 Okay, good morning everyone and welcome to this session about Asia security outlook. My name is Espen Bart Aida, I'm a managing director at the World Economic Forum, head of the Center for Global Strategies and one of my responsibilities is to further develop the work of the forum on geopolitics, geo-economy and security. And this is I think a very topical area of interest for the forum given the way that the world is developing. In my former life I was both the Defense Minister and Foreign Minister of Norway and I've been engaged with this region in many different capacities and very glad to be with you today. We have an excellent panel with us today. We have Dr. Rudiger Frank who is Department Head and Professor of East Asian Economy and Society at the University of Vienna and also the head of the Department of East Asian Studies. We have Laura del Rosario who is under Secretary of International Economic Relations, Department of Foreign Affairs here. We have a very glad to have with us Admiral Samuel Locke, who is the commander of the Pacific for the United States military, a very important role I think under your responsibility is 52% of the world's territory, which means your other colleagues have shared the other 48%, which is rather impressive. Shiego Ivatani is the Secretary General of the Tri-Lateral Cooperation Secretariat, very nice that you're with us, based in Seoul. And then of course Parag Khanna, who is Senior Fellow of the New American Foundation, currently based in Singapore and I don't profess early can use school or public policy, but somebody who is based both in Washington, London and Singapore, old world, new world, very happy to have you with us as well. And just as a point of introduction to the theme, I think that it's fair to say that the East Asian and Southeast Asian security dynamics will be to the 21st century what Europe was to the 20th century, for good and bad. As developments in and over Europe, not necessarily originating in Europe, but very much playing out in Europe in the 20th century was defining the state of the world and going from Cold War to a post-Cold War setting, the two World Wars prior to that. I think today the security dynamics of Asia are of global relevance, not only regional relevance. So if this region is developing into more strategic competition, that's probably a quite alarming development for global affairs. If one is able to build strategic trust between main players in this region, that will have a positive impact on the global scene. So that's very much the kind of broad landscape. And just to start us off, reminding ourselves of the dynamics of the situation around us, we had the military coup last night in Thailand continuing on the already established martial law. We had a bomb attack in China related probably to the issues of Uighurs and mainland Chinese. We had North Korean shells aiming at the South Korean ship. This is all just yesterday. And we of course have the lingering conflicts around both the East China Sea, the issues between Japan and China. And we have the South China Sea issues of maritime competition disputes about how to manage this area. So there's a broad specter of issues. And I would like to encourage us now to take a strategic perspective, begin with a big picture and see what are sort of the main lines of development. Let's start with the problem and then move towards solutions eventually. And I want to invite Dr. Rudiger Frank to start us off. Are we seeing Cold War 2-0 coming? Yeah. Thank you. This is really what I was going to say. I think the pink elephant in the room is clearly China. It's rising and at least for near realist scholars it's quite clear that if one side's power is increasing, somebody else's power has to decrease. That leads to dynamics that are very obvious to everybody, especially in Southeast Asia. So I don't think I have to expand on that very much. This situation is bad enough. But I think especially for countries that are not big powers like not China or the US, the question is how do you react to that? So far I think all this is taking place more or less in a bilateral way. What worries me is that indeed we will see a formation of camps again as we have seen that in the second half of the 20th century. And then smaller, medium-sized countries will not have a chance to really independently decide what they want to do. They will be asked to join. And that's a question that's very hard to answer because it usually includes trade-offs. Economic trade-offs as well. And so this is what I really worry about. Just think about transnational corporations right now more or less being present globally, having to redefine their position in another two or three-way competition in the world. You have to close down presences. You have to open up other ones. You have to think about your supply chains. You have to think about your distribution networks. You will have more competition inside of those newly formed blocks. You will have a different type of competition between blocks. You will have all kinds of completely different strategic implications that will seriously affect the way how we conduct business. Not only, of course, speaking about the security environment. And being a specialist on North Korea in particular, of course, you wonder how those countries will actually react to that. I think in particular someone like North Korea will actually benefit from a Cold War 2.0. They will find themselves back again inside of one camp where they will be under the umbrella that is formed, where their leverage will definitely increase. And if you see recent developments, especially improvement of relations between Russia and North Korea, forgiving 90% of their debt. On the other hand, also joint military exercises between Russia and China just recently. All that seems to point in a direction that I find very disturbing. I think there is also way out, but I think for framing the problem that should be enough for the moment. Thank you very much. That's a very interesting start. Let me just quickly challenge that on one line, because the original Cold War was a geopolitical competition of influence. But it was also a competition between economic systems. Do we see this second today as well, or is there a difference? Because actually Russia and China both have embraced capitalism in a sense. So that the mutual dependence is higher than it was back in the Cold War days. Oh, I strongly believe that will also involve an ideological competition. Perhaps not between socialism and capitalism, but between different forms of capitalism. So that is quite clear that we also see that. Certainly an emphasis more on a centralized, state-led economic development and emphasis on welfare and all these things. Even leading to how democracies are being created, different kinds of countries all call themselves democratic. So I clearly see room even for ideological competition in those fields. Okay. To stay on that one, do you agree with this? Largely I think what Professor Frank has said that is most significant is the role of traditional great powers that have not been as active in the region coming back in. You mentioned Russia and I think you're absolutely correct, both in terms of the role in North Korea increasing, but also of course the energy supply and the energy agreement that's just been signed with Russia. And also India now, after its new election, one expects a much more confident and consistent strategic orientation that's going to include the Far East more prominently than before. So the role of six or seven major world powers in this region simultaneously does have the potential for there to therefore be some kind of a Cold War 2.0. I would only differ in that. I see a lot of fluidity within those dynamics. For every action, there is a reaction. When we speak about America's pivot to Asia, at the same time the counter-reaction becomes how can ASEAN have a voice of its own? What is China going to do to potentially re-engage with codes of conduct and calm the waters? When we talk about the American shale gas revolution, the ability to export cheap energy to reinforce relationships with Asian allies, then there is an effort of course to tie up with Russia, Australian production of gas all around the region to bring down regional prices and that would mitigate the growing leverage that the US has. When we talk about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the idea of also embedding and strengthening alliance relationships and this gets to the point about ideology and economic competition, then the response is the RCEP, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which would be an equally robust intra-regional trade zone. So we can never say definitively, by giving those examples of the shale gas and the trade agreement and the military pivot, you see that you can make a forecast that lasts for six months or one year and say, oh, this is the new dynamic. But then things change on the ground and from within the region and you have that restoration of fluidity. So I wouldn't be so certain that we will be clear about the camps. What I would say though, is that the form that this ideological competition, if there is one is going to take, and in a way what the competitive dynamics really are about, whether they seem to be 20th century territorial or about matters of technology, so it really is about who controls the supply chains, who controls the value added, who controls the access corridors and so forth and the insecurities that we ascribe to these traditional territorial concerns and attitudes are really derivative of a concern for controlling supply chains of energy and technology and other commodities. Parag, would you agree that we are seeing the end of the liberal order and the return of Italianism? A return of? Of Italian... No, I actually think that that is a mistake and I think a more accurate analysis is that whereas even countries like China are considered very statist and Westphalian in nature, that how they view the sanctity of their own borders differs from how they view the sanctity of others' borders and therefore they are not entirely Westphalian per se. And that's why looking at things from the standpoint of, it's a two-way street after all. That's why I think taking a sort of supply chain approach is very important. What with the CNOC 981 oil rig off the Paracel Islands, the term that was used by the chairman of the oil company was that this is part of our mobile national sovereignty. So there's very novel language being used that isn't quite captured by Westphalian theory. The Yovestphalian. It wouldn't even... I don't think we should use the word Westphalian quite frankly in this conversation. We should really be talking about again these supply chain nodes and what their implications are for what constitutes territory in the first place and therefore what avenues or corridors for supply chains they want to control. And those can't really be grounded in traditional Westphalian legal theory at all. So we need to be much more, I think, creative. Adorell, I'd like to move to you. The pivot to Asia were basically announced, I think, more or less when you took over Pacific Command. And of course you are very central to the whole thinking of the US presence in the region. And I'd like to hear your strategic outlooks being from your very important position in the Pacific. Well, thank you. As you know, President Obama announced the pivot which are the rebalance to the Asia Pacific. Let me start by saying it's not just about security. It's about military security. It's about all of government, all of humanity, all of the things that are important to the American people. And I think one of the main audiences for the rebalance was the American people. It was to once again reassure to them that we're a Pacific nation, that our interests for this century and beyond will lie here in the Pacific, and that we have historic alliances, growing partnerships. I mean, we have $1.2 trillion of two-way trade through this part of the world each year. So this matters to the American people the security and stability of what happens in Asia. Now, my role though is on the security side, on the military side. And I think that the underlying assumption in a growingly productive global economy, and it really is quite amazing what's happened in my lifetime, our lifetimes as far as globalization. Just think about the things that flow in the maritime domain. Today, about 90% of everything that moves in the world moves on the oceans. And just in my lifetime as a career, that has quadrupled in volume. And it will continue to go up as we move energy and sources around and those types of things. So I think for that global economy to thrive in a very complex world with growing challenges, it has to be underwritten by a set of assumptions on what does that security environment mean? It's like your neighborhood at home. You have a safe neighborhood is generally gonna have a pretty good draw for businesses and families and good schools. Well, that's the true for the global economy, I think, as well, and in particular here in the Asia Pacific. But there are some significant challenges here. One, you can't compare this to Europe or to NATO. The vastness of this region and the diversity of the cultures and the diversity of the histories here across really what spans about half the world, I think to try to make that analogy too quickly is not productive. But there are challenges. First of all, is just the mass of humanity here. Today, there's about seven billion people in the world, six out of every 10 live here in this century. They expect that to go to nine billion and seven out of every 10 people in the world will live here. And as food sources have to be rethought about because of climate change and because of changing weather patterns, those have to be considered. As more and more of humanity move towards the oceans to look for economic viability. You see today in all industrializing countries, they're moving closer and closer to the maritime and laterals to get access to that economy, to those economic benefits. These start to put new dimensions on how we have to think through security. But of course, there are those traditional security issues that seem to continue to plague us and probably will for some time. The situation in North Korea, the armistice was signed the year I was born. And not much has changed in North Korea except that you have the third generation of a radical regime that now claims to have nuclear weapons that can hold the rest of the world at hostage. And so this is a very important problem that must be dealt with and considered because I believe that disruption in the Korean Peninsula would have far reaching implications for the security of the global economy. And then of course, there's the rise of China that you mentioned. There's also the rise of in India and a growing importance of Indonesia in the economic framework of Asia Pacific. And certainly the great economic prosperity that's happening in countries even like the Philippines here today. And of course then we've got the historic and traditional territorial disputes that you see going on that are kind of tearing at the fabric of what we used to think was right and now we're having to make some decisions about how we're going to deal with it. The Asia Pacific region because of its economic growth is also the most militarized region in the world. This is where the military navies, armies, you pick a piece of it, is growing the most rapidly. The seven out of the 10 largest armies in the world are in the Indo-Asia Pacific region. All the large navies in the world are here. And so these forces are managed to create a fabric of security that allows economic success here has not yet been determined. In the end, I think you're gonna have a historical group of bilateral relationships, alliances, a growing number of trilaterals and a need to move towards more multilateralism as painful as it is sometimes to be able to ensure that you can create a security environment. I've described it as a patchwork quilt. You can't put in this part of the world, you can't put a consistent framework together like you can in a smaller, other more homogeneous part of the world. It's gonna be a number of economic agreements, a number of alliances, a number of multilateral organizations, growing ones like ASEAN, who are gonna have to have a voice in being able to hold the fabric of the security together. And what's gonna underline that, the most important thing is a commitment to rule of law, a commitment to international forums, to solve problems, to solve disputes. You can't have a winner take all attitude. This will require compromise, it will require dialogue, and it will require, and I guess the bottom line is you will, you will never stop having friction in this part of the world because a good economic growth, a good competition is good for the region. And that springs competition, springs friction. But we have to have a security environment that allows that friction to occur without tearing and then sending the region into what you described might have been a century ago. Thank you very much, Admiral. Excellent points. A couple of takeaways here. One is, of course, this region is particularly dynamic. It has a large population, most of the people on the planet live here. It's a young population for many countries, but it has tremendous potential, but also the challenge that this potential will be undermined by security competition. Second takeaway I think is your reminder of the role of oceans for commerce and for commerce and trade, for contact between people. And I would say historically speaking, the role of navies has been more about protecting sort of free lanes of shipping in order to promote commerce and actually see battles with other countries. So this is a continued relevance of the job that you and your colleagues are doing. And I think also another takeaway so far in the discussion is that while a more sort of European centric or European North American centric outlook on security for the last 20 years have been the assumption that we would go from classical competition between states to so-called new and asymmetric threats. I think this theater, this region shows that there is a continued relevance of the classical security challenges where big states compete with each other. And that's probably more a dominant theme in the 21st century than we might have thought when we were in the midst of Afghanistan and Iraq and so on. Plus you're adding domains, that are becoming more and more critical. So in this case of cyber, I mean who would have thought 30 years ago that the cyber world would be so critical to the day-to-day operation of the global economy including this part of the world. But yet it's one of the most ungoverned spaces we have. And it's at risk. And that puts risk on economic development. So we have to have that dialogue, not just about oceans and airspace and land masses, but we have to have that dialogue about how do we operate in cyberspace? And then extrapolate that into space. This is one of the dialogues that the World Economic Forum is trying to drive in for precisely those reasons. This is basically now sort of a quick tour of the security landscape. But let's now move towards the solutions part. What can we do about it? How can we move ahead? And I'd like to start by inviting Secretary-General Ibatani on the tri-lateral cooperation secretariat. What is your perspective focusing on what to do? Well actually, I don't mean to put me in a rather difficult position because I was going to propose to follow the example of Europe. In this region, as Admiral Ibatani just said, because of the diversified culture and so forth, we are trying to refrain from forcing Asian countries to accept one set of known legal institution and try to be inclusive. And based on that assumption, there have been a lot of discussions have taken place as to security issues, military issues also. My feeling is that it is about time that we should consider to establish a certain solid legally based institutional framework to talk about all these political, military issues. And when we look at the European example, European Union is also of course much advanced than us. Maybe we can take the example of OSCE. As I was posted in Vienna before I came to Seoul, I observed how they function in order to create trust among the member countries. They can meet as often as they want, almost every day to talk about these issues. So this kind of dialogue forum should be established in this region. And well, I think this will be the extension of ASEAN regional forum. They have been working on this issue for the past 20 years or so. And this work should be expatized, expatized. And in order to do that, they need a more solid institution so that they can meet more frequently. So that is my idea. And I belong to Trilateral Corporation, Secretariat. And eventual goal of Trilateral Corporation is to establish the East Asian community. It is stipulated in the vision 2020 of the Trilateral Corporation. And definitely in this East Asian community, there should be security issues, handled in this organization. And so we have to start preparation now. Thank you very much. And you would, so your final goal is an East Asian security and economic political community. But you also suggest that you would build that on the ASEAN regional forum. You said forget it, right? When you make your, as a European, once you make the reference to the OSEE, I confirm that we can meet frequently. But it's still work in progress as Ukraine has showed us. We're not really done with establishing trust in Europe. And actually, I think the last years have led to a reduction in strategic trust between main players in Europe rather than the increase. So even if you have institutions, you may have problems. So just want to point out that. Yeah, I recognize this difficulty. Even in European Union, this political, military side is still to be developed. They are now formulating this common security policy. But it does not cover everything, right? It's just part of it. And I think it's fair for, if you want to follow up on historic analogy, the European Union would probably not have happened if it wasn't for the US security guarantee to Western Europe. So although the EU began as an economic political corporation, it was under the umbrella of the US nuclear and security guarantee. And of course, that's difficult to see that you will have kind of one driving force behind the unification of, you know, kind of a broader political agreement between Japan and China as things stand today. Question? Sure. Well, in order to establish the East Asian community, probably the key countries, this trilateral, you know, Japan, China and Korea, it is a very challenging task to establish a collaborative relationship among the three countries, particularly in the area of security. However, without this collaborative relationship, I don't think we can establish very solid organization in this region. So it will take time, but we should make efforts. Challenging, but even more necessary. Thank you. So under Secretary Rosario, let's move to ASEAN, host country and the host region. I think one of the most promising developments in the world, as I see it, this, you know, the coming together of the Asian, ASEAN states, but also the way it's not only about the 10 countries, but also about the broader region. And the ASEAN plus is probably the closest you get to a regional integration process in this part of the world. What can ASEAN do to solve the challenges that we were discussing or at least mitigate them? Yeah, okay. For ASEAN, of course, we do want to encourage the major actors not to engage in unilateral actions that will create a narrower space for cooperation. I think the more strident some countries might become, the harder it is to look for those, as I said, the space in which we can work together. And of course, other line, our encouragement of ways is we hope that all actors, including ourselves, should follow the norms of good behavior and rules-based approach to everything that we do following international law. Added to this, of course, is that personally I believe that following rules or international law is the best confidence of building measure that one can have because we believe that transparency eventually will lead to good governance. When there's good governance, everybody feels secure. On the ASEAN side, I think we need to study and re-examine and redefine what we mean by ASEAN centrality. More and more, I think people are beginning to see that there is tension now between the interests of ASEAN as a group and national interests. And if we cannot balance this, if we forget that paramount our national interests also is of course the protection of the regional interests, then we can easily divide ourselves or we might have to be able to work cooperatively. And of course, on the other side is this, that I believe that all of us in ASEAN, we should try to form strategic partnerships with all the major actors. We have one with China and I think we should have one with India as well as we should have one with the United States and we should have one with Japan. Because in this case, as we can see, then we will be able to form more or less a network of alliances and then we will not be used to play, I mean, we will not be played against the other. And at the same time, I mean for us in our own region, we should also look at the involvement of our citizenry. I think it's, you know, moving along in foreign policy becoming more complicated when the citizens get involved. What happened in China when they started to burn the Japanese factories in Vietnam when they started back against the factories of other countries. It does create some kind of, what they call it, insecurity also for the investors. And unfortunately, of course, we are in this Asian paradox as we grow economically, the tensions also grow. But I think if ASEAN will continue to take its role as a central core force, in the same way that we created ASEAN or we believe that our, I mean, Asian Regional Forum is also centered on ASEAN, the APEC also believe that ASEAN is also the core group in APEC, it's the core group in EAS. Then maybe we might be able to finally create a more stabilizing force in the Pacific region. Thank you. And I think that there is a great expectation put on ASEAN from the outside because everybody comes to ASEAN's meetings as the primary focus. I had the pleasure last year to take part in Brunei and John Kerry was there, the EU secured representative were there, the Chinese were there, everybody were there and see this as a primary forum. But I think you point to a very important core challenge that you need to make ASEAN more known and supported among your own public because any integration process will have winners and losers and you have to convince the losers upfront that there's a long-term gain even if you give up some of your privileges for instance from protected markets and so on. And I wonder, are you doing that? Is that happening or is it more something you would like to see happening? We, of course, I think there are also things here like the principles that we're trying to follow. Like Mr. Kanawa mentioned RCEP, okay. For us that's one way of course of integrating the region through our ASEAN plus one economic partnerships and our, I mean, it involves our, the RCEP involves all the major players including the European Union eventually when we, you know, the FDA with the European Union. But as I have mentioned, if we cannot somehow get a strong hold on the ASEAN regional interest versus our national interest then we might always be, you know, getting into the, what do you call it, the tension among ourselves because it cannot be avoided. ASEAN members themselves also compete with one another for investments. And I think that's also something that nobody can deny. And at the same time also we also know that if there's a weak link in one of us it might also discourage the investors to come to the region. More specifically on security, just to follow up on ASEAN one question. I think since 2010 I believe there's been defense ministers meeting in the ASEAN framework initiated by, interestingly enough, by the Vietnamese chairmanship. And there's also discussions on the code of conduct where for the So China Sea, which I personally find is very interesting, but could you just update us on what these discussions are going? Unfortunately we haven't really started negotiations on the code of conduct. We do have the declaration on the code and the declaration on how we should behave in the South China Sea and of course it means we should not do any unilateral action that will destroy the status quo or the balance and that of course we should always pursue peaceful settlement of disputes. But the code of conduct it has been long in coming. I mean we've been discussing about this item for the past seven or eight years and we're also wondering why is there a delay? Because are we changing the environment so that when we're ready to discuss the code of conduct, the environment has changed? I mean we're not acting fast enough and there's so many changes happening now. So eventually when we discuss the COC as we call it, from what point are we going to discuss it? Because when we started talking about it, the changes now were natural. There are now there's so many changes already, talking about movements on the claim especially and there are a lot of buildups, a lot of construction going on until we realize are people already doing some kind of offencing around already about what they're going to define as the baseline for the code of conduct. I think it's quite urgent because there is a significant military presence from many countries now in the South China Sea in places of high where there's a lot of disputes. And I think it's quite familiar from multilateral institutions that you start solving a problem and then the problem changed. You keep solving the old problem. Yes, that's why we've been wanting to start the discussion on the code of conduct because once the parameters have changed or once the baseline will have changed, then I think that will influence the code of conduct. Admiral, do you think a code of conduct would be helpful if it's connected? I mean absolutely, I mean I think first of all the role of ASEAN in basically this is your neighborhood. So the role of ASEAN in being able to manage neighborhood friction or neighborhood disputes either at the economic, social, or military level I think is really quite important. And they have made some progress. The code of conduct, however, if you take a look at the competing claims that are just in the South China Sea alone, I often ask myself why now? Why has this come in this decade and why it wasn't in previous times? Probably has always been lingering for some time but they waited for you to take over, come on. Well, maybe, but my personal observation is that we're dealing with it now for several reasons. One is the rapid economic growth of the region, the rapid rise of China, the rapid need to access resources. And then in the 80s, the UN Law of the Sea Convention and other mechanisms laid out how you then describe your economic zones and who would own what fish and who would control what seabed resources. So once that happened, then there was a desire for independent nations to start defining what their access and what their economic zones look like. So when you lay all these together, it's very complicated. I mean, the chart of who owns what in the South China Sea, very, very complicated. And then you add what I believe a rather ambiguous perspective from China of the nine dash line that has been challenged over the top of it, this just makes it hard. So over time, as things change, to deal with a hard problem, you have to baseline somewhere. And the US position has been that we need to baseline it, that we need to maintain status quo, which was in the DOC, and not to move forward from that until there's been a legal ability to look at this. And it's happening in other, between other parts of the world where these are being, the tribe units are making decisions and are being abided by. But the code of conduct should have been here several years ago and they're not, appear to be not any closer to it today. And underneath it, the status quo is changing. Yeah. All right, could such kind of a liberal order type of regime of behavior, like you call the conduct, could actually, that trump the state interests and would it be successful given the landscape you're describing? It wouldn't be enough. And I think the code of conduct, I think the admiral is absolutely correct. You needed to have the code of conduct prior. And there have been conversations about such codes of conduct actually since the 1990s, Spratly Island disputes which were sort of a precursor to what's happening today, but now in retrospect a lot smaller. I worry a lot about conversation in which we are focused so much on institutions but without the strategic maturity to back them. You have layers and layers already. If you look at institutional map of Asia, it does resemble the European Union already. But quite frankly, they have moved from multilateralism towards super nationalism in a wide range of functional areas. And that obviously has not happened here. But the stakes here are, as we know, even higher than they were a century ago in that part of the world. So I worry a lot that just talking about ASEAN, ASEAN plus three, ASEAN economic community, ASEAN regional forum, East Asian community. When Kevin Rudd was Prime Minister of Australia, he talked about the Asian Union. You can talk about these institutions and you can talk about codes of conduct, but you have to have the strategic maturity to back them. And I'm worried that given the fact that there are daily flash points in this region, you needed to have the code of conduct yesterday. You needed to have proactive resource sharing kinds of agreements in place already or be executing and practicing them now rather than waiting for the dialogue to emerge. And what disappoints me about this lack of strategic maturity is that there are examples going back a century in how to deal with these kinds of disputes. Your country, Norway, had a dispute with Russia over Svalbard Island in the Arctic Sea towards the end of World War I and you had a solution in terms of demilitarizing the island and allowing any commercial entity to exploit those resources. And even Saudi Arabian Kuwait and other sets of countries that have disputed maritime assets have been able to find ways to go about this. So if Asia wants to be seen as a mature region, as that third pillar of the world, a stable pillar of the world economy alongside North America and Europe and so on, it has to start doing these things already. And how do we get there? Well, I mean, I think that, again, these dialogues are fine. I prefer more novel solutions in which, of course, you have to have some de-escalation initially from the military standpoint, but I think the national oil company should be involved in a collective sort of new vehicle called a special purpose vehicle of some kind in which they're jointly determining which assets are exploited, which oil companies are involved or gas companies, how the revenues are shared, perhaps listing such a company on an exchange, something like that. So a commercial approach that gets around the nine dash line sort of issue because when the national pride and sovereignty and these maps are at stake, it's incredibly difficult to have a kind of compromise. But if you take a shared commercial approach in which everyone starts to enjoy the benefits in the short term, based on the need for, the demand for, the Admiral is right. We didn't have these disputes decades ago because the economies weren't growing as much. There wasn't the need to harness those raw materials as urgently as now. Well, if it is urgent, then in fact now is the time to collaborate on that and bring of course the best technology to the scene, the best management, and so that everyone can benefit from it. And I think what you just said is also an important call for the audience here because a lot of business people in the audience and I think just a general rule, business people don't like conflicts, they want cooperation. It's much better for business and it's good for the people. So I think to take some responsibility actually the mounting solutions is part of your recommendation here, Friediger. Any comment on this? Well, I mean, I think we shouldn't so quickly discard Europe as an example. Of course I'm aware of all those differences and I would never really go as far as comparing Europe and the EU with East Asia or ASEAN for that matter. But I do believe that we have achieved a few things in Europe and that we can even take some historical lessons. Just think about it. I heard a lot about the reasons for, economic reasons for cooperation in Europe. But let's not forget that European integration started as a security alliance, especially mitigating that conflict between Germany and France that has created so many problems in European security for, I would say, centuries. And this is now over. And for East Asia, I would, for example, think about South Korea, Japan. Another complicated bilateral relationship between countries that should be cooperating. And they are, but they could do much better. And this would be in nucleus around which something else could emerge. And I've always seen that possibility of course cooperating with ASEAN. What I like about ASEAN and the EU, and I think this is why, despite all difficulties, that's why they exist in the first place. They have been so successful is that they do not include one power that is too strong. And even, you know, if you look at the sequencing of European integration, the EU as such, including Euro and all those things, came into being after the German unification. Clearly with the strategic goal of taming that potential re-emerging giant of Germany. And it worked. Of course it worked because Germany wanted to cooperate. And it worked because Germany is not a country of one billion people or 200 million, it's just 80 million. So that kind of works in Europe. I don't think we could form a stable regional integration body in East Asia that would include either the US or China. I think you mentioned the word strategic partnership. I think this is what we should be looking for. Forming an organization of small and medium sized states that then, as an organization, as an alliance, as however you call it, develop a very close, stable, peaceful, cooperative partnership with those powers. Thank you. I will open up in a second for the floor because there are a lot of people who like to ask questions. But just before we do that, Mr. Rivatani, since as a Japanese living in Seoul, I'm given your job. You probably have some views on Korean-Japanese relations as well. It's too difficult for me to talk about. As to this code of conduct that reminds me of the effort made when they established OSCE, they adopted Stockholm final documents, final act. It took them, if I'm not mistaken, 20 years to agree on this document. And it stipulates about 10 principles these members of the CSCE should observe. So this code of conduct is also, I think, very, very difficult to agree on. But instead of just focusing on the South China Sea, we should look at the bigger picture. And maybe more countries can join and talk about these basic principles, code of conduct. In this region, countries only talk about international law. We should follow. Based on the international law, we should solve the problems. It is, of course, it's true. But if you look at the content of the international law, maybe countries have some different idea what is the international law. So we should have more principles which is more concrete than just international law. Thank you. So we've set the scene, a challenging security situation, but also a number of attempts to deal with it, embryonic, but still moving. So we open up for questions from the floor. And any question is welcome. But short, crisp, provocative, and challenging questions are particularly welcome. So who has a provocative question, please? And please introduce yourself. I'm Amina Rasul from the Philippine Center for Islamic Democracy. And for once, I'm glad that there's another global security issue that takes attention away from Muslims. So what I wanted to say, I've been in government most of my life. So I understand that when groups like this gather, they look at the policy formulation. But you forget that when people are embroiled, yesterday we were watching the television. And it showed, for instance, the harvesting of giant clams, the rioting that's going on in Vietnam. And in China, we've seen broadcasts that's really intended to make the blood boil of the Chinese citizens. Perhaps you should be looking at the impact of certain strategies of governments on peoples. Because whereas it's very easy for states to change policy, once you've gotten peoples to rise up, it's very difficult to pacify that. And then you would have started a round of violence and enmity that will destroy any attempt at establishing cooperation when the security confrontation moves on to another issue. Very valid point. And I think you did mention the challenge of nationalism. And the involvement of the citizens. Exactly. So I mean, do you have a comment on this? Actually, that's something which my own government, I think, has been very conscious of. Among President Aquino, for instance, issued a statement encouraging Filipinos, or rather discouraging them from doing something that might even add to the tension. Because we saw the effects in Ho Chi Minh. We also saw the effects in Beijing at one point, I think, when they were acting against the Japanese. But I think that's where we think that the media can play a role. Sometimes the media also, of course, should also be able to understand the issues. And sometimes I wonder, I mean, how much should they report and how should they report it? So that at least they're also adding to a better understanding. And how they can promote, also, their own way of helping create a better picture of the situation. But I think the argument here is that governments has the responsibility to avoid to incite. So at least thing they can do is not themselves to incite violence. And secondly, is, of course, to avoid that others do it as well. Yeah, I think we all, it's at a very valid point. Yes, please. Eric. Eric Bellfrugge from Sweden. Eric Bellfrugge from Sweden. Admiral, when do you think that the United States will ratify the law of the sea treaty? You knew it was coming. I knew it was coming. I don't know that I can give you a date on when our Senate will act favorably on ratification. As you have probably read, it's been my position, the position of all the senior military leaders in the United States, the position of this current administration to press forward with ratification. Let me caveat it and say that from the security perspective, we are bound to abide by it. So from where I sit, we de facto support the security aspects of that. But I can't give you a date. I would hope it would be soon. It shows the power of the people in a sense, because the whole elite in the US wants this to happen, and it's not happening. But I mean, it's a very important point that the US is actually abiding by the rules. So it's not, by not signing, you're not able to claim your rights. But you can respect the rights of others, which you do. So I mean, that's the current US position. Question over here? Morning. I'm Rahman Narayanan from Asia. I'm from the private sector. And obviously, I'm not the same big way as the panel is all of you in this room. I'm just a simple salaryman working at a low-cost airline. But from the private sector perspective, we started this discussion about, are we seeing the emergence of Cold War 2.0? The original Cold War major component, of course, was the ideological aspect of left wing, right wing. In my line of business, I'm only fully aware that we need two wings to fly. And to go on from there, the issue of South China Sea, I wonder if undersecretary can explain a bit more. And I also wish to follow on from Admiral Locke's comment of there's no winner-take-all solution in this kind of issues. If there's something from within ASEAN's own history that can make ASEAN more assertive in contributing to how we resolve this issue, in line with our notion of ASEAN centrality, I'm thinking about back in the 1970s when Malaysia and Thailand were engaged in a tit for tat over control of resources and the isthmus of craft. And let's face it, the whole South China Sea issue is not a nationalistic kind of issue. It's about resource control and accessibility to resources. At least that's how I perceive it from my level. And I wonder if the solution we used in how Malaysia and Thailand thought about that issue. Essentially, it was discussions that led to a formula that was summed up in a single line. Let's all drink from the same well. So I wonder if that sort of perspective, ASEAN can do more to emphasize that sort of approach, that sort of perspective, and then actively work within the structures that are available that everybody adopts that same approach. And just one passing comment about governments and nationalism from our perspective, despite all these headlines that you see, business goes on. Back in the 70s, 80s is China, Taiwan. Well, Taiwan is now the biggest foreign investment, mainland China. Business goes on. That's not a coup. That's now a coup in Thailand. Well, all I can tell you is that from our perspective, bookings to Bangkok are up on ASEAN. So business goes on. In two or out of? Both ways. Both ways. We make money each way, which sometimes we just wish governments and all these leaders involved all these issues. Why don't they just go to some isolated island crow stones at each other and leave us all alone to go on with our daily lives and make more money? So everyone, strong support in the audience. Other questions? A question here. We will collect a couple of questions. I appreciate Parag's point about the possibility of joint development. But we in Indonesia, we've been trying to get the claiming parties to agree to joint development on any resources. And after almost 15 years, we found that all the claimants talk about joint development. But when it comes down to it, they don't want to do it because no one is ready to put aside the jurisdictional issues. So maybe I can follow up with a question to this undersecretary. When the Philippines talk about joint development, how serious is it? And if you think joint development of oil is possible, and if so, with which claimants, would that be possible? I think the issue here is when they talk about joint development, I think some people remember what China has said, that they do want joint development. So it's becoming like China in another country. So it's China plus one. And what we were thinking of is if it's just China plus one or one plus one, who will decide the kind of equitable distribution? It can be complicated because, like in our case also, when we go into our own joint ventures, we're guided also by the rule on how much should be given to the other side. And you're right in that sense. Unless, of course, they're thinking of joint development as a communal kind of thing, but that's something that has to be explained to the people themselves. And as you said, people are thinking of sovereignty. Now, going to the Chinese, for instance, Chinese students have been taught from childhood that the whole of South China Sea is theirs. So I mean, for them, it's a harder thing. They also have to deal with their own domestic problems. They have to deal with their own citizens. Now, for us, people ask us, why did you have to go to the arbitration court? It's not a matter of us going against China, but rather trying to gain some clarity on maritime entitlements of the claimants. We hope that by bringing our case to the it loss or other to the court for arbitration, we'll be able to get a definition on what can we claim as ours. And hopefully, this will also reverberate and will trickle down to the other claimant countries. And for us, that's one way, really, of settling the matter in a more peaceful way, giving legal clarity. I think one of the key questions is, is this a set of bilateral relations or is it a more general multilateral issue? And obviously a great power like China would prefer bilateral solutions, and smaller countries would probably be for multilateral solutions. We want to deal with the issue as ASEAN, as a group, rather than on one arm, because considering the other side is big. But again, we have to have some clarity on the maritime entitlements. We have to also get some clarity on the nine dash lines. The admiral said, it's not defined. There's no coordinates. We don't know how far it can go and how wide it can be. Yeah, one question from behind here, over there, first. Okay, next. I'm Trevor Moss with the Wall Street Journal. I'd just like to ask the admiral Lopley a question. One of the panel mentioned that it's important that we avoid forming blocks of opposing countries in the region. But through the pivot to Asia, isn't the US essentially doing that by encouraging anti-Chinese countries or maybe not anti-Chinese countries that are concerned about China's rise to form a block with the US through the new defense pact with the Philippines, for example, doing more with Japan and even Vietnam? Is the US essentially forming just the kind of block that one of the panelists warned against? Yeah, that's a great question. First, let's remember the US has been in the Asia Pacific for 70 years and has generally underwritten the security of Asia Pacific for 70 years through allies, partnerships, presence, things that we've done here. It's helped our economy, helped the global economy, and I would say it's helped China, it's helped everybody else in this region as well. So as we enter into this century and you have a rising China, that is for whatever reason, historical reasons, has kind of coming into a fairly mature security environment late in the game and may not necessarily be happy with the rule sets that it is coming into. So the US position, the US military position is to welcome China into the security environment as a productive partner. I mean, to look at it from a US-China economic perspective, I mean, we share so many interests. I mean, I tell my counterparts, there's probably about 80% of the things that we deal with each day where the US and China converge on and we have to because it's important for everybody that we do and we work hard to keep that convergent. And then there's a part of it that we diverge on but it's a lesser subset of that. And merely that divergence happens to be in this part of the world that China would consider I think is their kind of their backyard. So I will say again that the US position out here is not to contain China. Militarially we welcome them in, we welcome more transparency, we welcome more exercises. We have Chinese as of today come into realm of the Pacific exercises next month, historic where they'll participate with 23 nations. So we're working these types of things. But in my opinion, the only person that can contain China is China. And this is the decisions that China makes about what they do in their neighborhood here. And you can have your own opinion about whether that's happening or not. Before we go to the next question, I'll just say comment on that. I think the Admiral has been very sort of diplomatic in pointing out that I've had my own concerns about the original formulation of the pivot and the rebalancing. It was accused of being vague and thus susceptible to interpretations that go in the direction of Cold War 2.0. But I think he and other US officials have been very, very clear about the fact that having a strategic presence in the region is A, not something new. And B, creating the conditions of strategic balance is an opportunity for Asian, indigenous nations to develop their own institutions and stability. And the US is there simply to support that and not to take sides. And I think day after day, week after week, American officials have been very, very clear about that. And that does bring us back to the sort of post, or the early Cold War European history. If we wanna draw lessons, it's really from NATO, even though it's a completely different sort of historical period, and geography, but it's that the US presence in the Netherlands creates the conditions for something like the European Union to emerge. And that really is going to be up to all of the players in the room. And I'm glad that you mentioned earlier not just the governmental, but also the corporate. I mean, to the gentleman from Asia, I think Asia has done as much or more for unity, culturally, commercially, otherwise in Asia than any ASEAN treaty has. Next question is here. Thank you, good morning, Mahbuhay. My name is Imtiaz Mukul from Travel Impact Newswire in Bangkok. My question is with the admiral. Can I just take you away from naval security to aviation security admiral and ask you what the military, the US military knows about what actually happened to MH370? Lot of people find it very difficult to believe that with all your satellites around you, nobody knows what happened. Well, I think they'll have to believe that it was a worldwide effort. We took after the initial assessment of what happened in coordination with the Malaysians and then in partnership with the Australians, almost every country in the world came together to bring the most sophisticated capabilities that we had to bear to be able to determine what the circumstances might have been around that tragedy. And I think it points out to the world that it was still a pretty large world. There's still some areas of the world, particularly our oceans, which are vast, which many of them remain uncharted. And when we do bring even our most sophisticated capabilities together, we're not always successful. It doesn't mean we won't find that airplane at some point in time. I believe the world will be committed to finding that airplane that will happen at some point in time. And there'll be some resources continued to be dedicated to it. You've seen that play out in the media. But I watched this very carefully. And I can tell you, I think that just about everything that could have been done, has been done, and we just haven't found it yet. Thank you. Floris Open, anybody else has a question? Otherwise, I have one. We had, so yesterday, one question on institutional development. We have, yesterday we had the Vice President of Myanmar and a big delegation that's a country we're celebrating a very positive development towards democracy, kind of a controlled transition into a much more open society. That's great news for the country, but also I think for ASEAN. But then just to learn that yesterday there was a military coup in Thailand. It's the second biggest economy of ASEAN. It's a quite significant dramatic event. Some perspective on what that means to ASEAN integration that you suddenly have a military coup in the midst of a democratic coup. And I think I forgot to mention that in my initial discussion. I think we really have the strength in the institutions in ASEAN. For instance, the democratic institutions, we say that we believe in democracy, the core values of freedom, market forces, and all that. And at the same time, there are forces within our own individual countries that seems to shake those, that seems to shake those institutions. I think we do need to strengthen them, not just the government institutions, but even the civil society NGOs and even maybe the strategic thinkers. Because only then can we really become a strong group. And even when it comes to integration, even within our own individual countries, yes, talk about Myanmar with all the ethnic groups there. They're having a difficult time integrating them. So sometimes you are wondering, how can we even integrate ourselves as pen nation? So within ourselves, we're also having the challenges of integrating ourselves within ourselves. So it's really a big challenge. And I think we have to continue working on this on the social, political, and you know the people, the people, kind of relations. I think again, to this Europe reference, one of the great achievements in Europe is that it has become easier to be a Catalan or a Basque or a Scot or a Breton after the establishment of the European Union because sort of a broader unity sort of took away some of the drama between the nation-state and the subgroups. So I mean, that's something maybe ASEAN integration could make borders less relevant and hence people of diverse ethnic backgrounds can live better together. I think that's really what we're hoping for when we're talking about the social, social, cultural integration. Yeah, but you know, living in the Philippines, I mean, I can speak for ourselves because we're the one farthest away from all the ASEAN. I think if people have to grade us, I think Filipinas are not as conscious as the other ASEAN countries about the ASEAN identity. And it's because maybe for one thing, even about talking about integrating ourselves, we are an archipelago made up of many islands. So if we have to think of ourselves, we have to think of ourselves as a group of islands, as the Philippines, and then we have to think of another entity which is so far away from us. So in that sense, too, we are not as conscious of our ASEAN identity as the other ASEAN countries are. Hillishwab. Again, about coming back to Europe, Professor Frank mentioned the reconciliation that happened first between Germany and France. My question, but this was done by leaders, by people. So is there a leader in this region, or one or two, who could come up and do the same thing that Helmut Schmidt, she's got this, and later on Helmut called and they made it harder for Europe? Excellent question. Where's Helmut Schmidt in this? In Asia. Germany, Helmut Schmidt. Germany of Jacques Delors. I mean, the silence is interesting. Any proposals from... I mean, I think it's a very valid point, and particularly in ASEAN, because you have collectively decided not to give the secretary at the very prominent role. There's no commission. You know, the European solution was basically to tell a commission that you have extraordinary powers to run on certain air, coal and steel community and so on. Now, I think for very understandable reasons, given a very different history, there is no desire in ASEAN to give the secretary-general that kind of driving force, but then you need somebody else. And who? In the past, we always... President Aquino, of course. In the past, we always considered Indonesia as the center of gravity of ASEAN. But there was a time when they called the lost decade of Indonesia, and Indonesia was not so much engaged in ASEAN. And we began to think, was that the point when ASEAN became to be, you know, to become weak, when the Indonesian leadership that you were looking at because they had their own internal problems. Now, maybe it doesn't have to be Indonesia's the center of gravity. Maybe there could be somebody from any of these countries who come out and say, no, let's start thinking ASEAN instead of just thinking of ourselves as 10 individual countries who happen to be a member of ASEAN. But if that person or country emerged, would the others tolerate that leadership? Maybe if there is, as I said, if there's transparency in that person, and if there's also a transparency in the direction of the nation, that they don't see it as some kind of, you know, trying to be the, you know, the new bull in the group. So I think it can happen, yeah. The mine leadership. Yeah. Good. Just on that, for us in Indonesia, just on that, Secretary, for us in Indonesia, I think we've always accepted that Indonesia does not have to be the natural leader of ASEAN. There are different issues whereby different countries can take the lead. And we've always taken that as part of collective leadership policy. Yes, but at one point, we did consider Indonesia because it's the biggest in terms of size, it's the biggest in terms of population. And of course, at the time, it was really a regional giant. But, okay, I don't want to say anymore because I'm going to say yes. Okay. But I mean, I'll come to you, but I mean, it's interesting because in a sense, it sounds like there is a kind of desire for a leader. But then the most logical leader does not want to lead. No. I like her. Yeah. I guess if you want to raise a question of, given the era we're living in, of hyper-connectivity and mobility, access to mobility, whether you really need any more such national kind of leader, one person at the top, man or woman. Maybe the fact is that this kind of things are happening at the ground level. Our citizens in ASEAN are texting each other, emailing each other, thanks to ASEAN flying and seeing each other. And it's a very low fare. But I'm seeing it's happening on the ground. I mean, I think the most regional leadership in ASEAN is coming not from government, it's coming from civil society because they deal with transnational issues. So they have to adopt a regional mindset. It's coming from the private sector because of investment, because everybody wants to make money. So I'm not so sure that we need to look at leaders from government anymore. And I think there's a natural organic process already happening of integration at the ground level which governments are not seeing because they're so elitist, they deal with each other all the time, sitting in rooms in five-star hotels. They're not on the ground out there. So I would say it's already happening. I think we all want to agree with that and we all do at some level, but there are problems with that. So if you take major cross-border infrastructure projects of which there's many on the drawing boards, high-speed rail connections from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok to Kunming. However, where is the private investment in infrastructure? It's incredibly low, it depends on the government. Every bank in ASEAN wants to have the PAN ASEAN banking license. Well, that's not going to happen without the government approval. Data sharing agreements aren't going to happen without agreement on certain standards and protocols. The governments have to do these things. The private sector is waiting on the margins, in a way, for those things to happen. So it's a plea to be much more active in the diplomacy to get those bottlenecks out of your way because you're correct that once they are, you can achieve a lot, but there are still certain things where the governments matter a great deal. What about the ASEAN? You can go back, get governments out of the way and just go ahead. But I think Parag's answer to you is... I'm being facetious, of course. What about an ASEAN business council that kind of demands specific answers from politicians? Well, to be frank with you, the current existing business entities accredited to the ASEAN secretariat are dormant. They are mainly headed by people from the old days, people mainly from Sunset Industries. There's a new generation of ASEAN entrepreneurs today who are looking at very different things. Some of them are the scion of the old families, but the kind of businesses they are into are not the Sunset businesses, not the extractive industries kind of thing. But you're all here, so you don't fix it, right? Yeah, they are into the 21st century. Telecommunications, you know, mobile phones. The number of small-scale, 21st century businesses that are being started up in ASEAN is amazing, but nobody pays attention to them because there's no body where they can get together and talk about what they're doing or anybody pays attention. Yeah. Okay, we're on Swiss time. We're exactly five minutes left. That's one minute for each speaker. Is there one person who tried to get to the floor but didn't? No, I can't see. And then, so we go, that's really good for us. We've got one round that will be your comment and your final word as well. Okay, but perhaps a bit too heavy for final words, but there's one topic that we really didn't talk about at all, and I don't think we can close that session without doing it, and this is Russia. For some strange reason, the Soviet Union was obvious to everybody, then it imploded, and for the last 20 years, Russia has been almost ignored, which I think is a big mistake. Now, as a European, we have those events in Ukraine, they're very unfortunate. Don't think they are managed properly, but at least it made it more obvious that Russia obviously is back on the world stage and they want to be back. They have their own version of a pivot to Asia. Russia is, if you look at the map in Asian country, and I think no strategic outlook on East Asia would be complete without considering Russia, without considering perhaps what we as the West are doing in pushing Russia towards a cooperation with China that they perhaps don't even want, and what that means for the overall situation. So back to my strategic, more general outlook, that's also a topic that we should be concerned about, and we should integrate Russia into whatever is happening. And as a baseline, I think the progress of institution building in ASEAN should simply continue. Strategic partnerships should be built and strengthened, and this is, I think, the way forward. Thank you very much. Undersecretary? I actually want to say the same thing. We really have to, and we're really serious about having to build strategic partnerships and we really have to strengthen our institutions. I think those are the key, and of course, the third thing, if we have to think about the future, I think we also have to strengthen our educational systems because we have a more educated population in ASEAN. I think, you know, we cannot go wrong there. And that's something we are not so focused on, you know, the education of our people. I get the sense that the economy is, in a sense, moving too fast for the institutions. They're not really able to develop in line. Even our educational systems, if you have to be able to move as quickly as, you know, as the changes that business and economics bring. Thank you. And well, could you also comment on the Russia-China issue would be interesting to hear? Well, certainly the recent changes or recent issues of Russia I think should give us some concern here in the Asia Pacific as well. I think whether Russia has the resources to become a significant Asian power, I think, is yet to be determined, particularly from the military side because they had retreated a long ways when the Soviet Union collapsed. But it's certainly something that has to be thought about and we have to ensure that once the world stabilizes from the most recent issues in Ukraine that we have a thoughtful Ossian, all the nations of Asia of the United States, China, they all have a thoughtful approach to how we will continue to bring Russia into the international community, into the security environment. Let me just go back a little bit to one line that you well made, which was business goes on. And I think that if you talk to any military leader across any nation in Asia, even in the PLA, they would say that's the ultimate objective is for business to go on. Now, determine which direction business goes. Sometimes we're at odds about that. But I would say that for business to go on, there has to be this underlying security architecture of some kind. And that has to be worked pretty hard. And I would cautious all of everyone to not cautious that we need to spend more time looking at what is happening in the military side of things in Asia. The rapid growth of military equipment, much of it offensive in nature, just leaving everybody alone and do business, that's fine. But at some point in time, history would tell us if those are improperly used, that will destroy that security fabric to the point that business can't go on. It cannot go on. And when that comes in, we got a big problem in Asia where seven out of 10 people in the world are gonna live. We don't wanna go there again. We've been there. We don't wanna go there again. Very good, the important points. Victor and I will tell you. Yes. I'm a bit afraid that my previous interventions gave the impression that nothing's happening among the three countries. Actually, the reality is just the opposite. There are many corporations going on among the three countries. If the three countries have the common interest or common concern, for example, in the area of environmental protection, all three countries are worried about the current air pollution situation over there. And also in the cultural area or disaster management. So I just want to emphasize that. But what I wanted to say is that we should now start considering collaboration in political, military area. Well, definitely I think that very strong leadership is necessary to talk about institutionalizing this area of cooperation. Thank you very much. Last 32nd paragraph. I think the point about both Russia and becoming or having more of a political military role for the trilateral cooperation entities is a significant point because given all of the diplomatic talk about how to deal with North Korea, I think that's very significant. And whether it's the discussions about social economic zones or railways and other projects, I think we can see a solution to North Korea that is an embodiment of this idea of more connectivity being an important way of calming territorial and military tensions. One thing though that we didn't talk about is urbanization, right? And this is one of the most rapidly urbanizing areas of the world. This is the networks among cities and businesses within cities. And that connectivity is really a crucial part of what will form an Asian network, if you will, network of orbit that involves business, government, civil society. And that is going to be a very important stabilizing factor in the future. I think that's something we should pay a lot more attention to. Thank you very much. And thank you to all of you, all the participants for being here around the floor. I want to thank everybody in the room, everybody who contributed. And Karin, if you sit down, then I can see the camera because I also want to thank those who follow us on TV, on webcast, from the World Economic Forum on East Asia in Manila. And I also want to conclude by saying that this is a line of work that we are going to continue to develop in the World Economic Forum. I think we see from this very rich panel the relationship between geo-economics and geo-politics and security. As the Admiral very importantly pointed out, there is a limit to globalization. And it's happened before. If you look before 1914, we had a strong development of a globalizing world and then it all collapsed. So if the going gets really tough, it will have very serious implications for business, which is why we don't want that to happen. And which is we need to see the interrelationship between all these issues. And this is to be continued. Thank you for the attention and thank you for the attention on everybody on webcast as well. Thank you.