 Okay, we're back from live. It's Monday. This is Think Tech. Think Tech Global to be specific. And it's 12 o'clock rocked. Today we have the honor of Ralph Kosza. He's the president of Pacific Forum, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, connected with Washington, the original CSIS in Washington, and the Kennedy School, and a lot of think tank people who deal in foreign policy and diplomacy. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Jake. Great to be here. You know, the world is different now. It's certainly different domestically, but it's also different in terms of foreign policy. And you know, you could not really sort of get your mind around where all of that would go before the election, because you really couldn't see it real time. Now it becomes more real time, even though Donald Trump is only the president-elect. So we'd like to discuss that today, Ralph. You wrote a piece, a pac-net piece recently, and it was, what should Trump's Asia policy look like, and what should Japan's policy to the Trump administration look like? And for that matter, Asia policy. And he made some statements in the course of the campaign, which suggested that he wanted to take a entirely different tack on dealing with Asia and the pivot and all the issues that surround it. So I guess the first question I would ask you is how important to the United States, the benefit of the United States and its people and its future, is foreign policy in Asia? Is this important to us, or can we marginalize it? Well, first of all, you're talking to someone whose think tank focuses on Asia's security, so if I told you Asia wasn't important, this would be a great shock. But you know, look at the numbers, look at the amount of our trade with the Asia-Pacific, look at who the second and third largest economies in the world are, both in the Asia-Pacific where number one China and Japan. This is not an area that we can ignore, and it's an area that we get wrong at our own peril. It's also an area that has a lot of countries that have nuclear weapons, including the North Koreans, who we're very concerned about. So both from an economic and from a security standpoint, this is a very critical area for US national interests. How would you characterize our relation, our national relationship with Asia, with China, Japan, Korea, North Korea and so forth, and the ASEAN countries? How would you characterize that right now here in the closing weeks of the Obama administration? It's good. It's a lot better than a lot of people complain. It's not as good as it could be or should be. And right now, there's a lot of anxiety. I just came back from China last week. I was supposed to be talking about the next administration's foreign policy. I had a great presentation prepared, and then two weeks ago Tuesday came along, and I said, oops, okay. Everyone's guessing. So, you know, everyone's, everyone's nervous right now. There's a lot of anticipation. So he's the president-elect, not the president. That's right. And it'll be until, you know, January 20th when the Obama administration's still in office. But he does things and makes statements, sometimes the same as what he said in the, you know, the campaigns and sometimes maybe a little different. What effect do his statements, what effect do his moves right now have on the nature of that policy? I think they're magnified, Jay. And I would say, you know, so far not so bad. I'm not prepared to say so far so good, but at least not so bad. He's walked back a couple of things. You know, Abe had a good dinner with him and came away encouraged, whatever that means. He had a very constructive conversation with President Park Young-hae in Korea, where he reaffirmed the importance of the alliances. He tweeted against the New York Times that they were, they were wrong when they said that he was looking forward to having more countries with nuclear weapons. So these are all things that are sort of walking back some of the positions that he had had or were ascribed to him previously. And in each case, I think he was walking back in the right direction. You know, in the campaign, there was a lot of acrimony. But now, after the campaign, people in the country, a lot of people in the country, Republicans and Democrats who spoke against them before, are walking back in that regard. And they're saying like, you know, George Mitt Romney, you know, comes to Trump Tower and tries to, you know, make nice, make a relationship with Trump. And a lot of people are doing that. They're finding a way to be optimistic about him. And my question is, are Asian leaders, for that matter, European leaders also trying to find a way to make nice, find a way to open a dialogue that will be better than what you might have expected, given Trump's remarks during the campaign? Actually, it's exactly what I would have expected. I had a very bright, distinguished diplomat slash politician who once told me whoever the president of the United States is and the Prime Minister of Japan is, they will become one another's best friends. The same holds true for whoever the Prime Minister of the UK is. National interests drive you. You can't afford to not be friends with the Prime Minister of the UK or with Japan and vice versa. So they're obviously now searching for common ground. And, you know, I, the article that you mentioned, our pac net, which is available to your viewers, free of charge on the internet address, right, Pacific forum.org. Yeah. But, you know, I said in there, experience tells us 50% of what any candidate says is wrong. It's not true. The challenge is figuring out what 50%. And with Trump, we're hoping it's more gonna be like 7030. And I think it will be. I think it will be because at the end of the day, a reality sets in. B, we have checks and balances. You know, if you want to build a beautiful wall, the Congress has to fund it. Well, the Congress is talking about, well, maybe we'll have a fence or maybe we'll have a drone or something like that. So, you know, reality sets in. Ronald Reagan was gonna recognize Taiwan. Jimmy Carter was gonna pull all of our troops out of Korea. You know, then reality sets in when they become president. So I, I think we shouldn't spend an awful lot of time trying to go back and hold him to some of the silly things that were said. Instead, we ought to be applauding when he seems to be moving more in the realistic traffic charge. What I get from your remarks today is that on the one hand reality sets in. That's the only diplomacy is based on reality. Yeah. On the other hand, you got to start from where you are. But they're true. They're true feelings. And the feelings are the people behind them, the governments behind them. In Asia, for example, must be at a level of concern because the statements he made before. So if you have, you know, on the face of it, yes, we want to make friends, we recognize the realities who were elected. On the other hand, you've made all these statements and given such concern. How does that affect their actions? You know, since they likely worry about some of those things coming true. You walk on eggshells for a while until you actually get to meet face to face. And you know, I've never met him face to face. But people say he's a charming man. And as a businessman, he knows how to how to finesse things and how to how to tell people what they want to hear. You know, there's two sides. Eight years ago, expectations were so high for Barack Obama. He was so welcome because he was going to bring about change and etc. etc. etc. that he actually had a hard time living up to the expectations. It'll be a lot easier for Trump to live up to the expectations right now because they're so low. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Yeah. You know, eight years ago, you'll agree that the world was different. Absolutely. In terms of Thomas Friedman's process of globalism and all that. And so now we're globalized eight years ago. And my question to you is how does that process of globalization, which is, may I say global? Yeah, you can coin that phrase. Okay, that's how does that affect diplomacy and policy in the international arena? When you have globalization more interdependence than was imaginable a few years ago? Yeah, well, well, it means that what you say and do matters to more than just you or your voters. And most presidents grasped that pretty quickly. Most of them knew that before they came in. I don't believe Trump is a dumb man. I think he understands all of that. And just again, we've got very small tidbits to latch on right now. But if you listen to what pock young hay said, he told her in their conversation. This says the man gets it he understands the anxiety understands the need for an alliance he understands the reassurance aspect. And at the end of the day, it comes down to reassurance, reassurance, reassurance. That's what a president needs to do. That's what a president elect needs to do. I'm hoping we'll see a little bit more about that. Right now, everyone is watching for one key announcement. And that's who will be Secretary of State. And that will tell us a lot, good or bad. And, and you know, sort of cross our fingers and hope for the best on that one. Big question is, is Trump's, you know, method of operating, which is derived from his business experience or has been successful in his business experience, winning by intimidation, if you will. Does that work in an international setting? Can you can you actually achieve things by by trying to win through intimidation? Depends on who you're trying to intimidate. Okay. What we've discovered over the last 50 years, both Republican and Democrats, both softies and hardliners, is that North Koreans aren't easily intimidated. So you know, you try to give them a threat, they respond in ways that are not very pleasant. And you know, every every president goes through his dance with the North Koreans to figure out what's the what's the right thing to say. Chinese are not easily intimidated. There are some countries that have no option but to be easily intimidated. So it so it varies. And there's not a one size fits all. And again, when you're doing business in those countries, you understand you have to do business differently in Japan than you do in China than you do in Europe. So hopefully this carries over. It's it's the level of sophistication that a president must have or if he doesn't have it, he has to learn it. And he has to have people around him who who know it. Yeah, to say on that. So I guess I would take it from the remarks in the campaign that Trump did not know has not known very much about the finesse points of doing diplomacy in Asia Pacific, but that he might be a quick learner. Yeah, I think he can be a quick learner. B, we may all be whistling past a graveyard. Very upset in a couple of months. But I prefer to think about the positive outcome until somebody convinces me it's the it's the negative outcome. And keep in mind, Trump was masterful, absolutely masterful in playing to his audience and winning the election. People in Japan weren't voting. People in China weren't voting. People in Europe weren't voting. He was he was aiming his comments toward the Rust Belt and it and it was successful beyond anyone's dreams. I mean, I was with the group of everyone else that was assuming, you know, who's going to do this for Clinton and who's going to do that. We were all kind of shocked. So a, don't underestimate the guy. B, don't assume that he's going to talk to the rest of the world the way he was talking to the people who he was trying to get their vote, because that's what politicians do. And he was a very quick learner as a politician. So now let's hope he's a quick learner as a international diplomat and leader. Okay, those are the general points. I'm going to take a short break. We're going to come back with Ralph Koso, president of Pacific Forum CSIS. I'm going to get the advice that he would offer Trump as to how to conduct Asia foreign policy in one minute will be back. That would be really interesting. I can't wait to hear what I have to say. Hello, I'm Marianne Sasaki. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law, where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics, and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Aloha. My name is Reg Baker, and I'm the host of Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're a show that broadcasts live every Thursday from two to two thirty. We highlight success stories in Hawaii of both businesses and individuals. We learn their secrets to success, which is always valuable. I hope to see you on our next show. Aloha. Aloha, everyone. I'm Maria Mera, and I'm here to invite you to my bilingual show Viva Hawaii every other Monday at three p.m. We are here to show you news, issues, and events local and around the world. Join me. Okay, we're back live with Ralph Koser, President of the Pacific Forum CSIS, which is an international diplomacy think tank right here in Honolulu. And today we're talking about what should Japan's policy be? What should Trump's policy be to Asia and what should Japan's policy be to the Trump administration? It's more than Japan. It's all of Asia. So let's look at her from the Trump point of view first. What would you suggest that the United States does, that he does, and that his Secretary of State does, going forward in 2017 to what was the term you used to bond up and connect up and stay connected with Asia? You know, in real estate it's location, location, location. In government it's reassurance, reassurance, reassurance. I believe there'll be a lot of continuity in our policy, but I think that they need to hear from Mr. Trump about that continuity. So if in fact he told President Park all the things that she said he said, he needs to be saying those to the general public. Yes, I recognize the importance of our alliances, recognize the stability that an American presence and commitment in Asia and in the world matters. I understand NATO is important, and these type of things. I think that one of the important things that he needs to look at is the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He ran against it, so did Hillary. Obama ran against NAFTA. Obama ran against the Korean Free Trade Agreement, and then he implemented it. Bill Clinton ran against NAFTA, and then he was hanged by Trump and others for being Mr. NAFTA. You know, it's fine when you're running for office to run against free trade, but when you're the president of the United States, you need to take another look and say, okay, how do we fix this? We don't throw it away, we fix it. How do we engage with China? How do we not start a new cold war with the Chinese? And I think that's critical, and I think to do that, you need to at least indicate that that's your that's your desires. Global warming is another issue, which you know we take personally here, living on an island, and is Trump really a denier? I don't know. I don't know what he really thinks. I don't know what he really thinks about anything. That's true. All those statements that he made, we don't know if he really means it or whether he's gonna do it. Yeah, and a lot of things contradicted other things that he said. So, you know, let's forget about holding them accountable for all of the contradictions. Instead, let's say, okay, here we are. You got to start from where you are. Here we are today. Global warming is a fact. You can say yes, it's because of cold, or you can say no, it's because of something else, but it's still a fact that we need to deal with. How do we deal with it? I'll tell you, it was personally embarrassing to me. I was in China last week, as I mentioned. The Chinese were lecturing us, lecturing the Americans in the room about how we needed to take climate change seriously and how we needed to do all these other things. And I said, boy, talk about turnabout being fair play. All the things we've lectured the Chinese on. You guys need to be responsible stakeholders. Well, unfortunately, they're right. Next thing you know, they'll be lecturing us on human rights. That's right. That comes next, I guess. Well, you know, what about some of these specifics? For example, the pivot, okay? The pivot is dead, but long live the pivot. That's right. How should it work now? I mean, the pivot is dead, long live the pivot. What I'm saying there is that the pivot as a term, the rebalance was an Obama term. But the decision for the United States to focus on Asia occurred under the Bush administration, the George H. W. Bush administration, 1989 to East Asia Strategy Initiative, which essentially said the 21st century is going to be the Pacific century and the U.S. needs to be fully engaged. Truly and important. Important in 1989 and 91 and in 93. Bill Clinton issued the East Asia Strategy report, which said everything that H. W. Bush said was true. And this is where we need to focus. George W. Bush got sidetracked with Iraq. Iraq. But George W. Bush also began the U.S. Enhanced Partnership with ASEAN with Southeast Asia because of a recognition that this area is still important. Obama reaffirmed it. The pivot was a terrible term for the right policy, which was reminding people that we effect on it. Now, if Hillary had won, she would have come up with a new term even though she invented pivot because that's Obama's term. She had to have her own vote. So Trump will come up with a new term at some point, which will say what everybody knows, which is that Asia is important. We need to remain engaged there. We need to focus on it. That's why the pivot may be dead, but it's still in another name and another, you know, buzzword. We will continue to do that because it's in our national interest to do it. Remember Churchill said, you know, Americans do the right thing after exhausting all other possibilities. We've spent the last year exhausting all other possibilities. Now it's time for us to do the right thing. What happens in a practical sense if the people that he was talking to in the Rust Belt, you know, they bought it. They bought it that we should close the borders, that we should ignore Asia, ignore Europe, pull out a NATO, you know, stop the Chinese and whatever they were doing and fold in on ourselves and become, you know, a self-reliant new manufacturing center or whatever he had. And the Rust Belt relates to that's why they elected him. Now he goes and he does a new newly named pivot. He's going to have some problems with his own constituents. Willie, I mean, I don't know. His constituents, I mean, the amazing thing is that, you know, when they did the polling after the election and all of that, half of his supporters didn't believe he was really going to do the things that he said he was going to do, but they hoped that he was going to get more jobs. If he creates more jobs, they could care less what his policy is toward China. Who cares? That's an important point about China policy. The experts care about China policy. The national security advisors care about China policy. The people in the Rust Belt could care less if the Chinese come in and open up a factory in, you know, they're happy in Milwaukee, in Wisconsin. They'll be, they'll be thrilled when the Chinese are prepared to do that. In fact, they've been trying to do it and the Republican Congress has been saying, oh, we can't have the Chinese come, you know, come here, come there. So, you know, that, that could be a, that could be a real plus. It could be a solution in part to satisfy his own promises. Bring the Chinese here to manufacture in the U.S. And it's going to happen. It's going to happen, you know, just, just as the Japanese are building, you know, Toyotas in Ohio and, and elsewhere, the Chinese will be opening up plants there because they've got a lot of money and they don't know what to do with it. And they understand the benefits. I mean, this is the whole philosophy from Nixon on down. We create this economic interdependence. It started with us putting in a lot of money into China. But now that the Chinese have money, you want to have that come back just as, you know, the Japanese, we were building plants in Japan, now the Japanese are building plants in the United States. This is part of the interdependent world economy that's going to, that's going to continue. And we want that. And we want that. We don't want the Chinese folding in on themselves either. You know, nobody should fold in on themselves. So what about nuclear? You know, we have nuclear issues. Trump mentioned it a number of times in this campaign. We have the the specter of North Korea. What should American policy to Asia be on nuclear proliferation, non-proliferation? Number one, we have to be very clear that we don't want to see more countries with nuclear weapons and that our security assurances to Japan and Korea are aimed at providing stability and also removing their reason or excuse for having to develop nuclear weapons. If Trump believes or if anyone around him believes that the world is more secure, if more countries have nuclear weapons, they need to explain that and they need to reexamine that. But I haven't heard that. And I haven't heard that from Trump. You know, instead he's tweeting that the New York Times was lying when he said, I wanted to do this. You know, who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? So, you know, so let's go with that and say, good, you're right. Sorry, we made that mistake. Now let's let's talk about, you know, non-proliferation because that's key and it's key to our interest. There's some crazies out there that would like to get their hands on nuclear weapons. North Korea is not the big problem, quite frankly, because North Korea knows that they ever used one North Korea is removed from the face of the earth. But ISIS could be a problem because who are they? Where's their country? How do you... You can't put them off the face of the earth. You can't deter them because you don't know where the hell they are. So in places like that, you've got to make sure that the bad stuff doesn't get in their own hands. That requires a very tight enforceable non-proliferation regime which is what we've had and what I believe will continue to have because it's in our national interest. And that means that having a relationship with China, we can ask China to apply pressure on North Korea and anyone else who likes to proliferate. But, you know, one of, I think, the sillier comments by Trump is, well, we're going to just have China take care of the North Korean problem for us. The Chinese aren't going to solve our problems for us. The Chinese will only do things that's in China's national interest. So we need to sit down with the Chinese and say, here's why it's in our mutual interest to make sure this guy doesn't do X, Y, and Z. Chinese have already making sure they don't do X and Y, but we've got to talk about Z. And we've got to talk about, you know, tightening up the border security and not letting information get in and not letting stuff get out. And the Chinese have a vested interest in that. So this is an area where we could have common ground. But to expect that the Chinese will solve our problems for us is, I think, hopelessly naive and Trump isn't the first person that had that idea. This is something that's repeated over and over and over again as if somehow that'll make it true. Obama didn't really achieve any slowdown in China's manifest destiny over the China, the South China Sea. And I wonder if, Trump has said, I think, that he wants to stop that. But can he stop that? Is that within this policy of engagement and reassurance, do you think? The Chinese are going to do what they feel they need to do in the South China Sea, and they've done it. And they've created new facts on the ground, just as the Russians created new facts on the ground in Crimea. And you know, if anybody thinks they're going to be able to get Crimea back or get those islands back, you know, let's forget about it. These are new facts on the ground. Let's go from there. And in my view, I don't lose a lot of sleep over a couple of artificial islands. Number one, the Hague Tribunal has already said these are not, you can't even clear 12-mile nautical limits around things that were, you know, submerged at high tide previously. Certainly, you can't declare economic zones about it. So once every six months or so, you conduct a freedom navigation operation just to remind people, and then you go on. If there was a war in the South China Sea, I don't want to be stationed on one of those islands, because it's bye-bye, fellows. So, you know, during peacetime, there's some psychological value to it, and the Chinese are certainly exploiting that. But part of that psychological impact has been to get more and more people asking for the U.S. to stay engaged. So I think it's going to backfire on the Chinese in the long run, and we just need to play it smartly. Yeah. And what about ASEAN? ASEAN is Southeast Asia, and it's in play somehow. What should Trump's policy be toward engaging with ASEAN? It's got to be more of the same. And again, we've got to recognize the real effort to reengage ASEAN began with George W. Bush. It was continued, expanded by Obama because it's in our national interest. And those 10 countries together make up an important trading block. There are a couple of them that are basket cases, but for the most part, these are very critical countries. And right now, of course, the wild card is Duterte and the Philippines. And he would do better for himself and for his nation if he thought a little bit more before he spoke. But, you know, as President Obama said, he's a colorful guy. Two colorful guys. Yeah. I would love to be the fly on the wall the day that he and Trump get in a room together to talk about foreign policy, but I don't think I'll be invited to that meeting. Let me take one minute now and talk to Mr. Trump, President-elect Trump, and give him a synopsis of how you like him to how you suggest he think about foreign policy in the world today when he takes office. Continuity is important. Reassurance is important. Reassurance, reassurance, reassurance. And that's, I think, the thing that we need most to do. We've got to understand the importance of our alliances. We've got to keep those alliances strong. We've got to reassure our allies that we are there for them and we expect them to be here for us. And non-proliferation is an important issue. These are all bipartisan issues that hasn't been a Republican versus Democrat position on these. These have been constants and we need to stick with that. You don't, you can, during a campaign, you can talk about tearing up agreements with Iran or with NAFTA or something else. As president, you have to sort of take a look. Maybe you can, quote, fix them, but you've got to, you've got to stick with them and you've got to understand when the United States government commits to something that's a U.S. government. It's not a Republican. It's not a Democrat. It's not a Nixon or an Obama. It's the U.S. government. And we have to stick with that and then go from there. You start from where you are and you've got to understand where you are in order to build on that and not start tearing away and throwing out the baby with the bathwater, as they used to say when I was a kid. Thank you, Ralph. Ralph, Ralph Koso Pacific Forum, from your lips to his ears. Yes. Thanks, Jake.