Want to do our normal safety announcement, for any reason we need to evacuate it is my responsibility to give you instructions and the general rule is we will go out the way you came in and make our way to either the National Geographic which is around the corner or straight down rhode island to saint matthews. Our expectation is that half of the people will go to starbucks but thats the plan. I will be brief because i have an opportunity to share a discussion with our very distinguished japanese and retired american leaders. I want to turn it over to the doctor who is organized this forum to tell you about its intent and purpose and about what they have achieved. Thank you, mike. Thank you very much. Id like to First Express my deepest appreciation to csis and its necessary to doctor Michael Green for cohosting this event with my think tank. I was here exactly at cs i s6 months ago and events like this, exactly like this. The scene is always the same. The us and japan alliance. [inaudible] it was a preview of one year long project with dozens of japanese experts at the think tank. The objective of that project was to identify that geopolitical and Economic Risks to japan and the Usjapan Alliance and the possible ways to deal with it. Today we are here to share some of innovations and take away from the conference which we just held in washington between retired military leaders and active Duty Officers from the us and japan. This is a retreat type and positive discussions and we have this military state forums for four years and doctor Michael Green has been extremely supportive from day one. Very much he now, in an era, radical uncertainty and in particular how in reaction to these new heights of that uncertainties and we are turning our attention to tried and tested values and institutions and methods. In the Usjapan Alliance is among the tried and tested. [inaudible] we have reaffirmed that this tried and tested strategy of values and significance of the Usjapan Alliance. At the same time, we have allies that this alliance has to adapt to radically changing international particularly in asia pacific. One of those areas that we have to evolve the alliance to adapt is in the field of economics. More accurately, the geoeconomics. Increasingly that economic instruments can be utilized to achieve that geopolitical gain objectives in the asiapacific area particularly we are confronted with these challenges. Particularly with china. Whether it is china or russia or japan or the United States or europe the trade policy now is increasingly has become the center part of National Strategy and thats also reflects a represents this new trend of that geoeconomics policy and politics how the Us Japan Alliance should deal with them, its a challenging feet. It also employs some countries to modify or revise and even undercut the liberal order and they just dont like the rules, the rulebased order. Cyberspace is increasingly exploited and even manipulated, not only to undercut, compromise that free and fair trade and services but also to damage and undermine the necrotic rules, process and institutions, democracy itself, and we are now also in the prodigal technology of evolution based on ai, dictator and so on. Its implication for that National Security and resilience is enormous. Those strategic challenges that we have to deal with and. [inaudible] just cannot talk about everything that we did, cyber security, geoeconomics, in north korea and the others. We get support from other active Duty Officers and the incumbent government officials is indispensable to enrich the conversation and make the discussions at an saf irrelevant and meaningful and we are fortunate we have members of the joint chief of staff, department of defense and National Security council from the United States. Japanese side we have members from. [inaudible] and minister of defense and the Prime Minister and today we have four members of the military state and we have two cochair and mike mullen former chairman of joint chief of staff and general, former chief of staff of Defense Forces and all of you know there is a former commander and dni chief and the chairman of the board. [inaudible] and the general former chief of staff of Defense Forces. We are extremely lucky and privileged to have all of them to share to share in suggestions with all of you today. I would like again to express my gratitude, to Michael Green for chairing this and moderating this. I hope you really enjoy that discussion. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you. People have a discussion of your onstage and take it over to the audience to ask questions including i hope some of the participants in the those who are not on stage right now. If you know, in classic form, come up with the right idea at the right time and theres never been any complaints like this military forum, in part because the japanese side there has been a former chief of defense the authority that these gentlemen have in there was an opportunity to create this opportunity given the broad not only joint but policy experience of the officers coming out of the top of the Defense Forces but theres also more of a demand for this kind of dialogue. The threat environment as was just said is extremely complex and us and alliance was an alliance we managed for real contingencies particularly on that free and what we were getting ready for that now it is on the front lines. The north korean threat you heard about another Missile Launch put japan on the front lines potentially with the north korean threat. The maritime challenges in the East China Sea and South China Sea from china are also right in japan front yard so this is no longer an alliance that is primarily an alliance but its on the front lines. That has changed japanese politics and policy and Strategic Thinking and it means that we, on the us side, have really a responsibility to understand how the product looks and the threat looks up close in japan and japan is also one of our most important Global Partners and the alliance for decades we talked about as a Global Alliance that i can tell you from my Time Beginning a decade ago when we go into the g7 or meetings were more aligned with japan than any other country. Its more complex and more comprehensive and we have less relative money to spend in japan is on the front line. Need to share Strategic Investments and former chief of Defense Forces and commanders and so forth perfect to contribute to that dialogue. Most importantly, msf, military statements has established itself in washington as a legitimate interNational Security because it has a tla, three letter acronyms. Msf, as you know, plays an Important Role going forward. Let me ask questions from our panel and have them dialogue appear and then will open it up. This was an off the record discussion to have permission from the organizers to ask about the discussion. I wanted to ask each of the admirals and generals on stage what their major take away was. In general, over the four years of dialogue, particularly for this meeting, what is the conclusion, the surprise, the imperative thing we must do. I will start done on this end. Then will do reverse order for the next question back when you are called a statesman thats another word for old guy and i will take a little bit advantage of that to give perspective on us military relationship in my time. When i was a commander of the guided missile destroyer in the mid 1980s when we were operating with the Japanese Maritime selfdefense air force we were required to leave port separately to make sure we didnt mitigate with the japanese ship until work beyond helicopter range of the coast of japan because a press helicopter not would not see us together and communicating. That was the state of the alliance in the 1980s. In the mid 19 90s i was involved in some joint planning with the japanese selfDefense Forces and i was required to put on a suit, grow my hair longer, get rid of my shiny black shoes and go in a small delegation into the basement of the old Japanese DefenseAgency Building in order to do some secret conversations with counterparts in the japanese selfDefense Forces and even our greatest fear was again, leak of these operations. To be able to sit in an open forum with cameras and audience and talk about important issues of the Usjapan Alliance is such a maturing of the alliance that we seen in recent years that i dont think we should lose sight of the progress that has been made. And just in time, to, because the security situation in northeast asia and overall in the world has become much more pressing and compensated than it ever has been in the interest of our two countries are exactly aligned in terms of our vision of what we think east asia should look like from the security, economic governance, values, point of view and that is imperative enabled us to talk much more openly and honestly and freely about how we can pull our resources and we can pull our efforts in order to Work Together towards that kind of asia. What i have seen in the military statesman forum is an unprecedented level of frank discussion. The japanese are famous for their politeness. The americans are nate famous for their directive and that has resulted in the past with a lack of serious medication to talk about the differences that needed to be worked around an understanding of points of conversion that should be emphasized. I would say that in the four years of this military statesman forum we actually get down to honest appreciations of the constraints on both sides and the ambitions on both sides and working towards common solutions. In the past four years we have noticed, frankly acknowledged, areas of the virgins that us and japan share, it objectives but were not the same country and we dont live in exactly the same locations and so we dont have exactly the same priorities. There are differences in these were discussed and will talk about those later in this discussion. We dont see russia quite the same way and we in the past have had different interests with china and there are Economic Issues which are different between the United States and china and between the United States in japan and our relations with china and inevitably a Major Economic major security approaches overlap. There have been those differences but rather than being joked over or papered over they are addressed in this forum and we been able to, i think, come up with ways to go forward that gets passed back to the job that we used to have. One of our rules is to be helpful to those the job that we used to have rather than making their life more difficult and i think we been successful in that area. Let me stop there as far as the overall progress and we will discuss the specific issues later. I would comment that this is the third forum for me, two of them here, one in tokyo last year. I would reemphasize what admiral blair said in terms of justintime. Ive also experienced the same evolution that admiral blair has over time in terms of our overall relationship, always allies but certainly constrained and what i really admire about what Prime Minister is doing now is looking for a way to have japan represented in the 21st century security environment. And to move in that direction and then to empower his retire Senior Officers to have some of that discussion and very specifically that he and i were in the same job at the same time and in particular during the fukushima tamagotchi disaster and it was validation, i think, of the alliance, the way that we were able to support instantly support, not just the selfDefense Forces but the people of japan. By virtue of that experience, the friendship and respect that we develop for each other this forum came along a couple years later. It was very easy to commit to it. Admiral blair talked about the issues we have discussed in broad detail and im sure will come to some of those but ive also watched the discussion mature. Its very similar to the relationship. One of the individuals in the audience today is general sharp and he was the commander of the forces in south korea when i was chairman, as well. Starting last year in the end of this year weve worked to try to create some version of a trilateral with rock views as well as japan and the United States and this year we had a former chief of defense there, a general, treated greatly. From my perspective when i try to understand the problem i really do want to try to listen to the prospective of i am with, what are your concerns, how do you hear the defense and this is a form that has afforded us a great opportunity to listen to our good friends so that we can understand the challenges and try to move forward together. Its been more robust this year than last year and the year before that. I think it will continue to be and what most of us, in his room, would understand or believe that its an extra ordinary time right now of uncertainty, geopolitical uncertainty, deal Economic Uncertainty and in that uncertainty one of my beliefs is that you need good friends and we have one in japan. Thank you. The generals are going to speak japanese so you might want to get your ear for. I dont know which channel is english, channel two is english. Three is russian. [laughter] let me turn to the general and parenthetically add. The other interesting thing about the forum is it comes or began at a time when japan selfDefense Forces in Public Opinion polls in japan emerged as the most trusted institution in japan, for japan is remarkable. The role of senior military statesman and in japan the idea of military statesman is very new. They have a role in helping frame the debate is new and timely. [speaking in native tongue] translator thank you for that introduction. We are switching from english to japanese and this is not a weakness from japanese but not learning english but we do have a very strong alliance. I want to say that. We concluded our forum and we been attending this from the first forum between the United States and japan. We rotate the location for tokyo in washington dc and that means last year we hosted one forum in tokyo. This is talked about earlier so when i was in active duty we had a similar job in similar timing and since then we have been working on opinion exchanges and also on trans analysis, so with him i expand that information but now we are coming here as representative so we had communication but we expand there was a gap and something we need to address and and first forum we are developing good communication and information sharing and we are becoming good in our communication. For our fourth forum i want to say my personal impressions. First off, in the South China Sea and various Security Issues are there but our topic was about deal economic and what kind of economy applications are there to Security Issues and doctor green talks about north korea and there are not only military options let me back up here. There are certain things that we would want from china for the relationship and russia and also the including sanctions and those are perspective that we talked about and also one belt, one Road Initiative in china so when we look at that initiative the indian ocean is very much integrated here and also the role for that ocean. When we look at the indian ocean in terms of. [inaudible] there is a economy implication to security and that is something that i learned from express that we had. Overall we had really good communication. Thank you. [speaking in native tongue] translator to that same question, i think this is our fourth forum and we have went through many of the topics already and these panelists are opinionated so thats why i dont have much to talk about anymore. I think that my participation is about 3. 5 times not fully four and not fully three and my participation was in the first forum in tokyo but i was in active duty so i could not fully attend to that first one so thats what i meant by half of the time participation. After that, i really am appreciative of this forum. Since i was a selfdefense for force, i am from. [inaudible] i had a cheap joined the staff and looking back to those times i spoke to my counterparts in the United States but when i was in active duty i felt that there was a gap in communication between the japan side in the United States. When i felt that i reached out to walter green. When you came to japan i was able to talk to you to gain more perspective and also talk to you about the need for more active discussion. [inaudible] there are differences in the two countries but this is the fourthround. We have been discussing a