 Good morning and welcome to the United States Institute of Peace and to today's event on the growing importance of NATO's Indo-Pacific partners, views from the region on NATO relations and the Vilnius Summit. The United States Institute of Peace was created by the US Congress in 1984 as a national nonpartisan public institution working to help prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict around the world. My name is Jennifer Statz and I'm the director for our East Asia and Pacific programs here at the Institute. We are gathering this morning just as the NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania gets down to business to focus on the importance of NATO's Indo-Pacific partners, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea. The leaders of these four countries will be joining the NATO Heads of State and Government for a meeting of the North Atlantic Council tomorrow. But before that happens, we are going to take some time this morning to discuss the significance of their presence at this NATO meeting and the broader context of relations between NATO and these Indo-Pacific partners. And for today's event, we're honored to welcome some very distinguished guests to our panel. From the Embassy of Japan to the United States, Sharjah Defer-Tamaki Tsukada. From the Embassy of New Zealand to the United States, Ambassador Bede Corey. From the Embassy of the Republic of Korea to the United States, Deputy Chief of Mission Chung-Guk Kim. And joining us soon from the Ambassador, sorry from the Embassy of Australia to the United States, Ambassador Kevin Rudd. And moderating today's discussion will be former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and Lieutenant General Carl Eikenberry, whose last military assignment was as the Deputy Chairman of the NATO Military Committee in Brussels. I think you'll agree that we couldn't have asked for a better group of people to join this conversation today. And I want to thank all of you for joining us. We're honored that you took time out of your very busy schedules to be with us this morning. Now Vilnius marks the second year in a row that the leaders of Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea have joined NATO counterparts at an Alliance summit. These countries have enjoyed fruitful and constructive relations with NATO for a number of years. And the recent spotlight on these partnerships comes amid geopolitical changes that are bringing the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific closer together. Among them, of course, the return of strategic competition to the international system, the threat to the rules-based international order from Russia's war on Ukraine, strategic challenges posed by a more assertive China, and urgent transnational problems like climate change and emerging and disruptive technologies. As NATO's Secretary General has said, what happens in Europe matters for the Indo-Pacific and what happens in the Indo-Pacific matters for Europe. Now, USIP has been exploring this topic over the last year through an expert working group on NATO and its Indo-Pacific partners, and that report will be available later this fall. But in the meantime, I'm very excited that we have a chance today to hear directly from the Indo-Pacific partners to help us here in Washington and everyone watching online better understand their perspective on these very critical issues. So we have a lot to cover and a fascinating discussion ahead of us. Thank you all for joining us. Thank you to our panelists. And with that, Ambassador Eikenberry, I will turn the floor over to you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. I know that I speak for all of us here on the stage today when I express our gratitude to you, Jennifer, for your words of introduction, and also to the United States Institute of Peace, so ably led by Lee's Grande for hosting this event today. And we'd like to thank, as Jennifer did all of you both here physically and those virtually for making time to join us. So this morning, as Jennifer had indicated, we're going to explore the growing importance of NATO's Indo-Pacific partners, not from the perspective or the vantage point of Brussels or the 31 NATO capitals right now, maybe soon 32 capitals. But we're going to do this from the vantage point of the Asia-Pacific region, from the AP-4, from Australia, Japan, Korea, and New Zealand. We couldn't do better in this regard then with the distinguished diplomats that I have sitting here to my right. All representative of the AP-4 countries. It's a very eclectic group. If you look at their bios, I'll make note of those at several points during our discussion today. They all have very diverse experiences nationally and internationally, but what they do share in common is a really keen deep understanding of international security issues. So as Jennifer had already mentioned, NATO relations with Canberra, Tokyo, with Seoul, and with Wellington, these are not new developments at all. There's more or less institutionalized developments that exist between our AP-4 going back in the case of New Zealand to 2001, in the case of Australia and Korea to 2005, and in the case of Japan informally, even in the 1990s, and then more institutionalized beginning in the year 2010. In fact, the NATO and what we call the AP-4, they actually started to have intermittent meetings going back to 2016, where the discussion point, understandably, at that time was Korea. And then these meetings became more frequent beginning in 2019. But it was clearly Russia's brutal illegal invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022 that marked an inflection point in the AP-4 relations with NATO to varying degrees. And this is evident if we consider right now, at this time, where in Vilnius, it's 5.30 p.m., and the first day of the 33rd NATO summit of heads of state of AP-4 are all there in Vilnius in the general period you had said the second year in a row now, beginning with Madrid last year. So as NATO Secretary General, Jen Stoltenberg wrote an article that was published in Foreign Affairs yesterday setting up the summit. He wrote, Ambassador, welcome. So as the Secretary General Stoltenberg wrote in his Foreign Affairs article that appeared yesterday quoting, as autocratic regimes draw closer to one another, those of us who believe in freedom and democracy, we must stand together. NATO is a regional alliance of Europe and North America, but the challenges that we face are global. That is why I've invited the leaders of the European Union and our Indo-Pacific partners Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea to join us in Vilnius. We must have a common understanding of the security risk we face and work together to strengthen the resilience of our societies, economics, economies and democracies. So then we'd like to explore with our four guests here this morning several aspects of this question, the growing importance of NATO's Indo-Pacific partners in this topic. These include but are no means limited to, number one, how and why Russia's brazen violation of the UN Charter have changed your government's thinking about your respective current and future relations with NATO. Two, how more concretely, do your nation's defense establishments and your armed forces hope to benefit from closer NATO ties? Three, although AP4 ties with NATO are not collective, they're direct from each one of your four capitals to Brussels, is there now or in the future potential for these ties to directly or to indirectly usefully facilitate security cooperation with each other? And then fourth and finally, how do you respond to those who are skeptical of the value of any or all AP4 associations with NATO, whether in Beijing, whether in Paris or perhaps within your own countries? Or one might ask, since NATO was established as a transatlantic alliance, what business does it have in NATO in Asia? So if agreeable to our guests then, let's proceed in allowing each one of our four guests here on the stage to offer five to seven minutes of opening remarks on why your country is interested in engagement with NATO and why your leaders have gone to NATO summits now for the past two years, then we'll have a more focused discussion among ourselves and then most importantly, it take questions from the audience here in person or virtually. And Jennifer, it's my understanding then that your team is going to, will come up with cards and collect questions and I'll go from there. Okay, so then let's begin with brief remarks from our guest and we're going to use the English alphabet protocol beginning with Australia's ambassador to the United States, Kevin Rudd. I've known Ambassador Rudd now for some years and I continue to be ever more surprised as I prepare for an event like this to learn more about this amazing life of public service that he has lived. So most recently I learned that back in 1981 when Ambassador Rudd was a young Foreign Service Officer for the Australia Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he served as the third secretary in the Australian Embassy in Stockholm, 1981 to 1983 and he wrote reports on Soviet gas pipelines and European energy security and I'm sure there's some report that he wrote back at that time that predicted that Sweden would be joining NATO in this year. But seriously Ambassador Rudd, what you've done on the international stage, what you've done on your national stage is extraordinary. I know that the audience is greatly looking forward to your comments. Thank you very much for the very kind and generous introduction and sorry to my colleagues for arriving slightly late. Going back to 1981, which was a while ago now, you're right, I did write a report then about the problem of European gas dependency on Soviet gas pipelines. You're wrong that I would ever have predicted Sweden becoming a NATO member. In fact, the reason I'm late, I've just come from the White House and we're talking to a bunch of folks there and we're talking about this morning's news about President Erdogan finally removing the impediment to Swedish accession and I said to my interlocutors at the White House who would have thought as a third secretary in Stockholm, Sweden after hundreds of years of cultivated and defined neutrality and proudly owned would now be a member of an orthodontic treaty organization. This was simply inconceivable in the Sweden that I knew. There was not a single constituency in the Swedish rickstarg at the time, the parliament, for anyone to get behind this proposition. So, as they say in history, times change, but security policy realities have a habit of enduring and becoming more acute. The other thing I remember from those times, Carla, was the fact that you had a series of submarine incursions by the Soviets into Swedish waters in the Baltic and that began a long process of strategic reappraisal of Swedish neutrality. And then, of course, what we've seen more recently with the Russian Federation's invasion of Ukraine fundamentally altered the and finally altered the strategic calculus. So, what's the perspective from down under? People may find it curious that a country so far removed from strategic realities in Europe would be engaged in security developments there. It has a series of antecedents. Carl just said before that in recent years we've begun attending NATO-NATO plus summits. This process really began unfolding. I remember when I was prime minister during the Afghanistan war and we as the largest non-NATO contributor to ISAF in international security assistance forces in Afghanistan were puzzled as to why our friends in Brussels would expect us constantly to lift our national military effort in Afghanistan and secondly, have us excluded from NATO high policy and security deliberations on the same. In other words, it didn't make sense. And it certainly was unsalable in the Australian body politic. And so a number of us began to engage in robust Australian style, which is the antithesis of normal diplomacy with our NATO counterparts. And the then secretary general copped it from both barrels from myself and our defence minister. And as a consequence of that, we began to see the formal collaborative mechanisms for NATO engagement with its Asia-Pacific and our Indo-Pacific partners begin to unfold. So I remember attending as prime minister the 2008 Bucharest summit of NATO where we had the morning session was should Ukraine be admitted? I was not in that session. The afternoon session with all NATO members present was what do we do next in terms of Afghanistan together. So this has been unfolding really over the last 15 years, which brings us to the present. I think whether you are a democracy such as ours in the Indo-Pacific region and looking at my friends and colleagues from Japan, from the Republic of Korea and from New Zealand, what we face now as a reality is that security is no longer defined primarily let alone exclusively by geography. That's the underpinning reality. If I was to say to you that cyber attack on New Zealand and Estonia this morning was uniquely the product of a problem in the East Asian hemisphere or in Russia's sphere of influence. Ultimately, we all know as practitioners that this is now a seamless threat across all geographies. And so when you look at the fundamental nature of cyber threat and cyber security to all of our democracies to our core and critical infrastructure to the theft of critical defense and other forms of technological information, this is now a seamless glory global threat. So it makes sense as democracies that we now collaborate fundamentally and instrumentally with each other. There's another domain as well. It's called space. And if we think somehow that space domains are unique to geography, then we need to go back and re-examine Galileo's assumptions because that is not the case at all. Chinese based space systems and Russian based space systems and others who seek to be in space represent new challenges for all of us globally, not regionally. And so therefore our road to discovery of all of these trans-regional security threats was of course our respective engagement in the campaign against global terrorism, but has now evolved in the direction of dealing with these seamless threats. So my final point by way of introductory remarks would simply be this and I'm mindful of the clock and I don't wish to go over time, is that when we look at strategic realities today, beyond cyber and beyond space and onto the physical geography of our respective regions, once again we are dealing with fundamental interlinkages between all of us. The fact that such a huge proportion of global trade goes through the South China Sea to the major economies of northeast Asia led by Japan and the ROK indicates that this is not just a concern for the neighborhood, it's a concern for the world. If our European friends run out of energy going into the next northern winter, this is not simply a marginal concern to the economies of the rest of the world. It's a fundamental concern because Europe collectively represents the largest economic entity in the world and so therefore geography also is of itself physically now running into its own, shall we say, seamlessness in terms of the impact on all of us. So my final comment from an Australian perspective is why is Prime Minister Albanese this morning in Vilnius in particular and at this NATO summit and I was speaking to his office this morning. It is one, not just the articulation of democratic solidarity and pan-allied solidarity with Ukraine at a time when Ukraine is under direct threat, two, there's a materiality from the rest of us as well. The Australian government announced yesterday, a day before in Berlin, a visit there with Chancellor Schultz that would be deploying Australian surveillance aircraft, the Wedgetail, to a six month rotation in Germany to monitor the space in and around the supply routes into Ukraine through Poland. We see that as an act of physical solidarity with our friends and partners in Europe as well. But beyond that again the supply of other forms of military equipment by Australia into Ukraine, currently there's about a half a billion dollars of Australian kit and equipment provided free of charge into the Ukrainians including a whole bunch of armoured personnel carriers. And so people often say to me led by the Ukrainians themselves, why are you doing that? Because you're such a long way away. In fact the Ukrainian foreign minister said to me recently, of all the demonstrations of solidarity and thought and the provision of material kit and equipment, the thing that surprised the most was coming from the distance of Australia. And the answer to that is, and the reasons for it are all of the above, we as a government and we as a country now understand the seamlessness of our security environment. And unless we invest in therefore in global strategic stability and invest in the defence of the United Nations Charter where you've had such a flagrant breach by the Russian Federation's invasion of Ukraine, then if and when security challenges arise for us and our part of the world then we would stand alone. Therefore alliances are mutually reinforcing arrangements between us all, sometimes causing us to do things and to express solidarity in ways we never hoped of when these arrangements were set in place. But what animates us is our underlying democratic values and the need therefore to take robust measures to defend them rather than just make fine speeches about the same. Thank you. Ambassador Szilva and Kijik as always. So Sharjah Tsikata from Japan, I noted when I introduced Ambassador Rudd and mentioned one of his early postings and I should highlight here for this audience one of your early postings was in Moscow from 1999 to 2001. And many think primarily of Russia as a threat to Europe. But in the case of Japan and shared by your partners, Russia poses and has posed a threat to Japan, especially since the end of World War II with the Soviet Union and then transitioning to Russia disputes over the ownership of the Kyrgyz Islands and other factors as well. And then I would also note that at the NATO summit last year that your Prime Minister Famiro Kishida famously remarked, quote, Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow. So I know everyone here will be very interested in your remarks. Thank you. Is the mic on here? Okay, good. Thank you, Ambassador Ikenberg for that introduction and I'm very glad that I have this privilege to speak on this very historic day on the eve of the Vilnius NATO summit and on the topic of AP-4. You're right. I did serve in Moscow a couple of years and for what it's worth maybe I have a very tiny sort of window where I could speak something about NATO and its relevance to the Indo-Pacific from that angle. But frankly, I must admit, most of my time in the Foreign Service I did mainly economic trade and development cooperation. So perhaps today I will talk more from a generous generalist perspective about how Japan sees the development in this area, i.e. the interlinkage between the NATO community, your Atlantic community and the Indo-Pacific community. And if I may, I would like to talk a little bit about my personal experience. When I first arrived in DC three years ago, I sensed that there was a kind of gap between the Euro-Atlantic community and the Indo-Pacific community, not just in the diplomatic world but in the think tank or the academia and in the business. The gap between Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific communities, both camps competing against each other to get more attention of the Biden administration. And still worse, lapsing into a negative spiral as it were, both camps arguing which is more important, i.e. Russia or China, which is more important or should command higher priority. And I thought that was wrong, even self-defeating. We should, if anything, engender a sense of community bound by value and interest, because after all, we are working on the same goal. And the interest and approaches that we are talking about here in the context of security, that transcends geography, as Ambassador Rudd mentioned. Of course, geography matters, but increasingly there are areas where our interest and approaches transcend the traditional idea of security. So I think by now there is no doubt, very little doubt, about the interlinkage and the commonality of security interests of the two communities, the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific. Why? Quite obvious, two factors. One, of course, is the evolution or the deepening of the Russia-China strategic partnership. And of course, most starkingly evident development is the Ukraine war. And this morning I just browsed through the recent NATO Strategic Concept paper and I noticed this reference. The theaters, oh, the threats we face currently are global and interconnected. And I think this captures the fundamental reason why our two communities are so bound closely. And of course, the blatant violation of international law and norms, the unilateral aggression by Russia and the attempt to change the status quo by force. That, of course, is the reason why we are all united against Russia. And there is also recognition amongst all the players that the Russia-China partnership is going to stay for the foreseeable future. And the reason why Japan supports the Ukraine war efforts and participate in the economic sanctions against Russia is not because we are asked to participate. It's in our own interest. And there is a strong sense of participation amongst the general public in Japan. It's in our own interest. And Japan believes defending the existing international order is in our best interest. And of course, as Ambassador Eikenberg mentioned, Japan faces Russia geographically on the Far East side of the continent. We have an unresolved border dispute with Russia for almost 80 years, which is denied as peace treaty with Russia to settle World War II. And of course, Japan confronts pressure from China on a daily basis in the East China Sea. People talk a lot about the South China Sea, but in fact, there is also the East China Sea question. And I would advise you to look at the map very carefully. There are seas apart between East China Sea and South China Sea. So altogether, I think there is no doubt that there is a growing sense of commonality of our interests and approaches. And through this Russia-China collaboration and the awareness of the trance boundary threats that we face, cyber, critical emerging tech, space, maritime question, disinformation, and so on. And another important factor which I think Europeans or their European community is beginning to realize is that Russia's war efforts in Ukraine is only sustainable if China continues to support Russia. So there has been a recent talk about NATO opening its Far East outpost in Tokyo. And for good reason, NATO has interest in monitoring. And if necessary, check Chinese behavior in the interest of NATO. So and of course, this is not going to happen overnight. It's going to take some time. But there is a natural sort of coming together of our minds and interests in this area as well. So our approach to security in the Indo-Pacific will basically be based on first and foremost on the U.S.-Japan alliance, bilateral alliance arrangement. But on top of that, we think that there is a kind of multi-layered web of bilateral and minilateral cooperation such as the Quad, U.S.-Japan Australia, U.S.-Japan ROK, Japan Australia, Japan ROK, Japan New Zealand, and the rest. So this together with a greater level of NATO engagement in the region will contribute, we believe will contribute greatly to the peace and stability of the Indo-Pacific. And that I think would be the basis of how we approach this question of the growing, the conversions of the interest between the two communities. You've got a very well-spoken. Thank you very much. So now we turn to the Republic of Korea and Deputy Chief of Mission Kim. You have had a remarkable series of assignments with respect to international security and to Korean security issues. So you've served as the ROK Presidential Secretary for Peace Planning. You've served within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Director-General for Foreign and National Security Policy. And several years ago, you were in Honolulu as the Council General enjoying better weather than Washington, D.C., but having very close relations with the United States Indo-Pacific Command. And I wanted to tell you, Deputy Chief of Mission, I just had a visit there in May and your reputation and legacy lives on. So I know we will all welcome very much your opening remarks. Thank you. Thank you, Ambassador Kimberley. He mentioned about the life in Honolulu. I'm not supposed to talk about the beautiful ocean or, you know, wonderful landscape. But I want to mention that in Honolulu, we have only five consulate generals. These P4, first the Philippines. These are only five. And they are all the alliance of the United States. And these P4 countries work together for the betterment of the security and safety in the Pacific. I want to reiterate the importance, strategic importance of the location of the international importance of Hawaii and in the Pacific. So these four countries always gather together to talk about China, Russia, and how to defend the democracy and free world against some big powers from the north. So I learned a lot in there. I made friends with a couple of admirals and generals. And well, that's it for my life in Hawaii. For Koreans and the Korea, Europe about until a decade ago, Europe is a far away wonderland where I feel tower, Roman churches, and Buckingham Palace sets, and popped up a lot of mermaid swims. But because of the drastic change of geopolitics and for the needs of solidarity among the free democracies, it was a high time to have more allegiance and solidarity between European, between the Pacific, you know, power and a Euro-Atlantic power. So this is a very high time to talk about the solidarity among the Pacific and the EU and NATO. Well, my special thanks to President Grande and Dr. Staths and Ambassador Kimberley again for organizing this wonderful event. On the occasion of the NATO summit in Vilnius today, I wanted to provide some background on Korea's foreign policy and our history of cooperation within the NATO and AP4. As described in our National Security Strategy 2023, Korea's foreign policy is rooted in the notion that the world is at an inflection point of history. For the past decades, the rule-based order has been the bedrock of stability and prosperity for the globe with ongoing trends of globalization, democratization, and innovation. However, the conflict in Ukraine and economic coercion came to represent a significant challenge to the existing view. At the same time, the world is facing transnational threats like the pandemic, supply chain disruptions, AI, and other emerging threats. Also, we must not forget the threat posed by North Korea with the increasing nuclear and missile capabilities, a topic I will visit later. Such a challenge often desicitized reorientation of one's foreign policy. In our case, Korea has put forward a new vision of a global pivotal state with an emphasis on freedom and solidarity. Korea has upheld the idea of freedom and liberal democracy for the past 70 years. Thanks to this, we were able to achieve the status of the 10th largest economy now. And here, NATO and AP4 are important partners of Korea who share the universal values of freedom, democracy, human rights, and rule of law. With them, Korea is committed to supporting the world-based order together. When it comes to Korea-NATO ties, great tries have been made since Korea became NATO's global partners in 2006. The Madrid summit last year holds a special significance as the first time that a Korean president was invited. The detailed plans for the future will be made clear later, but President Yoon gave some clues on our shared goal of cooperation in his speech in Madrid last year. That no single country can take on complex security challenges along today. And that our cooperation with NATO will contribute to international solidarity for universal values. As a sign of our enhanced commitment, we also established a permanent representative to NATO headquarters. Currently, Korea-NATO cooperation is focused on expanding joint response against emerging security threats, such as in cyberspace and new technologies. NATO's agenda for cooperation with AP4 is also in progress, featuring cyber and hybrid threats, climate change, and maritime security. Meanwhile, Korea also concluded the ITPP that was actually today, which will include new areas of cooperation such as public democracy and women's empowerment. In the summit, one of the most prominent topics would be Ukraine. Korea has long sided with the allies and partners for an anti-Russia invasion, so that peace returns to Ukraine immediately. Going forward, we are planning to continue to assist Ukraine in many different capabilities. Pivoting back to our own region, the strategic importance of the Indo-Pacific needs no further elaboration. This is home to 65% of the world population and 62% of global GDPs, a critical maritime trade route, and the center of semiconductor and other industries of importance. In this vein, AP4 is a community in which we can work together for our shared value, and we look forward to hosting the new rounds of AP summit tomorrow. Since we first met last year at NATO, the four countries have continued high-level talks, and the Vice Minister meeting in January was joined by the EU as well. All of these highlights Korea's commitment to the values of freedom, peace, and prosperity as described in our own Indo-Pacific stretch ever, first ever revealed last year. Lastly, on the challenges posed by North Korea, we believe that the world must come together to issue a firm warning that there is nothing to be gained from sticking to the path of provocation. Today, our approach to North Korea would be best summarized at the three Ds, deterrence against nuclear threats, decision from continuing nuclear development, and three, dialogue as a means to achieve denuclearization. Meanwhile, North Korea's human rights remain in a dire situation as well, and we need to continue to speak up for the people of North Korea to make a positive difference. In closing, our foreign policy approach to the new security environment is cooperative diplomacy with an emphasis on solidarity. The state visitor President Yoon to Washington in this April represented a drastic upgrade of the alliance to address many complicated issues. We also opened a new era of cooperation with Japan and our long-standing friendship and cooperation with Australia and New Zealand are growing stronger as well. To reiterate, Korea is committed to continuing efforts to promote freedom, peace, and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific and the world along with NATO and AP4 countries. This is not an agenda here, but I dare to say, I strongly hopefully have to say that this year is genuinely the E1 of the true cooperation among three countries, Korea, Japan, and the United States. So this is also another symbolic gesture and token of our democracies to show solidarity and allegiance to the whole world. And I want to welcome even though we are not a member of NATO, I want to say welcome to Sweden. Thank you. Thank you so much and it was very, very insightful. So Ambassador Corrie, we've talked with our three colleagues here about previous assignments and for yourself you've had formative assignments in the United States, Europe, Southeast Asia, Australia and both service in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of National Defense making it very well suited for today's discussion and we just reconnected and found out in 2001 that Brigadier General Carl Eichenberry had the honor of escorting Prime Minister Helen Clark to Arlington Cemetery shortly after 9-11 and a junior officer in the embassy was in her entourage there, so great to reconnect. You've got to, you know, in a way you've got the most challenging task for the AP4 in providing a rationale now for New Zealand's relations with NATO because if you're looking at distance from the AP4 to Brussels, you win. You're at 11,630 26 miles, you out distance Australia by 1,244 miles you're located almost halfway around the world from Brussels and I did want to highlight that your former Prime Minister Jacinda Arden at the NATO summit in Madrid last year, she interestingly said I quote, New Zealand is not here to expand our military alliances, we are here to contribute to a world that lessens the need for anyone to call on them so we welcome your remarks. Thanks very much Carl, great to be here this morning on the mileage thing, it's good to find another domain that New Zealand beats Australia, but whether distance from Brussels is quite the victory that we're seeking is another matter, but more seriously I think as you've heard from the panel this morning contemporary security challenges collapse mileage and that distance is becoming less relevant thanks to you and to the USIP for convening this very important event so timely as everybody has said with our four leaders about to attend a session of the NATO summit in Vilnius and I thought I'd begin by in a sense acknowledging my colleagues on the panel because of as they've all said in various ways acknowledging the countries they come from it is not some sort of accident that it is that are engaging with NATO and that NATO is in turn engaging with for New Zealand Australia is our ally and our closest friend Japan and Korea are very important regional partners with whom we're developing increasingly close and intimate relationships we all have a long but growing history of security cooperation in our region in a secure open peaceful and prosperous Indo-Pacific and more widely a secure open peaceful and prosperous Euro-Atlantic area as well similarly New Zealand and NATO are closely like-minded partners with a strong commitment to what we call the rules-based order and to established values and norms and for that reason we very much welcomed the invitation to attend the Vilnius summit as we did last year on the subject of the Madrid summit and now former Prime Minister's attendance in Madrid last year was an opportunity obviously to underline our perspectives on the same issue that everybody has raised this morning Russia's invasion of Ukraine which in company with NATO and with our friends here we unequivocally condemned and to condemn but of course our presence at the summit last year and again this year reflects the global consequences and I think Kevin said it first of what we're once seen as regional security challenges there is a continuum if you like between the security of the two regions I like the word that Kevin used a seamlessness, a growing seamlessness and this is shown in distant countries like New Zealand contributing to the defence of a far-off land such as Ukraine and it is shown of course in NATO's growing interest in our region as others have said our relationship and as Ambassador Eichenberry said at the beginning our relationship with NATO is not new dates back over 25 years might surprise some people here today that we first deployed on NATO operations in 1996 in Bosnia Herzegovina and of course we had as Carl well knows we had security forces in Afghanistan for over 20 years as part of NATO's ISAF there at a very practical level I might add that much of the New Zealand Defence Forces equipment is built to NATO standards and our doctrine, training, tactics and procedures are all influenced by NATO's practice and that's very important that kind of engagement with NATO helps ensure that our military remains interoperable with partners and that it can maintain high levels of capability obviously while we have as I've said engaged with NATO for many years Russia's actions over the last 16 months in Ukraine and their consequences for international security and stability including that as others have said this morning for our region have galvanised this relationship Russia's disregard for the UN Charter for international law poses what we would see as the most acute threat to the international rules-based system since the Second World War so we stand with NATO, the Allies and our partners condemning those actions in the strongest possible terms as a result we made a number or continuing to make a number of significant contributions to the defence of NATO of both the Mediterranean and other kinds I won't detail those this morning but doing so reflects what we see as the global implications of Russia's invasion which in addition to posing a challenge to the rules-based system also has serious consequences as Kevin said in his presentation for the global economy, for fuel and for food prices strategic disruption though is not confined to the consequences of Russia's invasion of Ukraine as Prime Minister Ardern then Prime Minister Ardern said in Madrid last year in our neighbourhood we see the mounting pressure on the international rules-based order we see attempts to disrupt and destabilise separately she said China has become more assertive and more willing to challenge international rules and norms so all these developments are going to shape our relationship with NATO and with our Indo-Pacific partners and this is only going to become more important as we look out to a world where challenges to that order to the rules-based order, coercive behaviours malicious cyber activities, disinformation foreign interference disinformation, I'm sorry, foreign interference emerging and disruptive technologies and the impacts of climate change are all significant challenges and all in various ways have a globalised and not a regional dimension and they all undermine the international order in different and dangerous ways coming back to the IP4 obviously we welcome NATO's engagement with its partners from the region based on exchanging insights and engaging on common security challenges I thought it was worth noting the comments by a NATO official of the Shangri-Daz dialogue recently and to paraphrase him he said NATO is not coming to the region to set up a new alliance structure or to somehow deploy it's coming to the region to engage with it and to share insights with it and I think that's important at last year's summit in Madrid NATO itself highlighted specific issues for that kind of engagement cyber, new technologies, maritime security climate change and these all align well with our own strategic priorities and interests at the same time let us remember that NATO has been clear that it is of course primarily a Euro-Atlantic alliance and our own priority will continue to be the Indo-Pacific and of course our home region of the South Pacific and while we have many interests in common with each of the partners they will have their own bilateral priorities for engagement with NATO and have established bilateral mechanisms for that but this new format as I and others have already said is a very valuable means for dialogue with each other and I'll just briefly linger on that point the creation of the IP4 as an entity that engages with NATO has also nascently created an entity which is the IP4 meeting among themselves so the four leaders of the four countries met separately in Madrid last year Vice Ministers and their equivalents of defence met I think in Tokyo earlier this year the four IP4 foreign ministers met with Secretary General Stoltenberg in Brussels earlier this year and so it's become a forum and it's enabled or helped enable a forum where we talk about those important issues among ourselves as well as with NATO whether that's the implications of Russia's aggression against Ukraine, climate change or if it's to strengthen the resilience of our own region we engage regularly with these partners outside of the NATO context given our shared interest in shaping a peaceful, open, prosperous Indo-Pacific and engaging with these close partners as an opportunity to talk about a broad range of issues and exchange perspectives not always tied directly to NATO Thanks very much again for the opportunity to talk to you this morning Thank you Ambassador, superb insights so actually you've set up then a good question I think for our group up here and that is to drill down a little bit on what are the interests and business of NATO in the Asia-Pacific region you know it's very interesting to know and I think Deputy Chief of Mission Kim you'll appreciate this that if we look back in history NATO was established in 1949 and then we had the Korean War break out in 1950 it was actively fought through 1953 what is underappreciated is that the Korean War itself had an impact then on the more rapid development of NATO as dots were connected between what was going on in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe but regardless that was 70 years ago and so some, most especially China have termed NATO as a cold war relic without relevance in Asia indeed the current PRC envoy to the United Nations Ambassador Jang Jun he said during a speech at the United Nations in June last year I quote we urged NATO to learn its lessons and not use the Ukraine crisis as an excuse to stoke worldwide block confrontation or a new cold war and not to look for imaginary enemies in the Asia-Pacific or artificially create contradictions and divisions we firmly oppose certain elements clamoring for NATO's involvement in the Asia-Pacific or an Asia-Pacific version of NATO on the back of military alliances the long outdated cold war script must never be reenacted in the Asia-Pacific and I take it that he's not in favor then of this Ambassador Rudd in addition to being a statesman, a diplomat and a national leader you also have a considerable expertise in China one of the most preeminent scholars in my view on China so I'd like to start with you then how do you respond to Ambassador Jang Jun well that's interesting the Chinese have an expression any Chinese speakers here in the room it's called Hushuobadal which is, we don't agree with that or rubbish yeah and I think they're simply the ambassador's doing his job as the Chinese PR to the UN but two points simply need to be made one which relates to the United Nations and the centrality therefore of international law our friends in China need to reflect very carefully on the permanent court of arbitration to terminate sorry the the mechanism, the UN mechanism in the Hague which determined a position based on the submission from the government of the Philippines on the nine dash lines which underpin China's territorial claim to the South China Sea what the established international legal authority determined was that the Chinese claim was without foundation without any legal merit under UN law of the sea so it is important to establish a factual basis for our engagement with China which often says it adheres to an international system anchored in the UN Charter as opposed to what it describes as a western concept which is the international rules based order which they allege is the UN Charter plus American strategic power that purely within the terms of the UN Charter and the UN system and the UN based international legal machinery through the UNCLOS arrangements that their claim to this significant piece of maritime real estate is without legal foundation and that is simply a matter of record of course China chooses to reject that fact and it has done so vociferously and voluminously but it is a major hole in the PRC argument about the nature of the international system that it seeks to defend it has through the South China Sea achieved one huge carve out so to my good friend and colleague Zhang Jun I would say have a close look at the consistency of China's position on that score with what was determined by the appropriate international legal authority on the other I think the second point in terms of his broader position about NATO entering into the Indo-Pacific is simply this that the nature of NATO's interest in the Indo-Pacific region has grown over years as a consequence of the Indo-Pacific's rising economic significance I think our Korean colleague referred to the numbers just before also our NATO colleagues and friends see a vast array of emerging security challenges in the Indo-Pacific which are of direct and indirect relevance to them and so therefore that's important for us to note and the final point I think in response to our Chinese colleagues reflection is as follows that the view that China has adopted against all US alliances as being relics of the Cold War has been a longstanding Chinese view since the end of the Cold War and prior to the end of the Cold War and that is it is universal Chinese political doctrine to oppose any form of alliance with anybody other than the alliance which exists between China and the DPRK and so which I would have thought has some Cold War residences itself so therefore we simply need to understand this is a longstanding political doctrine of the Chinese foreign ministry it's used in multiple theaters whether it's against continuing US alliance structures in Asia or against NATO within its own domain remember China has been critical of NATO's posture in Ukraine quite apart from NATO's posture or future posture in the Indo-Pacific so this is a longstanding strategic position of the Chinese foreign ministry and I think in these two sets of circumstances for these two sets of reasons objective facts fly in the face of the Chinese position Deputy Chief of Mission Kim I'd like to ask for your views I also add that you're a frontline state that's facing a nuclear armed in a very belligerent North Korea and you're also aware that Pyongyang opposes NATO ties with Asia Pacific countries earlier this year when Secretary General Stoltenberg made a very successful visit to Seoul and then to Tokyo a North Korean analyst wrote in one of his state newspapers that the Secretary General's trip to Seoul was quote a prelude to war and confrontational behavior bringing quote the flame of a new Cold War to the Asia Pacific region and he went on to condemn Secretary General Stoltenberg is the head of a military organization that turned Ukraine into a theater of proxy war known as rival in the Asia Pacific region which is out of his operational scope is raising concerns how do you reply? All right, what North Korea tells the world is just like what Chinese tell the world that's more or more mimic of what Chinese tell to the world North Korea has a hundred ways of verbally attack the free world including South Korea, NATO, EU and the United States and AP4 when they talk about NATO's allegiance in the Pacific and Secretary General's visit to Korea and Japan this is also the token of frustration that North Korea has because they are more and more isolated from the outer world and they had a very good excuse to show allegiance with Russia whenever there is some big conflict between Ukraine and Russia they always make a statement supporting very, very strongly supporting and condemning European, NATO and the United States and other free worlds so North Korea's statement and remarks on NATO's collaboration with the inter-Pacific is just a meaning just a meaning of their frustration that we have against them what is interesting is that North Korea for the first time described the Republic Korea as Republic Korea yesterday Kim Yeo-jung, Kim Jong-un, KJU's sister who is the highest possible lacking person, not an officer person to say Kim Jong-un she condemned South Korea and the United States for transpassing their own border which was not true actually so follows this information to the world what was interesting is that she picked up the word Republic of Korea not South Korean puppet or South Korean official language that they use for South Korea the analysis is going on and we are working on it but one thing that we can think about why did they say North Republic Korea it seems that they want to go for a normal country not a entity or a group they want to show themselves as a very stable, normal country allied with China and Russia so that they can make a more formal and official voice to the world so when we are talking about inter-Pacific alliance, allegiance when we are talking about solidarity between the NATO and the Pacific then they want to have another chain of solidarity among Russia, China, North Korea, maybe Belarus so it's getting clearer and clearer and then the world is going more clear grouping between democracy and non-democracy world that's the remarks that I can say to you very, very insightful, thank you I'm cognizant of time and as I understand it Jennifer we're going to go to 11.45 and we do want to get an opportunity to hear from the audience and virtually and physically so let me ask one more question maybe at the same time your staff can start to provide questions here thank you so much what I'd like to do is ask, lay one question out and then if any of three colleagues would like to take this on so I mentioned earlier by Ambassador Corey that the nations, the AP-4 are all working on what we call individually tailored partnership programs or ITPP, count on NATO to come up with a new acronym here and this represents an upgrade to a higher form of partnership that already existed with each one of the AP-4 countries and so the basis of this then is that there's going to be a set of documents that are prepared and road maps developed and then the partners will explore collaboration with NATO on such topics as cyber security space and fighting disinformation indeed I think you said Deputy Chief of Mission Kim that your nation has signed, has got now this document in place great, what I want to do then is ask colleagues here since these are tailored programs they're not AP-4 collective documents in each one of your instances can you briefly say what you would then believe would be your defense establishment your militaries, benefits mutually with NATO that could be achieved here how would these documents look and maybe I could start Ambassador with you Thanks very much Carl we have had a long standing partnership arrangement with NATO and this year it will transition to an individually tailored partnership program what the exact areas it will cover has yet to be agreed I spoke in my formal comments noting the issues that NATO had highlighted for cooperation with the Indo-Pacific four countries at large, cyber issues, new technologies, maritime security and climate change they will align well with New Zealand priorities and I wouldn't be surprised if our ITTP covered at least some of them but as it's yet to be finalized I probably can't say any more at this point Thank you, well yours is signed can you tell us anything about it? My present had a conclusion with counterpart it's about five, five hours or six hours so it's quite brand new agreement between NATO and the Republic of Korea as other things go we want to go first with very, very, very soft issues even though NATO is a military alliance and Korea has a military alliance with the United States but it is a very initial stage of birth so we want to go for soft things like climate change like women's empowerment as I told you before which is it seems not relevant to the security but women's empowerment is quite a big, big issue in Korea as well so we want to go for it we want to go for public diplomacy which is again a very soft one but a very important thing that we can learn from the people and the leaders of the country so we will start with that That's very helpful, very clear and thank you for your candor there My understanding is that the Republic of Korea and Australia are probably the most advanced in their discussions of this agreement but can you give any insights into how your country could look at this? I think there was an important announcement in January this year when Senator General Stoltenberg visited Japan where we issued a joint statement Japan-NATO statement where we identified four areas critical areas where we can further explore deep in our collaboration Japan is of course cyber as many emitters have described today and also space disinformation and critical and emerging technologies but I would say on top of that we would like to further expand our layers of consultations and discussion intelligence sharing at all levels from the ministerial to the working level through our diplomatic outposts in Europe and NATO countries so information sharing, consultations at all levels that would be also a very important area we would like to strengthen Thank you, very helpful So starting to turn to questions now from the audience Are we finding a way to get the virtual questions into? Oh, these are, okay So to paraphrase from several of these then we've talked about that the AP-4 is not a formal grouping it's four countries that have direct relations with NATO and Brussels but NATO has all kinds of formal groupings of countries there's something called the Partnership for Peace the Mediterranean Dialogue the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative So then I'd ask our three diplomatic representatives here this question, as you look at the AP-4 as a group now and into the future is there any merit in making it a more informal organization or even a formal organization and if you can speculate in Vilnius what are your four heads of state going to be talking about? And could we start Chargé with you? Sure I think we should not sort of overvalue the importance of kind of institutionalization of our fledgling or burgeoning collaboration What is important that we have sort of mutual interest mutual engagement in each other's areas I have this, I always find the analogy of the broken window theory which Mayor Giuliani used to espouse when he was mayor the more eyeballs watching the area the better to deter or to prevent crime I think that was the poor idea behind that and I think that applies to security in general the more countries who engage in a specific area or domain the more that can deter malfaisance or malicious behavior and I think that is the value of NATO countries engaging and participating in the Indo-Pacific security affairs so at this stage I would like to see more general interest of the European countries, NATO countries engage in the Indo-Pacific situation to understand the distinction between East China Sea and South China Sea, no I'm just joking here and to have that sort of wider appreciation of the value of the convergence of interest between our two communities Thanks, I will remember the broken window analogy Ambassador, your thoughts on AP4, informal should become more formal, what do you talk about? Well, it's early days, isn't it? We've had one press at the summit last year and another one this year I'm not aware that anyone on either side in either realm, the Euro-Atlantic realm or the Indo-Pacific realm is talking about formalizing anything One of our panelists this morning used a word which I thought was very apt and that word was community, building a community and I think that's quite a helpful way to think about it with habits of dialogue, habits of cooperation habits of engagement and I'm pretty confident we can achieve that under the current format whereby we are now in the process of having had one in nearly two summits and as I mentioned in my comments earlier a set of meetings in other formats with foreign ministers or defense officials and I think that is a good way to manage the IP4 concept for now Thank you, so again continuing with questions here Chengu for you I'll just read the question, well written Since the United Nations Security Council is paralyzed is NATO a better venue to seek support to make real changes in addressing the North Korea threat? In other words, how can NATO help if at all with regard to the North Korea challenge? I thought of getting questions about this for this former previous speaker Please, please do No, I'm just kidding No, please do if you want How can I, how can we do how can I solve the North Korean issues with the help of the NATO? Well, United Nations they made the very strong the both strongest possible sanctions on North Korea with the resolution 17, 18, 18 we imposed very harsh, very harsh sanctions on North Korea it worked, but not 100% just because, not just because because a country unofficially giving them a path there is a leeway always and that leeway was made by a country but that country do not acknowledge what that country does so this is the reality and how can NATO help us to denuclearize North Korea? That's a long way to go I really don't have the right answer right now because I didn't even think about getting the question from the audience the only thing that I can say to you is that what the cooperation with NATO and European countries and other value shared countries we can push them in a high upended, high ethics and high moral way well that's the initial state that NATO can help us I don't know more about it that's it let me ask you to follow up on the earlier question too about the AP4 as a informal or more formal kind of organization at this stage what should the heads of state of the AP4 be talking about? I want to echo previous speakers on that we don't have any specific time frame for making formal this is a community where we can share our opinions and our policies AP4, this terminology is only used related to NATO Korea, Japan, New Zealand and Australia they are the democracy in the Pacific as Damaki said before we have a multi-minilateral formula in this region three of us, four with Australia US, Japan, Korea New Zealand, Korea, Australia so many miniliterals for our now existence so when you're talking about AP it's quite artificial so let me think like this AP4 is a forum that like-minded countries can freely talk about our future that's it for now that's a very good framing I'm going to just give a cognizant we're going to end here in five minutes I'm going to ask one more question directly to Sharjah from the audience here but I'd ask all of you to turn it to you each one of you when we finish for a final one minute of remarks so the question for you Sharjah Maki is that, again, reading will the Envision NATO liaison office that you had talked about that was being recommended by Secretary General Stoltenberg creation of a NATO liaison office in Tokyo which is we understand it because of concerns right now at the highest level of the French government will be postponed for further deliberation maybe into the fall or winter but the question is that if you get there with that office will this contributed all in responding to the North Korean threat and this is from Voice of America well the question of opening a physical presence in Japan or Tokyo I think that is not an important thing the important thing is that we continue to develop this sort of gradual understanding of each other's threat perception and sort of mutual intrusive I would say understanding of each other's policy towards Russia and China and wider region and the question of opening an office there we are not a demandor so we of course welcome that move we already have our representation in Brussels we will open our formal stand-alone NATO mission next year in Brussels so through that channel and other channels that exist already I think there is de facto very very good information sharing so opening of a physical office would be sort of a final step in that build up so we are very optimistic that our path towards growing and more formalized relationship will happen in the very near future thank you so let's do the final quick round here and Deputy Chief of Mission Kim if I could begin with you just any final thoughts you wanted after this great hour and a half of discussion that you wanted to leave with the audience here well thank you again Carl this was a very unique chance and very good chance that we can talk about AP4 this is my first time to talk about AP4 among the context of the NATO but this topic was packed by USIP and the pack up of this AP4 itself meant that already in the Pacific and the Euro-Atlantic coalition were made we have to go further and further in making our free world be more free and more democratic we are the fully democratic full-fledged democracies so we have some sort of obligation to share our value with the human rights and the importance of life and death to the people who do not enjoy so that was our final game and the aim very eloquent Ambassador Corey thanks very much Carl really by way of final comment I just want to thank the institute for convening this great event and so expertly compared and participated in by colleagues it's really clear from the actual and virtual attendance that this is a topic of a lot of interest in some respects of course it's also somewhat tantalising because we're all trying to foreshadow an event that is happening in sort of a matter of hours so the summit itself or the section of the summit that engages the Indo-Pacific four hasn't actually happened and no doubt will all be more enlightened I think tomorrow I think it occurs in Villiers tomorrow not later today and so there will obviously be more to say more to say on this and as the community as I've chosen to call it evolves we look forward to having more discussions with all of you so thanks again thanks Ambassador and Sharjah to you sorry just one observation before we close is the mic one okay yes today we have been talking about AP Asia Pacific four but I noticed when I was listening to Ambassador Rudd he referred to AP four as IP four and I thought I was wondering whether it stood for Indo-Pacific four or the Australian pronunciation well that was my humble observation I wish he was here to hear that thank you so we come to the end of what I think has been just a wonderful hour and a half together here so a couple of ending points here first of all to Lee's Grande Jennifer to you and your great USIP team thank you so much secondly we know that in Vilnius right now and tomorrow there's history is being written that's no understatement or not an overstatement history is being written and I have to say after our discussion up here I've got confidence it's going to be good history and then third and last to include Ambassador Rudd I think all of you would agree with me that who we have sitting up here right now are superb superb representatives of their country their countries are lucky to have them here in the United States of America is lucky to have them in Washington DC so a round of applause to all of you