 So, to quickly introduce you to the moderator of our first panel is our very own Professor John Maurer. John has been at the Naval War College for many years. For eight years, he was the chairman of the strategy department and I can tell you there's probably no one more committed to the education of the Joint Force leaders, the future leaders of the Joint Force, through strategy than John. So a little shout out to you for doing an awesome job and over to you. Thank you Mike for that introduction. In an age of smartphones, smart cars, smart houses, of course we need smart people. That's critical as the C&O talked today to be able to make informed decisions. You have to have habits of thought, disciplined habits of thought to help guide decision makers. And so today I want to quote from Proverbs, plans succeed through good counsel. Don't go to war without wise advice. Well today we have good counsel and wise advice up here on the stage. What a distinguished panel we have here today for the first panel of the current strategy forum. Wow, the amount of intellectual firepower here is something that has probably never been equaled since Mahan's time. Well, without further ado, what I want to do is introduce our first speaker, Dr. Graham Allison who is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard, the director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, founding dean of the modern Kennedy School of Government, author of numerous articles and books on international relations and national security affairs. His book Essence of Decision on the Cuban Missile Crisis is a classic, a text that we use, Nuclear Terrorism, again an incredible book about the dangers of nuclear terrorism that we have used as a text here at the college. And he has his just released book Destined for War that draws upon Thucydides as the students here know Thucydides as a staple of the college strategy courses stretching back to the time of Mahan. There's much ancient wisdom there that can be applied to today and Dr. Allison has done this in this book Destined for War. By the way, all of our panelists are distinguished authors and copies of their books are in our own very fine, nice bookstore here at the college. Destined for War looks at the looming dangers of conflict between China and the United States. Dr. Allison has also had extensive service in government including Assistant Secretary of Defense where he played a leading role, important role in reducing the threat posed by the nuclear arsenal of the former Soviet Union. Without further ado I turn it over to Dr. Allison. Thanks very much John and it's a great honor for me to be here today. I think when John's introduction about the firepower of the panel, I looked at Paul Kennedy and I think we instantly had the same feeling, a recollection of the line about the never was there such a distinguished assembly since Thomas Jefferson dined alone. And I think it never was there so distinguished a panel since Mahan was here by himself. So I'm a great fan of John's and a great fan of the Naval War College. Actually when I, Derek Reverend was giving a ride from Providence airport this morning, I was remembering that I first came here when Stan Turner became the president of the, and Stan I was had just become or I was a few years as dean of the Kennedy School and Stan had some ideas about some reforms that he wanted to make here. I think he wanted some academic cover to basically agree with him. He had the ideas but we offered a little advice. I've been a big fan of the Naval War College ever since so it's a pleasure to be here. So as John mentioned I have a new book just published it was May 30th. It's called Destin for War, Can America and China Escape Thucydides Trap? Now for most audiences, especially Americans, first Thucydides is multi-syllabic and that's challenging, okay, and secondly he's a mouthful there's no doubt about that. So the number of people who managed to mush the name is quite a lot but I'm hoping that before this effort is done among other things that the book may help do is to remind people that if Thucydides is not part of your mental canon, you're deficient and I know that John has taught the Thucydides here for many years, I tell audiences as I've been doing this rollout that basically the bargain of your summer would be go to the net, download for free, the Peloponnesian War, just read book one, the first hundred pages and if it doesn't knock your socks off, check your pulse, okay? So this book has one big idea and one big takeaway and let me mention those. The big idea is Thucydides Trap. When a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power, alarm bells should sound, extreme danger ahead. Thucydides taught us about this in the case of Athens and Sparta and it's a storyline as old as history itself and it's been repeated regularly thereafter. So that's the big idea and the big takeaway, I would put it just to avoid unnecessary wars and I'll say more about that before I'm done but it turns out that on my list of unnecessary wars in American history I put not only Iraq and Afghanistan and Vietnam but also World War I and even more provocatively World War II but I think John will tell us about that from the book that he's doing later. So let me start with three big questions, three tweets and then I'll say a word about each of them. So the three big questions, what is the geopolitical event of our lives professionally? Let's say the last generation and secondly, looking forward, what is the central cardinal geostrategic challenge for the United States today and as far as the eye can see? Thirdly, the subtitle of the book, Can America and China Escape Thucydides Trap? So in trying to be consistent with the new style, a tweet version answer for each. And then I'll do a little explanation. First what is the geopolitical event of the past generation? My candidate is the rise of China. Never before has the nation risen so far, so fast on so many different dimensions. And particularly for people who are not China watchers and who haven't been paying that much attention to this space and that includes me. I'm not a China scholar, I don't read Mandarin. Only the last decade I've been trying to learn about China but China has emerged so far, so fast in so many different domains that I quote in the book, former Czech president Vakav Havel, we haven't yet had time yet to be astonished. So secondly, what's the geostrategic challenge looking ahead today and for as far as we can see? And my answer to that is that it's the impact of China's rise on the US and on the global order that the US constructed in the aftermath of World War II and has maintained in the decades since, the international order that accounts for what Paul's colleague John Gaddis is called rightly, the long piece, seven decades without great power war, which is a historically anomalous phenomenon. So what's the great geostrategic challenge, the impact of the rise of China on the US and the global order? Third, can the American China escape the obscenity strata? So there I'd be more professorial and say no, and yes, again briefly. So no, business as usual, I argue in the book, will likely produce history as usual. And in the book I look at the last 500 years and find repeatedly, business as usual, producing wars. So no, not escape if we cannot do better than business as usual. On the other hand, yes, we can escape the obscenity strata, if we can imagine learning the lessons of history as the Santagana line goes, only those who failed to study history are condemned to repeat it. So if God forbid we find ourselves in a war with China this year or next year or in the next decade, I don't believe the leaders will be able to excuse themselves by claiming that they were victims of some iron law of history. It will be because of mistakes that they made, not unlike mistakes that were made in earlier cases that led to outcomes that they didn't want. So that's my three questions, there's the three tweets. I've got about 10 more minutes and I'm going to take you at a rapid pace through the three points again. So first, the rise of China. I actually have a slide which I don't know if it arrived. If it didn't, I don't need it, if it did, it's fun. So I will tell you about it since I think I can relate to it since I came from the Providence Airport this morning and discovered the joys of the bridge that you all are reconstructing. So those of you who've been to Harvard lately will note that there's a famous bridge across the river Charles between the business school and the Kennedy School. It's called the Anderson Bridge. The rehabilitation of this bridge was first discussed when I was dean and I quit being dean at the Kennedy School in 1988. The construction project began in 2012 as a two-year project. At the end of the two years it was extended for a year. Then it was extended for another year. Now they've given up proposing a date when it's going to be finished. So it's just, if you look at the website it says question mark and it's three times over budget. So there's also, I'm going to be in Beijing next week and there's a bridge that I've been across. It's called the Sinyan Bridge. It's three times bigger than the Anderson Bridge. It's in Beijing down in Central across the river. In 2014 the Chinese decided they need to rehabilitate this bridge and they began the project. How long did it take to complete this project? Somebody want to make a guess? How long? 43 hours. 43 hours. You go to Google or YouTube, so you go to YouTube, put in the Sinyan Bridge or just put in Chinese Bridge 43 hours and you'll see the timeline of this thing. That's the slide that I would have showed you. If they were proposed to come and fix the Anderson Bridge now at Harvard I would also pay because rather than sit in the traffic jam to have this done the American way. So in the course I offer students my course at Harvard, which a couple of people here actually have been graduates of, a set of 26 indicators with the question when could China become number one? So automobile manufacturers, smartphone manufacturer, robot manufacturer, artificial intelligence, supercomputers, fastest supercomputers, number of billionaires, largest economy in the world. So when? They have to take a quiz, in effect, right down the wind. So they say 2030, 2050, not in my lifetime. Then I have a second slide and the title of it is already. And every one of these 26 indicators, China has already overtaken the U.S. So I'll do it again. Number of billionaires, number of robots manufactured and bought and used, fastest supercomputers. They were not even in the game five years ago. They won the first four places last year. Indeed, most Americans don't get it and most of the news sources would not tell you. But the big headline from the IMF World Bank meeting in 2014 is China is now the largest economy in the world. Measured by what the IMF and the CAA believe is the best yardstick for measuring and comparing national economies, namely purchasing power parity. So if you go to the CAA website, if you go to the IMF website, you'll see that the Chinese economy is about 10% bigger than the U.S. today. So in every domain, we see a rising China in the Chinese narrative and with some considerable merit, the restoration of China, as they think of it, to the position that it enjoyed before the West intervened. But if you haven't seen China in your face yet or in your space yet, I would say you haven't been looking carefully or, if necessary, just wait. So that's the rise of China. Second question, the geostrategic challenge looking forward. This is the impact of the rise of China on the U.S., U.S. sense of ourselves, the sense of our role in the world, and the international order that the U.S. has been the principal architect and maintainer of. I testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee three years ago about this. And the ranking Democrat on the committee from here in Rhode Island, Jack Reed, is a former student of mine, a very good guy. And Jack's invited me and he said, you know, Graham, you should make this simple. So I said, okay, I will work hard on this. So I gave him 10 pages that I thought was quite clear and simple. And he sent it back and he said, I told you simple. So I sent it back and it was five pages. And he said, no, no, no, simple. So I made a cartoon, okay? And I produced the cartoon in the book. So this cartoon imagines a seesaw. So, you know, remember the seesaw from the playground? So a seesaw, you have the U.S. sitting on one end of the seesaw and China sitting on the other end. Now, as of 1980, China's GDP was less than 10% of the U.S. So the weight of these two guys on the seesaw is the relative size of their economies. So by 2014, China is equal to the U.S., slightly larger. So the seesaw has moved like this. And by 2024, on the current trend lines, China will be half again larger. So the seesaw will look like this. So I said to the Armed Services Committee, you know, we're debating here in the Obama administration, it's a big initiative in Asia, it's called the pivot. And what was the pivot about? So the pivot was about whether this guy on the seesaw was going to put more weight on his left foot in the Middle East where we're fighting wars, or we should lighten up there a little bit to put more weight on our right foot in Asia where the future is going to be. But what was failed to note was that all the while, our feet are just lifting off the ground. So this is going to be a rather irrelevant discussion. So basically, the idea that the tectonics have shifted to the point that you have a China, which is a larger economy than the U.S., is, I don't like it. It's incredible. Now, for Americans, especially red-blooded Americans, even worse, red-necked red-blooded Americans like me, I come from North Carolina. I know that somewhere it is written, and I'm searching for it. So Paul is a great historian, he may be able to help me find it. It's either in the Bible or maybe in the Constitution or Shakespeare somewhere, but it says, USA means number one. And I think actually if you take off your shirt, if you're a red-necked American, and you rub off the cosmetics, you'll see there's a tattoo that says USA means number one. That's who we are. That's our DNA. So the idea that there's another country as big and strong as we are, that's not acceptable. I mean, it's not acceptable. I would prefer not to have such a world. I think a world in which the U.S. is the biggest and strongest country is a better world. But in any case, as Lee Kuan Yew says, and I quote him here in the book, this is the biggest player in the history of the world, and Americans are going to have to find a way to adjust to this reality. Now, what is the impact then of this tectonic shift? So we have a rising power threatening to displace a ruling power. This is Thucydides' big idea. You'll remember that he explained about the Peloponnesian War. He says lots of other people pointed to other factors. But I'm going to go to the heart of the matter. It was the rise of China, sorry, the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made the war inevitable. I look in this book at the last 500 years. Actually, and one of my best sources and guides for this was Paul Kennedy and his great book on the rise and fall. And Paul was a great tutor for me in all of this exercise. So although he's not the blame for any of the mistakes of which there are many here, the last 500 years, 16 cases of rising power threatening to displace a ruling power. 12 of the cases in the war, four of the cases in not war. So inevitable is exaggeration, that's hyperbole. But business as usual, likely produce history as usual. In this case, as we see the impact of the rise of China on the US, we also see this on all the rest of the international order and the structures. And nowhere is this more evident than in Asia. So I would say watch for all of the Asian relationships to be stressed. And if you haven't seen this stress yet, again, you haven't been looking. In the Philippines, in Thailand, in South Korea, which is gonna be a very stressful relationship in the year ahead, I believe. Even in Australia, because if you're my number one economic partner, you're my market, you're the source of investments, you're gonna have a lot of influence on me. Especially if you play the game as China does, which is tough. So that's the second point. Third point is very briefly, can American China escape through Sinadies trap? And I would say, if we do know better than the statesman who dealt with the situation in 1914, I have a good chapter in the book on the road to 1914, the answer is no. So how in the world did the assassination of an archduke in Sarajevo by a Serbian terrorist end up serving as a spark that produced the fire that burned down the whole house of Europe? And it's an incredible story. When I read it now and look at it, and I've been looking at it for 50 years, it's still more incredible to me today than that events on the North Korean Peninsula in a year or two ahead could lead us to a war with China. So at the end of the war, every one of the leaders, every one of the participants had lost what he cared about most. So the Austro-Hungarian Emperor, his empire's gone. He's out. The Russian Tsar is backing the Serbs. He'd been overthrown by the Bolsheviks, this whole regime. Kaiser backing his buddy in Vienna, he's out. France has been bled of its youth for a whole generation, never recovers as a society. And Britain, which had been a great creditor country, has turned into a debtor and is on a slide to decline. So at the end of this war, if you'd given people a chance for a do-over, nobody would have chosen what he did, but they did and it happened. So that's the no. On the yes side, if you look at the Cold War, I have, again, a chapter in the book that's one of the no-war cases. Cold War is an unbelievable, unbelievable strategy that was invented. And just to go back and to remember, in 1946, so we're one year after the war, George Kennan, the number two diplomat in the Soviet Union, writes back this famous document that historians know as the Long Telegram. So what does it say? It says, we've just finished World War II, we've just defeated the Nazis, but the Soviet Union, with communism on the march, is posing to the U.S. a greater danger, a more ominous threat to our vital interests than did Nazism. That was not a message that anybody wanted to hear in Washington in 1946. We were exhausted bringing the troops home and whatever. That stimulated a conversation and debate among people whom we now revere as the wise men, so Atchison, Truman, Vandenberg, Nitsi, out of which emerged a remarkable strategy, all-dimensional, fantastically imaginative, fantastically demanding for war in every dimension and by all forms, except bombs and bullets killing each other. And that strategy was then pursued by Republicans and Democrats for four decades to success. So I would say to conclude that what I would hope might emerge from this would be a recognition that the current condition with the rise of China threatening the displacement of the ruling U.S. produces severe structural stress in which external events like the assassination of Archduke or the launch of or the exercise or the testing of missiles in the Korean Peninsula couldn't create, can create cascades of actions and reactions that lead to where you don't want to go. That's on the one hand, but that on the other hand that if we could imagine strategy as bold as what was developed for the Cold War strategy, Thucydides trap can be escaped. Thank you, Graham, for that. Our next speaker is Professor Paul Kennedy, who is the J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History at Yale University. He is Director of Yale's International Security Studies. He is a distinguished fellow of the Brady Johnson program in grand strategy, which is one of the leading programs courses highly regarded grand strategy course in the world. He is the author of numerous articles and books. Graham talked about the outbreak of the First World War. Paul's book, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism is a must read book on the origins of the First World War. His book, Engineers of Victory provides a fascinating account of the role played by mid-level problem solvers in producing Allied victory in the Second World War. His books, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery and The Rise and Fall of Great Powers. These books are classics and are read here as texts at the college in our strategy courses. Paul, over to you. Thank you, John. Thank you for being our panel leader. Admiral Harley, Admiral Richardson, ladies, gentlemen. I'm really happy to be with you today on this panel, this panel, which connects history and enduring strategic principles, is the word, and present day challenges in this matter of national security and fleet design. And I'm going to take the latter topic very seriously in my 20 minutes of remarks. The latter topic fleet design seems to me is and always has been a critical one for navies and for the countries which depend upon their navies. And I don't think it's an exaggeration for me to say that for every hundred pundits or authors on national security and foreign affairs, there will be only one. If that, who paid any attention to the design of fleets, to the structure of naval forces, to the aptitude of warships and changing strategic environments, to the right types of warships. There are scholars who do look at warship design. There are scholars who do look at the structure of navies. They don't often deal with large-scale strategic environment. And the large-scale strategic environment people couldn't tell a frigate from a bumble, really. I also confess a deep personal pleasure at being back here again the first time I came here was to be interrogated about terpits and the German navy and what it meant with Admiral Gotchoff and the Soviet navy in the 1980s. I'm really pleased for two personal reasons. First, I am grappling with a new book called Victory at Sea, 1936 to 1946, which looks at the relationship between American productive and technological power that emerges in the middle of the Second World War by about 1943 or so. And the newer warships and weaponry, the newer fleet design that arrives on the battlefronts to win both the Atlantic and the Pacific campaigns. And secondly, at my little shop, International Security Studies at Yale, we started a smallish, very small maritime and naval history project. And one of its aims surely has to be to relate historical evidence to our contemporary strategic situation. It seems to me, I put this in parentheses in case I'm going to be kicked under the table and I will say I didn't mean it really. It seems to me tragic that none of the Ivy League universities or the major research universities yet are doing anything in the realm of maritime and naval studies and maritime and naval history. The emails I sent around asking my colleagues and friends at different departments in the prestigious universities of the country, who is your naval historian? What international naval comparative courses do you offer was met with, Admiral Richardson, it was met with puzzlement, like what do you mean who is our naval historian? The number one naval power in the world, 90% approximately of all of our traded commodities are carried by sea and who is our naval historian. So I'm really happy to be pushing this at Yale, I'm happy to be interacting with you here. It's not difficult really if you think about it to use history critically. We could begin with anniversaries. It's exactly 100 years ago, this summer in 1970, that the British Admiral Jellico, the CNO if you like by then, confesses his fears that the Allies would lose the war because they don't know how to handle the German U-boat offensive in the Atlantic. The British had won the surface war Jutland and a vast fleet of British and now American battleships lay ready for action, anchored in scarper flow, but they didn't have the correct fleet design to handle submarines. It seems to me a great irony that by the middle and late 1917, proud flotillas of very fast, expensive fleet destroyers were being taken from the Grand Fleet to join in with the sloops and corvettes and frigates to join in Atlantic anti-submarine work. That wasn't what they were designed for, but now they have to do it. The second lesser known anniversary is that it's exactly 74 years ago in June 1943 that the first of the new Essex-class fleet carriers steams into Pearl Harbor to begin the carrier-led offensive across the Central Pacific that even non-historians know a bit about and Professor Simmons writes quite a lot about the Gilbert Islands taken, then the marshals, then the ill-designed or ill-structured Japanese fleet hammered again and again, then the Philippines operation, then Iwo Jima, Okinawa, all under the umbrella of carrier-based air power, with the old fleet design of battleship-centric naval force pushed back to a supporting role as coastal bombardment forces. Like all other armed services, navies find it hard to rethink their existing strengths even in a fast-changing strategic environment because, well, obviously, you possess an existing strength. You find it hard to make the change. Consider one of the greatest ironic examples of a warship fleet design as we see it in retrospect. We're all wise in retrospect. I know historians' job is to be wise in retrospect, but consider a fleet design that half got it right and half got it wrong, namely the coming of Jackie Fisher's Dreadnought-class battleship launched in February 1906. That design got it right because it stymied and boxed in to a pizza's naval strategy. Whatever newer battleships and larger battleships the Germans could build, the British could build more and simply lock the high seas fleet into the North Sea. But the super battleship of the time, that super battleship type, comes to fruition ironically just when the most astounding newer technologies are emerging, all of which were to make surface warships, however big, so vulnerable. First, a torpedo, a torpedo the greatest ship-sinking projectile of the coming two world warships. Secondly, the submarine. In 1906, just when this Dreadnought is being launched, the submarine is only eight years away from that small German U-boat sinking three British heavy cruisers of Heligoland at the very beginning of World War I. It was more casualty than Jutland, by the way. And third, the aircraft whose destructive potential against traditional armies and navies, only the futurists like H.G. Wells and Leo Amory, then fully grasped. I'm struck time and time again by the wisdom of a remark by the lovely, long time to see British historian, Gerald Graham, where he talks about the historical irony of the super battleship Dreadnought just being conceived at the time when in the background they were coming along the newer technologies which were going to undermine it. A fleet design would half gets it right and half gets it wrong. I like that idea, ladies and gentlemen. I like it a lot. I know it would take a full lecture to tease it out and it can't be done here. And I know my few remaining remarks about national security and design are about things and ideas that certainly some of the navy planners are chewing over. But for the nonce, here goes in my remaining few minutes. If you put it in grand, truly grand, strategic terms of the largest possible way of thinking, the three great tasks, the three great aims for the U.S. Navy and the other services remain the following. First, the defense of the homeland and the sea lane communications to the homeland. I just can't see that core strategic aim being under any real, real threat. We are not great Britain in 1940 or the young America of 1812. So I leave it aside, but with the recognition that is the fundamental one. Secondly, the defense of NATO Europe and the Atlantic waters. I can't do justice to my arguments here, but I believe that that purpose is still eminently achievable despite our reduced resources that Secretary Lehmann was talking about. Putin's Russia is dangerous again, but it remains to a large degree a preposterously modern equivalent of Potemkin's village. And I'm happy to discuss that if you want in a Q&A. Thirdly and much more seriously, this is where I come along with Graham, much more seriously because we haven't figured it out even some 40 years after we left Vietnam. Thirdly, we struggle with the challenge of how on earth we offshore islanders can influence the future of Asia. An Asia which begins, remember, on the Lebanese shores and ends in the waters of Japan and the Philippines. I think I'm going to repeat that half sense. We struggle with the challenge of how on earth we offshore islanders can influence the future of Asia. Eisenhower and before him Lord Salisbury were right. The Sea Nations cannot and should not seek to place a large footprint on Asian soil again. It cannot work. It's too big. Asia has too much land, mountains, deserts, gullies, jungles, and there's just too many people there. Perhaps five billion people between Beirut and Jakarta who'll have to figure out their own destiny. Don't ever go there again or not without a large Asian ally like India to do most of the land fighting. There's ways of having a significant marginal influence of course, not only by making a huge and clever investment in the tool of diplomacy and I have to say how awful it is to see diplomacy produced by our current dysfunctional leadership which is not filling places, there's no regard to the lack of ambassadors and anyone else we have. But also by and I returned to the theme of I think it's Admiral Richardson's selected topic of this forum by intelligent consideration of the design of fleets, navies, warship types, maritime force. So I end my brief remarks here by returning to what one might call the 1906 question. That example of the dreadnought strategic design getting it half right and yet missing a lot and thus getting it half wrong. So I close my contribution more with questions and half spun ideas and with answers. So here then Admiral are four simple questions from a simple naval historian. A, have we still not yet got a full appreciation of the power of submarines as a devastator of any and all surface vessels as the underground conveyor of a whole range of missiles and drones and of course as the destroyer of enemy submarines. I think we are still missing their terrible full implication and before the submarine crowd here gives a big cheer I have a related question. Do we still have no place in this navy for a sizable fleet of less expensive non-nuclear diesel powered super quiet subs? I'm reminded that after all as I study now of a second world war and a great deal of detail I'm reminded that all German U-boat commanders thought that the smaller type 7 U-boats were the best. Not the bigger, roomier, clattier, clutchier ones but the smaller ones were the best. Second, are we right to have a fleet design policy that places so much so very much of a navy's money man aircraft and thinking into a mere nine or ten or eleven super large hulls. That is our giant aircraft carriers. You can argue of course that you need a number of very big vessels for very big wars. I don't contest that but as I read more about them I'm getting increasingly impressed by the role and effectiveness of the US Navy's light fleet carriers throughout the pacific war after 1943 doing everything that the fleet carriers did only of course they're smaller but at far less cost. So why today do we not like them? Third, why are we and along with us the Koreans the Japanese why are we designing destroyer types that are ever larger ever more expensive with a displacement tonnage the size beyond the size of the heaviest cruisers of world war two? What am I missing here? Would the navy not benefit if at least to some degree to some degree is destroyer budget partly went to an array of very sophisticated vessels say circa four thousand ton multi-purpose loops able to defend themselves in a modern electronic environment but also to handle everything from piracy to disaster relief. Imagine ladies and gentlemen a 2025 world of huge environmental and demographic stresses with much of Africa in the Middle East and truly enormous political and refugee chaos the sort of things the world bank and the world population fund are just scared stiff of imagine that what do 10,000 ton destroyers do when we ask the navy to go in and help a final agnostic question have we got the issue of manned as opposed to unmanned air power right for the world of 2025 or 2040 will it not seem weird to later historians that we us here lived in the decade when unmanned motor vehicles were perfected on land while we kept our preference for hugely expensive manned aircraft going and going and going until of course they were all shot down in an aerial world of amazing missiles and rocketry do we still have too much of a dreadnought complex here so I know this presentation ends with questions not answers hopefully tomorrow morning's panel will help out and in that regard some of the greatest seminal small essays on strategic matters have ended with questions rather than answers this certainly isn't one of them but I do think we don't do enough asking the historians questions about our larger strategic posture and by implication of course about our armed forces and then of course about our fleet design thank you very much thank you thank you very much paul for that our third panelist is kreg simons he is professor emeritus from the us naval academy I know there are many officers here navy navy marine officers here in in the audience here who were students of of kreg I'm sure some of them have come up to you right kreg and said hello and asked why they got that grade that they got he has also served as a military professor here at the naval war college he is the author of prize-winning books decision at sea Lincoln and his admirals the battle of midway the civil war at sea Neptune wonderful study about the d-day invasion I am pleased to say that he will be returning to the naval war college this coming academic year to serve as the earnest j king professor of maritime history kreg over to you well thank you john I appreciate that good morning everyone you know tom and I just before we sat down up here we're looking at the batting order and deciding that we had a distinct advantage because we got to go after our esteemed colleagues here so I'm going to make my remark what he said that's exactly right but let me see if I can elaborate just a little bit on that by the way my first lecture opportunity here at the naval war college was in 1972 Graham I think I have you beat by a month or two when I lectured I'd believe the first and perhaps still the only ensign ever to lecture to the college of naval warfare at the naval war college it's been 45 years since then I'm delighted to be coming back this fall to see how you've the stewardship of the program has survived going third also gives me the advantage to comment on some things my predecessors had to say here I was interested in Graham's comment about unnecessary wars both Paul and I have been working assiduously on one of those the second world war I have always believed that of all the wars in which the United States has participated two of them were not only necessary but essential and that those two were the two I've spent most of my life studying the American Civil War and the Second World War the reasons being that I cannot imagine in my historical imagination any circumstance that would have allowed our society to eliminate slavery with its enormous financial investment in chattel slavery absent a violent confrontation and I cannot imagine suppressing Hitler and Nazism without a violent confrontation so those two things I think have been necessary I mentioned that I've been working on a world war two book I just finished literally weeks before we came up here yesterday to participate in this panel and it opened my eyes to a number of ideas many of which Paul touched upon which I think is wonderful and one in particular that I wanted to talk about because much time was spent this morning talking about ship numbers numbers are not my thing I'm a historian nevertheless and Paul I think made a very thoughtful comment on this that assessing numbers alone can't give us a sense of capability the lieutenant who asked the question about how do you balance capability versus numbers I think is critical to us in 1945 when the Second World War came to an end the United States Navy was the most powerful sea force in the history of the world it was more powerful by multiple numbers over all the other naval forces on the planet combined some 65,000 combatants if you count armed landing ships today there are depending on how you count 275 287 282 but I'm here to suggest to you if you have an opportunity to place a bet on a confrontation between those 65,000 in 1945 and the 275 that exist today bet everything on today's navy because numbers alone cannot tell us exactly what a navy can do and that goes back to the idea of saying that the Gerald R. Ford is one unit and a landing craft infantry with a 20 millimeter gun mount in the bow is one unit and obviously that's absurd so the question is how can we get maximum capability maximum influence out of whatever number of platforms we have available on the sea another way to look at this is dollars invested if you take one of those online programs it allows you to compare 1945 dollars with 2017 dollars and figure the cost of a destroyer or a destroyer escort or for that matter an aircraft carrier in the Second World War compared with the cost in steady-state dollars of similar platforms today you'll see that for the price of one of these oversized destroyers 8,000 tons whatever the displacement may be you could perhaps get 100 World War II era destroyer escorts and destroyer platforms so again dollars also ship numbers dollars those numbers are not all we need to look at we need to look at capability we need to look at at what they're designed to do and in that respect the tipping points that Paul referred to in terms of the shift from dreadnought battleships into a carrier oriented warfare in the Pacific illustrated perhaps best by the Japanese decision just before the outbreak of war in the Pacific in the late 1930s to say odd the way we can clearly overmatch the threat that they perceived from across the Pacific from the United States was to build oversized supersized battleships the Yamato and the Musashi displacing when fully loaded some 73,000 tons carrying guns that fired shells of 18.1 inches in diameter at a range of up to 30-32 miles that will be the edge that will allow us to overcome this threat that we perceive across the Pacific but of course months after the Battle of Midway weeks after the Battle of Midway the third of those super battleships was converted into a super aircraft carrier in belated recognition that in fact the index of naval power had shifted and it shifted just at the moment when they were about to apply it just as in 1906 the emergence of the dreadnought shifted just at the moment when the submarine and the aircraft were making surface battleships more vulnerable and we need to ask are we in the midst of one of those shifts right now we heard the talk about the Uda loop and how assessment sensors and the application of firepower at the beginning in the end of that loop don't necessarily have to come from the largest platforms and again in this respect I would urge consideration of Paul's third question about the continued investment of putting so many eggs into so few baskets into whether or not that is makes a maximum efficiency of our investment and for that matter of the numbers the difficulty here is it's harder to convince the public one of the questions from the audience today how do you how do you convey the sense of urgency the very real sense of urgency about where we are in our naval capabilities vis-a-vis the rest of the world to a public when it's easier to say well we only have 275 ships and we need to have 350 this is an urgency we must sustain that's fairly easy to do it's much harder to say well we could do it with 300 ships if they had increased efficiency and capability harder to count well yes but there are devices on those ships you see that make them better it's harder to sell to the public but I I will comment and I'll wrap up with this so that is that I think we need to take confidence from the resiliency of American society in the American Civil War when Fort Sumter was fired on in Charleston Harbor the United States had the United States Navy had a handful of warships when President Lincoln asked Secretary of the Navy Gideon Wells how many vessels do we have that in fact are capable now of fighting this for he said perhaps 12 if you add the ships overseas it could be recalled from the Mediterranean and the Far China Station maybe we could put together as much as 40 within a year there were 200 and by the end of the war there were 671 now I will grant you that the number of those were ersatz modifications a merchant ship that had been modified to carry some heavy guns and that's not the kind of thing you can do today obviously but I think it speaks to the resiliency of a society that once energized once informed once involved can in fact respond to crises in the world and the same thing is true in the Second World War when France capitulated in June of 1940 within days the congress passed the two ocean navy act the great expansion that created 257 new warships including 18 aircraft carriers in a single appropriation that passed congress 316 to 0 now you couldn't get a bill for mother's day to pass unanimously today those ships authorized in 1940 were on duty with the arrival of the Essex and Pearl Harbor in June of 1943 so it can be done if we're energized if we pay attention and we're serious about what we need to do is it still possible today I I believe that it is and I'll end with that thank you thank you very much Craig our last panelist is Thomas Menken Dr. Menken is president and chief executive officer of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments which is one of the leading centers for the study of maritime strategy and fleet design today he is also a senior research professor at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University's Paul NHTSA school of advanced international studies. Tom served for over 20 years as an officer in the US Navy Reserve including tours in Iraq and in Kosovo his government service includes serving as deputy assistant secretary of defense for policy planning he is the author of numerous books and articles technology in the American way of war since 1945 uncovering ways of war US intelligence and foreign military innovation a wonderful study of the interwar period he has also produced books arms races and international relations strategy in Asia and also competitive strategies for the 21st century Tom has done a great deal in fact to bring back very much front and center this important concept of competitive strategies that was so important during the closing stages of the Cold War Tom also served here in the strategy and policy department as a professor for many years he served as the captain Jerome Levy chair of economic geography and national security Tom over to you thank you thank you John and CNO Admiral Harley and and John thank you for for really leaving the best for last and in the intro truly because it is wonderful to be back I know it's obligatory to say it's a pleasure to be here but but today it actually has the virtue of also being true so which isn't always true but you know my time at Newport has been so foundational to to who I am the colleagues here the students and it's it really is wonderful wonderful to be back in the limited limited time I have I want to focus on on a theme that has already emerged from from this morning's discussions and that is the the reality of great power competition and the increasing possibility of great power war and how history can help us think about and to at least partially illuminate an uncertain future this is a topic that that we have been hearing more and more about in in recent years and I think great credit goes to to CNO Richardson for for emphasizing great power competition the possibility of great power conflict and it's a it's a topic that deserves great discussion and study because it's it's one thing to talk and and sometimes we talk to you chemistically about these things but it's one thing to talk about great power competition and conflict it's another for us to really comprehend the full ramifications of that for the navy and for our nation and that's the task that that lies ahead for us I think like like like most of you like all of us I really enjoyed secretary layman's talk this morning but here I'm speaking specifically to to those of you in uniform my my guess is that it was it was interesting it was compelling in a certain way but it was largely a work of history and and a work of history that that perhaps many of us in uniform felt disconnected from because this discussion of great power competition and conflict is is is we're coming back to a topic that we've really not touched on seriously for a quarter century now for historians quarter century is not a long time for the military it's a lifetime or more accurately it's a professional career so audience participation time those of you in uniform how many of you were in service active reserve service those of you currently in service were in service in 1989 okay just just as I just just as I as I suspected so a period where great power competition and conflict was dominant is essentially I'll do respects outside the your professional experience but it's likely to dominate the rest of your careers and the rest of your lives so what I'd like to do is is really I can't as the other speakers I can't fully address this this topic in the limited time I have but I want to address three dimensions of it and be suggestive rather than definitive so first I want to talk about great power competition second I want to talk about deterrence and then third war and all three really are are linked now professor Allison has already touched on the topic of great power competition and I think it's important to look back at history but it's also in so doing as much to draw contrasts as comparisons today we don't face a replay of of the cold war not capital C capital W even if maybe we're we're in a period of small C small W cold war for a number of reasons first we face multiple great power competitors not just China but also but also Russia and even if I would I agree and I do agree that China is the more consequential consequential challenge we can't ignore Russia second that's multi-polar great power competition features actors on different trajectories so yes China's rising China's likely to rise although maybe not continue to rise maybe not as as quickly as as recently could have a catastrophic failure Russia's declining but of course in some ways Russia's been declining for centuries and you can go back centuries if with the predictions of Russia's decline and collapse so so that's you know that's different and certainly again as professor Allison said the outcome of great power competition is not predetermined we can look to history to see some happy outcomes the you know the Anglo-American competition was resolved I think as a as a win-win so much as we we tend not to talk about it in in polite company as if it didn't happen but you know I live outside of a city that was burned down by the British in the 1812 but but but that's one end the other end Anglo-German rivalry which which spawned multiple big wars and with the cold war the U.S. Soviet competition being a midpoint it did breed war red wars on the Korean Peninsula Southeast Asia Americans and Soviets did face each other in we now know in in the airs the sky over over Korea among other places but it didn't lead to the big the big war so as we look forward we face the challenge of formulating objectives relative to China relative to Russia and then developing a strategy to achieve them hopefully short of war and doing so intelligently doing so in ways that give us options and hopefully constrain our competitors options doing so intelligently to impose costs upon our competitors while minimizing their ability to impose costs on us and doing it intelligently to seize the initiative again as as secretary layman I think very evocatively pointed out this morning seize the initiative in key areas of the competition while preventing us from from being put on our back foot by our competitors moves now in doing so we need to begin to think seriously about risk more seriously than we've done in recent years because a world dominated by a great power competition is not a risk-free world and if we hope to dissuade and deter we need to incur risk and that leads me to my to my second topic deterrence we need to think more seriously about deterrence both conventional deterrence but also nuclear deterrence than we have in recent in recent years we have I think for all intents and purposes fooled ourselves for a long time that we live in a risk-free world and the environment has actually allowed us to fool ourselves we've been able to to do things essentially with with minimal risk but that world is is is going or has already has already disappeared um we need to think very seriously about risk within the government and we need to share that and we need to have a very frank discussion with the American people about about risk and with that is uh is we need to think very seriously and debate very seriously seriously are our model of deterrence now our recent model of deterrence has been I would say implicit it's best understood by looking at our pattern of behavior really going from the end of of the Cold War on that that implicit model of deterrence has been that when bad things happen so when when Iraq invades Kuwait when the the Serbs are committing all sorts of atrocities in Kosovo all sorts of other things go on what we would build up we would assemble a coalition with our allies at the center of that we would then we would we would respond and we would reverse we would reverse aggression and that worked has worked fairly well for us but it's likely to be of limited utility in the future particularly against great powers as a as a counterfactual imagine that imagine the 1990 1991 model at work against Russia in Crimea as a counterfactual let's assume that the political will was there let's assume that the decision was that we were going to treat Crimea like we treated Kuwait how would that have worked not too well right could imagine other other scenarios as well so because of the geographic proximity of of potential contingencies relative to great power competitors the the fact that there's likely to be less of a power imbalance in the future than there has been in the past we're going to need to rethink deterrence so specifically I think we're going to have to move away from this this this response model to deterrence concept based on denial and punishment denying an aggressor the fruit of his aggression and then inflicting disproportionate damage again as a as a deterrent and we and that's a that's a that's a concept of conventional deterrence but I also believe that we may very well need to lean more heavily on our nuclear deterrent in the future than we have at least in our recent the recent past happy to talk more about that but that leads me to my third and final topic which is the need to think seriously about great power war we need to think seriously about great power war not just because it could break out accidentally but because if we hope to deter we need to think through the consequences should deterrence fail because it sometimes sometimes does now for a number of reasons we're moving from an era of quick decisive wars to protracted attritional wars and I think as as CNO mentioned this morning you know a number of a number of trends out there are leading us to a more level figuratively battlefield and so future wars are likely to look considerably different than the recent past and they may share some features with past great power wars but they also may diverge from past great power wars in in in some significant ways as well but we do need to be thinking about a number of areas that we've neglected over the past quarter century and let me just give you give you three first we need to think very seriously about mobilization how best to tap into our nation's great resources in support of of war fighting now mobilization in the 21st century is likely to look a lot different than mobilization during world war two we're unlikely to plant victory gardens I don't know if we're going to be a collecting scrap metal I hope my wife's not going to have to paint the back of her legs with with eyeliner because because all the nylons needed for parachutes instead of instead of panning hose but what is what is what does mobilization look like in in the 21st century in the information age that's something that we we need to think very seriously about second we need to think very seriously about logistics and logistics for you know for for a big war it was not too long ago that you know two of our best armed best equipped NATO allies Britain and France nearly ran through their entire stock of precision munitions in the air war over Libya over Libya not Russia not China not Iran not North Korea but Libya we need to think very seriously about that and then finally we need to think about uh attrition and reconstitution I think one of the great stories of of the US navy in world war two and I think underappreciated is is our ability not just to build you know new new warships and field new warships but also to fight through damage and and reconstitute and prevail and in fact it's one of the the I think the the great stories of the aftermath of Pearl Harbor it's not the damage that we sustained on December 7th 1941 but how almost all of the of the of the warships were eventually repaired recovered and got back into action we need to get back into into thinking about those things so let me leave you with three three implications as if we are to seriously think about great power competition and the prospect of great power war the first with all due respect we need to stop telling ourselves that we have the greatest armed forces in the world because I don't know that we do I get I asked for the show of hands earlier as to you know who was in in uniform in 1989 well as far as the US Navy is concerned the last time the Navy fought a serious pier Navy Navy 1944 most assuredly outside of the the professional the professional experience of of those in uniform here I could say similar things about about the Air Force I could say similar things about the Marines the Army we don't know we hope and I think I you know I would like to give our our sailors that the a that cno does but that that doesn't add up to being prepared for this this type of of conflict so that's number one number two I think we are we're entering an era where great power competition and conflict really does need to be the driver not just of our fleet design but the the composition of our forces more more broadly even more explicitly I think we should we should be looking at competition and the prospect of conflict with with great powers as as our force sizing construct and we should then stress test the forces that that come from that against other types of contingencies it should be the driver third and finally to bring this back to to fleet design where this takes me is well in a way back to the future it takes me to the need really for a bifurcated fleet a bifurcated force and of course that's the way historically the US Navy the Royal Navy was designed the the force that was deployed either periodically or or permanently forward for engagement for deterrence looked very different than the battle fleet than the main fleet that would be called upon in time of war and for a whole bunch of reasons that need not detain us now we we got away from that after world war two we denominated the fleet in kind of like like units and we use those units as instruments of presence as unit as instruments of deterrence but also as war fighting instruments I think we need to go back to to a bifurcated force a force that includes a deterrent force or deterrence forces forward station with credible combat capability to to engage to shape to deter to reassure and then a big powerful maneuver force designed to fight and win that in you know that that I think will be a big change it'll be a big change for us and it'll also be a big change for our allies and our our partners and also our competitors who have grown to expect presence you know US presence to be denominated in carrier strike groups so this is a not something that can be fully addressed in 20 minutes it's not something that can be fully addressed in in the two days the current strategy forum the the good news and the challenge for for those of you in uniform is I think this is going to be the set of issues that you're going to be dealing with as you go forward for the rest of your careers thank you very much we have time before the lunch break to have some questions and comments from the audience I will recognize them if you raise your hand we have one right over here let's start with that Dr. Allison you spoke at length about the containment strategy that was developed at the beginning of the Cold War and was quite successful and you suggested that there ought to be a strategy developed for dealing with the threat from China I'm sure you've given some thought to what that strategy ought to look like and I wondered if you'd share that with so thank you very much it's good it's on yes okay the uh I have thought about it and I've told you the truth uh if I knew the answer I would have said so I say in the conclusion of this book that this book will be very unsatisfactory for Washingtonians because in Washington it's necessary to describe the solution to the problem in the same sentence in which you describe the problem but the rise of a 5 000-year-old civilization with 1.4 billion people is not a Washington problem to be fixed in which we just roll out our new strategy seven to do's take an aspirin and be confident things will get better I don't think that's correct I think this is a condition a chronic condition that we're going to have to cope with over a generation but in the conclusion of the book I sketch a spectrum of strategy I first say the current strategy of engagement edge that's been uh uh the the moniker under which we've gone both under obama and bush basically it permits everything and excludes nothing so it's been basically been an excuse for going with the flow and I think has not served us well secondly I say that the spectrum of strategies that we should be exploring should be way wider than the current conversation so I give you one well to the left which is accommodation in the spectrum just to sort of start the conversation and one well to the right which is called underbinding and splintering and none of those are part of the current conversation and then finally I say I what I'm hopeful is that is we get our mind around the fact that we're facing a a challenge of lucidity in proportions where on the odds the odds are that it turns out poorly we'll now stretch our minds and that a lot of people will get involved in the conversation in the same way that happened after 1946 and I think actually for the for the people in uniform here I think it's more likely that some people who are next generation not old cold warriors like me will be more imaginative than people that came from my generation another question or comment from the audience yes right there thank you for all the wisdom on the stage but I just have one specific question what do we do about Korea now who wants to take that on I'll say a word I think the fastest path I have a chapter in the book called from here to war in which all you have to do is put one foot in front of the other to get from where we are now to a war between the US and China with tens of thousands of people killing each other so I have five of these scenarios the most plausible is the Korean scenario in this case I think we're going to watch it and it's like a Cuban Missile Crisis in slow motion over the months ahead not years months either Kim Jong-un is going to test an ICBM that CAA says we'll be able to deliver a nuclear warhead against San Francisco or Los Angeles that's one train coming down the track or alternatively something's going to happen to interrupt that including a US attack on North Korea to prevent that from happening which is what President Trump has said he's going to do and is prepared to do and I think you know we're going to have to basically stay tuned now what one would wish in this situation was that this didn't occur in the context of this lucidity and dynamic basically because we ever we see a rising power who's threatening our position and because they see a ruling power who wants to hold to our current position there's trust level between the two parties is zero misunderstandings are magnified in the extreme so anything any one of the extra takes looks malign or suspicious to the other and the possibility of the impact of actions by somebody like Kim Jong-un should remind us of this assassination of the arts duke in Sarajevo so you would wish that in this case there were adult supervision but we know we live in hubs is world of anarchy so there's nobody above Xi Jinping and Trump if you could imagine a leaders of the two countries sitting down and say the idea that a small impoverished isolated country should drag the two of us into a war we don't want is nuts so we should find a way to deal with this problem I think if you started there and then you stretch your imagination of which both parties were prepared to start looking at things that they would not now look at in the same way that John Kennedy began to look at options that he would never have conceived before he got to the white of their eyes in the Cuban Missile Crisis there's some possibilities Tom you want to rope weigh in and then we'll close yeah look I think for for decades literally for decades you know we've fallen prey to wishful thinking when it comes to to North Korea we've we've we've tried to wish it away one one way or the other either by assuming that the Kim family regime was going to fall of its own accord or that you know that others the Chinese would take care of the problem and it's been just that it's been wishful thinking and it's led us to where we are now what I would say is and it really it it it tags on to what I'm saying earlier about risk I mean we need to think very seriously how much you know of a threat is a is a North Korean ICBM because that's you know that's sort of the precipitating event I like I could make the argument because I happen to believe it actually that the North Korean regime is actually quite rational quite rational and the North Korean regime has successfully played successive American regimes to its benefit and has has managed to extend its lifespan because of that so you know can can we tolerate the can we tolerate a North Korean ICBM well I think that's that's the that's that's the discussion worth having that's the definitely the discussion worth having join with me in thanking this wonderful panel okay that was by far one of the best panels we've ever had here at CSF we have an hour and a half for lunch and see you back in your seats at 1.15