in south korea and japan. the south korean president was just here, i spoke with him. he has had some apprehensions about the deployment of thaad, because he wasn t aware of the implications. i would see this as an opportunity for him to say we re going forward with a full-scale thaad. the same should be said and encourage japan to do the same, not only to employ land-base systems in japan, but i would talk about japan having a cruise missile capability. so i think we can do things on a defensive basis that will make life much tougher for the north koreans if we, in fact, really imposed the sanctions that need to be imposed and say to the north korean regime, if we re going to negotiate, we re going to negotiate on a basis which you don t gain. as you have been in the past. thaad is a missile defense system placed in south korea, just for the viewers. but the south korean leader had opposition because it felt it might be too provocative. it s there, but the question is
well as the guns. you said this has been going on for some time. but everyone we ve spoken to says it s worse, the fact that it s now a device that could reach alaska in theory, changes the calculus here. at what point do you have to go beyond the diplomatic scolding and force china to do what needs to be done? we still have two very important things, deterrence and defense. when we talk about beefing up our capability, we can do more in south korea and japan. the south korean president was just here, i spoke with him. he has had some apprehensions about the deployment of thaad, because he wasn t aware of the implications. i would see this as an opportunity for him to say we re going forward with a full-scale thaad. the same should be said and encourage japan to do the same, not only to employ land-base systems in japan, but i would talk about japan having a cruise
we spend seven times what the russians do. our forces are vastly superior. they are operating very old equipment. when we see them modernizing cruise missile capability that s something we need to look at. it has a counter part nuclear weapon as well. it can be used to deliver either a conventional warhead or nuclear warhead. it does give them increasing capability combined with aggress iness. we need to be watching this. i don t think this is something we need to be worried about of an attack tomorrow. it is very a discomforting thought that the abilities that russia s possessing them. bob you have a lot of people saying this has bit of a deja vu feeling to it. this could be sort of a cold war, i guess, rerun in way.
strikes go and one of the unanticipated consequences perhaps is an assault on one of our embassies in the region. we have the capability with the marine corps team to do that, to get our people out of whatever country has the problem with the embassy. so there are a lot of things that could go wrong. it looks like they re positioning the forces to prepare for some of those contingencies as well as the cruise missile capability. now the aircraft carriers of course, now you re talking a real serious, real serious punch. so whether nimitz stays in that region toreor gets withdrawn, again depend on what s the strategy, therefore, what s the military s mission to support that strategy. arthel: before i let you go, captain nash. gregg: if i could ask you based on the offense sieve moves we talked about what the u.s. might be planning, talk briefly about