Transcripts For CSPAN3 Assistant Secretary Of Defense For In

Regional power and president xi jinpings leadership. Good morning. My name is bruce jones. Im the Vice President and the director for Foreign Policy here at brookington. Its my pleasure to welcome you this morning. I see lots of old friends in the audience and several new ones and its a pleasure to invite you to our event with the assistant secretary of defense for endopacific affairs, randall shriver. Weve been fortunate to engage him on several aspects of policy research over the past decade, and while hes been serving in the Administration Since 2017, and randy, thank you for your service to our country and the Important Role you play in this administration. Randall shriver was appointed as assistant secretary of defense by President Donald Trump on january 8th, 2018. Previously having served as Deputy Assistant secretary for east asian and pacific affairs, under which portfolio he covered china, tie won, hong kong and australia, all the easy stuff. Earlier he held the role of chief of staff to the deputy secretary of state from 2001 to 2003 and also served as an active duty navel Intelligence Officer deployed in support of operation Desert Shield and desert storm. Beyond his government career, randy has been a leading thinker on a range of issues that play into the u. S. China relationship over two decades and hes been a robust voice on the future of the relationship, asking critical questions to help shape american policy in the region. And with that background, we couldnt ask for anybody better to join us today as we continue to roll out our project to global china, assessing chinas role in the world. I think we all recognize that china has he merged as a global actor impacting every region in the world. Its cast aside its strategy of hide and is now assertively seeking influence in asia and well beyond. The effort of this project is to capture a Baseline Assessment of the trajectory of that now expansive global role. It draws on our deep bench of east asia and china experts, but also pulls in the expertise of our execution strategy, regional, technology and economic scholars to try to capture the full scope of chinas activity. It will focus on several key areas of research, strategic competition, frontier technologies, chinas influence in critical regions and chinas approach to global governorance and norms. Today well have two sessions. Ryan hoss will chair a discussion with randy and then well have a panel that draws on three sets of the papers that are being launched or are still under way today. Audrey wong who contributed to an earlier set of papers looking at the future of Chinese Foreign policies and looking at the influence of chinas global influence. All of which are moderated. Before i invite randy to the stage, two further notes from me. It is of Course Campaign season, which means that think tankers are all trying to influence political campaigns as well as doing their day jobs. At brookings we close all of that. You can find their campaign affiliations, they do that off campus and on their own time, but it is an important way that we look at the impact. As wf now we have scholars advising the biden, warren and buttigieg campaigns and we have scholars on leave working in the trump administration. All of this is a long tradition that has seen scholars from the Foreign Policy program serve in the state or Defense Department of every president since nixon, both republican and democratic. Of course nixon tried to fire, so we didnt use him. Second, i would like to thank the foundations support for this project which has allowed us to do the research and communicate it to the Scholarly Community and to policymakers who will hopefully use the evidence that well provide to have a baseline approach, imperial approach. And with that, let me welcome Randy Shriver to the stage to give some opening remarks. [ applause ] thanks, bruce, and thank you for the invitation to return to brookings. And i really appreciate being part of this rollout of this impressive project. Ive been following some of the papers that have already been released, but hearing your twoyear plan to help us really both deep dive and really baseline this enormous challenge is really encouraging to know that youve got this project under way, and thanks for allowing me to speak as a part of that. So what i thought i would do is talk about our approach to china, our competition. And what i thought i would do is go into a little bit more detail on sort of the fundamentals of this policy. A lot of people sort of jump right into were in strategic competition or a competitive environment without really even talking about the fundamentals. What are we competing for . How is competition implemented and how is it different from confrontation or conflict . And so if i could take just a few moments to do a bit of a deeper dive and explain our perspective from the department of defense, i hope it would set the stage for a discussion that would follow both with ryan and with the audience. So with respect to your strategic competition, we believe that it is a major element of our Overall National Security Strategy and international strategy. We feel as though we are in competition fundamentally because we have different visions, different aspirations, different views of what regional and Global Security architecture should look like. If youre familiar with our National Security strategy, National Defense strategy and our dodendopacific strategy, youll know that we talk about a free and open endopacific. It is founded upon what we regard as enduring principles and principles that are near universal and widely shared and believe that theyre principles that benefit all countries if countries embrace them. These include respect for national sovereignty, no matter a countrys size, fair, free and reciprocal trade, rule of law and peaceful dispute resolution. We fundamentally believe each nation must be free to determine its own course and we believe that all countries can both benefit, as well as participate in preserving a rulesbased order. We observe that china under the leadership of the ccp has a different vision, and as i said, different aspirations, that is increasingly developing the tools to pursue its vision and seems willing to accept more and more friction in pursuit of that vision. We are competing with china, therefore, because we see chinas leaders have assessed that theyre in competition with us, both our ideas and our capabilities. Globally china seeks to shape a world consistent with its authoritarian model and national goals. We see that domestic governance in china is increasingly authoritarian and less respectful for human rights and digity, and that they are even beginning to ex sport some of these tools, such as facial Recognition Software and capabilities to other countries that are learning from chinas governance model. Were concerned that china has grown more willing to apply pressure against other countries and accept friction in pursuit of its vision. We observe china using influence operations to interfere in their domestic politics of other countries, undermining the integrity of elections and threatening internal stability, using economic coercion and weve seen recent examples in countries such as mongolia, austria and canada. Promoting theft of other nations technologies. Exporting the most effective tools from its domestic tool kit for surveillance and potential use for internal repression. We see them extending military presence overseas and expanding the one belt, one Road Initiative to include military ties with china and we see deploying advanced Weapons Systems to militaryized. In dod we focus on the military component of chinas growing global activities and we take china at their word. They seek to be a world class military by 2049 and they are making progress toward that goal. The department views military developments in china as seeking to erode u. S. Military advantages. Theyre working to become a preeminent power in the region while simultaneously taking plans to have overseas presence and plan to sustain operations farther from chinese shores. We see them widening the operational reach to match what its leaders consider to be the Global Nature of chinas economic and National Interest. Press reporting indicates that china has sought to expand its military base and access in the middle east, Southeast Asia. Kparmt xi squijinping himself h called for overseas interest to oversee personnel. The defense minister has also cited obar to increase cooperation with other countries. While our competition takes place on various levels, at the most fundamental level what were competing for is to sustain a position within the regional and International System which allows us to promote, support, and protect a liberal rulesbased order, whose institutions, rules and norms have fostered peace for decades. In all of this matters, because if the ccp and china were to be success nfl its authoritarian approach were to work, the world could look much different. States will have less control of their political decisions. Institutions could become less independent and less effective. Freedom of the seas and overflight in the endopacific may be challenged, the prefreed those bodies of water. We can also see a lack of respect for individual and human rights. All of this pore tends a less free and less open and more unstable endopacific region for these to manifest on a global scale. As i said, we view competition as being different than confrontation and conflict, a competitive strategy with china is not meant to lead us to conflict. For the United States, we seek to maintain competition as a stable deterrent that avoids conflict. While we meet vigorously with china, our military to military contacts are aimed at reducing risk and promoting International Norms and standards. Well cooperate with china where our interests align, while competing within a rulesbased framework where our interests diverge and we will continue to call out chinas behaviors that are counter to that rulesbased order. So briefly, dods response and, as i said, changing our mindset, we seek to regain the advantage and play to our strengths. Our goal is to deter china from pursuing and to improve our capacity to prevail at the outset of a crisis. Meeting the china challenges requires this fundamental shift in mind set of defense establishment. Were fielding increasingly sophisticated capabilities instead of expecting to dominate an opponent, our armed forces to learning to expect to be contested throughout a fight while achieving the political objectives set for them. Our strategy within the department focuses on a couple of pillars that will be key enablers for us to succeed. Namely the first two pillars of our National Defense strategy, which include building a more lethal joint force and strengthening our alliances and partnerships. The first line of effort, preparing a more lethal and resilient joint force, takes into account the scope and pace of our competitors abilities and prioritizes investment in modernizing key u. S. Capabilities across a range of domains. Our nuclear forces, space and cyber capabilities, missile defense, and looks at how our force can be resilient in having more access options, dispersal opportunities and adaptive basing. Within my office were also changing how we organize for longterm strategic competition. In june, our deputy secretary approved t approved establishment with a position inward looking, and the inward to help us carry out the Defense Strategy and implementation. The second line of effort is strengthening alliances and attracting new partners. Americas alliances and partnerships are crucial and durable asymmetric advantage that no other country can match. For countries that value a rulesbased order the strongest way we can demonstrate our support for these principles is the action we take, both individually and together, to uphold a free and open region. Our alliances and partnerships are important for a myriad of reasons. For example, there is inherent trust and confidence building that comes with combined training and enteroperability. Militaries that train together and trust one another are more adaptive. In this vein, the department is expanding collaborative planning, and training for highend combat missions in alliance, bilateral and multilater multilateral exercises. We are working to integrate our National Defense strategy with japans guidelines and were also working very intently and seriously on important emerging relationships, such as with india, singapore, indonesia and vietnam. The members and u. S. Navy forces test Maritime Security tasks during our first ever annual, what we hope now is annual, u. S. Maritime exercise last month. Were also enhancing our engagement in areas such as the Pacific Islands to preserve a free and open order. And we have enhanced our engagement in the freely associated states and beyond in that regard. Beyond the endopacific. The department is engaging partners across the globe and we have brought the china challenge into our discussions in europe and the middle east, for example. China and others recognize our advantages and are actively working to disrupt our alliances and partnerships in these key areas. But we, nonetheless, see strong interest in greater alignment on these challenges from our partners. We are also exercising with our partners in real world operations to include enforcement of the sanctions against north korea. Japan hosts the enforcement coordination cell, a demand center of eight countries to include south korea, australia, canada, new zealand, the united kingdom, japan and france, were all committed to enforcing the u. N. Security council resolutions. Were also working with our partners in the maritime spaces to include the South China Sea and are working with partners to build capacity through initiatives such as the Maritime Security initiative, which has boosted key partners abilities and helped them conduct Maritime Security and awareness operations. Were also part of a whole of government approach, which is allied and partner centric in response to chinas expanding influence and coercion and their interests in acquiring and advantaging themselves in the hightech area. We have ongoing deep conversations with our allies about protection of the Innovation Base and about the risks associated with new technology, such as 5g. To kconclude, the unfolding challenge with china is the defining challenge of our nation. Our current trajectory is largely driven by the ambitions and choices of chairman xi and the acquisition of capabilities to apply toward raelding those ambitions and the current policy choices and actions which demonstrate active pursuit of those ambitions. We remain open to changing the trajectory in our decision is inclusive and affirmative for any country, china included, who choose to support the enduring principles embedded in our vision. But we should be clear that we do understand these to be consequential times and consequential decisions must be taken. The cost associated with complacency could be extremely high. But the benefits of competing well and competing to prevail are equally high. With that, i look forward to the conversation with ryan and the questions and discussion that may follow. Thank you. [ applause ] first of all, thank you for being here with us and providing an overview of the work that is being done in your area of responsibility at the pentagon. I want to give the audience a chance to jump in, because i know there are a lot of questions that they would like to pose to you. But before i turn it over to this distinguished group, i did want to ask you a few questions building upon your comments today. First, you talked a bit about the u. S. China military to military relationship. I was wondering if you could take us into the engine room a little bit of that. How is it working and is it being insulated from ups and downs in the overall relationship, or is it a derivative of it . Well, we continue to hear from the chinese that they want the relationship to be a stabilizing force in the overall relationship. We welcome that. So we have maintained a robust level of engagement to include highlevel engagement. I think 2018 was the first year on record where there was both a visit to china and a counterpart visit in the same calendar year. So by that metric, our engagement remains robust. Our focus is on how we engage with china in this context of overall competition. So that places a premium on confidence Building Measures, on safety of operations, so things like the military maritime consultative agreement, other measures that help us to ensure a safe operating environment, while we know we operate in close proximity to one another with greater frequency, how we make sure theres no unintended incident or accident. So that continues. I plan to go to china next week, so our policy talks continue, our emphasis on confidence Building Measures and safety continues. So i see many oldtimers in the audience, were more insulated from the political ups and downs than we used to be and thats a good thing. Strategic competition was a theme of your presentation and its also one of the themes of this event today. Can you talk to us a little bit about where that competition is felt most acutely in your daytoday work, and also where you expect your successor ten years from now to field the competition most acutely . So i would say theres an inside aspect to that