The asia pacific region. Secondly, that we would maintain freedom of access throughout that region. In particular, we would maintain the sea lanes in that area, whatever the challenge might be. Even as we reduce our defense budget, therefore we must maintain and would maintain a powerful navy, and that that navy would be charged with maintaining the freedom of those sea lanes. We had, of course, to be concerned as to whether there would be a challenge for that. We observed that the rise and shine has more energy needs for more energy than they can produce themselves, and to maintain the Economic Growth which they believe is essential. We observed that the South China Sea is a potential source of Energy Supplies for china and that there is a contention among the nations in that region as to where the ownership and rights of access are to the South China Sea. And this is conceivable that china might seek to reestablish its claim there by military coercion and that could lead them into a
Program of exercise we conducted. The exercises were not only conducted on military scenarios, but we had an extensive set of exercises involved in humanitarian response. During the time i was secretary, we had a Disaster Response very similar to the one theyre doing here in San Francisco today. We bought naval forces from the United States, from russia and japan all to honolulu where we had simulated a tsunami disaster. And these three great nations brought their fleets to honolulu exercising how to respond and alleviate that disaster. Well, that was then. How about now . Last year the United States released a new Security Strategy. Most of you probably have not even heard of that, but i have to tell you this was a big deal. It was one of the fifth American Security strategies that we have issued since the civil war. Among the highlights of that Security Strategy was a strong statement that the United States had the highest economic and security interests in the asia pacific region. N
Stories from the field, if you will, peoples experiences in working in International Environments to help promote humanitarian missions. Fleet week got involved with a humanitarian mission back in october in the earthquake in van, turkey. Theres a heavy kurdish in San Francisco and the. Better recover from their event and how to better prepare in the future from the katz traufk event that had taken place would not occur. We got a phone call at the fleet Week Association to ask if we could help bring together some resources and leet a Factfinding Mission and we did that. One of our panelists is up here, second from your left, rob dudgeon, hes with the department of Emergency Management and hes the director of Emergency Services. Robs organization has been instrumental in creating the program that we have from back in 2010 all the way through to today and i know in the future were already talking about putting together a hot wash of everything weve learned through 2012s fleet week. So ro
Multiple professional military Education Programs and other venues and the maturing of thinking and policies since 9 11 and katrina. There is a recognition within this analysis that there are gaps in awareness of the capabilities dod can provide in complex catastrophes, as well as the inherent complexities and lack of understanding in our various chains of command and our authorities. The report recognizes what we have used to drive the dsca portion of fleet week, that local authorities are likely to be overwhelmed in a complex catastrophe and that the president will direct support to civil authorities. That San Francisco fleet week assumption is now stated as a guiding principle inside the dod for planning and activities. The objective of the dod effort is to enable the effective access to and use of defense capabilities in the event of a disaster. Critical to this is a review of authorities, policies and protocols that govern the access to and employment of defense capabilities and t
Aboard this symbol of americas millery power, the uss macon island. What a pleasure it is to be among the men and women of our armed forces and the men and women of the First Responders of the San Francisco bay area. Fleet week for many years in San Francisco was a somewhat [inaudible] affair and it has been transformed into this great coming together by the military and the First Responders, the great coming together of our uniformed personnel and a great [speaker not understood] of San Francisco. This amazing transformation in the last few years was due primarily to the vision and the dedication of three people, george and Charlotte Schultz and mike myers. Id like to pause to thank all three of them for this work. applause and in april of 1996, my last year as secretary of defense, i met one morning intelligence briefing at 7 oclock along with general charlie. The previous day general hughes had briefed us that the Chinese Military were to begin extensive military maneuvers in the ta