, hey, how about global zero, let's all get together and disarm, the Russians are one of the first to say, go take a hike. And the key question today, of course, is what is North Korea's strategy? What is China's strategy for a scenario over which it's losing Taiwan in a conventional war against the United States? I won't go there today, although I refer you to Josh Rovner's work here at the War College on the dangers of air-sea battle provoking Chinese escalation. So the point here is, this is not unthinkable. There are books about nuclear weapons that are about thinking the unthinkable. This is not unthinkable. It doesn't belong in a worst case scenario annex for military and political planners. The danger of adversary nuclear escalation should be the baseline expectation for scenarios involving the United States in a conventional war against a nuclear armed adversary. Okay, that's the relative good news because there's even worse news here. And that's that you might think there's a solution here. Well, and that is to adopt limited aims, limited objectives. I keep, I've mentioned marching to Pyongyang. Well, guess what? We can just say we're not going to march to Pyongyang. The problem and in other scenarios, we can imagine more limited aims where we try not to threaten regime survival in these conflicts. But even if we adopt these limited objectives in regional wars, so as not to threaten regime defeat, so as not to threaten the leaders going up on the gallows with the noose around their necks, the U.S. way of war, the modern way of war is inherently escalatory. Right? We all know what U.S. conventional operations look like. It's blind and confused right off the bat early and often. And we're going after leadership targets, command and control targets, air defenses, strategic assets, strategic forces. Again, every major combat operation since the end of the Cold War has essentially looked the same. The first days of the war, what happens? Air strikes going after all sorts of targets like this. I have not seen, I have no security clearance. This is all unclassified. I have not seen the Korean war plan, the air tasking order. But I'm willing to bet a large amount of money that I know exactly what the ATO looks like for the Korean contingency. And if I show Korean planners what the last five or six major military operations look like and what happens on the first nights and days of a conventional war, they would nod their heads and say, yeah, that's basically the plan. Right? This is not, I think, well, it is a state secret, but it's not a major mystery, I should say. This makes sense, the American way of war to fight this way. Why? Because it's good for saving lives, saving lives of our soldiers, and it's great for achieving decisive victory in the early stages of a conflict. But it's inherently escalatory because the adversary being subject to those kinds of air strikes is likely to worry that the reaper is coming. If you're Kim Youngin sitting there in Pyongyang and your national command and control is cut off, bombs are detonating around you going after you and your fellow leaders, your adversary is targeting your nuclear assets or other strategic assets, taking out your radars, air defense, you are going to think that you are going down the tubes and the same logic of escalation will kick in. Now, we may talk limited options that we, the United States, of the combined forces command, have limited options. Maybe there's A, B, and C. And maybe B includes, for example, in the Korean case, if a war starts going north of the DMZ, 25 kilometers to take out the artillery and stopping there as a signal that we're not moving on to Pyongyang. But again, I'm willing to bet that all of the war plans, the military operations that match up with those limited political aims, limited objectives, strategic objectives, all of them include going downtown Pyongyang with air strikes, going after leadership targets, going after command and control in a way that will be escalatory. And the real danger here is that you've got political, civilian leaders who think we have limited strategic aims, options, but in reality the military plans don't accord with those objectives. They aren't tailored to those objectives. Now, again, the National Command Authority, the United States President, may decide that we need to go to Pyongyang. Something could happen before a war, in the midst of a war, where regime change has to happen. That's fine. That's fine. We can talk about the merits of doing that or not doing that. But if that's the plan, then we should recognize the high likelihood of nuclear escalation and we should be prepared to mitigate that problem. So we're in the final things before I conclude. And speaking of mitigation, dealing with an adversary that's just crossed the nuclear threshold and is threatening to launch more nuclear strikes against U.S. forces or U.S. allies, I want to conclude with some thoughts, a quick argument that U.S. nuclear forces matter very much here, and also to suggest why our allies facing these nuclear armed adversaries, why our allies would be right to question the credibility of the U.S. nuclear umbrella in these cases. I'm going to try and summarize this argument, but I realize it turns on some technical details and some controversial assumptions, which I'm happy to talk about. But I would argue that the right kind of nuclear force, the right kind of force the U.S. should have in order to deter and if deterrence fails to mitigate nuclear escalation would marry several key capabilities. The capabilities of promptness, that we'd be able to use those forces very promptly, that those forces are very accurate and that those forces have flexible yields in their warheads. Again, all of these attributes are necessary. They're a requirement of conducting lethal strikes that don't generate radioactive fallout that would have regional consequences. So what am I talking about here? If you fire a Trident II off a SLBM in the Pacific against North Korean nuclear targets, and given the yield of those warheads, which is several hundred kilotons, if you're going to take out the nuclear forces, nuclear facilities, hardened bunkers, etc., you're going to create massive amounts of radioactive nuclear fallout. And according to some models, that fallout is going to drift right over the South Korean Peninsula and at lower levels will even reach across into Japan. That's one option. We need the kinds of nuclear forces that combine all those attributes of promptness, accuracy, and flexible yield. The ability to have low yield nuclear detonations that might be both militarily effective and not create this massive consequence that was of civilian and other allied casualties. But we currently don't have that capability. I mentioned SLBMs. ICBMs face similar issues. Both of them are prompt. Both of them are fairly accurate, but neither have flexible yields on their warheads. On the air-delivered leg, you have flexible yields. You can go to very low yields on B61 bombs and air launch cruise missiles, dialy yields. Again, leaving the jokes aside about all the dialy yields being turned up all the way. This is spinal tap. The fact is you can turn them down, theoretically possible, but they're not prompt. We don't have nuclear forces in the region. Again, open source. You might talk about putting forces at Guam in the midst of a crisis. Where are the nuclear bombs? You might talk about dual capable aircraft being deployed to the peninsula. Where are you going to store the warheads? This is a major issue. By the way, you're reintroducing nuclear weapons onto the peninsula, which you might have to think about ahead of time, etc. The point is none of these delivery systems combine the three attributes that seem most relevant for deterring or mitigating nuclear escalation in the most likely scenarios if the United States is going to hold up its commitment to our allies. Now, the good news here for the Navy folks is there might be, the best chance might be for the Navy to fill this gap looking forward toward nuclear modernization. Whether or not a follow on Trident would have flexible yields, whether the accuracy can be improved, whether we can do things like only detonate the primary instead of the secondary as well in the actual warhead. Again, this is all highly classified. I don't know the details. It may already be possible. The point is, are these things, do we know what the yields are, can we do that, etc. The bottom line, though, when you pull back from the weeds of nuclear capabilities, which I could talk for another 20 minutes if I could, but I won't, are that we face an enormous problem here. I think it's an underappreciated problem, even for those who don't think nuclear weapons use is unthinkable. We need to overcome this intellectual firebreak between conventional and nuclear thinking. There are conventional war planners and there's STRATCOM. The link between the two, commanders in the fields, appreciation for the need for nuclear forces, is a huge obstacle. I think we need to do a much better job of meshing civilian guidance with military plans with nuclear modernization and force planning. Thank you. With that, it's time to ask questions. If you'd like to stretch your legs, please just walk up and go to the microphone and we'll start with you. And if you could direct your question to one of the panelists. And I just have to say, I really feel like I'm back in the Cold War. I really do. I make people feel young again sometimes. National Security and U.S. National Security brought up today, but then kind of just brushed aside and, you know, we're talking about military power. We're talking about nuclear weapons. So I'd like to bring those threats up. Professor Art mentioned biological warfare. What are we going to do about it? If we think about the Iran nuclear program, the biggest detriment to it so far has been a cyber attack by the cyber warfare. What are we going to do about it? And then finally also climate change. When I talk to my undergraduates, that's what they want to talk about. The rising oceans. Are we going to have trade routes going through the North Pole? What are we going to do about climate change? Are those things we need to worry about? I agree with everything you said. The link between preventing spread of nuclear weapons, for example, and a forward presence is pretty clear to me, and it's pretty direct. You know, either countries take care of themselves if they are threatened by an adversary that has nuclear weapons, or they rely on us. And for reasons that I specified, I'd rather they rely on us than get their own, because I don't want to see nuclear weapons spread. Biological weapons are much more difficult to deal with. But they're not, having just finished a manuscript for a series I co-ed it, I'm persuaded that biological weapons are not as easy to develop, nor to use, and to sustain a program than the current day literature might give one cause to believe. I have a harder time figuring out the link between a forward defense posture on the one hand and trying to deal with biological weapons on the other. I don't see the link as strong. I didn't talk about, because I didn't have enough time. I also think that cyber attacks are not necessarily dealt with by a forward defense posture, or if we took the position that a cyber attack that was really very extensive against the United States, either in terms of the grid, or whatever, or financial institutions, we could take the position that it would not necessarily rule out a kinetic attack, in which case a forward defense posture will deal with, could help deal with cyber attacks. But first and foremost, this is a defensive problem, and we rely, as you know, very much on the Internet, and we are very open, and we have a system that was not designed for great control. So forward defense posture can, I think, help with cyber attacks as a declaratory posture. Don't assume that we would not hurt you. And my understanding now, and some of you may know this better than me, is that attribution is possible in about two-thirds of the cases. It might not happen immediately, but if you can't attribute, you can't deter, but if you can attribute, you can deter. And I wouldn't rule out kinetic responses. The link between global warming, for example, I taught a course in the 1990s with a biologist on global warming, because I thought something strange happened in that summer of 1988, and so did Hanson and some other people. To me, the link is an indirect one, but still there. I would rather see countries of the world spending money on dealing with the global warming threat, reducing their reliance on fossil fuels, than engaging in arms races, which might include developing these horrendous weapons. So to the extent that the United States is able to stabilize regions of the world, particularly where the great powers are, that means they will have to spend less on defense, and I would like them to spend more on the things that really count. I took the global warming threat very seriously. If you look back at climatic changes in the last 10,000 years, they have occurred wild swings between very cold periods and warm periods, with a change in a matter of four or five degrees centigrade, and we're projected to reach that by the end of the 21st century. So I think it's really very scary, and it is a very serious threat. A forward-deployed posture is linked in an indirect way. Does that answer your question? There we go. Okay, sorry, thanks. I think I would just add to what Bob said. I mean, I think you raise some really pressing issues. I guess the only thing I would emphasize in light of some of the things I was speaking about is that what I was trying to make the case for is that alliances are a tool. And the question is, what are you going to then use that tool for once you've preserved it and developed it and so forth? And I think some of the issues you raise actually point back to the importance of managing those key relationships with friends and partners. I mean, if you think, for instance, about some of the problems you listed, many of them require coalitions of states to solve, particularly climate change. That's an issue that can't be solved in isolation. It points to the need for US leadership. And also, when you think about the Stuxnet example, that also was not a unilateral project, right? So I think you raise important issues. The question is, what's the mechanism by which we actually managed to pursue and prioritize those? I just wanted to add one thing. The existential threat that I worry about for the United States is the acquisition of a nuclear weapon by a terrorist group. And building a rifle bomb is not that hard to do if you have the fissile material. So if you ask me what's the thing I worry about the most, it is that. That's the most direct threat to American security. The longer term, I think, is biological, 10 to 15 years with advances in biology. And then, of course, there's the global warming. But that's how I rank them when I think about threats. Look, if the global international economic order went towards closure, it wouldn't be the end for the United States. That's a nice thing to have, and I think it's useful to other countries to help generate growth in middle classes, which we think are important for democracy. But if we saw closure, for example, and even if we saw the cutoff of oil, the United States would survive that. So these are the three threats that I really worry about. And the problem is it's not a problem. It's easier to deal with the WMD non-state actor threat than it is, at least in my view, with the biological and with global warming. We're really not making progress. In fact, we're going backwards. It's very depressing because we want to limit the rise of average global temperature, which if you study this subject, you know there is no such thing, by two degrees centigrade. And we want to keep the CO2 concentrations to 450 parts per million. When you count methane along with CO2, we are already there. And this is supposed to be our goal for the end of the 21st century. Good afternoon. Again, Mark Schlackman, Florida State University. But I went to Georgetown Law. So there you go. I would appreciate commentary from the panel as to, given the focus of this session, some things that we haven't heard about, just like some of the challenges just mentioned, are the issues that are embedded within our response to the challenge. That is compliance with adherence to international conventions. The means by which the military, as opposed to other government agencies, handle priorities or issues such as indefinite detention, or the enhanced interrogation practices, or anyone of a number of other, again I'll call them means toward an end, which if not in the first graph on this frame of this panel, I think it's implicit within it somewhere. So again, anyone that might want to comment, I'd appreciate that. Can I just say one quick thing? I mean, given the first two questioners, it's either clear that we were talking about other threats. To me, international conventions and enhanced interrogation and all the rest, these may be important issues. But we're facing, and whether it's global warming, huge issue, agreed, all the rest. But right now, North War could break out on the Korean Peninsula tomorrow. And nuclear weapons could be used the same day or the day after, or the day after that. To me, this is just an immediate threat. And I understand your questions aren't necessarily suggesting you disagree with my analysis. I just find it ironic that we face this major threat. Bob's talking about the threat from terrorists. And again, we can argue about the degree to which that's a threat or not. But how does it rank compared to the danger of nuclear escalation that could happen tomorrow? It seems to me it's a far greater danger. And for some reason, it's a nuclear taboo. Or we don't want to think about the Cold War because it makes us feel old. I don't know. Maybe it doesn't make them feel young. It makes us feel, we just avoid this conversation. We avoid talking about it. It's strange to me. Well, my alternative choice for the question now that you mentioned that was, what your opinion, since you mentioned global zero, is there anything actionable there, if not in the near term, as to its primary objective? Or is that something that you just treat as a nicety that is not possible that is complete disarmament? So either, any comments for either question, I would appreciate it. I just have a very short response. The answer is no. No prospect for global disarmament. And we sound incredibly hypocritical by going around the world telling people that nukes are bad and you're bad if you want nukes. We used to love nuclear weapons. Now we don't need them. And others do. And we look foolish arguing the opposite. And it's just impossible. It will never happen. States won't give up their nuclear weapons unless entire international political system is transformed by aliens. I agree. Good afternoon, Lieutenant Colonel George Shreffler, U.S. Marines. This question goes to alliances in East Asia. So maybe appropriate to start with Dr. Talmadge. But Taiwan has come up several times today. And my question as relates to Taiwan specifically and East Asia alliances generally is, is Taiwan more of a key to our alliances in East Asia than any of the others with Japan or the Republic of Korea? And should the U.S. be doing something other than what it is right now? And I think you explained our policies in relation to Taiwan well and how we communicate both with Taiwan and with the People's Republic of China. Should we be saying, Taiwan, you need to take a step closer to China and look toward an eventual reconciliation? And if we go that direction and it does result in a Taiwan PRC reunification that can be achieved peacefully, what effect might that have on our other Asian allies? And would it cause them to reconsider their military alliances with the U.S. and take a step closer to the PRC? Well, I'm glad you saved the easy question for late in the day. You know, obviously this is kind of the crux of some of our major challenges that we face in the region. As you probably are aware, or your question at least suggests that you're aware of it, there are increasing calls for the United States to really reconsider its commitment to Taiwan. In fact, you know, many would argue that fundamentally the United States and China don't have that many conflicting interests. And if there is one scenario in which the two countries would be most likely to actually get into a shooting where it's over Taiwan. And I think there is some merit to that. On the other hand, I do think we have a long-standing relationship with Taiwan, which has become a very vibrant democracy, has been a loyal friend to the United States. And I think, at least so far, the approach that we've taken seems to be working pretty well. I think we are striking this balance where we've been very clear with the Taiwanese that we won't support them in aggressive or provocative actions. And I think we've communicated that publicly. We think we've also communicated it privately. And it has, as I mentioned, I think had some actually fairly profound effects on Taiwanese domestic politics. I think you really do see, if you compare now to 10 years ago or 20 years ago, it's really not within the realm, I think, of mainstream discourse to suggest that Taiwan would you know declare independence tomorrow. Instead, you're seeing exactly the sort of behavior you describe, which is increasing integration between Taiwan and mainland China, which of course doesn't resolve the underlying issue. It doesn't alleviate all the worries we have about a possible U.S.-China collision, but it is a case where I think the issue is being managed. And sometimes, with really hard problems, you can't solve them, you just manage them. And so, at least from my perspective, I think the status quo is actually pretty good. We're actually doing a pretty good job of threading that needle that I was trying to get to in the talk. You raise another important question though, which is what happens when we get what we want, when the status quo becomes so peaceful that there ends up being reunification between China and Taiwan. Well, if that did happen, and I'm purely speculating here, but I'm not sure why that would necessarily be a bad thing for us. Maybe it would, but it would depend a lot obviously on what the leadership was in China at the time. It would depend on if there had been substantial political change in China itself, who knows if not, and the conditions for reunification were dangerous ones, especially for Taiwan, that would be a concern. So there's a lot of sort of contingencies laden into that question, but the reason I say that I'm not sure it's fundamentally a huge problem for the United States, depending on how it happened, is simply that a lot of our commitment to Taiwan is not based on Taiwan having tremendous intrinsic, I think, strategic value. I think it's based on a long-standing relationship, maintaining our forward presence and so forth, and so you can imagine some scenarios where it would be really bad, but others where it could potentially be benign. But I think a lot of the scenarios are pretty far-fetched. I think in the short to medium term, you're likely to just see more of what we've seen. I don't know if that answers your question, because there's so many what-ifs in there. I'd like to add to that, if I could just briefly. I agree with everything that Caitlin said. The 1996 Taiwan straight crisis was the turning point. Now was the point when the United States began to lay down red lines, both to the mainland—you don't say China, you say the mainland and to Taiwan, because the United States recognizes that Taiwan is a part of—the United States recognizes the fact that both the Republic of China and the mainland government say Taiwan is part of China. We actually have a one China policy. As long as the mainland feels that time is on its side and we restrain the Taiwanese, it's not a problem. The problem would be, in my view, is if we decide to liquidate that commitment, because I think that under pressure from the mainland, if the United States said to the Taiwanese, bye-bye, you're on your own, I can't conceive of the fact that the Japanese and the South Koreans would then ask themselves, well, really when it really comes to the crunch, what do Americans do? Having said that, if we can manage this issue, time is against Taiwan and it's in favor of the mainland because of the economic integration that's going on. I mean, this is huge sucking thing that is taking investment. I think there are four or five hundred thousand Taiwanese in the mainland now. And vice versa. Huge amounts of investment. So I think they're growing together economically and I think the mainland feels fairly relaxed about the situation now because it's stabilized. And as long as everybody observes the red lines, I think economics is going to basically solve this problem. Could I just add one other piece to that, which is that I very much agree about the credibility concerns? I think a lot of times claims both by U.S. allies and just by observers about U.S. credibility being damaged if we do X, Y, and Z are often overstated. But I think this really is a case where if there is a case, if you believe credibility is a thing, it's a thing here. It really is explicitly referenced at least in conversations I've had with Korean counterparts, Japanese counterparts, all over the region. This is seen as an important commitment. So if you believe that countries look at other behavior of the United States and other decisions with other allies in determining U.S. credibility in their own alliance relationships, it seems like this would be a pretty important case, as Bob is saying. Commander. Commandant Seth from India. In your talk, Professor Kathleen, you mentioned the tilt towards Asia Pacific that the current administration is there. And as you very rightly mentioned, that there is no such question of a tilt because the presence was already there in the Asia Pacific region. So it is just a question of, you know, over-emphasizing the same point. My point is that China, though it's a economic power, but economic power does not necessarily translate into being a great military power in the sense that whatever China is developing right now, the United States has a huge lead in terms of military power. For example, the Chinese navy, they very recently they got their first aircraft carrier and which is still going through a trial stage, the Varia. Compare it to the United States, which operates, you know, a number of fleets, all which have carriers. So it is, in my opinion, always a question of playing catch-up because the technological lead that you have that the United States possesses in terms of military power, the Chinese would always be playing catch-up. And once they reach a particular stage, the United States would always be advancing on to the next stage. So in my opinion, it is very difficult for the Chinese to do catch-up. And regarding what the Chinese are doing, basically when we talk about area denial, it was basically triggered by the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis when the carrier battle group came and the Chinese felt that they could not do anything about it. So what they are targeting is basically they want to deny the United States the ability to operate in their own backyard. So rather than, in my opinion, having a global ambition, it is basically what they are focused on is to deny the United States to operate freely, which they consider their own area of interest. So my question is, considering all these factors, what, like the whole issue we have been discussing about China, so is China really a very credible threat to the United States? And if it is, in what areas do we consider it as a threat? Because all the current issues in the world, whether it be the case of Iran, whether it be the case of North Korea, generally the Chinese have supported what the major world powers wanted. So they have gone along with that flow. They have not taken a contrary line to it. So in what context do we feel that the Chinese can be, in what form do we think this threat is going to materialize from China? Or is it a question of basically overhyping this threat? Is your question, does China present a military threat to the United States? Yes, sir. I mean, in what forms does this threat materialize from China? Well, at a fundamental level, China is not a threat to the American homeland. This is why I frankly feel fairly sanguine about U.S.-China relations in, I think, perhaps in contradistinction to cure, because both sides have nuclear weapons. And if the record of the Cold War has any relevance, nuclear armed statesmen run scared rather than safe in facing other nuclear armed states. And that's a good thing. So in terms of a big war vis-a-vis the American homeland, forget it. That's not a problem. So the question really is, are they a challenge to U.S. maritime supremacy? And I think there are people that can answer that question better than I can. I would simply mention two words, diesel submarines. I mean, understand that's an issue. The anti-ship program is still a program. It's not a reality yet. But if the Chinese ever solved that problem, then U.S. Navy is going to have to worry about it, since they have some very small number of very expensive assets. As I said, I think there's a qualitative arms race going on, and the goal is for the United States to keep ahead. I don't think the Chinese have been stupid from what I understand about how to spend their money. But I think the threat is down the road. I think they're going to narrow the gap in a certain period of time. And I have great respect for China's ingenuity and hard work. They're trying to climb up to technological ladder in terms of industry, and they've been using pretty good mercantilist policies to do it. And they're bringing back, luring back a lot of Chinese that have studied in the West. So this threat's down the road, but we need to work on it now, and we are. So I actually agree with some of the premise of your question. I mean, I think there's a lot of uncertainties about how big of a threat or will there be a threat posed by China. And you pointed out some of the reasons. One is that Chinese capabilities are still limited in the number of areas, certainly relative to the United States. I think it's fairly easy to make that case. The second reason is that we don't know necessarily what Chinese intentions are, even if we have good assessments of capabilities. We don't know what they'll be in the future, which is part of the difficulty in answering the question that this other gentleman asked about Taiwan. And there's also the sort of wild card of Chinese domestic politics. And we've actually seen some of that playing out already, where it may be the case that leaders in China, even though they may rationally calculate that certain types of actions, possibly aggressive actions, may not be in China's national interest, they may feel political pressure to behave in ways that are destabilizing. So, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty in thinking about that threat. But I think this is actually part of the challenge that we face in managing these alliances. And I didn't talk as much about this, but this is kind of what I mean when I say that we need to deter without provoking. We don't actually have, if we knew, for instance, that Chinese capabilities were really dangerous, its intentions were malign, and its domestic politics would definitely point in a dangerous direction. Then it would be very easy to establish highly robust defenses, because we wouldn't have to worry about creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? The prophecy would be predetermined, and we'd just be reacting to it. And so it's the uncertainty that you're pointing out that is what makes this alliance management challenge, I think, so difficult. We want to hedge against the possibility that the worst case scenario is going to come true. But we also want to leave ourselves open to the alternate reality that you're mentioning, which is that the threat may actually be a bit more benign than we've envisioned. One thing that we always have to keep in mind, though, in making these calculations is that you're right, China may not catch up to the United States, but China doesn't have to catch up to the United States to threaten our allies, right, or to threaten another interest in the region, which is sort of your point about denial. And so, you know, it's possible that you can be right, China won't be a peer competitor, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we don't need to have an alliance structure in place that hedges against the possibility that they're still strong in their region. No. Thank you very much. It's a good place to turn it back to Mike. But before we do, please give our panel a round of applause.