Alliance with regional and Global Security challenges, this is from hosted by the International Strategic studies. [inaudible conversations] good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for coming. Its friday afternoon in august and you know, im delighted that your Summer Vacation plans include csis, but its really a testament to how important, influential and respected our panel today is. Im the senior vicepresident for asia and japan here csis at georgetown. Before we get started we always do a brief safety announcement. And we have about ten fourstar admirals and generals in the room, but this former boy scout will be in charge. If there is a need to evacuate and ill let you know, but well head out and head around the corner to National Geographic down 17th street. Out the back. We have simultaneous interpretation and there should be headsets on your chair. If you have a problem, wave and someone will help you. Please leave them on the chair, if you take them home wed send the new rapid force to your house to retrophy them tonig to retrieve them tonight. Were hearing from eight distinguished flag officers from the United States and japan who participated in this years u. S. Japan military statesmans forum which was established by the asiapacific initiative and i will introduce now who will tell you what weve been up to the past few days. The doctor is very wellknown in washington and around the world, an Award Winning journalist, columnist and author and written extensively on international affairs, u. S. Japan alliance, geostrategic and geopolitical dynamics in asia. He was a correspondent here in washington, 80 to 81. Excuse me in beijing 80 to 81, and washington 84 to 87 and he was here when i was a graduate student and he had a great adams forum and he would take the japan speaking military officers, Foreign Service officers and when the Prime Minister of japan, the foreign minister came to washington, he made them sit down to breakfast with us in japanese which was wonderful. Hes been a great mentor and friend to many of us in this business and today hires georgetown grads of mine and weve probably had ten people go back and forth between his Asia Pacific Initiative and csis and georgetown. Api was established after 311 after the initiative did a seminal report on what happened with that triple tragedy and how we responded. And then changed the name in 2017 to asiapacific initiative because the mandate has broadened to a whole change of economic and geopolitical issues. Please join me in welcoming our first speak. [applaus [applause] thank you, mike, for the generous introduction. Im very glad to be here. On before of the asiapacific foundation id like to express my deep appreciation to csis, dr. Michael green and the others hosting us. Asiapacific Initiative Foundation was founded in 2011 after the 3 11 tragedy. We pub published the report on Fukushima Nuclear disaster. And in that report we emphasized the Critical Role which japans selfDefense Forces and the u. S. Military played in fighting against adversity, particularly we are very much grateful for the United States dispatching more than 20,000 marines immediately to that disaster area for rescue operation. That crisis was that most existential National Crisis for japan in over 70 years. And it was that Civil Defense forces and the u. S. Military which really saved japan. That was a rude awakening to us japanese. So i thought that from military to military dialog and also, would be very much crucial for the future of japan and the u. S. Japan alliance. Thats a backdrop why we initiated this endeavor, to launch the japanu. S. Military statesman forum. A Core Group Members who are and still are retired admirals and generals, both japan and the United States, over the past six years, it has expanded that scope of the participation and expanded to include the active duty officers. And civilian policy makers. And the experts. And we have very much extraordinary fortunate to have that government officials, both from the United States and japan for this years sixth military forum and we have very fruitful, stimulating policy discussions over the past two and a half days. So i once again appreciate the guests of the military statesman forum to come to washington to get together to exchange views on those in very much informal manners. Mike green has been very much extremely helpful from day one. After dr. Hammer and dr. Green about this enterprise and so without dr. Howards strong endorsement this would never have started and also without dr. Greens continued support, it would never have grown to this extent. So, once again, thank you very much for dr. Green and the doctor at csis, thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] thank you, thank you. Were going to turn now to a panel discussion. Ill ask a series of questions to our distinguished visitors and well try to save some time to open it up for your questions. Theres a lot of experienced people in this alliance in the audience i see. Let me briefly introduce the panel. Admiral mike mullen for sprint and the Bloomberg Family Foundation and on the Advisory Boards of tech met and affinity. And he retired after serving as the jint joint chief of staff after 40 years in the United States navy. And to his right a special advisor to Japans NationalSecurity Council staff. He retired from active duty in 2012 after serving as the third chief of staff in japans joint staff, which of course was during 3 11 and he had to show leadership for the japanese people, the forces and our alliance and earned enormous respect for that. Saw the selfDefense Forces rise to be the most reexpected institution in japan in Public Opinion polls and to his right danny blair known to many of us here. Admiral blair served for intelligence. Retired in 2002 after 34 years including as commanderinchief of u. S. Pacific command. Admiral blairs right is gener general, Japan Air Force selfDefense Force. Hes special advisor to the cabinet retired in 2014 after serving as fourth chief of staff of the japans joint staff and air Defense Forces. To his right is general vincent brooks, who currently serves on the board of directors of the gary sinese foundation. He served as the 15th commander of the u. N. Command, combined forces command and u. S. Forces korea during a very consequential time, 2016 and the four star in command of u. S. Army forces in the pacific, in the indopacific and last but not least, admiral now executive advisor to the minister of defense, retired from active duty in 2019 after serving as fifth chief of staff 20142019 and before that chief of staff of Japan Maritime force defenses. So this is a very distinguished panel with a lot of experience across a whole range of security challenges that have confronted our countries. Im going to open, if i could, by asking admiral mullline and at admiral who cochair the military statesman forum just to give us two or three top take aways that you have from this past three and a half days of discussion weve had. Ill start with you, admiral, if i may . Thanks, michael and thanks for your leadership and continued participation in this forum. I think, with respect to the last two and a half days that the number one take away for me has been the ability to frankly explore in depth and in breadth the issues that with which the alliance is challenged. I can tell you this is my fourth year and each year its gotten deeper and broader and actually theyre much more frank discussions. Very rich in terms of the challenges and well talk about some of those, but more than anything else, theres a trust here thats very real, its very it happens very quickly once the conference starts, and its really bred out of friendship, longterm relationships and a passion and a commitment to the u. S. Japanese alliance and even though what we talk about is broader than just the alliance itself. Its particularly important to me, not just because of my longstanding relationship with japan, but at 3 11, while i had known the general, my counterpart when i was chairman, we went through he led in that crisis like very few leaders i have seen globally over the course of my career and so to be paired with him again in this kind of forum was very special. So, thats the breadth and the depth i think is the first thing. Secondly is and i try to follow things geostrategically, but i had no idea that the relationship between japan and korea had deteriorated so badly and were at a real low. We could argue about whether its an alltime low, and when you when he incorporate the overall geostrategic criticality of that area of the world, that this particular challenge, which is not new, but this particular challenge just opens the door for china to drive right through it and thats whats going on right now to the detriment of south korea, to the detriment to japan, to the detriment of the alliances and the region. I was very struck by that. Weve had some very healthy discussions with respect to it, this to include a very clear representation on the japanese side that right now were at a in japan were at what i would call sort of korea fatigue. We cannot let korea fatigue and all that is associated with that stop us from the point of achieving a solution here pretty quickly. And as was pointed out earlier today, this has seen the Political Support for both leaders go up, which is an incentive not to solve it and yet, longer term, the dangers are pretty significant. So that that came loud and clear, and one of the points that was made is korea needs the time right now to be able to work through this and from my standpoint, japan needs to give them the spouse without overreacting in what it has moved to what i would call sort of the emotional phase in which were operating in that phase, its not likely anything good is going to come out of that. So i hope the korean and the japanese leadership can actually pause, get to the point where they can pick up meaningful, constructive negotiations and resolve this as rapidly as possible and im sure youll hear more about korea. The third thing, and im sure someone will talk about china. The third thing, the take away is china. Its all about china in that region. In many ways to include our relationship and whats going on there. But this is more of an operational war fighting focus. Weve met many years. Weve all weve talked about figuring out how to Work Together and vote exercise together, which generates a much stronger deterrent against the potential outbreak of conflict, but it also puts you in a much better position if conflict should break out and thats very real. My take away, again, from this week was that there needs to be a sense of urgency on how we plan and exercise together. Not just japan and the u. S. , but also, our coalition partners, and to do that pretty quickly. We are challenged, as we always are, in this kind of work, the potential warfare and with information sharing. Thats built on trust. We talk routinely about these gray war these gray war zones, cyber, Electronic Warfare and weve had discussions about that. Those are incredibly complicated domains and weve got to get to work to have mo more, again, planning and exercising in these domains to understand how were going to operate together. My experience is that if youve done none of that conflict breaks out. It gets very bad before it gets better. You can mitigate a lot of that with practice ahead of time. That also puts a lot of pressure in the region on china, which is, i think, exactly what we need to do. Those are the three things. Well, thank you. I would like to speak to you in japanese today. And we are very grateful that there are many participants here today. Regarding what we are trying to carry out, i believe that admiral mullen has covered them comprehensi comprehensively, theres not much i need to add. However, when i was on active duty with admiral mullen, i had to work with him very much and as mentioned, after the time of 3 1 is 1 when we encounter a major disaster, at the top of the u. S. Military admiral mullen had provided us the strong support that we have been able to develop a personal trust relationship, which i personally believe is extremely strong. However we can say that relationships during active duty and when we are retired are somewhat different. That is we carry out the same mission in the same environment, but once you are retired, i believe that maybe you will have different view and perceptions and in this regard with the use of the forum such as sf, i think we can further the trust relationship that we had and build on it and i have participated in nsf six times and i have been able to feel that this i dont know how admiral mullen feels about me, but i have a total trust in him and such relationship. If you look at the South China Sea or activity of the chinese armi armies, from the military perspective i think we can share more even now. Not to say that just sharing information, but i think we can sort of perceive and recognize the information and i believe that this forum has given us the opportunity to be able to sort of share that kind of perception even before the information. Each time as i participate from the u. S. Side and from the stf, we do have more active members participating. We started that we will have the forum between the retired officers and we will talk about the government officers, as well as what the japanese as well as u. S. Active duty military can cooperate and we wanted to provide the bridge between these people. That was the original objective and i believe that we have been able to accomplish that. Earlier there was some reference to japankorea relationship. Although i will not be talking about relationship with south korea since three years ago we have general john participate in this forum. In that sense as well we can have the objective exchange of views. I believe japanu. S. Are okay, although we only have one participate from rok, i believe that position is extremely important and this year we had an australian guest also take part in our meeting. So although started with u. S. And japan, now we do have korea, south korea, as well as australia and there are four countries involved in this forum and maybe the origin tension and objective may have changed a little bit, but as the situation and environment changes extremely fast, i believe we are now meeting the needs of the time and i believe that that results in an extremely important result. So that is my view. Thank you. Thank you. Let me turn to admiral blair and general, you get the hard question. With the militarization of these artificial islands in the South China Sea by the pla, the unphiing of commands on the chinese side, the increasing operational tempo in the East China Sea, not only operating in the chain, but beyond the island chain, theres a problem. Some people say we have lost the South China Sea and we are losing the East China Sea. Starting with you, admiral blair, is that right . How would you characterize it . No, its wrong. [laughter]. Thank you. Let me go a little beyond that. Wonderful to have former secretary, former u. S. Trade representative carla hill is here with us. She and i cochaired back around 2003 a study on the future of u. S. China relations and a couple of conclusions that we reached back then i think are still very important. We agreed that the only country that could contain china was china. And our policy at that time was to try to give china room so it would not contain itself, that it would join the worldbased order from which it had benefitted so strongly to that time. Ever since it was open to the world. But what i now see china doing is containing itself. They are taking such aggressive action. Theyre getting such a wide range of areas, that the countries of the region who are there, the countries outside the region nonetheless have presence and interests and vital interest in the area, are really banding together to oppose this chinese, very aggressive posture from the Military Point of view, from the economic point of view, from the diplomatic point of view. So a few smile islands in the southern part of the South China Sea are really inconsequential, compared to a strategic level, a unified concerned about china and banding together in order to in order to offset and to and to contain this offensive by china. So, i think basically china is causing a reaction now which it will regret. Now, in my experience, the chinese are very practical and if something theyre trying is not working, they will try something else. And there are certainly elements within china who think it was the more theyre aggressive, the more we push, the more we demand and bully well get a point with the other countries, okay, youre a big guy, just do whatever you want. I dont think thats the way its going to turn out. I think the countries. Region and those of us who are allies in the conduct and the region and partners who support them will show china that this is a losing strategy that they are on and that they will say, okay, it was working better last time when we tried to work with the organization and try to make changes in a peaceful and noncoercive and nonbullying manner and we will get back to that point. On the specific issue in the South China Sea, there is far more military activity by other countries, the United St