WEBVTT

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- Thanks for joining us today.

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We're hopeful that you're in the right forum.

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This is contemporary military forum entitled

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Multi-domain Threats in the Future Operating Environment.

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AUSA is your professional association

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and the Institute of Land Warfare are proud

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to provide forums like this throughout the year to broaden

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the knowledge-base for not only Army professionals,

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but for those who support the Army.

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These professional seminars are AUSA's way of amplifying

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US Army's narrative to audiences both inside the Army

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and to help further the association's mission

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in support of the voice of the Army

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and support for the soldier.

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Of course, we can't do this alone.

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On your seats, we have a paid advertisement.

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And the paid advertisement is that if

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you're not a member of AUSA, please consider joining.

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And if you are, thank you for your support,

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but if you're not, it's pretty easy.

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And so all you have to do is go down to booth 307

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in exhibition hall A and they can help you out,

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or if you're too intimidated to do that

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you can do it online as well.

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I think that you're going to see

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a great group of experts here today

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and we thank you for participating

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and being part of this forum.

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We thank them for their presentations.

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And without further ado, I'd like to turn this over

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to Brigadier General Kevin Wulfhorst,

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the Deputy Chief of Staff G-2 for reserve affairs.

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General, over to you.

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- Thank you, Terry

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and thank you for AUSA's continued support of our Army

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and for your kind remarks.

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Ladies and gentleman, good afternoon and welcome

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to today's contemporary military forum number two,

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multi-domain threats in the future operating environment.

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It is my distinct honor to moderate

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this distinguished panel of experts

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who will collectively touch upon a very timely topic.

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The current and future threats

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facing our expeditionary Army.

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Whether it'd be from nation state great powers

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like China and Russia,

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or from Pariah states like Iran and North Korea,

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the nation expects and relies upon the Army

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to adapt to contend with these challenges.

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The chief of staff of the Army

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has defined our most pressing threats

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within the Defense Department four plus one threat construct

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and has specifically identified Russia

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as the most pressing near-term threat

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as well as the pacing threat for the US Army.

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He's further identified China as the most dangerous

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mid to far-term threat.

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Both of these great power competitors have invested heavily

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in anti-access area denial capabilities

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to compensate for their own perceived military weaknesses

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against the United States.

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Further, both have demonstrated a desire and capacity

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to challenge the United States in their respective regions

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and both have significant nuclear capacity.

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Iran and North Korea continue to pose

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significant hybrid challenges to the US military

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due to their extensive asymmetric capabilities.

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Both with extensive ballistic missile inventories

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and in the case of North Korea,

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a growing and increasingly threatening ICBM,

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a nuclear capability.

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Today's panel discussion will address an array of threats

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from each of these antagonists as well as the threat

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from state orchestrated information operations

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and malign influence as it is most noticeably

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being practiced today by the Russian Federation.

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These are all timely and relevant topics of concern

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so I'm certain having panelists

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who have served both inside and outside government

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offers us all unique and valuable perspective

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and contributes to a better understanding

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of the challenges facing us now and in the future.

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But before I continue any further,

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I'd like to thank each one of our panelists

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who have given their own time on a Monday holiday no less

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and graciously joined us today

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because of their genuine interest in our nation security

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and in the future of our Army.

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This is extremely generous of each of you.

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On behalf of our gracious hosts, AUSA,

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and the chief of staff of the Army, General Mark Milley,

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let me thank you.

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I also want to acknowledge and thank

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the entire AUSA team of professionals for once again

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putting on a tremendous annual meeting

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highlighting that the Army is indeed

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the strength of our nation.

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This panel represents the nation's most experienced

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and knowledgeable analysts and policy experts

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and today they will address issues that vexed

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and oftentimes confound us.

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They will both challenge and confirm our own thinking

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and we hope above all, they will lay the foundation for us

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to conceptualize solutions to these issues

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and to ultimately succeed on the next battlefield.

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So I anticipate a spirited-panel discussion today

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and an even better question and answer session

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and I hope that each of you will learn

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from the conversation.

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And then as you return to your own organizations,

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think about how the Army, the Department of Defense,

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the intelligence community, the nation writ large,

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and our allies and partners might contend with these threats

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now and into the foreseeable future.

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So to get started, let me introduce our support panelists.

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In your handouts you have detailed biographies

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of each of our four panelists.

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They come to us from very senior positions

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in the nation's most distinguished private policy centers.

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And of course, with their experiences and their credentials

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if I did take time to read all of that biographies,

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we would not have time to actually have a panel discussion

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so please take the time to read in detail,

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but I would like to at least provide a short overview.

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First, let me welcome Dr. Jeffrey Mankoff,

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the deputy director and senior fellow of the Russia

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and Eurasia program

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at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

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Before coming to CSIS, he served as advisor

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on US-Russia relations

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at the US Department of State as a council

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on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow.

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And from 2008 to 2010, he was associate director

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of International Security Studies at Yale University.

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Next and a returning panelist,

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actually, let me introduce the director

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of International Affairs group for CNA, Mr. Ken Gause.

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He is CNA's senior foreign leadership analyst

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and he has personally directed studies on North Korean,

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Iranian, and Russian leadership and decision making.

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His work on foreign leadership dates back to the early 1980s

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with his work on the Soviet Union for the US government.

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Sitting next to Mr. Gause is a returning panelist

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from last year's forum from the Heritage Foundation

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a senior fellow for National Security Affairs,

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Dr. Peter Brookes.

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Dr. Brookes is in his fifth term as

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a congressionally appointed member of the US-China Economic

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and Security Review Commission.

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Before joining heritage in 2002, Brookes served

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in the administration of President George W. Bush

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as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense

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for Asian and Pacific Affairs and he's also a Navy veteran.

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And finally, a research scientist and the director

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for strategy and partnerships

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for the Center for Strategic Studies at CNA, Ms. Vera Zakem,

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who currently lead CNA's work in assessing

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internal vulnerabilities in vulnerable populations,

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Europe and Russia, joint civil affairs,

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and media and influence.

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She has collaborated with special operations forces,

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multinational organizations and other US government agencies

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in analyzing and assessing human security

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and taught adversary, future's analytics, and red teaming

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at the Elliott School of International Affairs

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at George Washington University.

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And finally, I know we have many guests

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that are from our allies and partners,

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but I do wanna point out one noted guest in particular

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and that is Major General Hulkko sitting in the front row

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who is the commander of the Finnish Army.

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Thank you for joining us today.

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During the course of the panelist remarks,

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members of the audience, you'll have the opportunity

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to write questions on a 3 by 5 cards

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which will be handed out and then collected by our staff

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and then selected questions will be posed to our guests

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at the conclusion of all the remarks.

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And so without further ado,

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Dr. Mankoff, we'll begin with you.

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- Okay, thank you very much, General.

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Thanks AUSA and Teleview for being here today.

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I guess it's not holiday for you guys.

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I was a little bit struggling when I was asked to

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present on this panel exactly how to do that

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because I'm not somebody who studies military doctrine

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or operations, I'm much more focused on

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on politics and diplomacy

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so I thought I could probably provide

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the most value on this panel especially given

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my distinguished co-panelists' expertise

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by providing a little bit of a framework

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for discussing the Russian challenge.

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One that's going to look less at

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specifically what Russia is doing

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and more at why it happens to be doing those things.

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I think it's become clear as General Wulfhorst pointed out

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that Russia has become a strategic rival

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of the United States and of the West more broadly.

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In that context, it's essentially revisionist power,

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vis-a-vis the post-Cold War security architecture in Europe

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in the transatlantic space if not more broadly than that.

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Where does this come from?

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Why are we dealing with this challenge today?

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That really is the question that I wanna

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spend the next 10 or so minutes talking about.

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And I wanna do it by trying to get

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inside the Russian official mind, if you will

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because I think we disregard their own narrative,

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their own the stories they tell about themselves

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and about the current world at our peril.

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If you listen to how Russian analysts and leaders

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talk about the current strategic environment,

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they point to the continued bifurcation

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of the European security space.

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That's to say that at the end of the Cold War,

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the problem of European security was not resolved.

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If we set ourselves the task of creating a Europe

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that was whole, free, and at peace

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in a zone of peace and stability stretching

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as we put it at the time from Vancouver to Vladivostok,

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that obviously is not what happened.

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Sometimes you hear the comparison between 1919 and 1945.

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In both cases, a coalition of the liberal democratic powers

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defeated their revisionist rival in Germany.

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In 1945, that rival having been defeated

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was politically transformed and was at least

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its Western half engaged and integrated

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into the emerging Western Security Architecture.

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In 1919 by contrast, Germany was treated as a defeated power

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that was forced to pay reparations,

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that suffered the partial occupation of its territory,

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and the loss of populations and resources.

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After 1919, of course, Germany becomes

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a serious revisionist power culminating in the challenge

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to global order that opposed during the Second World War.

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Whereas in 1945, nothing of this sort happened.

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Many Russians would argue that the model that we followed

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with Russia at the end of the Cold War

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was much closer to 1919 than it was to 1945.

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That despite the rhetoric of partnership,

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institutional apparatuses that were created

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for the Cold War,

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first and foremost, NATO continue to exist,

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continue to operate on the basis

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of a containment approach to Russia

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and Russia itself was left on the outside looking in.

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There was no Marshall Plan.

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Russia received some amount of Western assistance

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and lots of Western advice, but instead of a transformation

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towards a liberal democratic flourishing democracy,

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Russia in the 1990s became a chaotic kleptocracy

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with a declining standard of living,

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increased insecurity for both institutions and individuals,

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and an overall decline in the status

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from being one of two superpowers

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to being a fairly peripheral actor on the European stage.

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In response, over the course of the last 25 plus years,

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Russia has a variety of ways sought to challenge

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that settlement to as it were find a place for itself

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in this post-Cold War order,

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one that it argues it did not have a hand in creating.

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Now, that challenge has existed

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ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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It became worse in some ways in the late 1990s

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and then there was a period of improvement of relations

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in the early 2000s following the 9/11 attacks

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and the onset of cooperation between the US and Russia

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in the war against the Taliban.

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More recently though beginning perhaps in 2008,

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perhaps a little bit later, things have gone

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in a much different direction and I would argue

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that that is for a couple of different reasons.

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One is a Russian perception of Western decline.

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Ever since the financial crisis

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in the United States and Europe, there has been

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a clear sense in Moscow that the West is on its heels,

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that it's more focused on getting its own house in order

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that its aspirations to global leadership

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and to spreading its own model globally have hit the skids

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and that's no longer a realistic aspiration.

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The world is now entering a more multipolar global order.

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One in which Russia itself seeks to play the role

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of one of the poles,

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one of the key pillars of whatever is going to emerge

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in this post-Western world.

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And of course, Russia is based on a series of ideas

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and principles about politics, global order, and legitimacy

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that are in many ways different from the ones

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that we in the West cling to.

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Moreover, Russia believes that the West has been engaged

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in the long running campaign to subvert

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and ultimately overthrow its own government in part

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out of a rejection of the legitimacy of the political model

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that emerged in Russia in the post-Cold War period.

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This has become particularly true in recent years

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particularly since Vladimir Putin returned

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to the Kremlin in 2012

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following a series of contested elections

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in the emergence of large protest movements in Moscow

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and other Russian cities.

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At that time, Putin and his allies charged

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that the United States and its allies

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were funding the demonstrators

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that they were ultimately seeking to subvert

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and ultimately overthrow the Russian government.

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Of course, this manifestation was followed

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just a year or two later by the outbreak of serious protests

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and ultimately a real revolution in Ukraine.

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And the notion in Russia was that

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if the Maidan could happen in Ukraine

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something that the West was clearly supporting

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in the Russian view, then why not in Russia itself?

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And so in thinking about why Russia decided to deploy

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military forces to Ukraine, I think there's a very strong

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domestic political component.

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A desire to make sure that the revolutionary changes

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that have taken place in Ukraine since 2013, 2014

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do not spread to Russia

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and that ultimately they fail in Ukraine as well

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making clear that Ukraine does not have the option

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of becoming a liberal Western democratic country

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so that Russians don't get any ideas.

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Of course, there is a longstanding belief in Russia

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that Russians and Ukrainians are as Vladimir Putin

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has put it one people and that what goes for Ukrainians

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ultimately goes for Russians as well.

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Now, moreover, this isn't just about Russia.

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Russians looking at the way that the United States

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has behaved globally over the last two decades

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would argue that instead of spreading democracy,

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prosperity, and peace, the United States and the West

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have instead succeeded in unleashing chaos,

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whether it was with the invasion of Iraq

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which of course, prompted an insurgency

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and eventually led to the formation of the Islamic State,

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support for the political change

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in the context of the Arab Spring which had a similar result

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or indeed in Ukraine itself where the Russian narrative

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is that instead of democratizing, the US has empowered

16:14.855 --> 16:17.242
the far right has empowered Ukrainian nationalists

16:17.242 --> 16:21.068
and has destroyed the pillars of Ukrainian statehood.

16:21.068 --> 16:24.873
The most notable example of this that Russians talk about

16:24.873 --> 16:26.989
and the one that I think has the most personal resonance

16:26.989 --> 16:29.239
for Vladimir Putin is Libya

16:29.915 --> 16:33.709
where Russia, of course, supported the United States

16:33.709 --> 16:35.739
at least to the extent of abstaining

16:35.739 --> 16:37.578
on a UN Security Council resolution

16:37.578 --> 16:40.674
authorizing the use of force to protect Libyan civilians

16:40.674 --> 16:43.841
against the forces of Muammar Gaddafi.

16:44.136 --> 16:46.136
But in the Russian view,

16:46.550 --> 16:49.015
the United States over interpreted the mandate

16:49.015 --> 16:51.112
that it received from the Security Council,

16:51.112 --> 16:54.603
provided air cover for an effort to ultimately unseat

16:54.603 --> 16:57.151
and murder Gaddafi that led to the complete collapse

16:57.151 --> 16:58.489
of Libyan state hood,

16:58.489 --> 17:02.572
the spread of terrorism instability, and Jihadism

17:02.871 --> 17:05.473
outside of Libya into the broader Middle East,

17:05.473 --> 17:07.135
and in a way that threatens both Russia

17:07.135 --> 17:09.885
and the United States themselves.

17:10.472 --> 17:13.748
As I heard one high-ranking Russian official put it once

17:13.748 --> 17:16.527
what did you like better, previously you had Gaddafi

17:16.527 --> 17:19.122
and American ambassadors we're not getting killed in Libya,

17:19.122 --> 17:20.149
now you don't have Gaddafi

17:20.149 --> 17:22.125
and American ambassadors are getting killed in Libya?

17:22.125 --> 17:24.208
When were you better off?

17:24.858 --> 17:29.025
I'm not recounting this argument in order to endorse it,

17:30.195 --> 17:31.966
but in order to give you a sense

17:31.966 --> 17:34.409
of how the Russian narrative views

17:34.409 --> 17:38.185
the way that the United States has acted and why

17:38.185 --> 17:40.624
this response has justified in their mind

17:40.624 --> 17:43.604
Russia doing the things that it's done.

17:43.604 --> 17:46.050
There's a process of mirroring here going on

17:46.050 --> 17:47.671
that I think is very important

17:47.671 --> 17:50.422
and this gets to the way that Russia operates too.

17:50.422 --> 17:53.136
I'm sure the name Valery Gerasimov

17:53.136 --> 17:56.635
is going to come up at some point in the conversation today.

17:56.635 --> 17:58.210
The chief of the Russian general staff

17:58.210 --> 18:00.960
who sometimes credited or charged

18:01.936 --> 18:06.103
with crafting a doctrine of non-linear or hybrid warfare.

18:08.228 --> 18:11.873
Sometimes referred to as the Gerasimov doctrine.

18:11.873 --> 18:15.805
If you actually read Gerasimov's writings though

18:15.805 --> 18:19.888
about the use of non-kinetic nontraditional forms

18:21.512 --> 18:25.465
of power projection, what he's really saying is that

18:25.465 --> 18:28.367
these are the things that the West has done already

18:28.367 --> 18:31.960
including in Ukraine, the mobilizing of civil society,

18:31.960 --> 18:35.124
the funding of groups seeking to promote political change,

18:35.124 --> 18:39.291
support for political parties, manipulation of information,

18:40.110 --> 18:42.334
and that it's doing these things to pursue

18:42.334 --> 18:44.501
a discrete political goal.

18:44.906 --> 18:47.398
And that if Russia doesn't adapt,

18:47.398 --> 18:49.387
if Russia doesn't learn how to do these things

18:49.387 --> 18:50.917
that the West has already engaged in,

18:50.917 --> 18:52.493
it's going to fall behind.

18:52.493 --> 18:56.235
And so the emergence of Russia's efforts at destabilization

18:56.235 --> 18:58.512
whether it's in the United States, it's in Europe,

18:58.512 --> 19:00.654
it's in its post-Soviet neighbors,

19:00.654 --> 19:02.276
owes very much to this mirroring

19:02.276 --> 19:03.668
to this perception that these are things

19:03.668 --> 19:05.738
that the West and the United States in particular

19:05.738 --> 19:08.320
have been engaged in for a very long time.

19:08.320 --> 19:11.688
So it's easy for us sitting here sometimes I think

19:11.688 --> 19:14.015
to say that Russia is just a bad actor.

19:14.015 --> 19:18.182
That Putin is evil, that Russia is seeking to sow chaos

19:18.794 --> 19:20.611
for the sake of sowing chaos.

19:20.611 --> 19:22.152
And I think from our perspective,

19:22.152 --> 19:24.161
there is some truth to that,

19:24.161 --> 19:26.648
but at the same time, I think it's important to understand

19:26.648 --> 19:29.320
that the Russians have a story too

19:29.320 --> 19:32.518
and that they are narrative about how the world works,

19:32.518 --> 19:34.208
how the United States has behaved

19:34.208 --> 19:36.289
and why the existing international system

19:36.289 --> 19:38.054
has been detrimental to their own interests

19:38.054 --> 19:39.896
helps us better understand what they're trying to do

19:39.896 --> 19:42.182
and I think ultimately help us better figure out

19:42.182 --> 19:43.702
what we're going to do about it

19:43.702 --> 19:45.999
if we do in fact want to preserve the system

19:45.999 --> 19:48.192
that we've inherited from the end of the Cold War.

19:48.192 --> 19:51.073
So let me stop there and pass the floor

19:51.073 --> 19:52.906
over to my colleagues.

20:01.881 --> 20:05.122
- All right, thank you for coming today.

20:05.122 --> 20:08.455
I think this is a very interesting topic

20:09.401 --> 20:11.318
about the four plus one

20:11.408 --> 20:13.201
and what that means for us in the future.

20:13.201 --> 20:16.322
And with North Korea, I think we're looking at something

20:16.322 --> 20:18.322
that I think is evolving

20:20.121 --> 20:24.288
and can become potentially very dangerous very quickly,

20:24.941 --> 20:26.966
but not for the reasons that a lot of the people

20:26.966 --> 20:30.383
in this room are probably thinking about.

20:32.059 --> 20:32.976
Next slide.

20:34.247 --> 20:38.414
If you wanna understand anything about North Korea,

20:38.988 --> 20:41.859
you can't start at the 70,000 foot level.

20:41.859 --> 20:43.747
Trying to understand North Korea at the strategic level

20:43.747 --> 20:46.793
is going to lead you down a lot of rabbit holes

20:46.793 --> 20:48.869
and a lot of strategic miscalculations

20:48.869 --> 20:51.413
about what North Korea is up to.

20:51.413 --> 20:55.330
You have to get down to the very personal level

20:56.696 --> 20:58.748
because inside North Korea,

20:58.748 --> 21:02.248
it's all about politics of the individuals

21:02.375 --> 21:06.292
and regime dynamics are centered on Kim Jong-un

21:07.882 --> 21:09.044
and his key lieutenants

21:09.044 --> 21:11.929
most of whom come from a web of around 51 families

21:11.929 --> 21:13.512
inside North Korea.

21:13.563 --> 21:15.983
This is evolving, even as of yesterday,

21:15.983 --> 21:19.557
we had the second plenum of the seventh party congress

21:19.557 --> 21:22.985
in which we saw a lot of new people come into the politburo,

21:22.985 --> 21:24.261
the Central Military Commission,

21:24.261 --> 21:25.840
and a lot of other key party bodies

21:25.840 --> 21:29.962
including Kim Jong-un's younger sister Kim Yo-jong,

21:29.962 --> 21:33.545
who is very young, but up and coming person

21:34.065 --> 21:36.836
worth watching inside North Korea.

21:36.836 --> 21:38.313
And in order to understand

21:38.313 --> 21:40.984
everything I'm gonna tell you in this brief here,

21:40.984 --> 21:42.885
you need to understand and keep in mind

21:42.885 --> 21:47.052
it's all about the Kim family and his key lieutenants.

21:50.179 --> 21:52.855
Kim Jong-un runs his regime very differently

21:52.855 --> 21:54.824
than his father and grandfather did.

21:54.824 --> 21:56.967
His father and grandfather ran the regime

21:56.967 --> 22:00.600
primarily off of martial law and Juche philosophy.

22:00.600 --> 22:04.565
Basically, the idea that North Korea could basically

22:04.565 --> 22:07.159
pull itself up by its own bootstraps.

22:07.159 --> 22:11.206
Kim Jong-un has elements of those two things inside of it,

22:11.206 --> 22:14.789
but it also Kim Jong-un is much more wedded

22:14.855 --> 22:17.855
to policy success inside North Korea

22:17.899 --> 22:19.930
than his father and grandfather is.

22:19.930 --> 22:23.540
And if he does not show progress on policies,

22:23.540 --> 22:27.707
economic policy, policy for the nuclear program, so forth,

22:28.208 --> 22:32.041
he will take a hit in terms of the legitimacy.

22:32.141 --> 22:34.209
And so finally, when we give a lot of attention

22:34.209 --> 22:37.709
to the nuclear program, but in Kim's mind,

22:38.274 --> 22:41.776
there is a ticking bomb inside North Korea right now

22:41.776 --> 22:44.104
and it's tied to the economy.

22:44.104 --> 22:48.271
And even the nuclear program is in service in some way

22:48.938 --> 22:52.561
to what he has planned for the economy inside North Korea,

22:52.561 --> 22:56.339
there is a growing money de elite inside North Korea

22:56.339 --> 22:57.672
called the Donju

22:58.128 --> 23:01.959
and these are people that are children of the elite,

23:01.959 --> 23:05.639
they are people that run a variety of illicit and licit

23:05.639 --> 23:08.176
foreign hard currency operations.

23:08.176 --> 23:11.585
These are the people that right now are being taxed a lot

23:11.585 --> 23:14.672
because of the sanctions that are going on

23:14.672 --> 23:16.122
on top of North Korea.

23:16.122 --> 23:18.107
They have growing expectations

23:18.107 --> 23:22.101
and they're looking to Kim to satisfy those expectations.

23:22.101 --> 23:25.286
And over the next few years and if he's not able to do this,

23:25.286 --> 23:27.453
he's gonna have a problem.

23:27.644 --> 23:28.561
Next slide.

23:29.499 --> 23:32.082
So what is this grand strategy?

23:33.232 --> 23:35.808
If Kim Jong-un is the ultimate decision maker,

23:35.808 --> 23:37.192
which we believe he is,

23:37.192 --> 23:41.170
we believe that he has finally consolidated his power

23:41.170 --> 23:45.047
and he's somebody who's under pressure to show improve,

23:45.047 --> 23:48.034
the question becomes what does he want?

23:48.034 --> 23:50.247
What drives his decision making?

23:50.247 --> 23:51.914
What is its in game?

23:52.335 --> 23:56.418
And this can be summed up by two strategic goals.

23:56.456 --> 23:58.201
And we think about North Korea,

23:58.201 --> 24:01.858
and we think about whatever Kim wants to do.

24:01.858 --> 24:04.259
Decision-making on economic reform,

24:04.259 --> 24:06.911
decision-making on the nuclear deterrent,

24:06.911 --> 24:10.812
decision-making on whether to retaliate to US strikes

24:10.812 --> 24:11.981
inside North Korea.

24:11.981 --> 24:16.148
If we were to do that, it all comes down to two things.

24:16.831 --> 24:19.748
Regime survival and more importantly

24:19.748 --> 24:22.748
perpetuation of the Kim family rule.

24:23.502 --> 24:26.234
He will not take any decision that does not factor

24:26.234 --> 24:28.234
in these two objectives.

24:28.828 --> 24:29.969
In support of these objectives,

24:29.969 --> 24:33.360
Kim has a strategy of brinksmanship designed to weaken

24:33.360 --> 24:37.051
and ultimately change the current status quo in the region.

24:37.051 --> 24:39.352
The status quo which is basically mandated

24:39.352 --> 24:42.461
by the United States, South Korea and its allies.

24:42.461 --> 24:45.630
North Korea is trying to become a nuclear,

24:45.630 --> 24:49.797
accepted nuclear state to the nuclear family of states

24:50.598 --> 24:54.765
and it wants to engage the outside world as a nuclear power.

24:57.096 --> 24:59.223
And so a part of these objectives,

24:59.223 --> 25:01.914
as I said, he does the variety of brinksmanship

25:01.914 --> 25:04.126
going up and down the escalatory ladder,

25:04.126 --> 25:07.769
so if we ask ourselves how North Korea will at react

25:07.769 --> 25:10.379
in a period of growing tension with the United States?

25:10.379 --> 25:14.008
I think the answer will be that it will react rationally

25:14.008 --> 25:17.141
and in the service of these two objectives.

25:17.141 --> 25:19.874
If you try to explain North Korea is acting

25:19.874 --> 25:22.142
as a rational state for its own people

25:22.142 --> 25:24.634
and what's good for its people,

25:24.634 --> 25:27.478
you're completely missing the boat here.

25:27.478 --> 25:29.709
It's what's good for the Kim family

25:29.709 --> 25:33.376
and the cohort of leaders that surround him.

25:34.091 --> 25:38.091
And they will not likely attack unless provoked,

25:38.824 --> 25:40.592
and if the US attacks North Korea,

25:40.592 --> 25:43.666
then it gets into a much more complicated

25:43.666 --> 25:45.106
decision making process.

25:45.106 --> 25:47.067
Something that we can talk about in the Q and A

25:47.067 --> 25:48.256
if you want to.

25:48.256 --> 25:49.173
Next slide.

25:53.294 --> 25:56.001
So another order to understand Kim's calculus,

25:56.001 --> 25:59.168
it makes sense to put it into context.

25:59.510 --> 26:03.177
A month ago or so in the Wall Street Journal

26:04.028 --> 26:07.945
secretaries Tillerson and Mattis wrote an op-ed

26:08.410 --> 26:12.577
in which they said, North Korea now faces a choice.

26:12.829 --> 26:15.701
Take a new path toward peace and prosperity

26:15.701 --> 26:18.597
and international acceptance, or continue down

26:18.597 --> 26:22.764
the dead alley of belligerence, poverty and isolation.

26:23.187 --> 26:25.093
This is how the United States and its allies

26:25.093 --> 26:26.510
see Kim's choice.

26:27.497 --> 26:31.247
It's not how Kim Jong-un sees his own choice.

26:31.283 --> 26:33.442
So how does Kim see his own future

26:33.442 --> 26:35.461
and the future of his country?

26:35.461 --> 26:37.473
He operates off of script that dates back

26:37.473 --> 26:39.704
to the beginning of the regime.

26:39.704 --> 26:42.655
He assesses risk and settles doctrines and strategies

26:42.655 --> 26:45.733
that fall within acceptable outcomes.

26:45.733 --> 26:47.922
These outcomes stretch back to the beginning of the regime

26:47.922 --> 26:51.036
and act as the brackets within which North Korean strategy

26:51.036 --> 26:52.311
and policy operate.

26:52.311 --> 26:56.478
Basically, survival of the regime as being the minimum goal

26:58.150 --> 27:02.317
and completion of the revolution being the desired goal,

27:04.997 --> 27:08.580
but it is something that, well, next slide.

27:09.556 --> 27:13.723
If we look at strategies that North Korea employs,

27:14.324 --> 27:16.411
political strategies, military strategies,

27:16.411 --> 27:20.578
economic strategies, the closer you get to the minimum goal,

27:21.645 --> 27:25.554
the more defensive in nature these strategies tend to be.

27:25.554 --> 27:29.137
The more you get closer to the desired goal

27:30.178 --> 27:31.467
of completion of the revolution

27:31.467 --> 27:34.269
which would be reunification under North Korea,

27:34.269 --> 27:37.602
the more offensive these strategies get.

27:38.615 --> 27:39.782
So next slide.

27:42.772 --> 27:44.832
Some discussions coming out of the US

27:44.832 --> 27:48.089
and Western sources these days highlights outcomes

27:48.089 --> 27:52.256
that are totally unacceptable to Kim Jong-un and the regime.

27:53.539 --> 27:55.311
Unacceptable outcomes are assessed

27:55.311 --> 27:58.811
as no longer guaranteeing regime survival.

27:59.334 --> 28:01.808
Essentially, any outcome that does not take into account

28:01.808 --> 28:05.975
the perpetuation of Kim family rule is unacceptable.

28:06.352 --> 28:10.519
So when we talk about, well, we want to negotiate with Kim

28:11.230 --> 28:13.477
and we want to negotiate with North Korea,

28:13.477 --> 28:17.477
if they will just give up their nuclear program.

28:17.680 --> 28:20.191
Well, North Korea just laughs at that.

28:20.191 --> 28:21.800
There's no way they're going to give up

28:21.800 --> 28:25.531
their nuclear weapons because it is in service

28:25.531 --> 28:27.781
of these two primary goals.

28:28.320 --> 28:32.081
It ensures the minimum which is survival of the regime.

28:32.081 --> 28:35.428
They look at what happened in Libya to Gaddafi,

28:35.428 --> 28:38.966
they look at what happened in Iraq to Saddam.

28:38.966 --> 28:41.213
These are countries who gave up their nuclear programs

28:41.213 --> 28:42.788
or their nascent nuclear programs

28:42.788 --> 28:44.436
and look what happened to them.

28:44.436 --> 28:46.317
North Korea is not gonna make the same mistake.

28:46.317 --> 28:47.817
Not in their eyes.

28:47.843 --> 28:51.084
And so they're going to continue to manipulate

28:51.084 --> 28:55.251
the escalatory ladder hopefully not step over the red lines

28:56.519 --> 29:00.156
from their perspective and continue to move along

29:00.156 --> 29:03.239
toward getting their nuclear program.

29:05.472 --> 29:08.324
The question is whether we will allow,

29:08.324 --> 29:12.491
where there are new red lines in play in the region

29:12.527 --> 29:16.527
in which North Korea may accidentally step over.

29:16.845 --> 29:18.548
That is something the North Koreans right now

29:18.548 --> 29:20.631
are trying to figure out.

29:20.935 --> 29:23.731
They don't really understand the US redlines anymore.

29:23.731 --> 29:25.998
They thought they knew what they were,

29:25.998 --> 29:27.772
they predicted that Hillary Clinton

29:27.772 --> 29:29.824
would be elected president,

29:29.824 --> 29:33.516
they had a game plan, and now they have President Trump

29:33.516 --> 29:37.683
and they are struggling to try to figure out how that works.

29:38.035 --> 29:38.952
Next slide.

29:41.643 --> 29:44.143
So when we look at the history

29:44.275 --> 29:47.477
of North Korean military doctrine in its strategy,

29:47.477 --> 29:50.356
over the last 70 years, we see a fluctuation

29:50.356 --> 29:52.984
between the regimes assessed outcomes,

29:52.984 --> 29:55.243
and associated offensive and defensive nature

29:55.243 --> 29:56.743
of its approaches.

29:57.609 --> 30:00.132
These strategies represent phases.

30:00.132 --> 30:02.632
The trim line, that black line

30:02.761 --> 30:05.031
that's probably very hard to see down there

30:05.031 --> 30:07.948
or at least it is for me over here,

30:08.014 --> 30:09.513
measures the offensive nature

30:09.513 --> 30:11.677
of North Korean military strategy and doctrine

30:11.677 --> 30:14.260
as it tracks from 1945 to 2017.

30:15.880 --> 30:18.774
You could see the spike in the early 1950s

30:18.774 --> 30:20.242
to accommodate the Korean War

30:20.242 --> 30:24.409
when North Korea tried to achieve their desired goal

30:24.623 --> 30:27.206
of reunification through force.

30:28.195 --> 30:31.028
And then you see this big drop off

30:31.183 --> 30:35.350
and this starts to tell us how North Korea operates.

30:36.935 --> 30:41.102
When North Korea has internal dissension of any kind,

30:42.054 --> 30:45.661
you will see that they will basically go turtle.

30:45.661 --> 30:48.244
they will go and they will hide

30:48.261 --> 30:50.521
and their strategies become very defensive.

30:50.521 --> 30:53.427
So what happened at the end of the Korean War?

30:53.427 --> 30:57.189
You had Kim Il-sung starting to consolidate his power.

30:57.189 --> 30:59.717
He was fighting the elements of the regime

30:59.717 --> 31:02.777
that were tied to the Soviet Union and China.

31:02.777 --> 31:06.070
He also was the, the country was basically

31:06.070 --> 31:08.480
economically recovering from the war

31:08.480 --> 31:12.230
so you had the drop off until the early 1960s

31:12.313 --> 31:14.699
and then they had a major reformation

31:14.699 --> 31:16.787
of North Korean military doctrine,

31:16.787 --> 31:20.954
the so-called four guidelines in which they introduced

31:22.097 --> 31:24.698
lessons learned from the Korean War

31:24.698 --> 31:27.448
as well as the Vietnam experience

31:27.710 --> 31:29.842
to bring an unconventional element

31:29.842 --> 31:32.002
in the North Korean military doctrine

31:32.002 --> 31:35.584
and so they became, in the 1960s, a combination

31:35.584 --> 31:39.376
of conventional and unconventional doctrine in North Korea

31:39.376 --> 31:43.294
and we started to see a spike in the offensive nature

31:43.294 --> 31:45.961
of their strategies and doctrine

31:46.269 --> 31:49.602
with periodic attacks against the south.

31:49.623 --> 31:53.790
Leading in 1968, you had the attack on the blue house,

31:54.687 --> 31:56.277
you had the capturing the Pueblo,

31:56.277 --> 32:00.444
you had the shooting down of the US intelligence plane.

32:03.847 --> 32:06.430
And so what happens after that?

32:07.509 --> 32:11.179
All of a sudden you have a drop off again in their doctrine

32:11.179 --> 32:13.031
back toward the defensive nature.

32:13.031 --> 32:14.198
What happened?

32:14.447 --> 32:18.614
Well, in the early 1970s, Kim started for to prepare

32:20.181 --> 32:24.098
his succession, even though it was in the 1970s

32:24.119 --> 32:26.026
and he didn't die until the 1990s.

32:26.026 --> 32:30.109
And you had Kim Jong-il become the heir apparent,

32:31.002 --> 32:33.672
you had the new constitution come out in 1972

32:33.672 --> 32:37.271
which really kind of announced to the world the beginning,

32:37.271 --> 32:40.025
really the beginning of the Kim Il-sung era

32:40.025 --> 32:42.858
as he fully consolidate his power,

32:43.346 --> 32:46.096
and then you had basically the regime going through

32:46.096 --> 32:48.477
a period of consolidation inside,

32:48.477 --> 32:52.644
so you had a period of this kind of very defensive nature

32:53.489 --> 32:57.168
in its doctrine until the 1980s and then all began,

32:57.168 --> 33:00.286
and suddenly, we start to see a spike again.

33:00.286 --> 33:01.442
And why do we see a spike?

33:01.442 --> 33:04.234
Because whenever you created heir apparent

33:04.234 --> 33:06.317
in a totalitarian regime,

33:07.407 --> 33:10.657
they gotta start to stretch their wings

33:11.143 --> 33:14.872
in terms of trying to play the escalatory ladder.

33:14.872 --> 33:17.456
So we had a variety of different terrorist strikes

33:17.456 --> 33:20.789
in the blowing up of the Korean airliner

33:20.874 --> 33:23.728
as well as the bombings in Rangoon,

33:23.728 --> 33:26.850
targeted assassinations that were going on

33:26.850 --> 33:31.017
and this last basically up until the 19, or late 1980s

33:32.008 --> 33:36.175
where you had North Korea put on the terrorism watch list

33:37.370 --> 33:39.054
until the early 1990s.

33:39.054 --> 33:40.441
What happened there?

33:40.441 --> 33:41.906
Basically at this point,

33:41.906 --> 33:45.290
we know because of the East German archives

33:45.290 --> 33:48.617
that Kim Il-sung was telling Erich Honecker,

33:48.617 --> 33:52.348
who at that time was the head of the Communist Party

33:52.348 --> 33:56.515
in East Germany that the North Korea no longer saw

33:56.600 --> 34:00.767
the ability to win a war conventionally on the peninsula.

34:01.429 --> 34:04.311
They could not reunified about war.

34:04.311 --> 34:08.311
And so this is where we started to see a program

34:09.612 --> 34:13.195
that really has its roots back in the 1950s

34:14.145 --> 34:17.206
basically the nuclear program really comes to fore

34:17.206 --> 34:19.289
and begins to accelerate.

34:19.475 --> 34:23.225
And this is basically an asymmetric approach.

34:23.593 --> 34:26.527
A way of guaranteeing regime survival.

34:26.527 --> 34:30.694
Not necessarily regime or reunification on the peninsula,

34:31.062 --> 34:33.395
they need to have deterrent.

34:34.300 --> 34:38.467
And as we look at this, we see there's precipitous drop

34:38.754 --> 34:42.921
in basically their offensive elements of their doctrine

34:43.653 --> 34:47.231
even though they do continue to do provocations

34:47.231 --> 34:50.121
and brinksmanship such as the sinking of the Cheonan

34:50.121 --> 34:51.576
and so on and so forth,

34:51.576 --> 34:54.645
but it's all in defense of the regime

34:54.645 --> 34:58.542
more so than as an offensive element to their doctrine.

34:58.542 --> 35:01.809
But now we're coming to the point where North Korea

35:01.809 --> 35:05.188
in a few years may have a viable nuclear deterrent

35:05.188 --> 35:06.413
and the question is,

35:06.413 --> 35:08.240
how is that going to affect their doctrine?

35:08.240 --> 35:11.496
Are they going to then use it is a coercive element

35:11.496 --> 35:13.743
to try to push the US off the peninsula

35:13.743 --> 35:16.011
and reunify under North Korea?

35:16.011 --> 35:20.178
Are they going to basically engage the outside world

35:20.723 --> 35:22.157
as a normal nuclear power?

35:22.157 --> 35:23.343
We don't know yet

35:23.343 --> 35:25.857
so we're kind of waiting to see how this all plays out.

35:25.857 --> 35:26.690
Next.

35:29.021 --> 35:31.369
So when we look in more recent period,

35:31.369 --> 35:35.536
the brinksmanship under Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un,

35:36.329 --> 35:39.415
we see that Kim Jong-un conducts brinksmanship

35:39.415 --> 35:42.914
and provocation in a very different way than his father did.

35:42.914 --> 35:46.395
His father used brinksmanship or used the nuclear program

35:46.395 --> 35:49.907
basically as a bargaining chip to try to set the stage

35:49.907 --> 35:54.074
for negotiations for economic aid from the outside world.

35:54.125 --> 35:57.208
And so you saw these periodic strikes

35:58.086 --> 36:01.136
and kinetic activities especially out around the NLL,

36:01.136 --> 36:05.070
the northern limit line in the maritime environment,

36:05.070 --> 36:07.737
but when you get to Kim Jong-un,

36:08.125 --> 36:11.114
we see something very, very different.

36:11.114 --> 36:14.697
With the exception of what happened in 2015

36:14.966 --> 36:17.633
which was the attack on the DMZ,

36:18.375 --> 36:22.042
his provocations basically have been testing

36:22.438 --> 36:23.709
the critical defense systems.

36:23.709 --> 36:26.807
The missile system and the nuclear program.

36:26.807 --> 36:30.974
He has now put this thing on an honest to God program

36:31.826 --> 36:35.408
with milestones that did not exist under his father.

36:35.408 --> 36:39.075
It is a very calculated step by step process

36:40.530 --> 36:44.697
in order to eventually reach a viable nuclear deterrent

36:45.669 --> 36:47.818
that can strike the United States

36:47.818 --> 36:51.025
because it is only that that will keep the United States

36:51.025 --> 36:53.557
from eventually overthrowing his regime

36:53.557 --> 36:55.357
from his point of view.

36:55.357 --> 36:56.190
Next.

36:57.182 --> 37:01.249
It shows a little bit more in specificity about really

37:01.249 --> 37:04.499
this constant drumbeat of their testing

37:05.439 --> 37:09.036
of their defense systems with the notable exception

37:09.036 --> 37:12.703
of the DMZ attack in 2015 which was designed

37:13.057 --> 37:15.424
to try to reengage South Korea.

37:15.424 --> 37:16.674
It didn't work.

37:17.105 --> 37:19.905
South Korea stuck to their guns about denuclearization

37:19.905 --> 37:22.758
and North Korea basically tanked the talks

37:22.758 --> 37:26.620
and really went hell for leather beginning in January

37:26.620 --> 37:30.620
of 2016 when they tested the fourth nuclear test

37:32.799 --> 37:35.549
followed by numerous missile test

37:35.561 --> 37:38.478
and through on up until last month.

37:39.942 --> 37:40.775
Next.

37:41.806 --> 37:43.306
So what can we do?

37:43.648 --> 37:45.731
Can we deter North Korea?

37:47.223 --> 37:49.091
I would argue that you can't deter them

37:49.091 --> 37:51.452
at the lower end of the escalatory ladder.

37:51.452 --> 37:53.694
They've already built into their calculus

37:53.694 --> 37:55.592
what they think that we're going to do

37:55.592 --> 37:57.759
in response to their test.

37:58.245 --> 38:00.080
The further you go up the escalatory ladder

38:00.080 --> 38:03.237
especially when you're talking about deaths,

38:03.237 --> 38:07.027
death primarily of civilians, but also military deaths

38:07.027 --> 38:09.057
such as the Cheonan, that's where it gets

38:09.057 --> 38:12.679
a little bit more problematic for North Korea.

38:12.679 --> 38:16.846
So the further you go up into the kinetic provocations

38:17.357 --> 38:21.524
is the point in which North Korea can be deterred.

38:22.460 --> 38:23.861
The further you go, because again,

38:23.861 --> 38:25.860
we're talking about regime survival

38:25.860 --> 38:28.027
and perpetuation of the Kim family regime,

38:28.027 --> 38:29.244
they're not gonna do anything

38:29.244 --> 38:32.131
that is going to put those things at risk.

38:32.131 --> 38:35.091
Then you have this period that they can be deterred.

38:35.091 --> 38:37.687
And then you go up further the escalatory ladder

38:37.687 --> 38:40.020
and it gets really squirrely

38:40.119 --> 38:42.466
because this is where they have to kind of figure out

38:42.466 --> 38:44.931
whether, and we would see this maybe

38:44.931 --> 38:48.514
in the midst of a conflict or a real crisis

38:48.537 --> 38:50.750
where they're trying to make the decision

38:50.750 --> 38:52.750
on whether the jig is up

38:53.103 --> 38:56.020
or whether they can find a way out.

38:56.672 --> 38:59.129
If they can find a way out, they'll be deterred.

38:59.129 --> 39:02.044
If on the other hand they believe that the jig is up,

39:02.044 --> 39:05.544
that the regime is headed toward collapse,

39:05.957 --> 39:10.124
then the ability to deter becomes very, very difficult

39:10.387 --> 39:14.554
and that's probably where we're looking at nuclear exchange.

39:14.690 --> 39:15.607
Next slide.

39:16.603 --> 39:18.520
This is the last slide.

39:19.022 --> 39:21.439
So what keeps us up at night?

39:21.623 --> 39:23.964
The people that watch North Korea,

39:23.964 --> 39:26.805
or at least people like me that watch North Korea

39:26.805 --> 39:30.555
is basically what could happen to this regime

39:31.202 --> 39:32.952
if Kim dies tomorrow?

39:34.444 --> 39:37.694
Kim Jong-un is not in very good health.

39:38.284 --> 39:40.490
He has a lot of physical ailments.

39:40.490 --> 39:43.187
Probably his health ailments we know he has

39:43.187 --> 39:45.354
kidney and liver problems.

39:46.316 --> 39:49.575
He has a body mass index we believe is somewhere around 40

39:49.575 --> 39:51.308
which is in stroke territory.

39:51.308 --> 39:53.630
He smokes, he drinks, he doesn't eat right,

39:53.630 --> 39:57.463
he doesn't get any exercise as far as we know,

39:58.988 --> 40:02.864
but everything in that regime comes together at him.

40:02.864 --> 40:04.295
He's the linchpin.

40:04.295 --> 40:07.732
And if all of a sudden he drops dead tomorrow,

40:07.732 --> 40:11.899
you do not have a viable continuance of governance plan.

40:13.399 --> 40:15.818
They have a continuance of governance plan,

40:15.818 --> 40:18.790
but it's based on a collective leadership model

40:18.790 --> 40:21.041
which will not hold together.

40:21.041 --> 40:25.208
Most likely it would be his older brother Kim Jong-chul

40:25.309 --> 40:27.617
who would be put out there as a figurehead

40:27.617 --> 40:31.234
and he would be in front of a lot of very powerful figures

40:31.234 --> 40:33.020
many of whom have their own equities

40:33.020 --> 40:35.852
and are basically in competition with each other

40:35.852 --> 40:37.269
behind the scenes

40:37.531 --> 40:40.627
that could lead to a collapse of the regime.

40:40.627 --> 40:42.525
If you have the collapse of the regime,

40:42.525 --> 40:45.854
it is not going to stay contained in North Korea.

40:45.854 --> 40:47.924
It will flood over into China,

40:47.924 --> 40:51.924
it will potentially have strikes on South Korea.

40:52.901 --> 40:54.983
You have the front line corps

40:54.983 --> 40:57.463
especially the second and fifth Corps

40:57.463 --> 40:59.956
which are on a hairline trigger,

40:59.956 --> 41:02.825
and if command and control in Pyongyang goes

41:02.825 --> 41:05.483
the possibility of artillery strikes into Seoul

41:05.483 --> 41:07.733
is a very real possibility.

41:07.871 --> 41:09.558
So this gets a very dangerous,

41:09.558 --> 41:13.225
and also we don't have one center of gravity

41:14.003 --> 41:17.600
that we can negotiate with for termination of conflict.

41:17.600 --> 41:20.382
We possibly have multiple centers of gravity

41:20.382 --> 41:24.302
which makes this a very, very difficult situation.

41:24.302 --> 41:26.145
And we need to understand

41:26.145 --> 41:29.010
that the more pressure we put on this regime,

41:29.010 --> 41:31.932
the possibility of something like this happening

41:31.932 --> 41:33.840
so we could end up getting,

41:33.840 --> 41:35.531
you know, you get a lot of these stories,

41:35.531 --> 41:37.570
well, we need to take the Kim family down

41:37.570 --> 41:40.342
and we need to strangle the Kim family

41:40.342 --> 41:43.178
in like the strangulation campaign.

41:43.178 --> 41:44.922
You may be kind of, you know,

41:44.922 --> 41:47.912
you need to be really careful what you wish for

41:47.912 --> 41:51.579
because this can get a lot worse very quick.

41:51.860 --> 41:52.693
Thank you.

41:53.697 --> 41:57.864
- Dr. Brookes, before you begin I just wanna remind

41:59.930 --> 42:03.327
all the members of the audience, there are 3 by 5 cards

42:03.327 --> 42:06.131
so if you do have questions, please write those down

42:06.131 --> 42:08.904
and then at the end of the panel presentations,

42:08.904 --> 42:10.793
we will take questions from the audience.

42:10.793 --> 42:11.955
When you write the card,

42:11.955 --> 42:15.194
members of our staff will collect them.

42:15.194 --> 42:19.361
- And here we've got a slide to start the presentation.

42:25.502 --> 42:26.335
Anyway, thank you.

42:26.335 --> 42:27.413
Thank you very much, general.

42:27.413 --> 42:29.256
It's a pleasure to be here again.

42:29.256 --> 42:31.766
I guess the surprise you could certainly put this

42:31.766 --> 42:35.065
in the category of the triumph of hope over experience

42:35.065 --> 42:38.232
having me back, plus being a Navy guy,

42:38.942 --> 42:40.428
that's another strike against me,

42:40.428 --> 42:44.595
but my son is an Army captain so maybe that helped.

42:44.787 --> 42:47.197
We're generationally improving the gene pool

42:47.197 --> 42:49.030
in the Brookes family.

42:50.162 --> 42:54.329
Anyway, if we get my slide up, I'm gonna talk about China,

42:54.749 --> 42:56.170
the strategic challenge of China

42:56.170 --> 42:57.776
and it may be actually kind of cheery

42:57.776 --> 43:00.276
compared to Ken's presentation

43:01.033 --> 43:02.834
which is not, and considering all the topics

43:02.834 --> 43:07.001
we're talking about today that's kinda hard to come by.

43:09.148 --> 43:10.752
So I'm gonna talk about the People's Republic of China.

43:10.752 --> 43:14.669
There is a beautiful picture of the Great Wall.

43:14.772 --> 43:16.485
And talk about the strategic challenges

43:16.485 --> 43:19.597
and some of the flashpoints that we may face

43:19.597 --> 43:23.764
as armed services including the Army in particular,

43:24.636 --> 43:27.875
and I also would in a shameless moment of self-promotion

43:27.875 --> 43:29.680
or for the Heritage Foundation

43:29.680 --> 43:31.978
have you check out our new book

43:31.978 --> 43:35.145
which is available here in booth 1169.

43:36.879 --> 43:37.879
Also online.

43:38.285 --> 43:41.482
It's called the 2018 Index of US Military Strength

43:41.482 --> 43:43.710
which assesses the global operating environment

43:43.710 --> 43:45.422
as well as US military strength

43:45.422 --> 43:48.005
to operate in that environment.

43:48.705 --> 43:50.539
In my view, China is gonna be our biggest

43:50.539 --> 43:53.368
strategic challenge in this century.

43:53.368 --> 43:56.648
In fact, I think beyond the United States,

43:56.648 --> 44:00.156
no country will shape the 21st century more

44:00.156 --> 44:02.406
for good or bad than China.

44:03.387 --> 44:05.799
This is a nation that is characterized

44:05.799 --> 44:07.509
by an increasing number of superlatives

44:07.509 --> 44:09.342
and near superlatives.

44:09.362 --> 44:10.791
We're talking about a country with a number,

44:10.791 --> 44:13.132
the largest population in the world today.

44:13.132 --> 44:15.446
The number two economy behind the United States

44:15.446 --> 44:17.101
having surpassed Japan.

44:17.101 --> 44:19.684
Number two in defense spending.

44:19.692 --> 44:22.922
It's difficult to come up with exact numbers in terms

44:22.922 --> 44:26.149
that are defense spending, but it continues to grow.

44:26.149 --> 44:27.923
Some say that in fact I think there's like

44:27.923 --> 44:30.350
a cottage industry out there trying to figure out exactly

44:30.350 --> 44:32.375
how much China is spending on defense

44:32.375 --> 44:35.766
because of the inconvertibility of its currency

44:35.766 --> 44:38.304
and just the lack of transparency

44:38.304 --> 44:40.510
in terms of the Chinese budget,

44:40.510 --> 44:43.902
but we're talking about I think over the last 20 years

44:43.902 --> 44:45.439
an average of double digits

44:45.439 --> 44:48.627
more than 10% in terms of defense and spending increases.

44:48.627 --> 44:51.344
This year, it's gonna be eight or so percent,

44:51.344 --> 44:54.501
but once again, that doesn't give us a full sense

44:54.501 --> 44:56.346
because some of the things are actually off budget

44:56.346 --> 44:57.552
in the Chinese budget.

44:57.552 --> 45:00.279
They're number one consumer of energy.

45:00.279 --> 45:02.288
Number one producer of greenhouse gases.

45:02.288 --> 45:04.895
Number one consumer of commodities in the world today.

45:04.895 --> 45:07.262
And at one point, China was consuming more coal

45:07.262 --> 45:09.431
than the rest of the world combined.

45:09.431 --> 45:10.393
Now, they're making moves

45:10.393 --> 45:12.101
because of environmental degradation,

45:12.101 --> 45:14.075
but this gives you a sense

45:14.075 --> 45:15.631
of what we're really dealing with.

45:15.631 --> 45:17.493
And of course, not all these attributes

45:17.493 --> 45:20.615
are good for the United States especially defense spending.

45:20.615 --> 45:22.369
So what does China want?

45:22.369 --> 45:23.619
Currently want?

45:23.692 --> 45:25.653
I mean, I think it really wants to return China

45:25.653 --> 45:28.382
to position of great power status.

45:28.382 --> 45:30.270
For years, we don't hear this as much anymore.

45:30.270 --> 45:33.789
China talked about 150 years of humiliation

45:33.789 --> 45:35.416
at the hands of the outside powers.

45:35.416 --> 45:39.583
I mean, this goes back to the Opium Wars back in 1840s

45:39.893 --> 45:42.587
especially over things like Hong Kong and the concessions

45:42.587 --> 45:45.114
that were given to other countries.

45:45.114 --> 45:47.047
President Xi calls this the China dream.

45:47.047 --> 45:50.996
The rejuvenation of the Chinese people of the Chinese state

45:50.996 --> 45:52.913
a national restoration.

45:53.117 --> 45:54.401
Another important issue for China

45:54.401 --> 45:56.918
is to protect and defend Chinese sovereignty,

45:56.918 --> 46:00.180
its core interests which are a little bit fluid.

46:00.180 --> 46:02.854
Certainly things like Taiwan are a core interests.

46:02.854 --> 46:04.473
South China Sea seems to move in and out

46:04.473 --> 46:06.356
of the issue of core interests.

46:06.356 --> 46:08.233
Certainly, its sovereignty issues.

46:08.233 --> 46:10.226
Its territorial integrity are considered

46:10.226 --> 46:11.427
to be core interests.

46:11.427 --> 46:14.127
Also as Ken mentioned for the Chinese Communist Party,

46:14.127 --> 46:16.794
it's the survival of the regime.

46:16.855 --> 46:19.138
I mean, this is job number one.

46:19.138 --> 46:23.305
China is not a democracy, it's an authoritarian state.

46:23.469 --> 46:26.968
And for them, their legitimacy is critical to them

46:26.968 --> 46:28.833
as well as their survival

46:28.833 --> 46:31.346
so in many ways that's kind of job one.

46:31.346 --> 46:33.542
They want to develop the political economic

46:33.542 --> 46:35.398
military informational power,

46:35.398 --> 46:37.350
basically it's comprehensive national power

46:37.350 --> 46:40.834
to shape the international environment in China's favor.

46:40.834 --> 46:43.927
China sees this period now as a strategic window

46:43.927 --> 46:46.427
of opportunity for doing that.

46:46.843 --> 46:49.426
I think it also wants to replace the United States'

46:49.426 --> 46:52.800
a prominent power in the Pacific, in Asia,

46:52.800 --> 46:55.273
and I think ultimately globally.

46:55.273 --> 46:57.738
China wants to sit as the middle kingdom

46:57.738 --> 47:00.321
atop the international system.

47:01.722 --> 47:03.472
Slide change, please.

47:04.402 --> 47:08.569
This is a Chinese military parade in Tiananmen Square.

47:09.426 --> 47:11.107
And I think the most interesting thing about this is

47:11.107 --> 47:13.707
if you notice on the side of that Chinese missile there,

47:13.707 --> 47:17.798
that missile launcher is DF-21D which is in English

47:17.798 --> 47:20.367
probably for a foreign audience to notice,

47:20.367 --> 47:21.534
and of course,

47:22.132 --> 47:25.911
this is the Chinese anti-ship ballistic missile.

47:25.911 --> 47:27.648
A unique weapon system

47:27.648 --> 47:30.058
that is also called the Carrier-Killer

47:30.058 --> 47:34.225
and they're talking about the US carrier in that respect.

47:34.835 --> 47:36.260
But I mean, to support these ambitions

47:36.260 --> 47:38.157
that I just talked about,

47:38.157 --> 47:41.698
the Chinese political ambitions, its global ambitions,

47:41.698 --> 47:45.615
the PRC is involved in a major military buildup

47:45.755 --> 47:48.307
and it's commensurate with its great power vision.

47:48.307 --> 47:50.248
Well, China, you're not threatened by anyone.

47:50.248 --> 47:51.903
Why are you building up your military?

47:51.903 --> 47:53.275
They will say, well, this is something

47:53.275 --> 47:54.436
that great powers have.

47:54.436 --> 47:55.526
They have great militaries,

47:55.526 --> 47:56.396
they have great political power,

47:56.396 --> 47:57.467
they have great economic power,

47:57.467 --> 47:59.645
and they have great militaries.

47:59.645 --> 48:02.822
This military is meant to deter, delay or deny an enemy

48:02.822 --> 48:04.807
from threatening its interests

48:04.807 --> 48:07.625
including what people are calling now an A2/AD strategy

48:07.625 --> 48:10.513
or anti-access/area-denial strategy.

48:10.513 --> 48:13.086
They're involved in a significant investment

48:13.086 --> 48:14.864
in the defense industrial base.

48:14.864 --> 48:16.445
China is serious about this.

48:16.445 --> 48:17.752
They're increasingly capable

48:17.752 --> 48:20.448
in terms of their defense industrial base,

48:20.448 --> 48:22.073
not only through research and development,

48:22.073 --> 48:25.208
but also through theft which many of you have heard about,

48:25.208 --> 48:28.240
and they're trying to produce top-notch defense systems.

48:28.240 --> 48:30.386
They're making progress in that regard.

48:30.386 --> 48:31.709
And the other thing is that the military

48:31.709 --> 48:34.661
and the civilian sectors are working hand in hand

48:34.661 --> 48:37.184
because of the way the economy is say driveling in China.

48:37.184 --> 48:40.142
So if the commercial sector is benefiting them,

48:40.142 --> 48:41.744
the military, if there is military application,

48:41.744 --> 48:43.494
will benefit as well.

48:43.688 --> 48:45.233
They're also involved in the professionalization

48:45.233 --> 48:46.270
of their armed forces.

48:46.270 --> 48:49.339
China has world's largest army as you know.

48:49.339 --> 48:51.114
The Army and the Party are one,

48:51.114 --> 48:54.208
as you'll hear politically from Chinese leaders,

48:54.208 --> 48:55.657
but they're downsizing it.

48:55.657 --> 48:56.961
They're reducing the size of it,

48:56.961 --> 48:58.687
but they're professionalizing it.

48:58.687 --> 49:00.235
In fact, one of the most significant things

49:00.235 --> 49:02.799
that they're doing is they're developing an NCO corps

49:02.799 --> 49:04.526
which is we all know is the basis

49:04.526 --> 49:08.193
of a modern professional top-notch military.

49:08.512 --> 49:09.932
They're also involved in combat

49:09.932 --> 49:11.197
and joint warfare training.

49:11.197 --> 49:13.812
They're moving away from single services

49:13.812 --> 49:17.775
to joint warfare, critical, and which is critical to them.

49:17.775 --> 49:19.626
It is developing its power projection forces.

49:19.626 --> 49:22.098
This is one of the focuses of their military.

49:22.098 --> 49:24.931
The Navy is now a blue-water Navy.

49:25.511 --> 49:26.666
There's an interesting story

49:26.666 --> 49:28.825
going back to the days of Mao

49:28.825 --> 49:31.276
when it took Mao like three years to actually visit

49:31.276 --> 49:33.109
the small Chinese Navy

49:33.403 --> 49:35.716
after they've won the Civil War in 1949,

49:35.716 --> 49:37.072
it wasn't that important.

49:37.072 --> 49:39.822
Today, it is very much important.

49:39.979 --> 49:41.624
China is building aircraft carriers.

49:41.624 --> 49:43.973
They have one at sea is considered to be operational.

49:43.973 --> 49:46.473
They're building more of them.

49:46.870 --> 49:49.610
They have the largest Navy in Asia today.

49:49.610 --> 49:51.616
They have the world's most prodigious shipbuilding program

49:51.616 --> 49:53.533
that includes warships.

49:54.008 --> 49:55.867
In terms of its Air Force,

49:55.867 --> 49:58.814
we're talking about fourth and fifth generation fighters.

49:58.814 --> 50:00.885
The stealth fighters, bombers.

50:00.885 --> 50:01.857
Largest Air Force in Asia.

50:01.857 --> 50:03.381
Now, I'm not including United States

50:03.381 --> 50:04.336
when I say in Asia in that respect

50:04.336 --> 50:07.708
even though we are certainly a Pacific nation.

50:07.708 --> 50:09.822
Number three in the world in terms of Air Force

50:09.822 --> 50:11.277
and it's getting increasingly better.

50:11.277 --> 50:13.151
Large numbers in the past,

50:13.151 --> 50:17.318
now they're moving towards more capable modern aircraft.

50:17.432 --> 50:19.774
They're also talking about expeditionary capabilities

50:19.774 --> 50:23.857
beyond China to operate beyond China's periphery.

50:23.977 --> 50:27.414
Their strategic forces is another in critical element.

50:27.414 --> 50:29.827
I think that China probably has the largest

50:29.827 --> 50:31.071
ballistic missile force in the world today.

50:31.071 --> 50:32.490
I'm not sure on those numbers,

50:32.490 --> 50:34.577
but I'm pretty sure that that is the case.

50:34.577 --> 50:37.062
I talked about the DF-21 shown there in that picture,

50:37.062 --> 50:39.895
there's also the DF-26 which was probably also displayed

50:39.895 --> 50:42.589
in the same way in this military parade

50:42.589 --> 50:46.135
which is also known as the Guam Killer or the Guam Express.

50:46.135 --> 50:47.844
So this is an intermediate range ballistic missile

50:47.844 --> 50:52.011
that can reach Guam and our forces that are located there.

50:52.597 --> 50:54.136
In terms of strategic forces,

50:54.136 --> 50:57.053
China's into information dominance.

50:57.816 --> 51:01.983
They want to be able to win wars in the Information Age.

51:02.386 --> 51:04.598
This includes cyber operations obviously.

51:04.598 --> 51:06.186
If we weren't talking about Russia today

51:06.186 --> 51:07.887
for all the reasons that we've been talking about

51:07.887 --> 51:09.882
for political and other reasons,

51:09.882 --> 51:12.215
we'd be talking about China.

51:12.958 --> 51:15.733
Incredible amount of American intellectual property

51:15.733 --> 51:18.430
has been whisked away via the internet

51:18.430 --> 51:20.232
in Chinese cyber operations.

51:20.232 --> 51:23.982
Also cyber warfare, they're involved in that.

51:26.722 --> 51:28.361
Some people in this audience are probably working

51:28.361 --> 51:30.275
on these issues, but I know in the past

51:30.275 --> 51:32.262
that we were quite confident about the Russians

51:32.262 --> 51:35.510
and the Chinese had mapped the American electrical grid

51:35.510 --> 51:37.610
and would probably shut it off if they could do so

51:37.610 --> 51:39.443
in the time of crisis.

51:40.308 --> 51:42.162
They're interested in information dominance.

51:42.162 --> 51:44.176
Space which is something a lot of people don't talk about

51:44.176 --> 51:46.209
when they talk about the Chinese military.

51:46.209 --> 51:49.312
Chinese are involved in counterspace operations.

51:49.312 --> 51:50.467
They're putting satellites in space

51:50.467 --> 51:51.970
for information purposes.

51:51.970 --> 51:54.524
They're also involved in the counter satellite operations

51:54.524 --> 51:55.784
which people aren't talking about

51:55.784 --> 51:57.671
that includes direct-ascent operations

51:57.671 --> 52:00.276
as well as co-orbital operations.

52:00.276 --> 52:04.026
Everything from dazzling to lasers to kinetic

52:04.061 --> 52:06.894
ways of damaging other satellites.

52:07.754 --> 52:11.348
The interesting thing for us, the Americans in the room,

52:11.348 --> 52:14.934
is the fact that it's believed that China holds

52:14.934 --> 52:17.351
all of our satellites at risk

52:17.866 --> 52:22.033
both geosynchronous and every orbital regime that we have

52:22.502 --> 52:24.419
Chinese have access to.

52:24.949 --> 52:27.866
Low Earth orbit and geosynchronous.

52:28.189 --> 52:29.896
In terms of the nuclear capabilities,

52:29.896 --> 52:31.608
strategic capabilities, one of the things

52:31.608 --> 52:33.084
that as a Navy guy I noticed

52:33.084 --> 52:37.251
is the China has sent its nuclear deterrent to sea

52:37.322 --> 52:40.064
ward fleet ballistic missile submarines

52:40.064 --> 52:42.981
moved away from silo-based missiles

52:43.234 --> 52:45.726
and maybe they have road-mobile missile certainly

52:45.726 --> 52:47.182
and now they're sending it to the sea,

52:47.182 --> 52:48.319
and there's also a talk about the fact

52:48.319 --> 52:51.059
that they're developing bombers to complete that triad

52:51.059 --> 52:52.976
and land attack cruise missiles,

52:52.976 --> 52:54.604
or I'm sure, they have gravity bombs

52:54.604 --> 52:55.754
for those bombers already.

52:55.754 --> 52:56.750
Nuclear gravity bomb.

52:56.750 --> 52:59.641
So they are talking about increasing their survivability,

52:59.641 --> 53:02.181
their lethality, as well as the penetrability

53:02.181 --> 53:04.181
of those nuclear forces.

53:04.615 --> 53:07.448
Internationally, they're involved.

53:07.708 --> 53:11.199
I mean, who would have thought we'd see Chinese warships

53:11.199 --> 53:14.141
operating with the Russians in the Baltics.

53:14.141 --> 53:15.641
In the Baltic Sea.

53:16.079 --> 53:17.260
They operate in the South China Sea.

53:17.260 --> 53:19.190
They'd operated there with Russia.

53:19.190 --> 53:21.523
They've operated in the Med.

53:21.528 --> 53:23.393
They're also the number three country in the world

53:23.393 --> 53:25.353
today in terms global arms sales

53:25.353 --> 53:27.522
and they're moving up the value chain

53:27.522 --> 53:29.939
in terms of their arms sales.

53:30.190 --> 53:32.504
So is the Chinese military a 10-foot giant?

53:32.504 --> 53:33.504
No, not yet.

53:34.329 --> 53:37.912
But it aspires to be the American military.

53:39.294 --> 53:41.894
It wants to be as good as the Americans

53:41.894 --> 53:43.958
in terms of their military capability.

53:43.958 --> 53:45.882
It's a significant military power.

53:45.882 --> 53:48.922
This is significant military power now.

53:48.922 --> 53:50.449
So why should the Army care?

53:50.449 --> 53:51.674
I mean, what's the so what question?

53:51.674 --> 53:53.449
Let me go through a couple of flashpoints here

53:53.449 --> 53:56.319
and show you why I think these things are very important

53:56.319 --> 53:57.531
to the US Army.

53:57.531 --> 53:59.114
Next slide, please.

53:59.220 --> 54:02.070
Number one issue for the Chinese is the Taiwan Strait.

54:02.070 --> 54:05.164
They are 100 miles between the mainland and Taiwan.

54:05.164 --> 54:08.164
China considers this a core interest

54:09.681 --> 54:12.679
which I define is an interest that the Chinese,

54:12.679 --> 54:15.102
Beijing is willing to fight over.

54:15.102 --> 54:18.202
This includes independence on the part of Taiwanese,

54:18.202 --> 54:20.211
the Chinese want unification.

54:20.211 --> 54:21.278
They consider Taiwan

54:21.278 --> 54:23.204
to be part of the People's Republic of China.

54:23.204 --> 54:25.787
This is a non-negotiable issue.

54:26.046 --> 54:28.465
It's building a military capability to bend Taiwan

54:28.465 --> 54:30.106
to its will if it needs to.

54:30.106 --> 54:33.606
This goes everything from decapitation operations

54:33.606 --> 54:35.878
to a bolt from the blue ballistic missile attack

54:35.878 --> 54:37.250
to amphibious landings.

54:37.250 --> 54:39.022
They're developing all of these capabilities

54:39.022 --> 54:43.189
and still the main focus of their military buildup.

54:43.378 --> 54:44.680
And unfortunately, the balance of power

54:44.680 --> 54:48.663
across Taiwan Strait has shifted in the direction of China.

54:48.663 --> 54:51.413
Has shifted from Taiwan to China.

54:52.289 --> 54:54.701
The Chinese military is more capable now,

54:54.701 --> 54:57.913
but then the Taiwanese military is more powerful.

54:57.913 --> 54:59.413
Slide two, please.

55:00.453 --> 55:02.784
Ken just did a great job on North Korea,

55:02.784 --> 55:04.536
but I'm gonna say a few things because obviously

55:04.536 --> 55:06.543
it's something that China cares about a lot.

55:06.543 --> 55:09.846
And obviously this is Kim Jong-un with a

55:09.846 --> 55:13.346
perhaps a model of a thermonuclear weapon.

55:15.173 --> 55:19.340
China and US interest on the Korean Peninsula don't align.

55:21.897 --> 55:24.480
People need to understand this.

55:25.271 --> 55:26.281
China has concerns,

55:26.281 --> 55:27.883
a lot of concerns on the Korean Peninsula.

55:27.883 --> 55:29.361
Obviously, geography is destiny

55:29.361 --> 55:31.908
and you can't just pick up and move away.

55:31.908 --> 55:34.784
China and the Korean Peninsula are attached

55:34.784 --> 55:37.423
so China has to care what's going on there.

55:37.423 --> 55:41.590
China, I think, Beijing is worried about a united Korea

55:41.645 --> 55:43.812
that may not be pro-China.

55:44.119 --> 55:45.954
Say, if there is unification

55:45.954 --> 55:47.146
or regime change in north.

55:47.146 --> 55:49.754
There is unification in the north and south.

55:49.754 --> 55:53.095
There's a lot of history there between China and Korea.

55:53.095 --> 55:56.178
They're worried about a pro-US Korea.

55:57.653 --> 55:59.999
They have serious concerns seeing US forces Korea

55:59.999 --> 56:01.999
above the 38th Parallel.

56:02.209 --> 56:06.002
I mean, all you have to do is hearken back to 1950, right.

56:06.002 --> 56:08.044
The US forces landed Inchon

56:08.044 --> 56:09.422
chased the North Korean forces back

56:09.422 --> 56:11.228
towards the Chinese border and what happens?

56:11.228 --> 56:14.021
200,000 "volunteers" come across the border

56:14.021 --> 56:17.440
to change the war to where it is today actually.

56:17.440 --> 56:19.666
They're worried about that.

56:19.666 --> 56:21.563
They're also worried about instability.

56:21.563 --> 56:24.783
China sees it as says a period of strategic opportunity.

56:24.783 --> 56:25.750
They want quiet.

56:25.750 --> 56:27.321
They wanna be able develop their economy.

56:27.321 --> 56:30.988
They wanna access to commodities and energy.

56:31.147 --> 56:33.694
They wanna deal with their challenges that they face at home

56:33.694 --> 56:36.444
in governing 101.3 billion people

56:36.779 --> 56:38.488
in raising their standards of living.

56:38.488 --> 56:41.377
They really don't want any problems of the nature that

56:41.377 --> 56:44.555
such as they might find as a war on the Korean Peninsula.

56:44.555 --> 56:46.462
They're also worried about a civil war

56:46.462 --> 56:50.629
should there be some sort of situation in Pyongyang

56:51.683 --> 56:54.883
where Kim Jong-un is no longer in charge

56:54.883 --> 56:57.983
between the security forces and party the military.

56:57.983 --> 57:00.118
They don't wanna see large refugee flows

57:00.118 --> 57:01.128
across the Chinese border.

57:01.128 --> 57:02.361
There already a lot of North Koreans

57:02.361 --> 57:03.982
across the border in China.

57:03.982 --> 57:05.061
They don't wanna worry about that,

57:05.061 --> 57:08.225
they want 22 million people moving across the border.

57:08.225 --> 57:11.546
And of course, what happens if the regime collapses

57:11.546 --> 57:15.629
or there's a war in terms of the nuclear weapons.

57:15.894 --> 57:19.894
And of course, China has made its thoughts known

57:20.356 --> 57:22.443
on this issue and has tried to deter

57:22.443 --> 57:26.193
North Korean provocations many times quietly.

57:26.290 --> 57:27.810
Sometimes publicly.

57:27.810 --> 57:30.435
One of the ones I like to note is that the Global Times

57:30.435 --> 57:31.822
which is English language version

57:31.822 --> 57:34.905
of the Chinese-English language paper

57:34.953 --> 57:36.698
recently had an editorial,

57:36.698 --> 57:38.191
now, I'm not saying this is the official mouthpiece

57:38.191 --> 57:42.113
of the Chinese government, but I'd say it's pretty close.

57:42.113 --> 57:43.677
They'd basically said, look, North Korea,

57:43.677 --> 57:44.774
if you pick a fight with the Americans,

57:44.774 --> 57:47.024
we're gonna remain neutral.

57:47.061 --> 57:49.418
But they also said, Americans, if you pick a fight

57:49.418 --> 57:53.223
with the North Koreans, we're not gonna remain neutral.

57:53.223 --> 57:54.721
So they have a lot.

57:54.721 --> 57:57.515
They certainly have a lot at stake there.

57:57.515 --> 58:00.558
I agree with Ken that I don't think that North Korea

58:00.558 --> 58:03.119
is going to give up its nuclear weapons.

58:03.119 --> 58:04.864
It's certainly a regime

58:04.864 --> 58:07.691
for a life insurance policy for them.

58:07.691 --> 58:09.274
Next slide, please.

58:09.581 --> 58:12.050
This is, don't worry about reading all that stuff

58:12.050 --> 58:14.260
because this is a Heritage Foundation product,

58:14.260 --> 58:17.119
but this is what's known as the Nine-Dash Line

58:17.119 --> 58:19.064
which is a term that the Chinese

58:19.064 --> 58:21.279
aren't using so much anymore, but people know,

58:21.279 --> 58:22.862
when you talk about the Nine-Dash Line,

58:22.862 --> 58:24.356
people know what we're talking about.

58:24.356 --> 58:26.507
This basically is what China considers

58:26.507 --> 58:28.940
to be Chinese sovereign territory.

58:28.940 --> 58:33.107
China claims almost the entirety of the South China Sea

58:33.109 --> 58:34.622
as Chinese sovereign territory.

58:34.622 --> 58:37.122
They say this is indisputable.

58:38.543 --> 58:41.642
This is about a million square miles of sea.

58:41.642 --> 58:45.167
It incorporates one half of the world's global,

58:45.167 --> 58:46.967
one half of global commerce

58:46.967 --> 58:48.933
moves through the South China Sea.

58:48.933 --> 58:51.516
One third of the trade in oils.

58:51.574 --> 58:55.451
Another thing is that 80% of Taiwan, South Korea,

58:55.451 --> 58:58.088
and Japan's energy, important energy needs,

58:58.088 --> 59:00.241
moved through the South China Sea.

59:00.241 --> 59:03.213
So the Chinese say that this is our territory

59:03.213 --> 59:06.951
based on historic and some geographic claims.

59:06.951 --> 59:10.416
The Permanent Court of Arbitration that Filipinos

59:10.416 --> 59:14.197
took the Chinese to the Permanent Court of Arbitration,

59:14.197 --> 59:16.624
the Permanent Court of Arbitration looked at a few years

59:16.624 --> 59:18.291
based on the law of the Sea Treaty

59:18.291 --> 59:20.997
and came back and said China you have no claims.

59:20.997 --> 59:22.779
The Chinese refused to participate in the case

59:22.779 --> 59:24.472
and they've basically ignored that.

59:24.472 --> 59:27.961
And as you know, they've built seven artificial islands

59:27.961 --> 59:29.789
in the South China Sea

59:29.789 --> 59:33.956
to advance their desire for presence and possession

59:34.881 --> 59:36.781
of the South China Sea.

59:36.781 --> 59:38.042
Now, they haven't said

59:38.042 --> 59:41.292
that nobody can pass through there yet.

59:41.776 --> 59:43.871
Some of these islands are being militarized,

59:43.871 --> 59:45.017
hangars are being built.

59:45.017 --> 59:47.723
The Chinese are claiming it this is for civilian purposes.

59:47.723 --> 59:49.252
They're building some lighthouses

59:49.252 --> 59:51.752
and they have some naval guns.

59:53.540 --> 59:56.258
There have been some military traffic in there

59:56.258 --> 59:58.425
into some of these islands

59:59.129 --> 01:00:02.227
and there's a concern that the Chinese

01:00:02.227 --> 01:00:04.740
as they build up their Navy and their Air Force

01:00:04.740 --> 01:00:07.665
with aircraft carriers and tanking capabilities

01:00:07.665 --> 01:00:11.150
will try to assert a control at some point

01:00:11.150 --> 01:00:13.233
over the South China Sea.

01:00:18.361 --> 01:00:20.448
Let's go to next slide, please.

01:00:20.448 --> 01:00:22.741
This is another territorial dispute that China has.

01:00:22.741 --> 01:00:26.908
This is with Japan which is an ally of the United States.

01:00:27.295 --> 01:00:29.256
China claims sovereignty over these islands

01:00:29.256 --> 01:00:31.920
which is the Diaoyu islands in Chinese

01:00:31.920 --> 01:00:34.003
and Senkakus in Japanese.

01:00:35.435 --> 01:00:38.036
The Japanese have administered these islands

01:00:38.036 --> 01:00:39.198
for many, many years.

01:00:39.198 --> 01:00:42.531
The United States has said that we will,

01:00:42.765 --> 01:00:45.799
that it falls under the US-Japan defense treaty

01:00:45.799 --> 01:00:48.866
and that the United States will play a role

01:00:48.866 --> 01:00:51.232
in defending them if required

01:00:51.232 --> 01:00:55.399
should China try to take possession of these islands.

01:00:57.279 --> 01:01:01.446
This is kind of an example of Chinese low intensity coercion

01:01:02.147 --> 01:01:04.730
to assert control and presence.

01:01:04.798 --> 01:01:06.472
Instead of using naval ships,

01:01:06.472 --> 01:01:10.026
they're often using coast guard ships or maritime militia

01:01:10.026 --> 01:01:12.556
so they don't break the threshold of showing

01:01:12.556 --> 01:01:14.806
that it's a military issue.

01:01:15.404 --> 01:01:17.503
They've claimed actually an ADIZ

01:01:17.503 --> 01:01:21.670
an Air Defense Identification Zone over these islands

01:01:21.829 --> 01:01:24.901
over an area which includes these Japanese islands

01:01:24.901 --> 01:01:29.068
and have asked, had required, but had really gotten

01:01:29.290 --> 01:01:32.553
to the point of asking aircraft that fly through this ADIZ

01:01:32.553 --> 01:01:36.172
to identify themselves with Chinese controllers.

01:01:36.172 --> 01:01:38.611
I'm not sure where commercial aircraft are

01:01:38.611 --> 01:01:41.238
in terms of doing that, military aircraft,

01:01:41.238 --> 01:01:43.235
US military aircraft to my knowledge are not,

01:01:43.235 --> 01:01:45.652
are certainly not doing that.

01:01:46.720 --> 01:01:47.637
Next slide.

01:01:48.943 --> 01:01:53.110
This is part of China's influence, interesting influence.

01:01:53.921 --> 01:01:57.663
This is called the One Belt, One Road project.

01:01:57.663 --> 01:02:01.830
This is basically a rejuvenation of the Silk Road.

01:02:04.359 --> 01:02:08.526
The historic Silk Road that ran from Europe to China.

01:02:08.593 --> 01:02:12.051
This one also has a maritime component to it as well.

01:02:12.051 --> 01:02:15.801
This is a tremendous of geopolitical economic

01:02:15.860 --> 01:02:17.850
undertaking on the part of Beijing

01:02:17.850 --> 01:02:21.097
that may include as many as 68 countries.

01:02:21.097 --> 01:02:23.825
So you can see that all the way up into the Netherlands,

01:02:23.825 --> 01:02:27.825
all the way down to Indonesia in Southeast Asia.

01:02:29.536 --> 01:02:32.369
Both land and sea routes and will,

01:02:34.817 --> 01:02:38.984
its tremendous undertaking has lots of challenges to it.

01:02:40.863 --> 01:02:42.798
Some people are extremely concerned about it

01:02:42.798 --> 01:02:44.741
'cause it gives China an opportunity to increase

01:02:44.741 --> 01:02:48.908
its influence not only regionally, but also globally

01:02:49.268 --> 01:02:52.851
across a good part of the world's landmass.

01:02:54.568 --> 01:02:57.266
China is also, you can see down there,

01:02:57.266 --> 01:03:00.849
Djibouti has built its first overseas base.

01:03:00.948 --> 01:03:02.448
It's a naval base.

01:03:03.384 --> 01:03:05.392
It's another effort on the part of China

01:03:05.392 --> 01:03:06.768
to increase its influence.

01:03:06.768 --> 01:03:09.918
This is unprecedented for the Chinese.

01:03:09.918 --> 01:03:13.269
We also have a base obviously at Djibouti.

01:03:13.269 --> 01:03:16.233
The Chinese say it's really only to support their

01:03:16.233 --> 01:03:19.546
deployed task forces that are operating in the Gulf of Aden

01:03:19.546 --> 01:03:23.713
on counter-terrorism/counter-piracy operations.

01:03:24.332 --> 01:03:25.351
There's possibilities.

01:03:25.351 --> 01:03:27.995
There's lots of talk and rumor that is part of this

01:03:27.995 --> 01:03:30.362
One Belt, One Road that China may also develop

01:03:30.362 --> 01:03:32.612
naval bases at other places

01:03:33.069 --> 01:03:35.632
which is of concern to not only the United States,

01:03:35.632 --> 01:03:38.262
but other South Asian countries such as India.

01:03:38.262 --> 01:03:42.077
There's talk of a place of water which is in Pakistan.

01:03:42.077 --> 01:03:44.587
There's a possibility of Myanmar, or Burma,

01:03:44.587 --> 01:03:46.170
and also Sri Lanka.

01:03:46.395 --> 01:03:50.478
So the Chinese are starting to use their military

01:03:51.168 --> 01:03:55.335
and their influence to protect their interests globally.

01:03:58.045 --> 01:04:01.496
Let me just conclude real quickly in that,

01:04:01.496 --> 01:04:03.140
I mean, people talk about a rising China.

01:04:03.140 --> 01:04:04.695
I don't think we're talking about a rising China.

01:04:04.695 --> 01:04:05.894
China has risen.

01:04:05.894 --> 01:04:08.300
I mean, of all the superlatives and near superlatives

01:04:08.300 --> 01:04:09.797
that I've laid out for you,

01:04:09.797 --> 01:04:12.880
China is a major international power.

01:04:13.469 --> 01:04:14.969
And a great power.

01:04:15.438 --> 01:04:18.185
It's a major challenge not only in the future,

01:04:18.185 --> 01:04:19.891
but it's a major challenge to us now

01:04:19.891 --> 01:04:23.609
and there are a number of unfortunately flashpoints

01:04:23.609 --> 01:04:26.228
and certainly for the Army of the Korean Peninsula

01:04:26.228 --> 01:04:27.978
would be one of them.

01:04:28.029 --> 01:04:31.506
Unfortunately, I think between the United States and China,

01:04:31.506 --> 01:04:35.673
despite some cooperation on issues such as North Korea,

01:04:35.753 --> 01:04:38.885
there's increasing levels of strategic distrust

01:04:38.885 --> 01:04:41.267
and there's a shifting balance of power

01:04:41.267 --> 01:04:42.734
considering where China came from

01:04:42.734 --> 01:04:44.496
in terms of its military power.

01:04:44.496 --> 01:04:48.076
It's involved in this unprecedented military build up

01:04:48.076 --> 01:04:51.344
considering where it was 20, 25, 30 years ago

01:04:51.344 --> 01:04:55.511
when they started this, it's made tremendous gains.

01:04:56.824 --> 01:04:59.200
I think alternative scenarios are possible,

01:04:59.200 --> 01:05:02.806
but I think that a significant superpower competition

01:05:02.806 --> 01:05:06.639
between United States and China is very likely

01:05:07.145 --> 01:05:08.728
in the years ahead.

01:05:08.784 --> 01:05:10.520
So I think I'll just stop there

01:05:10.520 --> 01:05:12.520
and thank you very much.

01:05:14.536 --> 01:05:16.036
- Well, thank you.

01:05:16.201 --> 01:05:19.826
Thank you again for the invitation, General and AUSA.

01:05:19.826 --> 01:05:23.422
What I'm gonna talk about, yeah, there we go,

01:05:23.422 --> 01:05:26.922
is really piggyback on Jeff's presentation

01:05:26.990 --> 01:05:28.935
and really talk about Russia,

01:05:28.935 --> 01:05:30.498
but probably also a little bit

01:05:30.498 --> 01:05:32.640
when I talk about the security,

01:05:32.640 --> 01:05:33.915
the operating environment,

01:05:33.915 --> 01:05:35.541
the current and the future operating environment,

01:05:35.541 --> 01:05:37.408
really put in a broader context as well,

01:05:37.408 --> 01:05:40.825
but speak about Russia's malign influence

01:05:41.279 --> 01:05:43.529
and information operations.

01:05:43.879 --> 01:05:46.396
And talk about a couple of things.

01:05:46.396 --> 01:05:50.563
One is the broader influence campaign that Russia has waged,

01:05:50.598 --> 01:05:52.802
then just a little bit about,

01:05:52.802 --> 01:05:55.538
specifically about the information operations,

01:05:55.538 --> 01:05:58.535
disinformation, (mumbles),

01:05:58.535 --> 01:06:02.290
and propaganda, of course, but I'll also speak about

01:06:02.290 --> 01:06:05.250
the vulnerabilities and sources of instability

01:06:05.250 --> 01:06:06.601
in the operating environment

01:06:06.601 --> 01:06:10.768
and then finally conclude on what the toolbox that we have,

01:06:12.348 --> 01:06:16.515
or the tool kit rather in engaging and managing the threat

01:06:17.622 --> 01:06:19.539
in dealing with Russia.

01:06:19.693 --> 01:06:23.472
And then some of these toolkit as you'll see is really,

01:06:23.472 --> 01:06:25.559
can really be applicable to other actors.

01:06:25.559 --> 01:06:29.023
So just to start off here is that, you know,

01:06:29.023 --> 01:06:32.653
I think since arguably, there have been two touch points

01:06:32.653 --> 01:06:33.486
if you will.

01:06:33.486 --> 01:06:35.758
Of course, the Ukraine conflict

01:06:35.758 --> 01:06:38.258
and of course our US election.

01:06:39.295 --> 01:06:43.021
And I think since that time, certainly since 2014,

01:06:43.021 --> 01:06:45.164
we have been, we the United States,

01:06:45.164 --> 01:06:48.078
have been more sanitized if you will

01:06:48.078 --> 01:06:51.328
to disinformation and malign influence.

01:06:53.054 --> 01:06:55.224
And when we talk about the malign influence,

01:06:55.224 --> 01:06:57.786
I'm talking about broader beyond the media

01:06:57.786 --> 01:06:59.062
and the cyber domain.

01:06:59.062 --> 01:07:02.562
I'm really talking about economic, energy,

01:07:03.402 --> 01:07:06.152
security, cultural, and so forth.

01:07:06.821 --> 01:07:09.164
But arguably, we can look back to, you know,

01:07:09.164 --> 01:07:11.454
this has existed certainly since the Cold War

01:07:11.454 --> 01:07:12.982
with the active measures.

01:07:12.982 --> 01:07:15.557
And in the last decade, Russia has waged

01:07:15.557 --> 01:07:18.344
a pretty comprehensive influence campaign

01:07:18.344 --> 01:07:22.261
particularly around Europe and in, if you will,

01:07:22.367 --> 01:07:25.367
in its neighborhood that, of course,

01:07:25.490 --> 01:07:29.297
we can look back to the 2008 Russia-Georgia War.

01:07:29.297 --> 01:07:31.006
Of course, I mentioned Ukraine,

01:07:31.006 --> 01:07:35.173
even the West sort of in the Germany case, the Lisa case,

01:07:35.478 --> 01:07:37.895
and can point to the Balkans.

01:07:38.565 --> 01:07:40.457
I'll talk about the Balkans in a second.

01:07:40.457 --> 01:07:42.624
But again, this is not new

01:07:43.045 --> 01:07:45.140
so I think part of it is just a realization

01:07:45.140 --> 01:07:47.562
that we've been a little bit more sanitized to it.

01:07:47.562 --> 01:07:49.145
Next slide, please.

01:07:49.419 --> 01:07:52.002
So what is Russia trying to do?

01:07:53.018 --> 01:07:56.851
As I look into the broader influence campaign,

01:07:56.856 --> 01:07:59.128
there is really a couple of, if you will,

01:07:59.128 --> 01:08:01.798
you'll see that here five key areas,

01:08:01.798 --> 01:08:05.715
but before, it's trying to mobilize and sustain

01:08:06.167 --> 01:08:07.584
domestic support,

01:08:08.174 --> 01:08:11.617
it also tries to communicate official positions

01:08:11.617 --> 01:08:15.366
and I think that key regardless of the method and the tool,

01:08:15.366 --> 01:08:17.104
it's really trying to put it in the context

01:08:17.104 --> 01:08:19.333
of what Russia is trying to do.

01:08:19.333 --> 01:08:21.987
So I would argue it's two key things.

01:08:21.987 --> 01:08:25.320
One is to discredit Western institutions

01:08:26.071 --> 01:08:29.049
and what Western institutions stand for,

01:08:29.049 --> 01:08:32.251
democracy, liberal order, and so forth.

01:08:32.251 --> 01:08:35.297
And then the other point that I'd make is

01:08:35.297 --> 01:08:38.380
where there are frictions in society,

01:08:38.616 --> 01:08:42.436
where there are internal divisions in society.

01:08:42.436 --> 01:08:46.603
Russia has tried to really play up those divisions

01:08:47.192 --> 01:08:50.945
to play up this kind of narrative of us versus them.

01:08:50.945 --> 01:08:53.475
It's you're either with us or you're against us

01:08:53.475 --> 01:08:57.642
but across the board regardless of these five broad areas.

01:08:58.781 --> 01:09:01.813
When we talk about Russian influence operations

01:09:01.813 --> 01:09:04.396
more broadly, it's not uniform.

01:09:04.845 --> 01:09:07.437
It's not uniform across the country to country,

01:09:07.437 --> 01:09:10.565
it is not uniform across the population to population,

01:09:10.565 --> 01:09:14.048
or arguably even at the subnational level.

01:09:14.048 --> 01:09:16.465
So let me just kind of go through a few of them.

01:09:16.465 --> 01:09:17.554
I'm not gonna go in detail.

01:09:17.554 --> 01:09:19.473
I'm happy to answer questions.

01:09:19.473 --> 01:09:23.640
So in terms of, there's actually a government agency

01:09:23.904 --> 01:09:26.506
called (mumbles).

01:09:26.506 --> 01:09:28.895
It is kind of parallel to our,

01:09:28.895 --> 01:09:30.048
they do some science and technology,

01:09:30.048 --> 01:09:31.827
but it's also parallel to our US Agency

01:09:31.827 --> 01:09:33.562
for National Development.

01:09:33.562 --> 01:09:37.260
It really tries to bring sort of a tie in cooperation

01:09:37.260 --> 01:09:39.536
particularly between the ethnic Russian

01:09:39.536 --> 01:09:41.453
and Russian compatriot population abroad

01:09:41.453 --> 01:09:43.359
living outside of Russia.

01:09:43.359 --> 01:09:45.406
Of course, in many of the countries

01:09:45.406 --> 01:09:48.353
when we talk about Russian influence campaigns,

01:09:48.353 --> 01:09:51.368
there is economic energy and corruption,

01:09:51.368 --> 01:09:55.535
but the key here is that some of these cooperations

01:09:57.057 --> 01:10:00.168
and some of these influences are pretty straightforward

01:10:00.168 --> 01:10:03.445
and you can actually trace them and some are not.

01:10:03.445 --> 01:10:06.790
Some are very not transparent and pretty opaque

01:10:06.790 --> 01:10:10.534
and that makes it particularly difficult to track.

01:10:10.534 --> 01:10:12.701
Now, about the culturally,

01:10:13.200 --> 01:10:15.454
there's, of course, the Russian Orthodox Church

01:10:15.454 --> 01:10:19.406
and what it's called Russian world or Russkiy Mir.

01:10:19.406 --> 01:10:21.646
It's really kind of from this concept

01:10:21.646 --> 01:10:25.813
that there is this broader Russian world outside of Russia.

01:10:25.964 --> 01:10:28.262
And particularly, this was put into the context

01:10:28.262 --> 01:10:30.573
since the collapse of the Soviet Union

01:10:30.573 --> 01:10:34.550
when there are more compatriots, Russian compatriots,

01:10:34.550 --> 01:10:37.309
residing outside of Russia than in Russia itself.

01:10:37.309 --> 01:10:40.457
So there is cultural activities, youth activities.

01:10:40.457 --> 01:10:42.995
Certainly, the church is being utilized

01:10:42.995 --> 01:10:44.995
for influence operation.

01:10:45.317 --> 01:10:47.421
And then, again, we see this for example

01:10:47.421 --> 01:10:50.580
in countries like Serbia and in Georgia,

01:10:50.580 --> 01:10:53.294
just give you a couple of examples where

01:10:53.294 --> 01:10:55.060
I wouldn't argue that there is significant

01:10:55.060 --> 01:10:57.833
ethnic Russian populations in these countries,

01:10:57.833 --> 01:11:02.000
but the church and the Russkiy Mir or Russian world

01:11:04.475 --> 01:11:07.475
really this key levers of influence.

01:11:07.929 --> 01:11:09.688
And then again, military cooperation

01:11:09.688 --> 01:11:12.235
and intelligence cooperation with certain countries

01:11:12.235 --> 01:11:14.628
particularly in the European theater,

01:11:14.628 --> 01:11:17.045
Russia does have strong ties.

01:11:17.481 --> 01:11:21.648
Again, I'm thinking in this case of Serbia, for example.

01:11:21.702 --> 01:11:24.420
Again, I'll talk about the information operations domain

01:11:24.420 --> 01:11:28.172
in a second, but again, these are used very differently

01:11:28.172 --> 01:11:30.223
in different countries for different populations.

01:11:30.223 --> 01:11:34.390
It depends where there is perhaps in our ethnic conflict,

01:11:34.720 --> 01:11:37.421
or perhaps there are strong already preexisting ties

01:11:37.421 --> 01:11:41.083
for cooperation, but again, the key is where,

01:11:41.083 --> 01:11:42.947
when we're dealing with especially

01:11:42.947 --> 01:11:45.610
with the compatriot populations with the ethnic Russians,

01:11:45.610 --> 01:11:49.477
if there are grievances to kind of attach yourself,

01:11:49.477 --> 01:11:51.378
then Russia will use those grievances.

01:11:51.378 --> 01:11:54.553
However, if those folks are actually simulated

01:11:54.553 --> 01:11:58.135
into that host country, Russia uses that as well.

01:11:58.135 --> 01:11:59.718
Next slide, please.

01:12:00.058 --> 01:12:03.155
So let's talk a little bit about just the key,

01:12:03.155 --> 01:12:06.268
just a few select mediums of influence.

01:12:06.268 --> 01:12:08.331
Again, this is obviously not, you know,

01:12:08.331 --> 01:12:10.742
we know this is not an exhaustive list

01:12:10.742 --> 01:12:12.325
and so just again to have just highlight

01:12:12.325 --> 01:12:14.325
a couple of points here.

01:12:14.432 --> 01:12:16.723
So okay, so here is our sort of, if you will,

01:12:16.723 --> 01:12:19.676
elements of the information operations campaign.

01:12:19.676 --> 01:12:21.727
But again, what is propaganda?

01:12:21.727 --> 01:12:23.810
What is this information?

01:12:24.033 --> 01:12:28.200
It is designed to sow distrust, confused audience,

01:12:28.230 --> 01:12:29.689
and shape public opinion.

01:12:29.689 --> 01:12:32.439
So it is pretty difficult to tell

01:12:32.511 --> 01:12:35.428
whether something is true or false.

01:12:35.571 --> 01:12:37.506
There are filter bubbles are created

01:12:37.506 --> 01:12:41.180
and alternative viewpoints, not just on social media

01:12:41.180 --> 01:12:45.011
that we've been hearing a lot about, by the news outlets.

01:12:45.011 --> 01:12:48.094
If there is not alternative contents,

01:12:48.957 --> 01:12:51.486
there's not alternative content that content can be

01:12:51.486 --> 01:12:53.653
regurgitated, if you will.

01:12:53.818 --> 01:12:55.860
On social media, I think we've been hearing a lot

01:12:55.860 --> 01:13:00.027
about social media lately particularly as it pertains to

01:13:00.543 --> 01:13:02.720
alleged involvement in the US election,

01:13:02.720 --> 01:13:05.436
but again, looking back to Ukraine,

01:13:05.436 --> 01:13:08.225
looking back to the 2008 Russia-Georgia War,

01:13:08.225 --> 01:13:10.492
looking back to, for example, Macedonia

01:13:10.492 --> 01:13:12.651
where there were some teenagers

01:13:12.651 --> 01:13:14.825
who were looking to make extra money right

01:13:14.825 --> 01:13:16.492
before our election,

01:13:16.824 --> 01:13:20.741
looking back to the German case, the Lisa case.

01:13:20.882 --> 01:13:24.527
Trolls are social media and trolls and troll armies,

01:13:24.527 --> 01:13:28.307
many of them that operate inside of Russia proper

01:13:28.307 --> 01:13:32.472
and also have affiliates in neighboring countries,

01:13:32.472 --> 01:13:35.226
it is part of a comprehensive campaign.

01:13:35.226 --> 01:13:39.309
So if you are actually putting out constant lies,

01:13:39.309 --> 01:13:43.476
disinformation, and propaganda, it becomes to some degree

01:13:44.359 --> 01:13:47.442
virtually impossible to counter that.

01:13:48.750 --> 01:13:51.264
And then, of course, the other layer to it.

01:13:51.264 --> 01:13:53.505
I'm talking about the information space here.

01:13:53.505 --> 01:13:56.383
We have to talk about cyber, right?

01:13:56.383 --> 01:14:00.550
And cyber the actual, the hacking, and that obviously

01:14:01.132 --> 01:14:04.504
again, thinking to this Estonia case, the 2007 case

01:14:04.504 --> 01:14:07.837
we're not just talking about the alleged

01:14:08.411 --> 01:14:11.838
sort of hacking into US elections, but the Estonia case,

01:14:11.838 --> 01:14:14.415
there has been cyber-attacks in Georgia,

01:14:14.415 --> 01:14:16.909
cyber-attacks in Ukraine, and this is not new,

01:14:16.909 --> 01:14:19.030
but it's part of a comprehensive,

01:14:19.030 --> 01:14:21.929
I think this is a part of a comprehensive tool kit

01:14:21.929 --> 01:14:23.346
that Russia uses.

01:14:23.596 --> 01:14:24.513
Next slide.

01:14:25.997 --> 01:14:30.164
Okay, so this is actually from a product that we did

01:14:30.187 --> 01:14:32.770
looking at the Western Balkans,

01:14:32.961 --> 01:14:36.536
and the reason I put this up is really talking about

01:14:36.536 --> 01:14:39.379
the vulnerabilities and sources of instability

01:14:39.379 --> 01:14:41.153
in the operating environment.

01:14:41.153 --> 01:14:44.256
And so it's really looking from across the board

01:14:44.256 --> 01:14:48.423
where you see one diamond is kind of less instability

01:14:49.317 --> 01:14:52.317
and three diamonds, high instability

01:14:52.334 --> 01:14:54.150
across the Western Balkan countries.

01:14:54.150 --> 01:14:56.650
So why do I put that up there?

01:14:56.924 --> 01:14:59.274
I put that up there, and again, this is just one case

01:14:59.274 --> 01:15:00.853
the Western Balkan case,

01:15:00.853 --> 01:15:02.658
but this can be probably replicated

01:15:02.658 --> 01:15:05.690
and should be examined across the board.

01:15:05.690 --> 01:15:07.934
The reason I put this up there for all of you

01:15:07.934 --> 01:15:11.434
is that I cannot underscore the importance

01:15:11.667 --> 01:15:14.500
to understanding and analyzing the current

01:15:14.500 --> 01:15:16.770
and future operating environment

01:15:16.770 --> 01:15:18.826
that our adversaries operated.

01:15:18.826 --> 01:15:19.659
Why?

01:15:19.659 --> 01:15:22.326
Because adversaries like Russia,

01:15:22.900 --> 01:15:25.736
we can talk about Russia, we can talk about Iran,

01:15:25.736 --> 01:15:28.129
we can talk about Isis, we can talk about Al-Qaeda.

01:15:28.129 --> 01:15:31.223
I mean, you name it whether state or non-state actors.

01:15:31.223 --> 01:15:33.890
They exploit any vulnerabilities

01:15:34.274 --> 01:15:36.421
or sources of instabilities.

01:15:36.421 --> 01:15:40.388
Adversaries actually exploit those vulnerabilities

01:15:40.388 --> 01:15:42.409
to target the actual host nation,

01:15:42.409 --> 01:15:45.447
or the populations that reside in this country,

01:15:45.447 --> 01:15:47.785
in those particular countries.

01:15:47.785 --> 01:15:51.587
So and part of the issue that we're dealing with right now,

01:15:51.587 --> 01:15:53.613
the complex environment is so complex.

01:15:53.613 --> 01:15:55.408
It's not that we're not we're just talking about

01:15:55.408 --> 01:15:56.541
land, air, and sea,

01:15:56.541 --> 01:15:58.506
but we're also talking about cyber and media

01:15:58.506 --> 01:16:00.593
so that's why it really present

01:16:00.593 --> 01:16:03.260
this kind of a hybrid challenge.

01:16:03.635 --> 01:16:06.635
Now, here as you kind of go through,

01:16:06.799 --> 01:16:09.517
as you kind of go through all these sources of instability,

01:16:09.517 --> 01:16:12.035
Russia has used them to different means.

01:16:12.035 --> 01:16:15.785
Again, when I talk about Serbia, for example,

01:16:15.950 --> 01:16:17.408
there are strong partnerships,

01:16:17.408 --> 01:16:19.244
there are alliances between Russia and Serbia.

01:16:19.244 --> 01:16:23.161
Well, there is weakened institutions in Serbia.

01:16:25.226 --> 01:16:27.851
There is also weakened media environment.

01:16:27.851 --> 01:16:30.155
There is also the sense of, again, cultural

01:16:30.155 --> 01:16:32.988
and sort of international identity as well,

01:16:32.988 --> 01:16:35.627
but then if you look at Macedonia,

01:16:35.627 --> 01:16:36.697
for this particular project,

01:16:36.697 --> 01:16:40.253
we traveled to Serbia and Macedonia last year.

01:16:40.253 --> 01:16:43.338
Russia plays up on the interethnic conflict.

01:16:43.338 --> 01:16:45.387
How many of you remember about a year,

01:16:45.387 --> 01:16:48.052
roughly about a year ago or maybe little less

01:16:48.052 --> 01:16:50.969
when there was huge riots in Skopje

01:16:52.497 --> 01:16:56.277
and basically Sputnik and RT was spinning these riots

01:16:56.277 --> 01:16:59.221
that they were basically for the greater Albanian project.

01:16:59.221 --> 01:17:00.713
Again, understanding this

01:17:00.713 --> 01:17:03.090
just becomes extremely, extremely important

01:17:03.090 --> 01:17:04.940
and I think the reason is that

01:17:04.940 --> 01:17:06.984
once we know that what those vulnerabilities

01:17:06.984 --> 01:17:09.325
and sources of instabilities are,

01:17:09.325 --> 01:17:11.620
then I think we can actually put forth

01:17:11.620 --> 01:17:13.437
strategies and proactive tools

01:17:13.437 --> 01:17:16.839
to both counter and strengthen those vulnerabilities.

01:17:16.839 --> 01:17:18.256
Okay, next slide.

01:17:18.943 --> 01:17:22.526
So I'll end here just a couple of things on

01:17:22.740 --> 01:17:26.163
some tools, if you will, in our collective tool box

01:17:26.163 --> 01:17:28.413
for comprehensive response.

01:17:28.938 --> 01:17:31.605
So speaking of the environments,

01:17:31.907 --> 01:17:34.700
I think it's important to talk about persistent engagement

01:17:34.700 --> 01:17:38.867
and that is one area where I think on the United States,

01:17:38.919 --> 01:17:42.336
US military has in some ways an advantage

01:17:42.704 --> 01:17:46.410
where we actually do want to proactively engage.

01:17:46.410 --> 01:17:48.316
I think in the new normal environment

01:17:48.316 --> 01:17:50.983
that is marked by hybrid threats

01:17:51.039 --> 01:17:53.599
and sources of instability engagement,

01:17:53.599 --> 01:17:57.529
particularly engaging with the local populations

01:17:57.529 --> 01:18:00.362
and not just mil to mil trainings.

01:18:00.840 --> 01:18:02.468
Mil to mil trainings, exercises, and trainings

01:18:02.468 --> 01:18:04.385
is extremely important.

01:18:04.391 --> 01:18:05.993
And you know that is really important

01:18:05.993 --> 01:18:06.973
when you're kind of dealing

01:18:06.973 --> 01:18:11.140
in this kind of phase zero one preconflict construct

01:18:11.470 --> 01:18:13.760
where engagement becomes extremely important.

01:18:13.760 --> 01:18:16.568
So let me just give you one example.

01:18:16.568 --> 01:18:18.235
Civil affairs teams.

01:18:18.737 --> 01:18:21.018
The preponderance of the Civil Affairs Forces

01:18:21.018 --> 01:18:23.185
in the United States Army.

01:18:23.397 --> 01:18:25.683
And I think the Civil Affairs Force,

01:18:25.683 --> 01:18:29.850
the Joint Civil Affairs Force does a wonderful job

01:18:30.264 --> 01:18:33.063
in engaging and conducting persistent engagement,

01:18:33.063 --> 01:18:37.230
engagement and persistence like missions all over the world

01:18:37.959 --> 01:18:41.459
not just Europe and not just talking about

01:18:42.320 --> 01:18:43.739
engaging or countering

01:18:43.739 --> 01:18:45.714
depending on how you look at it with Russia.

01:18:45.714 --> 01:18:47.953
So things like face-to-face.

01:18:47.953 --> 01:18:48.963
These kind of engagements.

01:18:48.963 --> 01:18:52.272
Engaging with the local populations is extremely important.

01:18:52.272 --> 01:18:55.939
On resilience, when we talk about countering

01:18:56.099 --> 01:18:58.289
and strengthening the environment

01:18:58.289 --> 01:19:01.275
and actually engaging or countering our adversaries

01:19:01.275 --> 01:19:02.811
in certain state or non-state actors

01:19:02.811 --> 01:19:05.256
depending on how you wanna look at it,

01:19:05.256 --> 01:19:07.973
creating that resilience is extraordinarily important.

01:19:07.973 --> 01:19:09.177
One of the things that I've heard

01:19:09.177 --> 01:19:11.491
and a lot of the work that I've conducted,

01:19:11.491 --> 01:19:14.289
particularly one I've actually gone in the region

01:19:14.289 --> 01:19:16.362
and gone to some of these countries is that

01:19:16.362 --> 01:19:19.312
we have a problem with the lack of critical thinking

01:19:19.312 --> 01:19:21.577
and this is not just a media literacy issue

01:19:21.577 --> 01:19:24.099
which by the way interestingly enough

01:19:24.099 --> 01:19:25.081
I was in Europe last week

01:19:25.081 --> 01:19:26.746
and I heard that media literacy issue

01:19:26.746 --> 01:19:28.890
has become a national security issue,

01:19:28.890 --> 01:19:30.809
but this of course starts at the educational level.

01:19:30.809 --> 01:19:32.755
This starts with how we conduct ourselves

01:19:32.755 --> 01:19:35.558
and that we're actually critically thinking

01:19:35.558 --> 01:19:39.225
about the information that we are processing

01:19:39.701 --> 01:19:43.618
in social media, how we're actually interacting

01:19:44.137 --> 01:19:45.459
with the local population.

01:19:45.459 --> 01:19:47.280
So critical thinking is extremely important,

01:19:47.280 --> 01:19:50.134
and of course, that is tied to the engagement piece

01:19:50.134 --> 01:19:53.298
because, again, resilience and building that resilience

01:19:53.298 --> 01:19:55.918
of society is kind of a key piece to it.

01:19:55.918 --> 01:19:57.182
Now, on the messaging.

01:19:57.182 --> 01:20:00.349
If you recall I mentioned earlier that

01:20:00.996 --> 01:20:03.883
Russia's information and influence strategy

01:20:03.883 --> 01:20:06.550
is not uniform across the board.

01:20:06.586 --> 01:20:08.278
And I think it's very important

01:20:08.278 --> 01:20:10.778
that we think about messaging.

01:20:11.851 --> 01:20:14.184
For example, when we're talking about ethnic Russians

01:20:14.184 --> 01:20:15.172
or Russian compatriots,

01:20:15.172 --> 01:20:17.194
it's important to target to that audience.

01:20:17.194 --> 01:20:19.850
So know the audience that you're actually working with.

01:20:19.850 --> 01:20:22.471
Know the population centers that you're working with.

01:20:22.471 --> 01:20:25.072
And I think it's really important overall holistically

01:20:25.072 --> 01:20:28.384
is actually targeting that message and that narrative

01:20:28.384 --> 01:20:30.957
and that's active towards the audience.

01:20:30.957 --> 01:20:33.153
And finally, I'll mention of course,

01:20:33.153 --> 01:20:36.486
none have this will exist without money.

01:20:37.309 --> 01:20:41.309
So going after corruption and criminal networks,

01:20:41.550 --> 01:20:44.050
I mean, these are very opaque.

01:20:45.130 --> 01:20:47.334
They are hard to define, if you will,

01:20:47.334 --> 01:20:50.060
but I think that's just gonna be critically important

01:20:50.060 --> 01:20:52.086
for our overall engagement

01:20:52.086 --> 01:20:53.669
so I'll stop there.

01:20:53.873 --> 01:20:56.237
- All right, thank you very much.

01:20:56.237 --> 01:20:59.078
Now, we do have time remaining for questions.

01:20:59.078 --> 01:21:01.198
I do have some that have been submitted

01:21:01.198 --> 01:21:03.628
and I think we have additional questions

01:21:03.628 --> 01:21:05.676
that look like individuals have

01:21:05.676 --> 01:21:06.787
so we will go around and collect that,

01:21:06.787 --> 01:21:10.242
but I will start by asking a question I have

01:21:10.242 --> 01:21:13.491
actually for Dr. Brookes, and you talked about

01:21:13.491 --> 01:21:15.611
China rising or China has already risen.

01:21:15.611 --> 01:21:18.778
If I'm looking at multi-domain threat,

01:21:21.425 --> 01:21:23.170
I look at China's capability.

01:21:23.170 --> 01:21:25.706
And you talked about that they've,

01:21:25.706 --> 01:21:28.065
and I know there's been reforms towards joint operations

01:21:28.065 --> 01:21:30.232
and towards expeditionary.

01:21:30.782 --> 01:21:33.050
I know they've got the capability to be expeditionary.

01:21:33.050 --> 01:21:35.272
When you look at joint operations,

01:21:35.272 --> 01:21:38.692
I'm interested in your assessment of how successful

01:21:38.692 --> 01:21:41.229
they will be in achieving a capability

01:21:41.229 --> 01:21:44.271
to conduct joint operations when unlike the US

01:21:44.271 --> 01:21:46.315
which is currently conducting joint operations

01:21:46.315 --> 01:21:47.671
in several conflict zones.

01:21:47.671 --> 01:21:50.283
And unlike Russia which is operating in Syria

01:21:50.283 --> 01:21:53.910
how China will be able, will they look for opportunities

01:21:53.910 --> 01:21:55.947
to engage or are they focused on training

01:21:55.947 --> 01:21:58.042
and how, what's your assessment

01:21:58.042 --> 01:22:00.172
of what kind of joint capability they will achieve

01:22:00.172 --> 01:22:02.172
in say 15, 20, 25 years?

01:22:02.985 --> 01:22:04.982
- What do you mean by engage?

01:22:04.982 --> 01:22:08.003
Do you mean like somehow using force is that what you mean?

01:22:08.003 --> 01:22:08.933
- Exactly, right, yes.

01:22:08.933 --> 01:22:12.855
- Okay, I wanna make sure I make an insurance to that.

01:22:12.855 --> 01:22:14.008
The Chinese, you're right.

01:22:14.008 --> 01:22:15.837
They're in a training mode certainly.

01:22:15.837 --> 01:22:18.141
I don't think you're looking for opportunities,

01:22:18.141 --> 01:22:22.308
"opportunities" for getting involved in violent conflict

01:22:22.803 --> 01:22:25.386
to test out their capabilities.

01:22:26.398 --> 01:22:29.231
They're astute students of others.

01:22:31.193 --> 01:22:35.360
They are watching what the United States does and can do

01:22:36.214 --> 01:22:39.881
and they're studying you incredibly closely.

01:22:40.181 --> 01:22:42.825
In fact, I remember when I was a congressional staffer

01:22:42.825 --> 01:22:45.242
in the late 1990s and the US,

01:22:50.182 --> 01:22:53.932
this origin of the most hits on the US Army's

01:22:54.505 --> 01:22:56.755
doctrine website was China.

01:22:57.322 --> 01:22:59.766
The Chinese were pinging your website

01:22:59.766 --> 01:23:02.465
reading all of your online documents

01:23:02.465 --> 01:23:04.632
more than any other users.

01:23:06.049 --> 01:23:06.882
They're still doing that.

01:23:06.882 --> 01:23:08.324
I mean, you'll see case studies today

01:23:08.324 --> 01:23:12.452
where they study of the Kosovo War and the use of airpower.

01:23:12.452 --> 01:23:13.285
They're watching.

01:23:13.285 --> 01:23:14.898
Now, but there is a huge difference

01:23:14.898 --> 01:23:17.315
between practicing and doing.

01:23:17.824 --> 01:23:19.416
And that's why I made the point

01:23:19.416 --> 01:23:21.666
and I hope I pushed it home

01:23:22.331 --> 01:23:25.081
is that they're trying to be you.

01:23:25.641 --> 01:23:28.689
They know the US military and US Army

01:23:28.689 --> 01:23:30.939
is the finest in the world.

01:23:32.563 --> 01:23:35.905
And you've learned a lot over these last 15 years

01:23:35.905 --> 01:23:37.822
of persistent conflict.

01:23:38.600 --> 01:23:40.842
So they're trying to learn whether it's they're open source,

01:23:40.842 --> 01:23:41.804
if they're espionage.

01:23:41.804 --> 01:23:43.947
How you actually do your business.

01:23:43.947 --> 01:23:47.354
It's hard to say how China is going to evolve.

01:23:47.354 --> 01:23:50.382
I mean, I'm fond of the Danish physicist,

01:23:50.382 --> 01:23:52.132
Niels Bohr's, saying.

01:23:52.798 --> 01:23:56.518
He said that prediction is hard especially about the future

01:23:56.518 --> 01:23:59.435
and I think that's really the case.

01:23:59.952 --> 01:24:02.021
So it's difficult to say where China will be

01:24:02.021 --> 01:24:04.354
in a certain number of years

01:24:04.399 --> 01:24:05.658
in terms of their joint training,

01:24:05.658 --> 01:24:09.241
but I believe that they're committed to it.

01:24:09.428 --> 01:24:11.901
They're going to look to others to learn

01:24:11.901 --> 01:24:15.450
besides the United States such as the Russians

01:24:15.450 --> 01:24:18.618
and I think they see this as the cutting edge

01:24:18.618 --> 01:24:19.697
of modern warfare

01:24:19.697 --> 01:24:22.238
so I think they're definitely committed to it.

01:24:22.238 --> 01:24:24.198
Now, the question is whether they will ever have

01:24:24.198 --> 01:24:25.051
to put in practice.

01:24:25.051 --> 01:24:27.037
We know the difference between practicing something

01:24:27.037 --> 01:24:29.020
and actually doing it for real,

01:24:29.020 --> 01:24:33.187
but they are definitely committed to the joint game.

01:24:34.699 --> 01:24:36.199
- Okay, thank you.

01:24:36.949 --> 01:24:39.782
I have a question for Dr. Mankoff.

01:24:41.376 --> 01:24:44.913
What is the long-term prognosis for Russia beyond 2030?

01:24:44.913 --> 01:24:47.683
Will demographics, ethnic, and economic pressure

01:24:47.683 --> 01:24:51.600
prevent Russia from prospering in the long run?

01:24:51.696 --> 01:24:54.113
- Okay, nice simple question.

01:24:56.573 --> 01:24:58.240
Russia is not China.

01:24:59.076 --> 01:25:02.139
If China is a risen power, I would say

01:25:02.139 --> 01:25:04.972
Russia is somewhat stagnant power.

01:25:06.667 --> 01:25:08.547
It's a power with a lot of capabilities,

01:25:08.547 --> 01:25:11.114
but with many of those capabilities

01:25:11.114 --> 01:25:13.197
kind of having plateaued.

01:25:13.998 --> 01:25:15.970
As far as the demographic issue goes,

01:25:15.970 --> 01:25:17.790
I think it's important to keep in mind

01:25:17.790 --> 01:25:20.508
that the demographic crisis that the country faced

01:25:20.508 --> 01:25:24.008
in the 1990s has largely played itself out

01:25:24.292 --> 01:25:28.375
so while it's not experiencing a population boom,

01:25:28.657 --> 01:25:31.987
it actually has a comparatively stable population.

01:25:31.987 --> 01:25:35.081
One that's reinforced by very high rates of immigration

01:25:35.081 --> 01:25:38.331
primarily from the former Soviet Union.

01:25:38.442 --> 01:25:42.132
And as in other countries with large rates of immigration,

01:25:42.132 --> 01:25:44.715
that does create some tensions,

01:25:45.375 --> 01:25:48.792
but those tensions have for the most part

01:25:49.381 --> 01:25:52.331
been managed so far which is not to say

01:25:52.331 --> 01:25:54.851
that they will continue to be managed in the future.

01:25:54.851 --> 01:25:58.351
One of the concerns is a demographic shift

01:25:58.488 --> 01:26:02.301
with a much larger Muslim population over time

01:26:02.301 --> 01:26:05.718
as many of the migrants from Central Asia

01:26:06.512 --> 01:26:10.012
and Azerbaijan are Muslim and tend to have

01:26:10.803 --> 01:26:14.970
larger numbers of children than the Slavic population.

01:26:15.762 --> 01:26:17.351
So managing those tensions over time

01:26:17.351 --> 01:26:20.073
is going to be a challenge, but I don't think

01:26:20.073 --> 01:26:23.740
it's right to speak of a demographic crisis.

01:26:23.789 --> 01:26:27.414
In terms of some of the other challenges that Russia faces,

01:26:27.414 --> 01:26:31.081
separatism was a problem, again, in the '90s

01:26:31.847 --> 01:26:35.207
and the immediate aftermath of the Soviet collapse

01:26:35.207 --> 01:26:36.320
is much less so today.

01:26:36.320 --> 01:26:39.891
There is still something of a simmering insurgency

01:26:39.891 --> 01:26:42.391
in parts of the North Caucasus

01:26:42.493 --> 01:26:46.660
which has various links to global Jihadist movements,

01:26:47.191 --> 01:26:50.358
but again, has largely been contained.

01:26:52.598 --> 01:26:53.599
It creates problems.

01:26:53.599 --> 01:26:56.853
Russia still suffers from occasional terrorist attacks

01:26:56.853 --> 01:26:59.276
and could have a larger problem

01:26:59.276 --> 01:27:02.837
once people who've gotten experience fighting

01:27:02.837 --> 01:27:06.920
in the Middle East who traveled there from Russia

01:27:08.089 --> 01:27:11.635
or other post-Soviet republics end up going back.

01:27:11.635 --> 01:27:14.223
And the security services of Russia as well as its neighbors

01:27:14.223 --> 01:27:15.806
are very attuned to

01:27:15.979 --> 01:27:19.562
to the danger of those people flowing back.

01:27:19.678 --> 01:27:23.428
Economically, Russia is in a difficult place.

01:27:24.444 --> 01:27:26.702
Its economy is still very heavily oriented

01:27:26.702 --> 01:27:30.741
towards the production and sale of natural resources.

01:27:30.741 --> 01:27:33.664
And as we all know, natural resources

01:27:33.664 --> 01:27:35.466
and commodities of all types are subject

01:27:35.466 --> 01:27:39.633
to pretty extreme fluctuation in terms of their price.

01:27:41.054 --> 01:27:43.046
We're currently in an environment

01:27:43.046 --> 01:27:45.856
where oil prices are down significantly

01:27:45.856 --> 01:27:48.842
from where they were at the peak of the boom

01:27:48.842 --> 01:27:52.881
about a decade ago on top of the effect of sanctions

01:27:52.881 --> 01:27:55.374
and just general political uncertainty.

01:27:55.374 --> 01:27:58.038
These lower commodity prices are putting a big hit

01:27:58.038 --> 01:27:59.575
on the Russian economy

01:27:59.575 --> 01:28:03.075
and are also constraining defense spending

01:28:03.113 --> 01:28:06.531
which the government is committed to reducing

01:28:06.531 --> 01:28:10.031
or at least to reducing the rate of growth

01:28:10.149 --> 01:28:12.768
so this is also gonna be a challenge.

01:28:12.768 --> 01:28:15.349
I think there's a pretty wide recognition

01:28:15.349 --> 01:28:18.146
that Russia would be more powerful.

01:28:18.146 --> 01:28:21.549
It would have a more dynamic economy if it could move away

01:28:21.549 --> 01:28:24.978
from this reliance on natural resource extraction.

01:28:24.978 --> 01:28:29.145
The problem is that there's now a political economic model

01:28:29.393 --> 01:28:31.150
in which control of natural resources

01:28:31.150 --> 01:28:33.527
and the revenues derived from them

01:28:33.527 --> 01:28:36.604
is the main source of economic and political patronage

01:28:36.604 --> 01:28:40.619
that keeps the existing political regime in power.

01:28:40.619 --> 01:28:44.463
And so, any efforts to liberalize the economy to move away

01:28:44.463 --> 01:28:48.463
from this natural resource oriented system risks

01:28:48.768 --> 01:28:51.421
at least in the short to medium term political instability.

01:28:51.421 --> 01:28:54.088
And perhaps as with North Korea,

01:28:54.590 --> 01:28:57.173
although in a less extreme way,

01:28:57.460 --> 01:29:00.817
Russia has made the choice for political stability

01:29:00.817 --> 01:29:02.698
over economic growth and dynamism

01:29:02.698 --> 01:29:05.612
and has been willing to sacrifice dynamism

01:29:05.612 --> 01:29:08.521
in order to maintain the existing political regime

01:29:08.521 --> 01:29:11.746
whether that will continue to be the case ahead to 2030,

01:29:11.746 --> 01:29:14.682
again, predicting is hard especially the future,

01:29:14.682 --> 01:29:17.133
but I would say most likely absent

01:29:17.133 --> 01:29:20.381
some kind of major discontinuity over the next 15 years

01:29:20.381 --> 01:29:23.874
I think that's where Russia is likely to be.

01:29:23.874 --> 01:29:27.541
And given the somewhat limited economic base

01:29:27.698 --> 01:29:29.263
from which it's operating

01:29:29.263 --> 01:29:31.899
in addition to the other challenges I mentioned,

01:29:31.899 --> 01:29:33.698
I think that means that we're not going to see

01:29:33.698 --> 01:29:36.698
Russia become a full peer competitor

01:29:38.782 --> 01:29:40.645
in the way that China is,

01:29:40.645 --> 01:29:44.018
but it's going to continue to be a large powerful country

01:29:44.018 --> 01:29:47.935
that has a number of tools for projecting power

01:29:48.157 --> 01:29:50.053
and influence around its borders

01:29:50.053 --> 01:29:54.176
and more broadly, a country that is well-developed

01:29:54.176 --> 01:29:55.664
and effective military force

01:29:55.664 --> 01:29:58.360
and that gets a lot of bang from its buck.

01:29:58.360 --> 01:30:01.670
And so Russia is going to continue to be a challenge,

01:30:01.670 --> 01:30:04.451
but I don't think that it's going to be a challenge

01:30:04.451 --> 01:30:07.951
quite of the same degree or type as China.

01:30:08.918 --> 01:30:09.918
- Thank you.

01:30:11.116 --> 01:30:15.033
A lot of questions I think due to the impact of

01:30:15.455 --> 01:30:17.535
Mr. Gause's presentation on North Korea.

01:30:17.535 --> 01:30:19.397
There seems to be a lot of questions on North Korea

01:30:19.397 --> 01:30:21.324
that he said that's seems to be the threat

01:30:21.324 --> 01:30:23.128
that's keeping people up at night

01:30:23.128 --> 01:30:24.267
and the number of questions,

01:30:24.267 --> 01:30:27.064
and I'm just gonna group several together,

01:30:27.064 --> 01:30:31.231
so in related to China's influence in North Korea.

01:30:32.450 --> 01:30:35.935
So how much political influence do you believe

01:30:35.935 --> 01:30:37.125
China has with the North Korea?

01:30:37.125 --> 01:30:40.761
You went over China's, you know, their focus,

01:30:40.761 --> 01:30:43.541
how much intelligence presence do you believe

01:30:43.541 --> 01:30:45.958
China has within North Korea?

01:30:46.000 --> 01:30:47.897
And as a follow up not related to China,

01:30:47.897 --> 01:30:51.048
is there a scenario where economic sanctions

01:30:51.048 --> 01:30:53.965
against North Korea will ever work?

01:30:55.820 --> 01:30:58.777
- The best intelligence presence in North Korea

01:30:58.777 --> 01:30:59.610
is not China.

01:30:59.610 --> 01:31:00.610
It's Russia.

01:31:02.801 --> 01:31:06.632
I would say the near-term influence in North Korea right now

01:31:06.632 --> 01:31:09.632
is leaning toward Russia, not China.

01:31:10.413 --> 01:31:12.346
Russia is looking to integrate themselves

01:31:12.346 --> 01:31:14.679
just like they did in Syria.

01:31:14.867 --> 01:31:17.412
They are looking to get themselves get a foot

01:31:17.412 --> 01:31:20.283
into Northeast Asia and they're doing it through North Korea

01:31:20.283 --> 01:31:24.108
through the promise of possible economic goods

01:31:24.108 --> 01:31:26.960
to get to South Korea which is the economic engine

01:31:26.960 --> 01:31:28.671
they're looking to get at.

01:31:28.671 --> 01:31:32.458
Long-term strategy geography is gonna trump everything

01:31:32.458 --> 01:31:34.627
and obviously China is sitting there,

01:31:34.627 --> 01:31:37.822
but China right now has a lot of other issues on its table

01:31:37.822 --> 01:31:40.822
which were elaborated on here today.

01:31:42.753 --> 01:31:46.836
But if you were to look about trying to influence

01:31:47.001 --> 01:31:50.239
North Korea right now through a third party,

01:31:50.239 --> 01:31:54.406
I would say put your chips on Russian and not China.

01:31:58.334 --> 01:32:00.734
What was the other part of economic?

01:32:00.734 --> 01:32:01.733
- The economic sanctions.

01:32:01.733 --> 01:32:03.066
- No, sanctions.

01:32:04.346 --> 01:32:05.346
You can try.

01:32:05.422 --> 01:32:08.624
Yeah, North Korea's already gained their system.

01:32:08.624 --> 01:32:10.560
They've already brought in the oil they need

01:32:10.560 --> 01:32:11.393
for all of this.

01:32:11.393 --> 01:32:13.143
They played this out.

01:32:13.745 --> 01:32:17.821
You can try eventually that the sanctions will hurt,

01:32:17.821 --> 01:32:21.571
but there are three economies in North Korea.

01:32:22.019 --> 01:32:25.382
There's the people's economy, there's the military economy,

01:32:25.382 --> 01:32:29.549
and there's the royal economy which funds the Kim family.

01:32:30.192 --> 01:32:32.623
The people's economy is suffering.

01:32:32.623 --> 01:32:36.318
All those gas lines of people trying to get gas,

01:32:36.318 --> 01:32:39.143
the people who are suffering are the Korean people.

01:32:39.143 --> 01:32:39.976
Are they gonna rise up?

01:32:39.976 --> 01:32:42.378
No, they're not gonna rise up.

01:32:42.378 --> 01:32:44.451
I know we would like to think that they're gonna rise up

01:32:44.451 --> 01:32:47.100
and overthrow the regime, it's not gonna happen.

01:32:47.100 --> 01:32:51.100
This is not the Arab world, this is North Korea.

01:32:52.138 --> 01:32:53.721
But there is a way.

01:32:53.891 --> 01:32:56.351
There is a way to get North Korea

01:32:56.351 --> 01:32:59.268
possibly to stop what they're doing

01:33:01.163 --> 01:33:05.330
and it doesn't come from pressure, it comes from engagement.

01:33:05.862 --> 01:33:08.857
But we may have already passed the threshold

01:33:08.857 --> 01:33:10.524
where it's too late.

01:33:10.836 --> 01:33:12.507
It really depends on how close they are

01:33:12.507 --> 01:33:13.789
to the nuclear program.

01:33:13.789 --> 01:33:15.442
If their close of the nuclear program,

01:33:15.442 --> 01:33:18.134
they will not engage on a freeze.

01:33:18.134 --> 01:33:21.916
If they're further out and if you promise them

01:33:21.916 --> 01:33:24.155
you're not giving up your nuclear program,

01:33:24.155 --> 01:33:25.412
but you're freezing it,

01:33:25.412 --> 01:33:26.693
there's no intrusive inspections,

01:33:26.693 --> 01:33:29.943
all you have to do is stop the testing.

01:33:30.430 --> 01:33:31.314
And really the economic incentives

01:33:31.314 --> 01:33:34.345
and security guarantees that might go through that.

01:33:34.345 --> 01:33:37.725
It's gonna be a very bitter pill for us to swallow

01:33:37.725 --> 01:33:40.563
because it's rewarding bad behavior,

01:33:40.563 --> 01:33:42.549
but I think we're so far down the rabbit hole

01:33:42.549 --> 01:33:43.663
with North Korea right now.

01:33:43.663 --> 01:33:45.750
We have to start thinking out of the box

01:33:45.750 --> 01:33:48.601
and just lobbing more sanctions on this country

01:33:48.601 --> 01:33:50.123
and congratulating ourselves

01:33:50.123 --> 01:33:52.211
and patting ourselves on the back

01:33:52.211 --> 01:33:54.766
is not gonna solve the problem.

01:33:54.766 --> 01:33:56.287
And the thing is gonna get worse

01:33:56.287 --> 01:33:59.582
and eventually, if we don't do some sort of military action,

01:33:59.582 --> 01:34:03.152
we're gonna be facing a country that has a nuclear program

01:34:03.152 --> 01:34:05.652
that can hit the United States

01:34:06.444 --> 01:34:08.702
and then we're in an issue of containment

01:34:08.702 --> 01:34:11.710
and that becomes a much more complicated situation

01:34:11.710 --> 01:34:12.740
than we're at right now.

01:34:12.740 --> 01:34:14.990
So that's what concerns me.

01:34:15.172 --> 01:34:16.005
- Okay.

01:34:16.005 --> 01:34:17.737
I think, Dr. Mankoff, you would like to.

01:34:17.737 --> 01:34:20.432
- Just on the Russian influence in North Korea.

01:34:20.432 --> 01:34:24.599
I would say it's actually not all that substantial.

01:34:25.182 --> 01:34:27.973
Russian knowledge of North Korea may be reasonably good.

01:34:27.973 --> 01:34:30.890
They do have plenty of people there

01:34:31.438 --> 01:34:33.521
both overt and otherwise,

01:34:34.747 --> 01:34:38.224
but at the same time in terms of actual leverage,

01:34:38.224 --> 01:34:42.391
there's not a major economic or military relationship.

01:34:45.662 --> 01:34:49.183
If you're talking about who can put major pressure

01:34:49.183 --> 01:34:50.404
on the North Korean economy,

01:34:50.404 --> 01:34:53.321
that's much more China than Russia.

01:34:53.951 --> 01:34:57.478
North Korea has some workers who are living

01:34:57.478 --> 01:34:59.975
and working in Russia and sending their earnings back

01:34:59.975 --> 01:35:01.142
to the regime.

01:35:02.594 --> 01:35:04.450
That is one source of leverage,

01:35:04.450 --> 01:35:05.911
but it's a comparatively limited one.

01:35:05.911 --> 01:35:07.329
I think more important is the fact that Russia

01:35:07.329 --> 01:35:10.829
sees North Korea as not being its problem.

01:35:11.323 --> 01:35:14.469
I don't think it's willing to step away from China

01:35:14.469 --> 01:35:17.646
on this issue much as it expects China to follow its lead

01:35:17.646 --> 01:35:21.813
on issues in its own sort of perceived sphere of influence.

01:35:22.665 --> 01:35:25.294
I think it's willing to leave this

01:35:25.294 --> 01:35:28.211
to follow China's lead on this one.

01:35:29.365 --> 01:35:32.569
The idea of extending connectivity through North Korea

01:35:32.569 --> 01:35:35.269
to South Korea is something that Russians have talked about

01:35:35.269 --> 01:35:37.527
for a long, long time whether that's gonna be

01:35:37.527 --> 01:35:41.610
a gas pipeline or a railway, something like that,

01:35:42.981 --> 01:35:44.946
you know, if and when the political environment

01:35:44.946 --> 01:35:46.415
is conducive to that.

01:35:46.415 --> 01:35:48.184
I think the Russians will jump at the opportunity,

01:35:48.184 --> 01:35:50.336
but we've got a long way to go

01:35:50.336 --> 01:35:52.893
and I don't think the Russians believe that

01:35:52.893 --> 01:35:54.042
the opportunity to do that

01:35:54.042 --> 01:35:58.209
is something that they can count on any time soon.

01:35:59.063 --> 01:35:59.896
- Thank you.

01:35:59.896 --> 01:36:02.088
We did actually have a question, a request,

01:36:02.088 --> 01:36:03.261
if they could bring the North Korea

01:36:03.261 --> 01:36:05.344
escalation graph back up.

01:36:05.446 --> 01:36:07.929
People are interested in seeing that again.

01:36:07.929 --> 01:36:12.096
So that was Ken Gause's presentation on North Korea

01:36:13.257 --> 01:36:15.910
and there was an escalation graph.

01:36:15.910 --> 01:36:18.139
This is an interesting question because we're talking,

01:36:18.139 --> 01:36:21.570
the panel is talking about multi-domain threats

01:36:21.570 --> 01:36:25.705
so I'm going to ask all of the panel to contribute.

01:36:25.705 --> 01:36:29.872
Describe the nature of the future Russia-China relationship

01:36:30.351 --> 01:36:33.735
particularly if each gets the power that it's seeking

01:36:33.735 --> 01:36:36.326
and several follow ons, how would you see

01:36:36.326 --> 01:36:38.291
from your perspective as policy experts

01:36:38.291 --> 01:36:41.291
Russia's view on assessment of China

01:36:41.570 --> 01:36:45.737
and China's assessment of Russia as a partner or competitor?

01:36:51.339 --> 01:36:52.319
Anyone that would like to--

01:36:52.319 --> 01:36:54.957
- All right, I do in (mumbles).

01:36:54.957 --> 01:36:58.457
I think Russia, Beijing, and Moscow see it

01:36:59.625 --> 01:37:02.125
as a relationship of necessity

01:37:02.246 --> 01:37:04.996
more than a relationship of love.

01:37:05.437 --> 01:37:07.992
There is a tremendous amount of strategic distrust

01:37:07.992 --> 01:37:10.075
between the two capitals.

01:37:11.415 --> 01:37:13.581
The Russians certainly don't wanna be considered

01:37:13.581 --> 01:37:15.894
to be the little brother to China,

01:37:15.894 --> 01:37:18.928
but they see what's happening across the border.

01:37:18.928 --> 01:37:20.723
They understand the number of Chinese

01:37:20.723 --> 01:37:23.761
that have influence in the Russian Far East.

01:37:23.761 --> 01:37:26.428
They're aware of the historical,

01:37:26.651 --> 01:37:29.818
the history between the two countries.

01:37:30.106 --> 01:37:31.239
I think they're using each other

01:37:31.239 --> 01:37:33.739
to play off the United States.

01:37:34.327 --> 01:37:37.426
The Chinese like to do naval exercises

01:37:37.426 --> 01:37:40.189
in the South China Sea with the Russians,

01:37:40.189 --> 01:37:42.772
gives the Russians an opportunity to

01:37:42.772 --> 01:37:45.091
show their power projection.

01:37:45.091 --> 01:37:46.691
Their Navy is not in such great shape,

01:37:46.691 --> 01:37:49.427
not certainly not of the time of the Cold War

01:37:49.427 --> 01:37:51.807
especially in the Far East when it had the largest,

01:37:51.807 --> 01:37:55.582
its largest fleet was actually in the Far East.

01:37:55.582 --> 01:37:59.082
And because the Chinese like to send a signal

01:37:59.082 --> 01:38:02.755
that maybe the Russians would side with us over Taiwan.

01:38:02.755 --> 01:38:04.422
The issue of Taiwan.

01:38:04.913 --> 01:38:08.635
So I think there's a lot of strategic mistrust.

01:38:08.635 --> 01:38:10.401
They're using each other

01:38:10.401 --> 01:38:12.568
to advance their interests

01:38:13.027 --> 01:38:15.245
vis-a-vis the United States

01:38:15.245 --> 01:38:17.591
making us think that this strategic partnership

01:38:17.591 --> 01:38:20.346
that they have will lead to something.

01:38:20.346 --> 01:38:23.337
My view is that, for instance, if the United States

01:38:23.337 --> 01:38:26.485
were to get into a dustup with China over North Korea

01:38:26.485 --> 01:38:28.461
that the Russians would probably say,

01:38:28.461 --> 01:38:32.544
let us hold your coats while you guys do get out.

01:38:32.903 --> 01:38:35.986
So I think there's not a lot of love.

01:38:37.172 --> 01:38:38.887
The Russians have been forced into some parts

01:38:38.887 --> 01:38:40.342
of this relationship they haven't liked.

01:38:40.342 --> 01:38:44.149
They had production licenses on the Su-27 fighter,

01:38:44.149 --> 01:38:45.972
the Chinese were stealing it like crazy,

01:38:45.972 --> 01:38:47.975
the Russians got it off and now the Russians are back

01:38:47.975 --> 01:38:49.892
as they need the money.

01:38:50.460 --> 01:38:53.710
So it's a very complicated relationship

01:38:54.965 --> 01:38:58.053
and as you know from the history of it,

01:38:58.053 --> 01:38:59.701
there's a lot of concerns.

01:38:59.701 --> 01:39:02.704
I think they may be stronger or more accepting

01:39:02.704 --> 01:39:06.322
at the political level than at the military level.

01:39:06.322 --> 01:39:07.384
So if you're a Russian general,

01:39:07.384 --> 01:39:11.301
when you look across at China, what do you see?

01:39:12.171 --> 01:39:13.421
It's not happy.

01:39:14.862 --> 01:39:17.755
So I think that's kind of (mumbles).

01:39:17.755 --> 01:39:20.987
Jeffrey, I'm sorry, has some thoughts on that.

01:39:20.987 --> 01:39:24.953
- Okay, let me just talk a little bit about Russia.

01:39:24.953 --> 01:39:27.906
I would agree that there's not a lot of love or trust

01:39:27.906 --> 01:39:31.245
in their relationship despite the declarations

01:39:31.245 --> 01:39:33.199
that come out of the fairly frequent summits

01:39:33.199 --> 01:39:35.032
between Putin and Chi.

01:39:35.620 --> 01:39:37.969
The characterization of the relationship

01:39:37.969 --> 01:39:40.453
officially has escalated over the last decade.

01:39:40.453 --> 01:39:42.546
It's now something like a comprehensive

01:39:42.546 --> 01:39:44.896
strategic partnership of coordination,

01:39:44.896 --> 01:39:46.755
I think is the official term they use.

01:39:46.755 --> 01:39:49.838
So it's sort of like, you know, yeah.

01:39:50.174 --> 01:39:52.500
It's like that, you know, if it's the people's Democratic,

01:39:52.500 --> 01:39:56.061
Republic of whatever, it's even less democratic

01:39:56.061 --> 01:39:57.980
than if it's just the democratic republic.

01:39:57.980 --> 01:39:59.652
So I think the more adjectives you throw in,

01:39:59.652 --> 01:40:02.485
the less substance there is to it.

01:40:04.464 --> 01:40:07.293
I would say though that one of the key things

01:40:07.293 --> 01:40:09.228
that is pushing these two countries together

01:40:09.228 --> 01:40:12.728
is a shared antipathy to the current state

01:40:13.273 --> 01:40:14.940
of the global order.

01:40:14.957 --> 01:40:16.945
They wanna change it in different ways,

01:40:16.945 --> 01:40:19.239
but they both wanna change it.

01:40:19.239 --> 01:40:23.083
They both see the predominant role of the United States

01:40:23.083 --> 01:40:26.608
in their respective regions and in global institutions

01:40:26.608 --> 01:40:28.805
as being a constraint on their abilities

01:40:28.805 --> 01:40:31.560
to achieve their strategic interests.

01:40:31.560 --> 01:40:35.131
And so to the extent that they're focused on

01:40:35.131 --> 01:40:37.741
these global level issues and on pushing back

01:40:37.741 --> 01:40:39.434
against the United States,

01:40:39.434 --> 01:40:41.608
they have a lot of interest in common.

01:40:41.608 --> 01:40:44.679
They also have shared economic interests.

01:40:44.679 --> 01:40:48.253
China is Russia's most, after the European Union,

01:40:48.253 --> 01:40:51.005
Russia's most important economic partner

01:40:51.005 --> 01:40:53.384
has been a key prop for the Russian economy

01:40:53.384 --> 01:40:55.534
since the imposition of sanctions

01:40:55.534 --> 01:40:58.534
has kept some Russian projects alive

01:40:58.542 --> 01:41:01.094
that haven't been able to get Western fundings

01:41:01.094 --> 01:41:03.989
since the sanctions have been imposed.

01:41:03.989 --> 01:41:05.717
There's mistrust at the military level.

01:41:05.717 --> 01:41:08.967
I think there's also regional tensions.

01:41:09.779 --> 01:41:13.362
These are primarily evident in Central Asia

01:41:14.999 --> 01:41:17.416
that kind of interior Eurasia

01:41:17.998 --> 01:41:20.363
that is the focal point for the Belton Road,

01:41:20.363 --> 01:41:22.308
but also for Russia's own efforts

01:41:22.308 --> 01:41:25.458
to maintain a kind of sphere of influence.

01:41:25.458 --> 01:41:26.293
To a significant degree,

01:41:26.293 --> 01:41:28.110
they've been able to manage those tensions,

01:41:28.110 --> 01:41:31.864
but you can see them kind of in the background

01:41:31.864 --> 01:41:34.767
and I think when, and if a point comes

01:41:34.767 --> 01:41:37.934
when they're no longer both focused on

01:41:38.032 --> 01:41:40.741
their global level tensions with the United States

01:41:40.741 --> 01:41:43.223
or whether when one of them is trying to improve relations

01:41:43.223 --> 01:41:45.562
with the United States, then you're going to see more

01:41:45.562 --> 01:41:47.406
friction emerge over some of these areas

01:41:47.406 --> 01:41:49.257
in their shared geography

01:41:49.257 --> 01:41:53.340
and over the issues that Peter was talking about.

01:41:54.636 --> 01:41:57.636
- This is a question for Vera Zakem.

01:41:59.351 --> 01:42:03.018
How well does, you've talked about the chart

01:42:05.111 --> 01:42:09.278
with the nature of the different Western Balkan countries

01:42:11.048 --> 01:42:14.043
and how Russia could target those message.

01:42:14.043 --> 01:42:15.765
The question is, how well does,

01:42:15.765 --> 01:42:17.449
how do you view the effectiveness?

01:42:17.449 --> 01:42:21.616
How well does the Russian message resonate with those,

01:42:21.965 --> 01:42:25.069
on those Western Balkan and other Eastern European countries

01:42:25.069 --> 01:42:26.428
with our trust and diaspora?

01:42:26.428 --> 01:42:29.750
So what's your assessment of the long-term effectiveness

01:42:29.750 --> 01:42:31.667
of the Russian efforts?

01:42:32.319 --> 01:42:35.756
- I think it depends on the effectiveness and the impact.

01:42:35.756 --> 01:42:37.742
If they have been engaged

01:42:37.742 --> 01:42:40.767
in the staging influence information operations

01:42:40.767 --> 01:42:43.836
in a particular country for a long time

01:42:43.836 --> 01:42:47.402
and they have made inroads whether public or not.

01:42:47.402 --> 01:42:50.569
Arguably speaking, their effectiveness

01:42:50.630 --> 01:42:52.252
is gonna be far greater.

01:42:52.252 --> 01:42:54.180
I think the other way to measure effectiveness

01:42:54.180 --> 01:42:57.597
is when we look at our collective action.

01:42:57.680 --> 01:43:01.847
How effective broadly speaking has, what we have been doing

01:43:02.923 --> 01:43:07.090
to both strengthen institutions in these countries

01:43:07.433 --> 01:43:10.671
whether we're talking about the Balkans, or Eastern Europe,

01:43:10.671 --> 01:43:14.671
or other parts in the neighborhood, if you will,

01:43:15.403 --> 01:43:17.944
how effective is our response has been.

01:43:17.944 --> 01:43:20.727
And again, I think part of it has to be put in the context

01:43:20.727 --> 01:43:23.464
of what are these vulnerabilities

01:43:23.464 --> 01:43:26.412
and sources of instabilities in these societies

01:43:26.412 --> 01:43:30.274
whether we're talking about corruption, or for example,

01:43:30.274 --> 01:43:32.412
here's an example on the effectiveness.

01:43:32.412 --> 01:43:34.007
Historical narratives.

01:43:34.007 --> 01:43:38.174
Historical narratives exists virtually not all over Europe

01:43:39.144 --> 01:43:41.720
or the former Soviet Union space or the many parts of it,

01:43:41.720 --> 01:43:45.302
so for example when you look at Latvia or Estonia,

01:43:45.302 --> 01:43:48.019
where those countries are somewhat divided

01:43:48.019 --> 01:43:51.031
and that they have pretty significant percentage

01:43:51.031 --> 01:43:53.175
of ethnic Russian populations

01:43:53.175 --> 01:43:56.627
and they play up to those historical narratives.

01:43:56.627 --> 01:43:59.150
In some ways, Russia does not have to do much

01:43:59.150 --> 01:44:01.093
in terms of just putting out,

01:44:01.093 --> 01:44:04.510
just putting disinformation because those

01:44:04.970 --> 01:44:07.281
if you will, memories of the Cold War

01:44:07.281 --> 01:44:09.553
what they see on television,

01:44:09.553 --> 01:44:13.032
what the kind of content and news that they get from Russia.

01:44:13.032 --> 01:44:14.383
I mean, it's natural.

01:44:14.383 --> 01:44:16.275
And then you have to look at the demographics.

01:44:16.275 --> 01:44:20.358
Certainly, the older population that has grown up

01:44:20.663 --> 01:44:23.388
with that environment, they I think

01:44:23.388 --> 01:44:24.972
are gonna be more susceptible to influence

01:44:24.972 --> 01:44:28.389
particularly, how do the messages spread.

01:44:28.562 --> 01:44:30.108
First of all, television.

01:44:30.108 --> 01:44:31.890
That's primary source of information.

01:44:31.890 --> 01:44:33.472
And there's also friends and family

01:44:33.472 --> 01:44:35.734
and that's where the trust factor comes in.

01:44:35.734 --> 01:44:38.954
The younger population, perhaps they're more worldly,

01:44:38.954 --> 01:44:40.771
they get information from social media,

01:44:40.771 --> 01:44:42.235
from the internet, from others,

01:44:42.235 --> 01:44:45.398
from they may have other alternative sources of contents

01:44:45.398 --> 01:44:47.350
not just say that they're gonna be less susceptible

01:44:47.350 --> 01:44:51.361
to influence, but they have other modes of influence to get.

01:44:51.361 --> 01:44:55.528
So again, the effectiveness I think is just gonna be,

01:44:55.587 --> 01:44:56.498
is gonna depend.

01:44:56.498 --> 01:44:59.581
And then the last point I'll make on the effectiveness

01:44:59.581 --> 01:45:01.710
is a lot of the things that we don't know.

01:45:01.710 --> 01:45:04.584
We talk about disinformation, information operations,

01:45:04.584 --> 01:45:07.834
but what about sort of ties via energy,

01:45:08.533 --> 01:45:10.366
via economic security?

01:45:11.754 --> 01:45:15.004
What about those ties via intelligence?

01:45:15.457 --> 01:45:19.624
Again, some of them are very not, just not transparent

01:45:19.896 --> 01:45:21.219
and they're pretty opaque

01:45:21.219 --> 01:45:24.516
so they keep on working for a long time.

01:45:24.516 --> 01:45:28.683
So if you think of effectiveness from that perspective,

01:45:29.361 --> 01:45:33.528
I would say there's to a degree they have been affected.

01:45:35.050 --> 01:45:38.217
- Okay, back to China for Dr. Brookes.

01:45:39.951 --> 01:45:43.034
A more tactical or shorter term issue

01:45:45.014 --> 01:45:46.460
and a broader issue.

01:45:46.460 --> 01:45:49.206
One is your views on China's approach

01:45:49.206 --> 01:45:50.620
in the South China Sea.

01:45:50.620 --> 01:45:53.604
I know you talked about it has been less than,

01:45:53.604 --> 01:45:57.604
they're building the islands that have runways.

01:45:59.145 --> 01:46:03.302
Is that a long-term scheme that they're focused on

01:46:03.302 --> 01:46:04.410
in the South China Sea?

01:46:04.410 --> 01:46:06.660
And then in a longer sense,

01:46:07.045 --> 01:46:09.474
that I have several questions related to Chinese

01:46:09.474 --> 01:46:13.641
political system survival that how do they balance

01:46:13.770 --> 01:46:16.197
being in global economic power

01:46:16.197 --> 01:46:19.276
with the continued authoritarian control

01:46:19.276 --> 01:46:22.693
and is Xi Jinping likely to try to remain

01:46:22.973 --> 01:46:25.140
as a leader past 10 years,

01:46:26.202 --> 01:46:28.352
or so will there be a peaceful transition,

01:46:28.352 --> 01:46:32.519
or will there be, what do you see in his future as well?

01:46:32.590 --> 01:46:33.914
But again, but the balance.

01:46:33.914 --> 01:46:36.247
How does China balance that?

01:46:36.473 --> 01:46:40.640
Can they be an economic power without having some sort of,

01:46:42.259 --> 01:46:46.426
with maintaining that strong one party political control?

01:46:46.733 --> 01:46:49.815
- I think they're balancing it very well.

01:46:49.815 --> 01:46:53.497
The fact is is that they're quite successful obviously

01:46:53.497 --> 01:46:56.830
at the international level economically.

01:46:58.914 --> 01:47:01.439
In fact there are many countries

01:47:01.439 --> 01:47:04.451
that are trying to which I think is counterproductive

01:47:04.451 --> 01:47:07.607
to Western efforts, but there are many countries

01:47:07.607 --> 01:47:11.177
that are trying to emulate the Chinese model.

01:47:11.177 --> 01:47:12.830
And including in places like Africa

01:47:12.830 --> 01:47:14.451
where there have been a tremendous amount of effort

01:47:14.451 --> 01:47:18.247
to increase democratization and liberalization of economies

01:47:18.247 --> 01:47:19.740
and decrease corruption,

01:47:19.740 --> 01:47:22.532
they say, well, why can't we be like China?

01:47:22.532 --> 01:47:25.949
Why can't I be a strong man and rich too?

01:47:26.092 --> 01:47:27.893
So I don't think there's a problem.

01:47:27.893 --> 01:47:29.827
Then the Chinese consider if you talk to them,

01:47:29.827 --> 01:47:31.159
they'll say this is just business.

01:47:31.159 --> 01:47:33.595
Let's not do politics, it's business.

01:47:33.595 --> 01:47:36.151
This is a problem, the challenges that the West has

01:47:36.151 --> 01:47:37.445
with the Chinese foreign policy

01:47:37.445 --> 01:47:41.324
in places where we're competing which is globally basically.

01:47:41.324 --> 01:47:43.890
The Chinese don't put conditions on their aid.

01:47:43.890 --> 01:47:45.985
United States and the West does.

01:47:45.985 --> 01:47:47.252
You have to do this, this, and this

01:47:47.252 --> 01:47:48.085
if you wanna get this aid.

01:47:48.085 --> 01:47:50.009
Chinese say, hey, here are some aid.

01:47:50.009 --> 01:47:52.256
We'll build your stadium, we'll build your roads.

01:47:52.256 --> 01:47:53.239
There's problems with that too

01:47:53.239 --> 01:47:55.237
such as the transfer of skills.

01:47:55.237 --> 01:47:58.513
The Chinese commit to a country that needs infrastructure,

01:47:58.513 --> 01:48:00.815
or railroads, or bridges, or roads.

01:48:00.815 --> 01:48:02.571
They'll build bridges and roads for them

01:48:02.571 --> 01:48:05.161
for political influence and perhaps access to commodities

01:48:05.161 --> 01:48:07.868
depending on what country X or Y has,

01:48:07.868 --> 01:48:11.701
but they'll also bring Chinese labor to do it.

01:48:11.757 --> 01:48:13.142
For instance, an African once said to me

01:48:13.142 --> 01:48:14.794
that China was their biggest, their greatest dream

01:48:14.794 --> 01:48:17.127
and their greatest nightmare

01:48:17.770 --> 01:48:19.520
both at the same time

01:48:19.618 --> 01:48:21.439
because they can be helpful,

01:48:21.439 --> 01:48:23.411
but sometimes they keep strong men in power.

01:48:23.411 --> 01:48:25.570
They undermine democracy and they also,

01:48:25.570 --> 01:48:27.528
when they bring people in instead of transferring skills,

01:48:27.528 --> 01:48:29.539
teaching people how to build roads,

01:48:29.539 --> 01:48:31.875
and bridges, and trains or railways,

01:48:31.875 --> 01:48:34.450
they bring Chinese labor in to do it.

01:48:34.450 --> 01:48:36.848
So there's no transfer of skills.

01:48:36.848 --> 01:48:38.625
So I don't think the Chinese have a problem with that.

01:48:38.625 --> 01:48:39.993
And they will tell you it's just business.

01:48:39.993 --> 01:48:41.160
It's business.

01:48:41.614 --> 01:48:44.531
It has nothing to do with politics.

01:48:44.941 --> 01:48:46.274
South China Sea,

01:48:46.929 --> 01:48:48.701
I think there's actually three questions there.

01:48:48.701 --> 01:48:49.534
President Xi,

01:48:49.534 --> 01:48:51.278
I don't sense that he will change constitution,

01:48:51.278 --> 01:48:52.540
but I don't know.

01:48:52.540 --> 01:48:55.124
He will spend another five years I think

01:48:55.124 --> 01:48:56.574
if you're thinking about legacy issues

01:48:56.574 --> 01:48:58.022
over the next five years.

01:48:58.022 --> 01:49:00.092
I think there was a sense on his part that

01:49:00.092 --> 01:49:02.773
previous leaders just didn't do enough,

01:49:02.773 --> 01:49:04.773
quickly enough for China

01:49:06.783 --> 01:49:08.058
that they were lackadaisical

01:49:08.058 --> 01:49:09.744
about advancing Chinese interests

01:49:09.744 --> 01:49:11.995
and he's been very, very assertive

01:49:11.995 --> 01:49:14.036
and that includes what he's doing in the South China Sea.

01:49:14.036 --> 01:49:16.432
Think about this, you know, making the South China Sea,

01:49:16.432 --> 01:49:19.687
claiming that South China Sea is a Chinese lake essentially.

01:49:19.687 --> 01:49:21.720
This is huge and they done it through a process

01:49:21.720 --> 01:49:24.328
of what some folks call salami slicing.

01:49:24.328 --> 01:49:28.103
Very thin slices of salami, one piece at a time.

01:49:28.103 --> 01:49:31.017
Kinda like I think what the Russians did in Ukraine.

01:49:31.017 --> 01:49:32.533
They did this, nobody reacted.

01:49:32.533 --> 01:49:35.010
They did this, nobody reacted and they kept pushing.

01:49:35.010 --> 01:49:36.347
You know, it's the Leninist philosophy,

01:49:36.347 --> 01:49:39.027
if you're feeling mush, keep pushing, right?

01:49:39.027 --> 01:49:41.277
If you hit metal, you stop.

01:49:42.186 --> 01:49:45.405
And I think this is what China is doing to South China Sea.

01:49:45.405 --> 01:49:48.230
You know, yeah, people build artificial islands.

01:49:48.230 --> 01:49:49.501
I mean, look at Singapore, right?

01:49:49.501 --> 01:49:53.608
I mean, its places are doubled or tripled in size.

01:49:53.608 --> 01:49:55.074
But this is different.

01:49:55.074 --> 01:49:56.542
This is not Singapore.

01:49:56.542 --> 01:49:57.962
The Chinese have been doing this.

01:49:57.962 --> 01:50:00.067
Little bit of time, they build one artificial island

01:50:00.067 --> 01:50:02.734
and they didn't do it overnight.

01:50:02.930 --> 01:50:04.226
They did it rather quickly when they decided

01:50:04.226 --> 01:50:07.730
they're gonna put their mind to it, but it happened,

01:50:07.730 --> 01:50:09.877
they're asserting themselves and now they have presence.

01:50:09.877 --> 01:50:11.592
They actually were trying to,

01:50:11.592 --> 01:50:15.092
I think on some of these islands that the,

01:50:15.753 --> 01:50:18.039
the International Courts of Rule that they do get

01:50:18.039 --> 01:50:20.811
a 12 nautical mile territorial waters around it,

01:50:20.811 --> 01:50:24.874
but they're not eligible for exclusive economic zones.

01:50:24.874 --> 01:50:26.584
I think if you look at a lot of these islands,

01:50:26.584 --> 01:50:28.812
if you put these 200 mile exclusive economic zones

01:50:28.812 --> 01:50:30.291
under Law of the Sea Treaty,

01:50:30.291 --> 01:50:31.988
China would have economic rights

01:50:31.988 --> 01:50:35.488
and a good portion of that Nine-Dash Line.

01:50:35.949 --> 01:50:39.366
I think it will continue to militarize it

01:50:39.532 --> 01:50:41.413
because at some point, they may wanna assert control

01:50:41.413 --> 01:50:42.663
and I think a lot of it has to do,

01:50:42.663 --> 01:50:46.034
not only with the possibility what lies beneath the seabed

01:50:46.034 --> 01:50:47.759
in the South China Sea in terms of energy

01:50:47.759 --> 01:50:50.360
when China is a major importer of energy.

01:50:50.360 --> 01:50:54.527
They need that to keep the wheels of industry turning,

01:50:54.561 --> 01:50:58.321
they need that to continue for the Chinese Communist Party

01:50:58.321 --> 01:51:02.005
to have political legitimacy by making the Chinese people

01:51:02.005 --> 01:51:03.255
improving their standard of living

01:51:03.255 --> 01:51:07.005
and making the Chinese people proud of China.

01:51:07.090 --> 01:51:09.771
I don't know if anybody saw the 2008 Olympics in China

01:51:09.771 --> 01:51:10.668
and what they did there.

01:51:10.668 --> 01:51:13.482
I mean, the infrastructure and everything else.

01:51:13.482 --> 01:51:15.649
I mean, this is important,

01:51:15.744 --> 01:51:17.839
this is critically important for China.

01:51:17.839 --> 01:51:21.198
But they're also, you know, at some point strategically

01:51:21.198 --> 01:51:22.951
I mean, I think there is definitely a rivalry

01:51:22.951 --> 01:51:27.034
between Japan and China and it's increasingly so.

01:51:27.133 --> 01:51:29.025
And a lot of the energy,

01:51:29.025 --> 01:51:32.010
North East Asia had the short stick on energy

01:51:32.010 --> 01:51:36.113
when they're passing out energy when the world was created.

01:51:36.113 --> 01:51:39.156
Japan imports about 80% I think of its oil.

01:51:39.156 --> 01:51:40.137
South Korea is similar.

01:51:40.137 --> 01:51:42.085
Taiwan is similar to that.

01:51:42.085 --> 01:51:43.531
China could put a stranglehold

01:51:43.531 --> 01:51:44.978
on some of these countries if they wanted to

01:51:44.978 --> 01:51:48.561
by cutting off the flow of goods and energy

01:51:48.649 --> 01:51:50.982
through the South China Sea.

01:51:51.284 --> 01:51:53.747
And having those islands there, I'm not saying

01:51:53.747 --> 01:51:55.915
those islands cannot be dealt with militarily,

01:51:55.915 --> 01:51:57.886
but having those islands there certainly

01:51:57.886 --> 01:51:59.635
increases the possibility of them doing it

01:51:59.635 --> 01:52:01.885
at least in the short term.

01:52:02.799 --> 01:52:03.799
- Thank you.

01:52:04.095 --> 01:52:06.928
Okay, so I think we have time for,

01:52:07.391 --> 01:52:08.624
all right, we'll have one more question

01:52:08.624 --> 01:52:10.416
and then maybe any final thought.

01:52:10.416 --> 01:52:12.166
So I appreciate that.

01:52:12.223 --> 01:52:13.892
Also I just wanted to share with everyone

01:52:13.892 --> 01:52:17.334
that the slides that were shown will be posted

01:52:17.334 --> 01:52:18.917
on the AUSA website

01:52:18.959 --> 01:52:21.067
so you will be able to see those.

01:52:21.067 --> 01:52:23.984
So again, this is looking long term

01:52:24.598 --> 01:52:26.512
and we've had number of questions from our audience's focus

01:52:26.512 --> 01:52:30.179
so we had a good description from Mr. Gause,

01:52:31.025 --> 01:52:33.692
from Ken on what would happen if

01:52:33.830 --> 01:52:35.964
Kim Jong-un is not in power?

01:52:35.964 --> 01:52:38.771
For China, you assessed that Xi Jinping

01:52:38.771 --> 01:52:40.797
will not change the constitution

01:52:40.797 --> 01:52:43.714
and there would be another central,

01:52:45.158 --> 01:52:47.386
another Communist Party leader.

01:52:47.386 --> 01:52:49.781
The question is for you, Dr. Mankoff.

01:52:49.781 --> 01:52:53.614
Post-Putin, what is the future in Russia post?

01:52:53.966 --> 01:52:57.936
So we have post-Kim Jong-un, post-Xi, what is post-Putin?

01:52:57.936 --> 01:52:58.936
- All right.

01:52:59.879 --> 01:53:03.833
Well, the first question I suppose is when is post.

01:53:03.833 --> 01:53:06.849
There is an election scheduled in Russia next spring.

01:53:06.849 --> 01:53:11.016
Putin has not formally announced that he's running again.

01:53:11.169 --> 01:53:12.345
The general assumption is that

01:53:12.345 --> 01:53:16.512
he will make that announcement soon, but he hasn't.

01:53:17.716 --> 01:53:21.299
And even if he does, he has a six-year term

01:53:21.542 --> 01:53:23.267
that could change the constitution again

01:53:23.267 --> 01:53:24.771
to allow him to stay in power.

01:53:24.771 --> 01:53:28.021
He'll be in his mid-70's by that point.

01:53:29.273 --> 01:53:31.523
It's a reasonable question.

01:53:32.665 --> 01:53:34.799
It's reasonable to start thinking about

01:53:34.799 --> 01:53:36.376
what a post-Putin Russia would look like

01:53:36.376 --> 01:53:39.126
whether it comes sooner or later.

01:53:39.324 --> 01:53:40.724
I think there have been efforts

01:53:40.724 --> 01:53:42.947
to answer this question already.

01:53:42.947 --> 01:53:44.686
The so-called CastlinG maneuver

01:53:44.686 --> 01:53:48.571
where they transferred power to Dmitry Medvedev in 2008

01:53:48.571 --> 01:53:51.238
was I think one attempt at this.

01:53:51.762 --> 01:53:54.420
One that for a variety of reasons didn't work

01:53:54.420 --> 01:53:56.831
the way that various members in the Russian elite

01:53:56.831 --> 01:54:00.248
wanted it to work and so Putin came back.

01:54:01.511 --> 01:54:05.678
Putin's most important role in Russia is as the arbiter.

01:54:06.811 --> 01:54:09.457
There are competing factions, competing clans,

01:54:09.457 --> 01:54:11.866
competing economic interests,

01:54:11.866 --> 01:54:15.953
and he's the one who arbitrates among those disputes.

01:54:15.953 --> 01:54:17.967
Anybody who succeeds him is going to have

01:54:17.967 --> 01:54:20.634
to have the buy in of a majority

01:54:20.729 --> 01:54:24.646
of not a substantial number of the same actors.

01:54:26.094 --> 01:54:29.011
So whether the post-Putin leader is

01:54:29.345 --> 01:54:32.163
somebody from the security services like him,

01:54:32.163 --> 01:54:35.953
somebody from the military, is a civilian, whatever it is

01:54:35.953 --> 01:54:37.581
that's going to be the biggest challenge

01:54:37.581 --> 01:54:40.831
that they're going to have to navigate.

01:54:41.853 --> 01:54:45.103
I don't think that you're going to have

01:54:45.793 --> 01:54:48.919
somebody come in from outside the system.

01:54:48.919 --> 01:54:52.088
Alexei Navalny, for example, who is considered now

01:54:52.088 --> 01:54:55.336
to be the leading opponent of Putin and who is going to,

01:54:55.336 --> 01:54:58.836
who is trying to run against him in April,

01:54:59.599 --> 01:55:01.374
the state is doing what it can

01:55:01.374 --> 01:55:03.957
to prevent that from happening.

01:55:04.591 --> 01:55:06.393
I think there are those within the system

01:55:06.393 --> 01:55:09.088
who could tolerate somebody like Navalny

01:55:09.088 --> 01:55:11.961
and there's some degree of coordination

01:55:11.961 --> 01:55:13.711
between them and him.

01:55:14.479 --> 01:55:17.175
But at the end of the day, I would imagine

01:55:17.175 --> 01:55:21.189
that whoever ends up on top once Putin is no longer there

01:55:21.189 --> 01:55:25.022
is going to be somebody from within the system

01:55:25.142 --> 01:55:27.466
which is the model that we've seen

01:55:27.466 --> 01:55:30.625
in a couple of post-Soviet countries that have gone through

01:55:30.625 --> 01:55:32.360
political transitions recently

01:55:32.360 --> 01:55:36.527
Uzbekistan just within the last year or so did this.

01:55:37.781 --> 01:55:39.838
So, you know, absent some kind of major crisis

01:55:39.838 --> 01:55:41.773
I think that's probably what we'll see.

01:55:41.773 --> 01:55:45.132
I don't think we're gonna see a fundamental liberalization,

01:55:45.132 --> 01:55:49.299
or softening, or whole scale political change in Russia.

01:55:49.564 --> 01:55:52.220
There is some pressure from below

01:55:52.220 --> 01:55:54.795
and it's going to be a challenge for them to manage that,

01:55:54.795 --> 01:55:58.712
but I also think that there's enough acceptance

01:55:58.727 --> 01:56:01.975
and even active support for the status quo

01:56:01.975 --> 01:56:06.142
that were not looking at sort of 1991 style scenario.

01:56:08.387 --> 01:56:10.220
- Thank you very much.

01:56:10.917 --> 01:56:15.084
Again, I wanna, on behalf of the Army Deputy Chief of Staff

01:56:15.824 --> 01:56:17.825
for Intelligence G-2 office and team,

01:56:17.825 --> 01:56:20.794
I wanna thank each of our panelists again

01:56:20.794 --> 01:56:22.407
for taking time out of your busy schedules

01:56:22.407 --> 01:56:25.074
to come and share insights that

01:56:25.436 --> 01:56:29.519
I think were very valuable in looking at future,

01:56:30.539 --> 01:56:32.956
or current and future threats

01:56:33.300 --> 01:56:34.853
that the United States may face.

01:56:34.853 --> 01:56:38.464
I wanna thank the audience for coming and participating

01:56:38.464 --> 01:56:39.425
and I wanna thank you

01:56:39.425 --> 01:56:41.811
for the questions that you have submitted.

01:56:41.811 --> 01:56:43.142
I think they were really relevant

01:56:43.142 --> 01:56:44.917
and I think this was very rewarding

01:56:44.917 --> 01:56:47.212
for all the members of our audience.

01:56:47.212 --> 01:56:50.129
(crowd applauding)