 Welcome back after lunch. My name is Yongwook Ryu. I teach and research in the Department of International Relations here. As you know, lunchtime is an interesting time when a lot of amazing things can happen and one thing that happens during this lunchtime is we have new chair for this session, which is me. So I don't know whether it's an amazing and good happening but we will see how it goes. I'm not qualified enough to chair any session relating to Mongolia. My research is not about Mongolia. I do research about its neighbors, though, such as China and Japan. So perhaps that's one linkage with this session and me. But also I research on international relations and foreign policy, security policy, so that's probably the closer link between me and our speaker today. Let me not waste any more time because we do have a very interesting session coming up. Professor, and here I have to issue a warning. I probably cannot pronounce your name accurately. Professor Monk Orcher Dorchester. It's perfect. Close enough, right? He is a current director of Defense Policy Institute at the National Defense University in Mongolia. He is an expert on Mongolian foreign affairs, as well as security and strategic studies. His research interests include Mongolian history, especially the 21st century history, political and military implications of historical events, and Mongolian national security. He's been a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in U.S.A. from 2010 and 2011, and he was a formerly an associate senior researcher at the Institute of Strategic Studies at Mongolia's National Security Council and an officer in the Mongolian Army. And during the lunchtime I had an opportunity to speak with Professor Dorchester, and I found him a very approachable and interesting person. And I might add, without glasses, he probably looks like the former Mongolian small champion in Japan, as well. So without further ado, let's welcome our speaker. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Yu. That's too much of a flattering. It's quite a boring thing, isn't it? It's after lunch, 2 o'clock p.m. I always hate to speak... I have speaking engagements during this period of time. For obvious human physiological reasons, people are not prone to listen to lengthy speeches at this time of the day. It is also a customary, almost a ritualistic tradition that any venues like this, especially international fora, for a speaker to mention three things in advance. Thanking the hosts, which I will do now, not because I must, but because I'm sincere, and for obvious reasons I will mention afterwards during my presentation. I think it's really truly an important event, A&U in particular, the Mongolia Institute, Professor Narongla and Ambassador Bolden, his dedicated team put together to make this happen. And I thank you all for your hard work efforts. Again, not just because I'm trying to be nice and polite, but for some reasons I will mention during my presentation. And second thing people usually do is to try to find similarities between the host country and his or her own country. And again, I'm not trying to mention the obvious things like the population density, the landscape, the economic, the mining factor in the economy, et cetera, et cetera. I will just mention that our two countries undoubtedly share two very important, two very significant similarities. One is of course our country. Thank you. The values we share. Earlier our distinguished panelists spoke about our commitment to democracy. It's a bit rocky, it's a bit challenging, it's a bit messy, but nevertheless we are committed to make our country a fledgling democracy. And secondly, both nations envision ourselves as an Asia and Pacific player, an actor, positioning to be, to play a more engaging and active role in our border region, Asia and Pacific for political and security reasons. And based on that similarity and those commonalities we have, I will try to dwell on what I'm going to talk to you. And third, it's almost ritualistic to say that usually every speaker says this is my personal opinion, my opinions do not necessarily reflect the position of the government of this country or that country. I work for the government, I'm a military officer in the Mongolian armed forces, so although I don't think any of my findings and ideas would be strongly rejected by my authorities, I nevertheless, for the sake of safety net, mentioned that these should not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Ministry of Defense, the armed forces of Mongolia or the National Defense University of Mongolia. Okay, I have to discuss or just throw some ideas, make some, cite some facts, numbers and ideas, but also a few words about ensuing controversies. What a speech without mentioning controversies or problems or challenges about Mongolia's national security policy in general and defense reforms and Mongolian armed forces peacekeeping commitments in particular. So it's a very challenging task. We have time limits, I have to smash these broad issues together into one, otherwise what I'm afraid would be an incoherent and illogical presentation. It's somewhat easier for me because throughout the past 22 years of Mongolia's all-rounded social, economic and political transformation, my sector, the defense and security has been, I should probably say, the most successfully transformed, the least controversially transformed reformed sectors of our public life. But also it should be a challenging because I have to lump many different ideas, different numbers in a nutshell. I also shall mention that only a couple of days ago we have witnessed the first ever inaugural successful visit by our child, Chief of Defense Forces to Australia with his Australian counterpart and I am beginning to hear news that the visit was successful and ideas were shared about enhancing our bilateral ties in the years to come. Okay, I shall start from the national security concept in very general terms what it is because it's the guiding principle, guiding document of our national policy when it comes to national security, foreign policy, defense transformation and whatnot else. The current concept was adopted, promulgated by our parliament two years ago in the summer of 2010. It is the second national security concept in Mongolia's history, the first being the one adopted in 1994. Although it's a different document, it echoes the same principles and it continues to display the strategies that the nation, the government and people of Mongolia must take in order to ensure, maximally safeguard our national security. Although it's revised, it is stemming from the principles of respect to human rights, maximum sovereignty of Mongolia, becoming an active player in international arena. All these principles as enshrined in the constitution of Mongolia of 1992. So what is basically our own perception of security? We have to look at the geographical, geopolitical and yes demographic and cultural and historical situations of Mongolia which is rather unique compared to many other nations. We are in a very unique neighborhood. As our president once told to an American audience, some call it quote from the president, some call it a rough neighborhood but in my opinion it could be also rather benign neighborhood and end of quote. What did he mean? And I can't agree any more with that. You might think it's rough. We are sandwiched between two nuclear powers, two giant non-democracies, both of whom had either strong influence or a domineering position in Mongolia's history. But let's take a look at this phenomenon from a half full approach rather than a glass half empty approach. The two strong powers are effectively shielding Mongolia from a number of international parallels such as terrorist threat, insurgency in any part of the world because these two are strong, these two are centralized and these two neighbors are, they want to make sure that no such international parallels enter their own, they want to make sure that they will put down any manifestations of such parallels should they enter their own national territories. And Mongolia being isolated by hundreds and thousands of kilometers from any other third physical country, that makes us relatively a, from a security practitioner point of view, relatively safe neighborhood. And we're also in the midst of a triple bilateral strategic partnerships. What do I mean by triple bilateral strategic partnerships? We have a Mongolia Russia strategic partnership agreement. The strategic partnership, it's one of the highest levels of confidence. It's not yet alliance, but it's good enough. We have Mongolia, China strategic partnership relations and last but not the least, Russia and China have their own bilateral strategic partnership relations. We don't have any trilateral setting, but we live in the midst of a triple bilateral strategic partnership relations, which makes us to differently, rather than any small nation, rather than any nation of our caliber to see, to have the perception of our security. And we have the comprehensive notion, the comprehensive concept of what national security means, which is not only the physical existence of Mongolia as a country, independence and sovereignty issues to our greatest advantage seem to be out of immediate question. We have no territorial disputes or even any political disagreements on major issues without your neighbors. So we live in a relatively, say, advantageous time and period in history with a relatively advantageous strictly speaking from the security point of view to indulge what we can define our security. It's basically comprehensive, it's human security. So the meaning of national security is to ensure the maximum quality of life and well-being to each and every Mongolian citizen. So the security concept is dictated both by the contemporary mindset, political and social economic realities. So in one hand, it's depending on the mindset, the perception of Mongolians about our own security. Also it reflects political, social and economic realities. So it's both idealist and realistic outlook. And it says for the pure existence, pure physical notion of security, political and diplomatic actions should be the primary means of achieving such security. I'll briefly scheme through what are the six constituent parts and then probably save more time to a more concrete issue about what we have been doing for the defence reform. In our concept, we define Mongolian national security is composed of six constituent parts. The first one is we call security of existence. In a more recognised international relations and security studies term it will be physical security of nation. Even including the cultural and demographic notions of security which is a bit controversial but I would say it's a necessary component of how we define it and I'll probably leave it for the further discussion. Domestic, which means political security, continuation of our liberal democratic governance, economic security which is not a very broadly interpreted notion. I should say it by no means it should mean that we want an isolated economy or we want a non-interdependent economy. Actually it emphasises on diversifying the trade partners, investment partners so that Mongolian economy would be more interdependent with the global economy but excluding, avoiding the situation in which Mongolian economy would be overwhelmingly dependent on one single country. The notion of human security as well, environment and ecology is one important aspect particularly the information security including freedom of information for citizens as well. Let's probably better focus on the notion of traditional security and foreign policy. As stated in both the constitution, the foreign policy concept as well as the national security concept, priority relations for Mongolia and equal, priority of foreign relations and equal treatment of the two neighbours is enshrined in all three documents. Where have we come to this idea? Priority and equal, some say equidistant relations with two neighbours. It's a lesson we learned the hard way from the Cold War existence. Throughout the four decades past World War II, Mongolia had to endure what we call the double Cold War, the Cold War between the Communist bloc and the western free world in the one hand and also the Cold War within the larger Communist bloc led by two arch-rival communist states, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. I'm not going to enter the lengthy discussions on whether or not it was rational or not to one-sidedly align with the Soviets but at the time of Mongolia's democratisation we realised there shouldn't be repeated without any objective reason. So Mongolia, as our framers of the constitution and security strategy, many of these distinguished statesmen are present here, especially on this front row, have decided back then in the early 1990s that save for the most worst case scenario in which vital national interests of Mongolia are at stake, Mongolia should not enter a formal alliance with either one of the neighbours or even any other country. It basically means we will uphold the principles of neutrality and non-alignment. The word neutrality ensues one caveat. It means we still preserve the sovereign right to enter any necessary alliance should our vital national interests are at stake, meaning should any country attempt an armed invasion or something short of that we still preserve the right to enter an alliance with either one of the neighbours or any other country. But as I told you earlier we are currently indulging ourselves in a relatively benign time and space so that we can focus more on not building immediate military and political alliances but further in transforming our national defence capabilities. And even with the priority relations of the two neighbours there's always a strong strategic mindset among the Mongolians for centuries of always trying to overcome the tyranny of geography, the tyranny of distance, of trying to create bridges, build bridges, create new contacts, partnerships with lands far beyond our immediate neighbourhood. And of course the wonderful opportunity came with the opening and democratisation of Mongolia in the late 1990s and early 1980s and early 1990s. And that is very eloquently styled with the term the third neighbour policy. And of course everybody knows that we only have two physical neighbours and third neighbour is rather virtual notion rather than realistic notion. The third neighbour policy as stipulated in our policy documents is primarily advanced democracies. It's not a completely new concept. Successive political regimes and monarchy, even the earlier socialist regime in Mongolia in 1920s have attempted to overcome the tyranny of distance but of course as I said the opportunity came only with Mongolia's democratic transformation. It basically means no country including our two immediate neighbours can exert an absolute leverage. I'm not ruling out the fact that neighbours have leverage over their neighbours. Bigger, powerful neighbours have leverage over their smaller neighbours. I'm not naive about that, we're not naive. We're talking about no country shall have an absolute leverage especially in the light of growing economic interdependence between countries and regions. We can probably sum, and I should warn you that I am just lumping categorising into the four pillars. I mean it's not anything stated in the official policy documents. It's just my own imagination just for the sake of making the ideas more or less clear to you. The so-called third neighbour policy of Mongolia we can assume is based on four pillars essentially. One is political, another one is diplomatic, the third one is economic and social and the fourth one is security component. By political I basically mean it's a commitment to democracy. The only fact which was especially true in the early 1990s but still remaining true now, Mongolia isn't a spotlight of international communities because we are a democracy and we can't ignore that. If we are an authoritarian or semi-authoritarian or even a very benign authoritarian benevolent authoritarian regime with such a small population and small sized economy, I don't think Mongolia would have deserved as much as international attention as we are doing now. So political democracy is not only a luxury of political life, it's not only a conscientious choice of Mongolia and people but it's a national security necessity. It's vital to preserve Mongolia's national security. Secondly, the second pillar is to engage in active bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, being part of regional initiatives, being authors and sponsors of regional initiatives, aspiring to become integral part of regional economic integration and high level summits and organizations as well. We can talk about a number of initiatives, the nuclear weapon free status initiative. It's probably the first and by far only example in which a single country, one country declares itself a nuclear weapon free area. Our modest contribution to regional confidence building such as proposing to host Japan North Korea talks, which is going to happen in Ulaanbaatar for the second time, the first one was in 2007, if I'm not mistaken. We're also aspiring to become, to assume memberships in international Asia Pacific organizations such as APEC, East Asia Summit, as we are already members of ASEM. The third pillar is economic and social interaction, people to people, cultural, educational, in terms of investment, in all these fears we are looking forward to create direct interest and the stakes of the third neighbors to ensure that people-to-people interaction are stable and continuing and to engage in a further educational, cultural exchange. I believe this is pretty much what we are doing today and that's why I want to especially thank the co-hosts of this wonderful event. This is actually not only bringing knowledge and update about Mongolia to the Australian and other international audience here, but it's very helpful to pursue our own, very own national security. So that's why I was beginning to say, I'm utmost grateful for this event. The security component, it's including but not limited to military and military, to military engagement. I just want you to think along with me and try to reimagine Mongolia in the early 1990s. Here we have our former erstwhile benefactor, Soviet Union gun, the troops are withdrawn, we are in the midst of dire economic crisis, the whole economy which was hitherto subsidized is collapsed. We had no prior experiment with free market system, let alone speaking about any representative democracy at all. And guess what, we have had about 90 or 100,000 strong military active duty for a population of 1.9 million then. Per capita it was worse than today's North Korea. I mean everything in Mongolia is per capita. Whether you speak about military deployments, you speak about shares in various sectors in economy or even whether you speak about the number of Olympic medals, everything is per capita. So per capita it was already one of the largest militarized countries in the world in the region. With that economy, we of course couldn't sustain that and also we didn't have any need. Already normalized relations with China created this new foreign policy doctrine which is equal relations to an equal treatment of our two immediate neighbors. So we had to find a way basically to downsize the military force to make it corresponding to the very needs of Mongolia and capabilities, both fiscal and demographic capabilities of Mongolia at that time. So the framers of that agenda, again it's just my personal summarization. It's not really an official documentation. Probably thought about four necessities in order to reform our defense and security sector. One is we should create compact, capable and professionally oriented forces by still maintaining national conscript service but reorganizing to include a more professional and volunteer elements to it. So it's a two in one goal. The second goal, it shouldn't have been a burden on national economy and should not supplant immediate priorities of nation such as economic development, human development. Third, it should not only physically defend Mongolia because we faced no outright enemy. In pure military terms. So it should support Mongolia's foreign policy initiatives and project the country's interest, credibility and image on the international arena. So based on those three, so to speak, policy goals, our defense transformation should have geared toward international peacekeeping operations and other multinational operations. We broadly term it like sometimes MOTW, military operations that are in war, some of which is called international missions for the short. While still upgrading its homeland defense capabilities. So based on those premises about a decade ago, since 2002, I'm not going to talk about how the laws are passed, how many policy papers are written, but since 2002, about 10 years ago, Mongolia began its first overseas deployment of our service members to travel their areas in the world. I'm just going to name you the countries our troops have been. It started with the Democratic Republic of Congo, former Zaire, Western Sahara, Ethiopia and Eritrea, South Sudan, Sudan, it's Darfur, Georgia, Abkhazia, Chad and Central African Republic, Serbia slash Kosovo, Sierra Leone, last but not least, Iraq and Afghanistan. As of the numbers, as of June of this year, 5,776, 5776 service members including officers, non-commissioned officers, contract soldiers, including female officers have gone through one or another or two or three of these missions. It's an accumulative number. It doesn't mean 5776 people in total. It means a cumulative number. Some people have gone twice or thrice. But nevertheless, it's about half of the entire active duty corps of the Mongolian Armed Forces. At any given period between 120 and at minimum and 7 to 800 at maximum can be deployed where the capability of being deployed overseas. What are the forms of engagement? In a number of capacities, military observers, staff officers, these are relatively safe or relatively coveted duties. Also, we have sent to various combat and near combat missions including combat and protection at various levels, platoon level, company level and full battalion level as well. Mobile training teams, especially artillery training teams, e-meds, the medical teams. And of particular note is our bilateral cooperation, what Mongolians and Australians have been doing at the artillery school in Kabul, training the Afghan National Army service members. Who are our lead partners? First and foremost, we should of course note the United Nations because most of these operations are mandated by the United Nations Security Council. Of individual countries, we have to name the United States. NATO, we have been part of two operations. ISAF, International Stability Assistance Force in Afghanistan and formerly the K-4 in Kosovo. And Australia. These are our lead partners. Among other partners we can also name Poland, Germany, Belgium, France and a number of countries. I'm not going to go to details what happened when, who did what. But let me share with you what was our rationale, frankly speaking? Why we needed those deployments? And what are the outcomes? And I should probably lump rational into one, because what we envisioned we are gaining pretty much. Again, I'm categorizing. We had political rationale and political result out of it. Economic, both nationally and for the defence sector. It was economically beneficial. We should not forget the social benefit. The fourth, pure military rationale as well. How important was it for upgrading the skills of our armed forces and individual service members. And last but not least, let's not forget the benefit for the individuals. Let me go to political notion. But political I mean both in terms of realist and idealist terms. It promoted Mongolia's visibility in the international community. It extended the foreign policy by bringing about more partners from different parts of the world. We upgraded, we increased our ability to achieve security assurances from not individual countries as much, but from the international community at a whole. And strategically, it was a litmus test. Especially our first deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan back in 2002 was a litmus test of how would our two immediate neighbors react. Are we crossing any line? Are we not crossing any line? By far, the reactions weren't as harsh as we might as we were afraid of. There's a possibility of a room to maneuver in the international arena, international fora. It was a good litmus test for Mongolia that we indeed are a sovereign nation. Our two neighbors, of course, have leverage, but ultimately not as much as they wish to have, or not as much as we are afraid they might have. And then let's not forget about more idealistic notion of contributing for the common security both globally and regionally. In other words, becoming a country which is not only the recipient of security architecture, but also a provider, a contributor to global and regional security architecture. It's a national pride issue. It's almost like a missionary. It's the zeal. It's the idealistic issue. In some, politically, as our former Defense Minister and Foreign Minister of Mongolia, the namesake of the ambassador told to an audience earlier this year, that peacekeeping commitments means turning or using the hard power which is military into a soft power projecting Mongolia's image. Let's turn to economic side. Why was it beneficial and important economically? Okay, let me be Canada and France, no doubt. It contributes to national budget through the Armed Forces Development Fund. To find the sum we receive from the United Nations through this participation. There's no reason to shy away from that fight. There's no reason to hide and to be ignorant of this fact. And realistically speaking, because we entered the international spotlight, the amount of international aid and investment to Mongolia increased not exclusively because of this factor, but in part thanks to our own commitment to international security. And let's not forget the Armed Forces itself being able to upgrade its weapons and equipment modernization and training facilities. Earlier, our speaker talked about a place named Tavan Tolgoe which literally means five hills. In Mongolia there are two distinctly different places with the same name, five hills. The one is the Coking Coal Deposit and the one I'm going to talk to you is the International Peacekeeping Training Center not far from our capital city of Lambatter and it's been upgraded thanks to the Global Peace Operations Initiative funds provided by the U.S. government. The social aspects our commitments internationally aided the already positive attitude toward the military service always persistent in Mongolia's society. Mongolia has a strong and proud military tradition and even during the communist regime the Armed Forces I'm proud to say never were an instrument of political oppression even during the communist regime. There was never a military junta a military regime, there was never a military dictatorship, it was a political dictatorship so throughout the existence of Mongolia for millennia this military ethos was pretty much respected and it aids to already a positive attitude toward the national service. And what about the military itself its combat preparedness, its counter insurgent skills, ultimately necessary for the defense of homeland should any threat of such kind occur to Mongolia. In a way our soldiers and our officers and NCOs are learning by doing they are engaging in near combat situations only to be able to repeat it should a necessity come to our country. Individually last but not the least how about professional skills but also personal development increasing benign human qualities such as integrity care for your body patriotism, loyalty, family values as well included and these are all very positive factors to our young officers and soldiers who are basically seeing, we all talk about hardships Mongolia faces, we talk about domestic situation, we talk about political instability, it's not instability in the real sense of the world we talk about pollution, we talk about corruption but many of our young people go abroad and see the real basket countries and regions they are more proud of who we are, our nation as an island of stability in this world and I'm not sure this is basically what we have done, I should also mention for the sake of time about a number initiatives and exercises we have a signature event hosted by Mongolia the KQ is an Asia Pacific wide international peace operations initiative which over the past seven years hosted more than 6,000 service members from 20 nations around the Asia Pacific, our wider region we also host bilateral exercises with Russia, with China India, Qatar and Turkey and with the possibility of other partners as well okay to conclude let me just throw you some, I mean I can't avoid controversies, I can't avoid looking at the other side of the things, despite all the successes we still have to be worried and cautious about a few things most strategically what our active engagement in international arena international security means for Mongolia's foreign policy at all, of course it's a natural tilt toward the western world, the third neighbor countries, the democracies the armed forces are being transformed along the lines of the NATO standards, we have incorporated the JSTAF structure into our structure of the command education so how would fit the more western oriented transformation, how would fit with the continued Russian weapons domination I don't think in the near future we'll get rid of the Russian weapons system we'll continue to acquire purchase or otherwise receive Russian weapons and equipment will there be one day a conflict between the two it's an open question, we must be prepared to answer that we're only indulging in this luxury because we are in relatively Benai neighborhood but peacekeeping operations is not necessarily a pure warfighting mission as any armed forces have to be ready to how would it impact its warfighting capability the third we are so lucky that we receive a near universal public support for our international engagements predominantly because we are so fortunate of suffering no single injury let alone speaking of casualty during the last 10 years of international active commitments but for the worst case scenario if a soldier is fallen how would the public react that's the question we also must consider isn't it becoming way too imbalanced meaning we also consider joining forces together with our two immediate neighbors in performing international missions this is a dilemma between our reform goals and strategic considerations fifth and the last we all know that Mongolian troops are courageous and competent and we are part of that but when it becomes ordinary thing 10 years ago deployment to Iraq deployment to Afghanistan was out of the ordinary it was the first international deployment since World War II no matter the preparedness psychological preparedness, social preparedness and discipline were at the highest when it becomes ordinary it becomes just a normal for any Mongolian service member to do will it impact the discipline and preparedness and consciousness at all in some we have gained so much and so much other potentials to pursue the bilateral cooperation in this field with this wonderful country Australia as both position themselves as an Asia-Pacific power and Asia-Pacific partner during the recent visit of the chairman of the general staff, chief of the general staff of Mongolian armed forces I believe the following aspects could have been raised as venues and rooms for possible cooperation we have some rooms to upgrade training or even mutual exchange of expertise secondly I know that Australian defense forces is very strong in humanitarian and disaster preparedness functions regional assistance in MOTW military operations other than war we have plenty of room to learn from your experience we probably can continue our joint efforts especially within the United Nations framework in the hard-quest military exercise the Australian troops are highly welcomed they are already active in the CPX command post exercise but highly desired in field training exercise and possible bilateral exchanges and exercises as well okay I'm almost coming to an end we are determined as a nation to continue pursuing the objective of being a responsible member of the international community the common cliche about Mongolia is that and I'm happy to hear it all the time my country is punching above its actual weight and Australia is more than welcomed to be a partner in this endeavour of ours both because of our values as well as our very own strategic interests thank you very much