For serious readers. He is an honor graduate of the u. S. Naval academy. He went on to earn a masters degree and a doctorate are honors with honors in International Law and diplomacy. He is also a distinguished graduate of the u. S. Naval war college. He is also the author of seven prior books, this is his eighth. And over 103 articles. Even his wife, laura, is an author. [laughter] and and a very good one. Since retiring as supreme allied commander and retiring from the navy, hes been the dean of the Fletcher School of law at Tufts University in boston, the very same place he got his doctorate. We are fortunate to have here tonight with a new book steam power which i cannot wait to read. Ladies and gentlemen, jim sorry thank you. [applause] thank you. Normally when people hear that introduction, bob, thank you, that was very kind. You, thank you for having me here. When people hear that introduction they have one overwhelming reaction when they meet me in person which is boy, i thought youd be taller than you appear to be. Were going to take just a couple minutes and talk about the oceans of the world today and so often as we look at a map of the world we tend to think of the land, right . Its illogical. We have 70 percent of this planet are the oceans. By the way, 70 percent of your body is composed of water and heres another one. 70 percent of the oxygen that you breathe comes from photosynthesis in the ocean. The oceans the british use to say who know a thing or two about naval mastery, the british say the oceans are one. They connect everywhere. Tonight as we talk about the ocean i invite you to think about 70 percent, this water world that we inhabit here today. What im going to do is very quickly im going to take 20 minutes and were going to walk through the oceans of the world. Im going to try to fight together with the challenges we face and then what we are doing about it. Lets start with the pacific ocean. This is a 1589 chart of the pacific by a cartographer named or tell us. Bottom right, you see the polynesians who voyage 5000 miles, 10,000 years ago to inhabit the pacific. As i got ready to get underway in san diego in my 500 foot 10,000 ton destroyer, i sent my 300 men and woman crew the pacific is dangerous, weve got to really be on our toes, can you imagine getting in and out rigor and saving 5000 miles . The polynesians did. This is an agency, its also the largest of the oceans. The pacific, you dont have to remember these numbers. The pacific is 170 million square kilometers. Ill give you a better way to think about the pacific. You can take all the land in the world, put it inside the pacific ocean. Its enormous. And it is an ancient sea. It has been sailed, its been sailed for centuries. Here are two ships, bottom ship that kind of little one lookslike a little toy boat. You will know that ship. Thats the santa maria. Thats the need to, the pinta and the santa maria, the three ships Christopher Columbus sailed to america. It was 60 feet long. Working 92, right . That behemoth next to it was from the same time period, 1450 was the flagship of the chinese admiral shane fee. It was 420 feet long. Six decks. 500 mariners on it. It worked the ship Christopher Columbus sailed. These are contemporaneous vessels. We need to understand how china views the pacific. As an ancient sea, an enormous c and 1a sailed for centuries. In the american mind, when we think about the pacific what do we think about typically . World war ii. We think aboutthe attack on pearl harbor. Campaign to retake the pacific. This is a period of time, the early 1940s when the United States navy as not hundreds of ships as we do today. We had hundreds of Aircraft Carriers. Today we have 12 Aircraft Carriers. Hundreds of Aircraft Carriers. We dominated the city. American self view of the pacific tends to inculcate that dna into how we think about it. Another nation is rising at sea and it is an ancient nation, and ancient civilization, it is china. These are chinese Ballistic MissileNuclear Powered submarines. Highly capable, i put them here as examples of the rise of the chinese fleet that we have seen really over the last decade. Chinese now have two Aircraft Carriers. Again, we have 12. But they are building and they are on a constant increase in their maritime capability and its not just s ships. On the left, tokyo is the Pacific Century building. On the largest in tokyo. The largest commercial centers, built and owned by china. On the right, we see a chinese or strip proudly pulling into a court visit, where . Earl harbor, hawaii, United States of america. China is on the move. China has what they regard as historical claim to the South China Sea. It would be roughly as though the United States claimed to own the gulf of mexico. Chinas belief is that there ancient territorial rights is the result of all of those voyages of admiral jing he and that as a result, they own that water space and all the hydrocarbons that are under it. 80 percent of pacific trade passes through this South China Sea. And to reinforce this claim, china is building artificial islands and reefs , many of them. Thousands of acres. And theyre militarizing men. Those are airstrips. Each one of those islands becomes kind of an Aircraft Carrier from which china seeks to operate and it reinforces their claim under International Law. Fortunately, we have allies in this region. We have japan which is increasing its military spending and is more inclined to operate alongside us. Wehave south korea. An improving economy, a new president. Our allies are the heart of our Maritime Strategy in this region and its good that we have them because we have an enormous practical problem. China is a strategic challenge that the tactical problem is right here. Its north korea. This is kim jong own, and he is well name because he is unpredictable, unstable, untested, untried. Morbidly obese, addicted to opioids. Hes got a really bad haircut. I think that holds them back and he is building Ballistic Missiles that can range great distances, over time his ambition is to create nuclear weapons, marry them to these vessels and slide them over the pacific so we have a significant challenge here and that in a sense is a good thing cause it survives any confluence of interests to the United States and china in the pacific. Lets turn to the atlantic as we kind of skip around these oceans and this is how the book seapower instructor, each chapter a history of the ocean. A current geopolitics and what its like to sail in the ocean as americans. The atlantic is the ultimate transit zone in history in so many ways. And it begins with these great mariners. Who all come from the iberian peninsula. From spain and from portugal. Prince henry, bottom right everyone would recognize Christopher Columbus. Upper left, the greatest of nagging navigators, magellan. Bartolomeo dion, portuguese navigator who opens the route to africa in the indian ocean. These mariners transit the and create a global economy. How do we think of it in the United States . We think of world war i and world war ii, our absolute determination to resupply the europeans in those two wars create transit zones, convoys , much warfare, two small hinges, these convoys are swinging big doors of war. If we had not controlled the atlantic, we would not have succeeded in either of those wars. So thats the american view of the atlantic. Today we are challenged on the atlantic by vladimir putin. By the resurgence of the russian navy. And our problem is that we keep looking for the strategic terrain in the atlantic on this map. And its not there, the strategic terrain is right here. Its the mind of vladimir putin. He is rebuilding the russian navy. This is a brandnew russian frigate. The admiral greg gurevich. Highly capable. In the next three years, russia will add 100 ships to their fleet, we will be challenged on our coast, in the greenland, iceland, united kingdom, we are going to see a resurgent russia. In the atlantic as we see a resurgent china in the pacific. But lets turn to the thirdlargest ocean. That would be the indian ocean. So pacific, about 160 million square kilometers. Atlantic, about 100 , indian ocean just a tad smaller but a big ocean. You could take the entire landmass of the United States times three and put it in the indian ocean. It began as spice routes. Today increasingly hydrocarbon. The two geopolitical actors, india on the left, pakistan on the right. In their own kind of cold war manifesting in maritime countrymen confrontation in this indian ocean. We see pirates around the edges of it. And off the coast of yemen, we see the interplay of shia, thats a ran supporting sufi rebels and sunni, saudi arabia, the gulf states supporting the government of yemen with the United States leaning towards saudi arabia. A great deal of this action is playing out in the maritime theater. And we ought to consider the number one challenge in the indian ocean is right here. Ran. Thats the iranian flag, this is just a deal to missile, iran sees itself as an imperial power. They will seek the to recreate the persian empire. These are the battle flags of cyrus the magnificent. 2500years ago. Darius the great, the flag of iran today. Looked at the water space around that persian empire. And in all of it, brings confrontation between upper right, he ran, shia nation , bottom left sunni world led by saudi arabia. Our closest ally and friend israel in the middle of this mix, the United States very much involved so maritime activity, no in the South China Sea, not only the atlantic but also this Persian Arabian Gulf and the wonders of the indian ocean. What else . The mediterranean. How many people here have gone on a cruise to the mediterranean . Quite a few. Its a wonderful place. A wonderful place but in a brick big cruise liner, really enjoy yourself. The Mediterranean Sea of all of the world oceans has seen the most combat, the most war. If i can snap my fingers and bring back to life all of the dead mariners around the sea, all those smoking holes that went to the bottom and somehow miraculously bring them back, we would completely cover the surface of the Mediterranean Sea with those sailors. This is the battle of love until, one of the epic maritime battles of history in which a Christian Coalition led by the austrohungarian empire essentially fought the Ottoman Empire in a small place called lepanto in the center of the mediterranean. The med is the place where were at sea began. Today, the challenges in the Eastern Mediterranean syria, this is the brutal dictator and war criminal aside. He has a coastline on the Eastern Mediterranean. And heres what it looks like. Its confrontation between the United States and russia, thats the russian flag. Right above the us and the other nations of this region are in conflict not only about the shia politics but also about the hydrocarbon. This is an area of the world which under the sea, in oil and natural gas. Two thirds of us maritime trail passes through the canal. Its been expanded recently. Yet there are challenges here in the mediterranean, maritime challenges. Things upper right or going to see natural disasters plague the region, bottom left with we have refugee problems here. Upper left we have the challenge of marcottes. Narcotics, let me show you a rather hopeful photograph. This is a drug bust. This is a hightech u. S. Navy vessels. Its capturing a drug runner. The bad news, is that the hightech u. S. Navy vessel is the one on top in the photograph. The one on the bottom that looks like batmans submarine, that was built in the jungle of columbia. When we caught this thing and in truth in advertising, there was a Navy Destroyer just outside the picture, when we got this thing it had 10 tons of cocaine in it. 10 tons of cocaine, street value in miami, 150 million. So lets part the issue of should people use drugs or not, i think its a medical issue, a personal choice. I worry about is the money. Across the cartel, 5 million would put this thing to see and load it with 10 tons of cocaine. 5 billion in, 150 million out. Thats what undermines fragile democracy in central america. That creates corruption, driven by demand in the United States. So luckily we have partners who focus on this on the transit zone but we will never solve this in the transit zone. We have to work on the supply side. In places like in the indian ridge and we have to work on that demand aside in the United States and addressed medically the challenges here. Lets go north to the arctic. And the left is a doomed vessel, the uss jeanette. It sailed and powered itself up into the high north in the mid19th century, a private public expedition that caught the ice, the group most of them lost. I handful escaped. Itshows us that even as late as the late 19th century we had no idea what was in the high north. Today i will tell you as a fact the ice is melting. We can have a big debate about the science of global warming. Im here as a mariner and ill tell you as a fact the ice is melting. As a result, those lanes of communication are going to open. Hydrocarbons will be available and there will be significant competition in the high north. We had a chance unfortunately of turning this into a real cold war, pun intended , over time. And in russia on one side of this arctic in five nato nations, the us, canada, denmark, iceland, norway on the other side. This the cause of the ice melting will create real geopolitical challenges, there is something called the Arctic Council, nato on one side, russia on the other. I hope we can find a way to use diplomacy to avoid further conflict in the high north. And we dont have enough icebreakers. Anybody know how many icebreakers the United States has . One. You get the prize, one. Denmark, a nation of 4 million people, they have six. Russia has dozens. China has 12 and is building more. We need to step up our game if we are going to operate in a high north. So lastly, having walked you through a few of the worlds oceans. Let me turn to what i call sometimes the outlaw seed. The outlaw see, those oceans are the largest crime sees in the world. Falluja. Dumping, acidification. Piracy itself. Fishing. Under reported, under regulated. Catches of protein down 60 percent over the last two decades. And the oceans are warming. Again, we can have a debate about why thats happeningbut its a fact. Again, environmentally, we face a longterm challenge because our oxygen comes from the oceans. With all respect to al gore who told us many times the amazon are the lungs of the earth, thats not right. The oceans are the lungs of the world. Thats where our oxygen comes from. Right about now you ought to say okay admiral, im worried. Youve got us on a 10 more minutes voyage and im worried. What do you think mark what are the opportunities to create better security and to harness the oceans responsibly. What would this 19 century old broken down admiral who wrote the naval strategy of the United States 150 years ago, what would he say about the world today. Whats the first thing we should do. Make sure we can continue to be ac power. You think the next picture is going to be like an Aircraft Carrier, no. The number one thing we should do is listen more. Listen more. This gentleman is listening. This is actually from about 80 years ago, its an burly air defense system, hes listening for incoming aircraft but i put it here for us as metaphor. We should listen literally to the oceans, we need to study and understand whats going on. We should listen to our allies, our partners, our friends in the world. He should listen to our opponents so we can find ways to avoid conflict. Thats my number one prescription. This is the Naval War College of Newport Rhode island. We can do what you are doing tonight. You can stop, listen like students do at a college and we can learn and converse. Agree, disagree in a responsible way. We can have a dialogue and build intellectual capital to understand our oceans. What else . We can hold on to our values. Our values. And our values come to us, upper left from the ancient greeks, aristotle, from the agent, thats buddha. They dropped here in the United States during the enlightenment, thats the young full tear on the right, every best portrait ever made a full tear, he is normally an old wizened man like me. Through the founding fathers, good people like angela merkel, i would really argue the most responsible leader in the world today. We need to hold those values and principles value to the oceans is our responsibility for future generations as well as our geopolitical concerns today. Else can we do . Im in a wonderful bookstore, one of the iconic bookstores in the United States of america, im so proud to be here. You can read more. We can read magazines like the economist, and unbiased central centrist magazine with no byline. People ask me sometimes in this era of fake news, where do i turn . By the economist. I spent four years as an ally commander of nato reading the president s daily intelligence briefings. If you read the economist cover to cover once a week you will get 80 percent of what the president is seeing. You can read biographies of great officers like minutes, by eb potter, one of my rose and mentors in the world of writing. Want to read a novel . Cruel c by nicholas montserrat, heartbreaking story of life at sea and its impact on people but above all about the oceans. Rules of the game or reach back into history and reread two cities, happens, ac power confronting sparta, a land of power. What are the echoes for today . Okay, heres the picture in the Aircraft Carrier. Yes, we need a strong and capable navy. We need Aircraft Carriers, submarine and service ships. Our fleet today is 275 ships. Under president reagan we had almost 600. In world war ii we have thousands. We are not in an open war now, we dont need thousands. Were not in a cold war, we dont need 600 but we need more than 275. We need 100, 25 to 350 ships. Thats not me winging it. That is serious analysis. How do we get there . Weve got to build more, we have to extend the life of some but we need a capable fleet. But its not just about your navy. Its also your coast guard, marine corps, these joint partners who work together. Its about our allies and friends. Look at this photograph. These are pirates being captured, somali pirates right out of captain philip, many of you have seen that film. These are french, you had french marines who have landed in an Italian Military helicopter to refuel on a frigate. Portuguese aircraft overhead protecting them, based on satellite imagery provided by the United States. Its a coalition, folks. We dont want to the world police, thats not our job. You want to work with allies, friends and partners take on challenges together so in addition to our navy and our joint partners, we need our allies, our friends. When we go to save china as we must in the South China Sea on these artificial islands, we will rely not only on our ships on japan and south korea and australia to help us. We need the united nations, not a Popular Organization but the un is the backbone of International Law that creates the regime of the oceans. Its a good treaty. We should ratify it. We need more of this. When i was a commander in the us Southern Command in doral for three years, colonel silvera was my team lead for many things. We filled these hospital ships with doctors and nurses , private sector. Interagency, allied doctors. We had dutch and french literary doctors and civilian volunteers. We had everybody operating on this. It was the ultimate team sports. In many years as an admiral i ordered the deployment of many Aircraft Carriers into combat. Most important deployments i made were these hospital ships, im firmly convinced of that. We need private public cooperation. This is a private vessel receiving fuel and being free pirates by a u. S. Navy fuel are. Ill conclude the background of this book is not only the geopolitics which i talked about, its not only the trade in the economy, 95 percent of the world is good to see what its, i tried to communicate in the book what its like to be a mariner. What its like to sail into the arctic. What its like to sail through the strait of gibraltar. What does it feel like when you approach the coast of china in the dark of night dodging fishing boats. Its choppy. Its challenging. I spent 11 years of my life day for day on the deep ocean out of sight of land. I spent 16 years assigned to ships, 11 day for day on the ocean. And you know what, sometimes things go wrong. But more often, and this is where i want to close, this is the ocean i know. Its the ultimate room with a view. An office with a view. It was a privilege to have served my nation as a sailor for 37 years. I tried to pour that experience into this book and pull some history alongside it, geopolitics with it but above all its a sailors book. Thank you very much for being with me today. [applause] thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. I love to take some questions about issues in the world today, the book, anything you like ask at all, yes sir. On the last picture that youhave, japan, south korea and sailing. I should put new zealand there. I also didnt put the philippines who are our ally, china who is a treaty ally and i put those three i did say because those are the three largest runtime forces who are most likely to come and operate with us. You are correctly pointing out in addition to those three who are treaty allies, new zealand, thailand and the physical philippines are also treaty allies and we also i hasten to add have a close relationship with singapore. Not quite a treaty ally but close. I put those three because they have the most capable navy and the most likely to operate with us in that scenario. Yester. Id like to ask about as you are commander of the south, and great field expansions, the growing unrest in venezuela and what kind of challenges that may face for the unitedstates in terms of piracy. So how do we get out of this . My belief is we use the Arctic Council which i highlighted for you and we tried to take a pragmatic approach with russia that says we will confront where we must on the crucial issues i mentioned but lets find zones of cooperation with the russian federation. I think the arctic could be one of those zones so i am cautiously optimistic that we will be able to preserve this extremely fragile environment. One which has never known war and over time try to cooperate with russia there because it is in their interests as well as ours. Yester. This have to do with china. You mentioned the possibility of confrontation with russia in the South China Sea which i heard from other narratives and it seems to me britain had a similar issue with the United States around the turnofthecentury with the caribbean where the United States thought the caribbean was artsy and we were going to grab it and britain had a choice. To confront the United States where they can let the United States basically take control of the caribbean because they had more desperate threats, germans maybe. In the empire and such. Seems to me that looking at the South China Sea, has a reason to believe this is their stake. Do they really does such a threat to us that we cannot give them more room to maneuver the South China Sea and info avoid a confrontation and see their control of the area just like most of the worldsees our control of the caribbean . First i would say that mexico, cuba, jamaica , Trinidad And Tobago do not in any way see the us control of the caribbean. What china is attempting to do to follow your analogy would be to actually take territorial control, to make that a territorial sea. So i think the analogy breaks down a bit because of the expansiveness of the chinese desire here. I think its fair to say and i would agree with you that it is reasonable for us to believe that china ought to have significant influence in asia. That makes sense but we should not exceed to simply territorial control over an enormous body of water, that would be enormously precedent. I think the historical analogy thats more that you kind of pull that was the confrontation between Great Britain and germany. About 100 years ago. Here we have established power changing a rise in power, this is sometimes called the lucidity trap where in an established power is challenged by rising power. My friend Graham Allison professor at harvard has done extensive analysis on the 16 times in the last several thousand years that that situation has been scaled. In 12 of those situations, the two nations go to war. In four of them they do not. What we need to do is understand china, listen to them, exceed where we can, cooperate where we can but in front where they push beyond the borders of what the expenses. If we do that, your point i think we can avoid this trap and avoid an open confrontation. How about this young man over here . As an admiral, what are the primary services you had between the sea, as opposed to a land on. Great question. The ocean, the biggest thing of course is terrain. The oceans, heres a newsflash. The oceans are flat. There are no terrain borders between them. You know how fast you can cross them. You have many more known elements in a sea battle on the service. On the land, you have enormous obstacles you have to get over. The challenge back over here for the admiral is whats happening below to see. In todays world, i sometimes envy admirals like wuornos and and trafalgar who could see all of those challenge in front of them. And an admiral today have to worry about this undersea battle thats very threedimensional. So i would say in really simple terms, and admiral have to deal with the service of the oceans. But his challenges are whats happening underneath and of course in an air battle overhead thats the same in both components. For the admiral, he has an advantage with the flatness of the sea but a danger was under it. The general , he has minimal challenges in terms of obstacles in his is a goal zone but he or she can match those and doesnt have to deal with that hidden dimension underwater so two different kinds of battle lines, those are necessary between admirals and generals. I want to get someone on the side of the room. How would you describe the appeals by francis drake. And magellan. I really like the 1500s skills of those mariners. The question is how do you describe the skills of the mariners in the 15th, 16th century and how they are they different from today . Today being a mariner is a lot easier, lets face it. You have satellites overhead to pinpoint your position. You have Surveillance Systems both undersea and in the air. You have many more tools. There are mariners that i showed you had to rely on wind andcurrents , on pilots orders that said, the last time i took this away, the prevailing winds were from the northeast and that means i was getting to this, its very intuitive kind of sailing. Early mariners develop navigation as they went along. Navigational systems including the use of, there we go. Including eventually longitude which really changed navigation but that is the fourth so people like Christopher Columbus sailed by what is called direct reckoning which is when they take their ships, they take along to see how far theygone in a given hour, givenday. They plotted on a chart. They estimate how much the correct and the winds have push. It was a very intuitive , indifferent i would say between art and science. How about someone else here, how about back in the corner . So ive first heard from experts that say that Aircraft Carriers are a thing of the past and focus on them that the us has is mixed. Im not sure i agree with said people but iwas curious on your take on that. Aircraft carriers remain the centerpiece of the us fleet area and they are enormous machines of war, just to give you an idea of the scale of these ships, you can take the empire state building, lay it on its side, how long an Aircraft Carrier is. Its 100,000 tons. As a crew of 5000. Flight is eight acres of sovereign us territory. And has 80 combat aircraft on it. More to the point, it is defended. It doesnt say all by itself. Its defended by cruisers, destroyers, frigates, submarines, landbased air over it, or valence customs. They are well protected. They are not invulnerable. They could potentially be hit by hypersonic cruise missiles, submarines that slip underneath so heres the bottom line. We should rely on the carriers but we should not make them indispensable. We need to distribute combat power with tomahawk missiles, with other large ships. We have that capability and we need a balance fleet, about 12 carriers and about 100 cruisers, destroyers, frigates to distribute that firepower. 60 summaries. We need a distributed fleet. We dont want over rely on the carriers nor should we underestimate them and ill close by saying our opponents focus constantly on the carriers. How about back over here in the hawaiian shirt. What are the consequences that the economy wouldve occurred at the end of the cold war of the United States gradually gone out of south korea, trying to make it just a local dispute between the north and south. It appears to me that its all an attention call to the United States that we are there. And if we had just left the north and south had a local dispute towards india and pakistan, it might be a real defense. I think what you would have to day and its always a fascinating game to sort of think about what it, what if we done this, what if we had whatever. My guess would be the entire korean fence peninsula would be unified and it would be subject to china. It would be a chinese vassal state essentially and recall that the reason the United States went into korea was because it was invaded and so one could make the argument that if we had given up at that point and left, north korea, what is today the north korean state would have dominated. It would be a hardline communist date and to give you an idea what it would be like i would invite you to do this. Go on google and google Korean Peninsula at night