Photo: iLab/CSIS
Andrew Schwartz: Welcome to the Asia Chessboard, the podcast that examines geopolitical dynamics in Asia and takes an inside look at the making of grand strategy. I'm Andrew Schwartz at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Hannah Fodale: Ahead of the 50th episode of The Asia Chessboard, we thought we would take a look back at some of our favorite conversations with key players from the past two-and-a-half years. While these conversations were recorded in 2019 and 2020, the themes covered are still just as relevant today. The first conversation is from Episode 2 of The Asia Chessboard, featuring Ambassador Richard Armitage. In this episode, Ambassador Armitage and Mike grade the U.S. Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy, as well as Japan’s and China’s grand strategies in Asia.
Mike Green: Are there still lessons from the Vietnam War for how we do Asia policy today, Asia strategy?
Ambassador Armitage: Yeah, I think the main one is if you're going to get into something, simultaneously figure out what conditions allow you to get out of it, and that's the main lesson that I've taken through my career. And how we didn't always do that in 2003 and the invasion of Iraq, but that's the major lesson I learned.
Mike Green: We got out of Vietnam and we largely got out of Southeast Asia. We are not re-engaging Southeast Asia, or at least we were with rebalance and the pivot. Just reflecting again on many decades in that part of the world, what's the importance of Southeast Asia for us right now? The big pieces of this chessboard in Asia or Japan, China, Korea, India, but the game right now is being played in Southeast Asia.
Ambassador Armitage: Yeah. It's self-evident the geostrategic location of the Southeast Asia nations that combine the GDP of about $3 trillion, population of over 600 million, and the largest Muslim country. So I wouldn't call them exactly pawns. They may be knights on the chessboard, but they count.
Mike Green: Part of the problem with Vietnam for us was our approach was derivative. It wasn't about Southeast Asia. It was about NATO and their touring Communist expansion in Europe. It was about Japan. It wasn't really about Southeast Asia, at least looking at it historically. Have we gotten over that? Because in the War on Terror, when were both in militia administration, for you or me or Bob Zoellick, we got it but for a lot of people, you had to frame Southeast Asia strategy in the context of the War on Terror. For the Obama administration, they pivoted to Asia, but now it's derivative of China, in competition with China. Are we thinking about Southeast Asia on its own merits, the way you just described, or are we still stuck in this ...
Ambassador Armitage: No, I think we're probably still stuck. Even the language that we now use, Free & Open Indo-Pacific, the picture I have in my mind is in the north you have two great democracies of Japan and Korea. You've got India on one side, and the other bookend is the United States. And then in the south, you've got Australia and New Zealand. So that's the way I think we kind of see the nations, though we should and could spend a lot more meaningful energy and time on Southeast Asian nations themselves. We do in Vietnam, so it's not a completely blank slate. We've made some progress there, but we have not in the other nations, in my view.
Mike Green: So the administration's national security strategy, the national defense strategy, the most recent iterations of the Free & Open Indo-Pacific Strategy, acting Secretary of Defense Shanahan unveiled his DoD report on the FOIP, Free & Open Indo-Pacific Strategy, for DoD. It's all about competition with China. Are we winning that competition, do you think?
Ambassador Armitage: No.
Mike Green: How come?
Ambassador Armitage: We're not winning it. We're not applying the total whole of government approach. Acting Secretary Shanahan's speech at Shangri-La was okay. I didn't find much new in it. It was all about defense, as you allude to, and it wasn't about the other elements of the other arrows in our quiver: education, political engagement, economic engagement, cultural engagement. And if we don't do all of that, then we're not going to prevail in this battle of ideas with China.
Mike Green: Which parts do you think we're doing better on, we the US or the administration, on the Free & Open Indo-Pacific right now?
Ambassador Armitage: I think we're doing pretty well on the development of relations with India. This has been a bipartisan approach for Democrats and Republicans. We're doing real well with the development of relations with Japan, and we're having some difficulties, not of our own making in many cases, with South Korea. It's a mixed picture, in my view, in Southeast Asia. For heaven's sakes, we don't even have an ambassador in Singapore now. It's two-and-a-half years into the administration.
Mike Green: What about the trade piece? Pulled out of TPP. "Free and open," those words sort of would connote a free and open economic system in Asia.
Ambassador Armitage: Well, they do. Pulling out of this, and then thank God that Japan and Prime Minister Abe stepped into the breach, and I think rescued the TPP from total disaster, but it won't be what it should be without the participation of the United States, and that's apparently not going to happen in this administration. The irony of this is, to me, that the things that I understand, for instance, that the Trump administration is desirous of getting from Japan by and large were contained in the TPP. So we couldn't take "yes" for an answer.
Mike Green: So you're a professor now at Keio University?
Ambassador Armitage: I am an honorary professor. Make sure you underline that.
Mike Green: So even more important than a professor. Do you give grades to students?
Ambassador Armitage: I do for graduate students.
Mike Green: Okay. So what grade would you give the administration for the Free & Open Indo-Pacific, assuming we're halfway through the semester?
Ambassador Armitage: I'd give them a C.
Mike Green: A C? Let's go around the region and grade some other grand strategies, which is the focus of this podcast. Shinzo Abe?
Ambassador Armitage: Shinzo Abe has been the brightest spot in the globe. This is a man who right now is the leader of the free world. Would that it be the United States, but we have eschewed that. It's Shinzo Abe who is the most desired visitor in capitols around the world. He's the one who is holding high the flag of human freedoms, human dignity, human rights. Thank God for Japan and Prime Minister Abe right now.
Mike Green: In late 2018, the Pew Foundation did a poll around the world and asked what world leader people trust the most. It was all American and European leaders, and so President Trump did not do well. Xi Jinping did not do well. He was the one Asian leader. Merkel was the most trusted. Abe wasn't on the question. But in Australia, Lowy Institute around the same time asked the question and added Abe. He was by far the most respected leader in Australia, and I suspect that would be true in a lot of parts of the world.
Ambassador Armitage: Well, I think look at our own society. Japan is in public opinion polls here extraordinarily highly regarded. The US Congress regards Japan and holds them in the highest esteem I think for their behavior, for their activities post-war, their support for the international institutions, et cetera. So there's a lot to recommend itself in the way Japan is approaching not only Asia but the world, but most importantly, I think, has been the indefatigable diplomacy of Shinzo Abe during this whole time.
Mike Green: I don't know if you're a hard grader at Keio-
Ambassador Armitage: I'm a pretty hard grader.
Mike Green: I'm a pretty easy grader at Georgetown, but I don't know if Abe has deserved an 'A' yet and the main reason is relations with the Republic of Korea. You and I have talked about this a lot, including to the Prime Minister himself and others in Japan and Seoul. It's kind of curious to me that a Japanese grand strategy that is so successful in so many ways is kind of failing on the area that animated Japanese grand strategy for a thousand years, which is the Korean peninsula.
Ambassador Armitage: Mike, you're a musician among other things, not a dancer.
Mike Green: No. Not at all.
Ambassador Armitage: But it takes two to tango, and Shinzo Abe does not have a partner right now in South Korea. The Japanese have since 1965 signed two international agreements, binding international agreements, with governments, legitimate governments of the Republic of Korea, and right now, the Moon Jae-in government has moved the goalposts, so it's a little difficult for me to pin this all on Mr. Abe. So prior to 2015 and the latest agreement between Japan and South Korea, I would agree with you. I would've given Mr. Abe a slightly lower mark. Since then, I'm pinning the tail on the Korean peninsula and South Korea on the President contretemps.
Mike Green: This Japan-Korea relationship may be one of the most strategic relationships for us, for the US, in the region. I mean, if China has a strategy to marginalize the US influence to create a sphere of influence in Asia, the Southeast Asia front is important in this, but the one that's probably the most consequential is the Korean peninsula, and I think most people in Washington would agree with you that the problem now is in Seoul. But that said, since this affects us, is there a US strategic approach for this, or just patience?
Ambassador Armitage: Well, there should be, but my observation from afar is that we haven't done what normally American diplomacy would do, that is to step in and quietly urge a settlement. You and I both have talked to the various ministers from both countries. I think the bureaucracies are ready for a betterment of relations. I don't think in the case with Seoul the Blue House is ready yet.
Ambassador Armitage: You mentioned China. This leaves the playing field open to China, and there are reports today that Xi Jinping may be visiting Seoul towards the end of the month, maybe right prior to the Osaka G20.
Mike Green: How do you grade Xi Jinping's grand strategy in Asia right now?
Ambassador Armitage: Well, grand strategy in Asia, he's got one and it includes the Russian Federation, and it's organized around one concept. That is the Americans are leaving and we want to usher them out the door as quickly as possible, so he's got an organizing reason for his strategy, and his much improved relationship with the Russian Federation. So that element, I give him high marks for his strategy.
Ambassador Armitage: There is another element and that is for his economic strategy, and I give him lower marks here because it's so avarice. It's so charging interest rates, all of those things. It's economic trade craft in a malign way, so I give him bad marks for that.
Ambassador Armitage: And finally, I give him the worst marks for his own handling of his domestic problems, whether it's the situation with the Uyghurs, which is a terrible human rights disaster, or the fear he has of his own people.
Hannah Fodale: The second conversation is from Episode 12 of The Asia Chessboard, featuring Ambassador Kurt Tong. Ambassador Tong and Mike debate how the United States can rebuild its trade strategy in Asia, and the potential for a regional digital trade agreement.
Mike Green: So you know your career, you're kind of like Zelick not Bob Zelig, Zelick the character who pops up all the time for art history and photographs and so forth. You were there. We first met in something like 91 or 92.
Ambassador Tong: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mike Green: When you were at the, I guess, the junior econ officer on the Japan desk.
Ambassador Tong: Japan desk, right.
Mike Green: And I was a PhD student at SAIS and there are others who are still in this field, some in the economic policy world, some like me, more national security.
Ambassador Tong: Right.
Mike Green: So you were at that Japan piece, then you wrote this essay proposing U.S.-Japan FTA in-
Ambassador Tong: Correct.
Mike Green: 95. You went to Korea, did APEC. You were in China.
Ambassador Tong: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mike Green: Also, I believe-
Ambassador Tong: Yeah.
Mike Green: As an economic minister. So you've sort of touched on all these different pieces. It built over the course of your career towards what you mentioned FTAP, Free Trade of the area of the Asia Pacific, which in turn I think had we done it would have given us a lot of leverage to get China to make concessions.
Ambassador Tong: Right.
Mike Green: TPP, plus what probably would have come on the other side of the globe, T-TIP-
Ambassador Tong: Right.
Mike Green: Transatlantic Agreement, would have given us a huge amount of leverage vis-a-vis China. How do we get that back now?
Ambassador Tong: Yeah.
Mike Green: The president prefers bilateral free trade agreements he says, the diet of Japan just passed one with us, but it's pretty small-ball compared to what we were going for.
Ambassador Tong: It is small-ball. The strategy, as abandoned, was for the United States to do the Trans-Pacific partnership, the Transatlantic partnership, put the two together, you've basically recreated the WTO and with China on the sidelines, and then use that pressure to bring China around through structural reform. A useful grand strategy, difficult to execute as it turned out. But I think it's a good one. And getting back to that I think may require focusing on issue by issue rather than doing these comprehensive agreements because there's so much complexity in one of these across-the-board free trade agreements that you end up instigating political opposition in enough corners of a democracy in particular that then it becomes very politically difficult to deliver on the mechanism. So, for example, I think there's a lot of talk right now between the U.S. and Japan of now that they've done this digital services agreement bilaterally, how do we push that out and bring other countries on board and maybe move it at some point to the WTO?
Ambassador Tong: Those basic principles of how data trade should be governed and all the questions around data privacy and the proper approach to cybersecurity, balancing that with human rights, et cetera, all of that. There's a great potential. It's very important issue set, great potential for all these countries to come together with common views and have an effect on the future development of the economy. That may be a more realistic approach than a series of grand FTAs. I don't want to give up on that FTA strategy, I think it's useful, but maybe we need to build back up to it and restore confidence in U.S. leadership and our own confidence domestically that we know what we're doing in international economic relations before we jump in with both feet on it, say TPP.
Mike Green: 14, 15 years ago when you were in Korea and then in the White House and when I was in the White House, the question was whether Korea or in the case of what became TPP, Vietnam, or even Japan were up for this.
Ambassador Tong: Right.
Mike Green: There were real questions about that. We had very little doubt about ourselves.
Ambassador Tong: Right.
Mike Green: Because we had passed so many FTAs.
Ambassador Tong: Right.
Mike Green: The irony of all of this is that the Japanese, the Koreans, the Vietnamese are up to this.
Ambassador Tong: Right.
Mike Green: Because they're afraid of China and now we're the ones who’ve stumbled. But I wonder-
Ambassador Tong: And we've, in my opinion, misdirected our anxiety about China. The threat of China.
Mike Green: Explain what you mean.
Ambassador Tong: Well, I think that we're doing a lot of small-ball approaches to the China problem rather than working with like-mindeds and working at the level of general principle and then trying to push that toward China. Let's go after one company here or do a little bit of-
Mike Green: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ambassador Tong: Export controls there, or do these very transactional agreements that we're trying to do in the bilateral trade space, rather than really trying to focus on the big picture. I mean, I know that sounds, to some people that sounds Pollyannish and that we tried that, we had all these dialogues with China and it didn't work. So we need to just use specific leverage on very specific issues. But there's so many issues out there that if you come at it that way, it could take forever.
Mike Green: Your career sort of went from the bilateral, to the regional, to your last job in EB, in the Economic Bureau towards global-
Ambassador Tong: Right.
Mike Green: Rules. It must be incredibly frustrating that TPP just collapsed in your-
Ambassador Tong: Quite frustrating.
Mike Green: Final years in the government. I'm not trying to [crosstalk]-
Ambassador Tong: Project that you've been working on for 10 years not succeeding.
Mike Green: Yeah. It's more just-
Ambassador Tong: Yeah and it's our first FTA that we haven't ratified.
Mike Green: Yeah, yeah.
Ambassador Tong: So it is frustrating.
Mike Green: But, here's the silver lining, to your point about the U.S.-Japan Digital Services Agreement. Tell me what you think. I mean, maybe we were spending a lot of time on things like state-owned enterprises and tariffs and AG in TPP and in these other bilateral agreements. But in 30, 40 years, what's really going to matter is the digital space. And we're talking about 5G, the Internet of things. So maybe if you think about the trajectory of technology, this Digital Services Agreement is actually something that may matter in the longer run more than TPP and the trade agreements.
Ambassador Tong: Well, I think that's right. And I think I wouldn't include state-owned enterprises as a sunset issue. I would think that's still very relevant-
Mike Green: Fair enough.
Ambassador Tong: But I think the amount of time that we spend talking about tariffs and dealing with tariffs is frankly a bit absurd. Tariffs are attacks on inward trade. You're hurting your own economy when you do it. You're protecting somebody that probably doesn't deserve to be protected. I know that sounds very hard, cold to people in struggling industries, but giving up your tariffs in order to get tariffs down. Too much attention on tariffs. The non-tariff issues and the structural issues, I would include SOE reform in there, but things like antitrust regulations, investment rules, accountability and transparency requirements and in financial transactions, all that stuff is extraordinarily important along with the digital piece and a lot of work can be done there if people emphasize it.
Mike Green: Where are you on the 5G and Huawei question? The criticism you had earlier was that the administration is picking on one company here, one company there. But when you're talking about 5G, it's Huawei-
Ambassador Tong: Right.
Mike Green: And the de facto ban on Huawei participation in our 5G procurement, 5G market is being also taken by Japan, Australia, and other countries. But we've also put Huawei on the entities list.
Ambassador Tong: Right.
Mike Green: So was that a bridge too far? Was that too much, do you think? Where do you draw the line?
Ambassador Tong: My personal view is that if we're not confident that we can monitor and regulate Huawei equipment used in the United States in a way that doesn't create a cyber security threat. Okay, great. So let's not buy-
Mike Green: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ambassador Tong: Huawei equipment and requiring U.S. procurement not to use that equipment makes perfect sense. Some countries say that they're confident they can do it like the U.K. is kind of trying to figure it out. I think each country can decide that for themselves and we'll just deal with it. I think going beyond that to then say, well let's try to just really damage this company because it's competitive on a technology, is a bridge too far. So the entity list piece, all it does is hurt U.S. companies who are trying to sell legitimate stuff. If they shouldn't transfer it because it's too high tech, then put a limitation on certain categories of technology export, but a blanket entities list designation because it's a competitive company I think sends the wrong signal about how global markets should work.
Mike Green: Yeah. I think it also puts us out of alignment with our closest allies.
Ambassador Tong: Well that's right. And also, even going around to different countries as the U.S. government is attempted to do and say don't buy Huawei. Their response is, well then what do we buy or, or why should we actually care if the Chinese are listening to our conversations? Because we're not the United States, we're not involved in a competitive military relationship with China and we don't really care if they hear what we're ordering for dinner and that's a legitimate response from these countries. It really I think crosses over into a containment strategy, which should not be the approach to China. I think the approach should definitely be one of entanglement, come up with rules, get the world to agree to them and, and tie China up with those rules.
Mike Green: And if you think of the problem as a chessboard, like this podcast, you want as many of us as possible and as few of them, and it seems to me that the debate in Germany and in Britain is shifting in directions that are probably not good for Huawei. It's still very much up in the air. But the British put off their decision because of Brexit essentially-
Ambassador Tong: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mike Green: And the German Bundestag is pushing back hard against the government. And I think a U.S. strategy focused on creating an ecosystem for an alternative to Huawei and at least in advanced industrial democracies, a ban on Huawei and procurement can create a team if you will or a scale-
Ambassador Tong: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mike Green: That's considerable. But, if we continue the entities list, I think we probably push China and Huawei toward creating their own operating system to compete with iOS and Android.
Ambassador Tong: That's right and you're stimulating-
Mike Green: Yeah.
Ambassador Tong: More market distorting, state down investment in the very sector where you're trying to compete. So it doesn't make sense as a tactic either.
Mike Green: And we're not talking about Japan in the 1980s or 90s. China has different scale and the reality is, as you pointed out earlier, a large part of the developing world and the developed world is going to buy Huawei because it's cheaper and it's better financing. So we're not going to strangle them. They're going to have-
Ambassador Tong: And-
Mike Green: Somewhere between 40 and 60% of the world market problem.
Ambassador Tong: And it's one generation of technology and it's a certain subcategory of one generation of—
Mike Green: Yep.
Ambassador Tong: Technology that we're talking about. So I think it'd be much more important. And your colleagues here at CSIS, Matt Goodman and others, have been really working on this, trying to refocus people's attention on how does the U.S. actually strengthen its own competitive capability through domestic action. And I think that's important. If we have key firms or key technologies that are important to our national economic future, how do we make sure that those are built well and are made competitive, rather than trying to just knock down the other side. We need to be working on building up our own capabilities.
Mike Green: But there are different rules in China about data localization and data reciprocity. And so the U.S.-Japan effort reflects, I think prime minister Abe is pushing the G20 to create some rules around-
Ambassador Tong: Right.
Mike Green: Reciprocity in data.
Ambassador Tong: I mean, ideally-
Mike Green: So, we do need to do that, right?
Ambassador Tong: Exactly. And ideally you create a set of rules that 80% of the global economy subscribes to, and then they'll eventually become the predominant rule set because the isolated economy will become non-competitive.
Hannah Fodale: The last conversation is from Episode 28 of The Asia Chessboard, featuring Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed. Senator Reed and Mike discuss bipartisan support for a more robust U.S.-Asia strategy and the new Pacific Deterrence Initiative.
Mike Green: You know, looking at the Senate today. It's hard to know who's going to be the next Mike Mansfield, but I do see a lot of members on both sides of the aisle who are like Mansfield in that they are thinking about the Pacific. Younger generation, if you will, Schatz from Hawaii, my buddy Dan Sullivan from Alaska, there seems to be maybe some proto Mike Mansfield's starting to come up in the Senate these days on Asia.
Senator Reed: Well, I think there's a renewed interest in Asia, and some of that is a result of since 9/11, we were engaged in counter-terrorism in the Mideast. And particularly after the invasion of Iraq, we were just tied down there. And so the interest and the attention of all of us, in fact, particularly President Bush, was getting that solved, if we could. And it took our attention away from Asia. And also at that point, Asia and China particularly looked like it was moving in a positive direction, global economic engagement and a rising middle class looked like it would be the magic formula that would move them away from the depths of Maoism in the cultural revolution to a more pragmatic and more integrated country in the world.
Mike Green: Do you have a short boilerplate description of how we should think about strategic competition with China? The Trump administration's first national security document in 2017 said we are in strategic competition with China and Russia. For 20 years before that, including national scrutiny strategy documents I worked on, we didn't say that. We said we would work together on global issues. We had terrorism, we had climate change. Do you think that's right, that we're in strategic competition and what's the concept of operations? What does victory look like? How do we organize ourselves?
Senator Reed: Well, I think we are in a strategic competition with China and to a degree Russia, but China is a much more formidable foe because of its economic prowess. And because it has put together this authoritarian capitalism, if you will, they're very ingenious and entrepreneurial. The Soviets weren't that entrepreneurial, that's one of the reasons I think the Soviet Union collapsed, the economy just imploded on its own people and they rejected the Soviet Union.
Senator Reed: But China has been able to grow its economy to increase its middle class, to be dominant in many areas internationally. Now with Xi’s ascension in 2012, you have someone who's basically declared almost one man rule. And also that China is no longer going to be just a player. They want to be the leader in Asia, if not the world. And they've made it quite clear that they're prepared to be confrontational, their island construction in the South China Sea, their recent actions in Hong Kong. They're not hiding anything any longer. And I think that's become more and more obvious.
Mike Green: Yeah. The old Deng Xiaoping maxim, hide and bide, is behind us, which is an awfully big strategic mistake by the Chinese. They were doing pretty well before they started showing us what their intentions are.
Senator Reed: I think you're right. I think in terms of what's the strategy, obviously the strategy is to maintain a liberal international order in which rites of passage at sea are respected. And the sovereignty of nations are respected, that there is appropriate trade, and of course you want to deter any type of armed conflict because the consequences could be significant. You know, China is putting together a formidable arsenal in terms of ships and particularly missile systems. And doing lots of research... They're out aggressively researching and also taking information wherever they can find it. So this is becoming a much more perilous proposition in terms of maintaining the international order in the Pacific, as well as maintaining the peace.
Mike Green: I've testified a few times in front of your committee on China. And you know, it felt like if you covered your eyes up, you wouldn't know who's a Republican, and who's a Democrat. It seems like this is an area where there's a fairly broad bipartisan consensus about the problem we're looking at, is that right?
Senator Reed: I think there is a very broad bipartisan consensus, the Pacific Defense Initiative, which is a part of our NDAA this year was a product... a collaboration between chairman and often myself, a very thorough and friendly collaboration, because we both recognized... And not just us, you've mentioned several other of my colleagues on the committee who are quite astute, in fact, very astute about Asia, and that recognition is there.
Mike Green: Maybe this is a good time to hear a bit more about the PDI. What are the lines of effort? Is it a change?
Senator Reed: I think there was a recognition by both sides that we had not focused sufficiently on the Pacific. We had not a coherent plan. We understood an emerging threat, but we didn't understand very well the strategy to confront it. And so basically we decided to try to raise up the profile and concentrate on several things. First increasing the lethality of our forces in the Pacific, because we're seeing a much more lethal opposition, particularly in China. And then enhance the design and posture of our forces, so that we're better deployed, we're better communicating, we're better integrated. It's not the service by service, the Navy does their thing, the Air Force does their thing. We want that integration, and then we have to strengthen our alliances and partnerships. We cannot do this alone by a long shot. We need the collaboration, cooperation of traditional allies like Australia and Japan.
Senator Reed: We need emerging nations. We need a major effort to bring us all together. And then finally we have to get demonstration, experimentation, innovation, because you're not going to learn how to get the job done unless you go out and try to do it and practice. That's one of the key aspects, I think, that ties this all together. We're not just going to sort of talk about it, et cetera. We're going to actually go out there and practice this and make the mistakes in practice, not when the flag comes down. Then there's another area too. About the Pacific Defense Initiative. We've asked the Department of Defense to identify all the significant funding that's going to the Pacific, in one place. It's scattered all over, as you can imagine. And when you get it in one place, now we'll be able to take a look and say, what's really going into the Pacific. So those are the features, the most prominent of the features of the Pacific Defense Initiative. And I think it's been embraced enthusiastically by the Department of Defense. And again, it’s got strong bipartisan support.
Mike Green: One of the tough questions about forward posture and capabilities, and how we spend resources in the Pacific, is what to do about ground forces? And we have a forward presence with the Army in Korea and the Marines in Okinawa, that's basically a residual World War II and Korean War presence in some ways. And General Berger at the Marine Corps, thinking in new ways about the Marine Corps' role in high end war fighting in the Western Pacific. And the chief staff of the Army is also really working to re-align the Army, but it's a maritime theater. So in the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, how'd you think about the role of ground forces, the Army and the Marine Corps, in that region.
Senator Reed: I think the Marine Corp and the Army both are talking about getting their forces into the first island chain, dispersing their forces, having them coordinated, multidimensional coordination, with the Air Force, with the Navy, with space, on them with anti ship missiles. Hopefully provide air defense systems that are capable because... Particularly against some of the new missiles that the Chinese are developing and what that will do, they believe... Now, I think it's worth trying to justify or examine, is first of all; It will disperse a concentration of forces, which are very vulnerable to attack by anyone, including the Chinese.
Senator Reed: Then I think it will provide more areas in which the opponent has to neutralize before they can move and change. So, that makes the task of the opponent much more complicated. And then again, if we do it correctly, and we're sure we have the kind of communication, the logistical support, which might require redundancy in the theater, that's one area too, of the Pacific Defense Initiative, looking at the logistics. That I think is going to be seriously tested in terms of operational war gaming, not just table tops, but in the field too. And just to see how we can maximize this new dispersed effort of land forces in the Pacific.
Hannah Fodale: Thank you for listening or re-listening to The Asia Chessboard. We will be back in two weeks with our fiftieth episode.
Andrew Schwartz: For more on strategy and the Asia Program’s work, visit the CSIS website at csis.org, and click on the Asia Program page.