Asia pacific area. So weve had those treaty obligations for a long time. A long, long time. Secretary cohen . If i can followup on secretary browns answer. I think we have to be concerned what china thinks. We are up to, and also be concerned about what the Asian Countries believe is necessary. As seen, china is number one trading partner replacing the United States, were number four. To say the u. S. Is trying to contain china would be to sea all of the members of asean are trying to contain china, which is not the case. They want to continue to do business with china. But they dont want to be dominated, as secretary brown said. And that is a reason why this strategy on the part of the United States makes sense in the sense of how its being pursued. To say we have 2500 marines in darwin, australia, is not a containment strategy against china although the marines think so. To say were going to rotate four combat ships through singapore is not exactly a change in the balance of power. As you look at steps that have been taken, theyve been pretty modest. But theyve also sent a signal to say we understand chinas power is rising, its inevitable. This is something talked about years ago saying the fourth reform would be that of the military. Its inevitable. Its going to get bigger and stronger. What the United States is saying with our allies in the seven treaty relationships we have, yes, chinas going to be a power in the region and onbut we want that power to be exercised consistent with international norms. So these steps that are taken shouldnt be seen by the chinese, notwithstanding their feelings, this is a containment strategy. But rather saying, use your power in a way that benefits all of us. Use the power in a way that does contain the prosperity thats been generated. And when i first was in the pentagon i had to go to their National Academy of sciences and speak to young officers coming up, there were papers saying time for asia to take care of asian ands for the United States to get out. I asked the question, do you really want that to take place . If we were to get out now, who replaces us . Is it going to be you . Is it going to be japan . Is it going to be india . Who replaces a stabilizing force we have been and will continue to be. We have to persuade them were taking modest steps to make sure their power is fully integrated into the International Regime and not seen as the United States trying to in any way to prodescribe, constrict, inhibit their growth, which is inev vitt ibl. Bill perry, anything no add. I would associate with with what my cloegs have said on the issue. We have had almost 50 years of peace in the Asia Pacific Region which is historically unusual. And that 50 year of peace, two comments. First of all a key contributor the American Military force in the region. Secondly, that 50 years of police has more than anything, china to have economic growth. So in a way which may seem insane to the chinese, the American Military presence in the region has been indispensable to them achieving this remarkable economic growth. Some chinese sense that. Few chinese are willing to say out loud their economic wellbeing has been a direct function of americas military presence. I think you can say it sort of pox americana in the Asia Pacific Region in the last few decades. Fair to conclude from the comments you think the existing architecture with the five alliances in asia, is something which should survive for the next few decades . Chinese will not like it. Exactly. That was going to be my point. And i think they believe that were pushing the envelope. I believe, during each of you opined, for instance, when you were secretary on article v of the mutual defense treaty with japan, applying to japans administration of the islands and secretarys defense owe fined and the chinese say we never hat a president who opined on that. Now the president goes to japan and opines on that. When you were secretaries, the philippines and the vietnamese built stuff on islands in the South China Sea. We department make a big deal of it. But now that the chinese are doing it, its a big deal. So one can understand where kind of their views are coming from. Well, from their point of view, thats a reasonable argument to make. On the other hand, what they are doing is completely disproportionate to what the others did. The others didnt build islands and then put elaborate construction on them and start flying airplanes into them. The chinese would say, well, thats them. Were different and bigger and we were always in charge there. Theres also the point of the world order that the United States helped build and led during that tenyear period after world war ii. And that world order was all about coalitions of common interests that established International Law. And what the chinese are doing here is they refuse to acknowledge International Law to resolve these disputes International Bodies that were set up to do this. And thats another dimension of this. That i think very important because if we see a world that now starts to unravel International Law, then where are we going . The world has done pretty well the last 70 years, no world war iii, no nuclear exchange, conflict, problem, disasters, yes. But when you consider that over a 30year period we had the two most horrible wars in the world and weve had nothing like that because of this world order, its impmic it needs to be adjusted and adapt to reals of a rising china and all of 0 the other issues. But when you start disregarding International Law, then were running into some real difficulty. I think, in my opinion, the real issue here is much as anything else on these disputes and east and South China Seas. Of course the chinese can say, well, we werent part of the making of those laws. And i think thats a reasonable point to which we could invite them to help us and the rest of the world bring them up to date. Im not clear that thats happened. Well, that, too. But i also would say, harold, the chinese took a seat on the u. N. Security council a long, long time ago and had did have a role in helping build a world order that was much to their benefit which all three of you have noted, and bill perry talked about it, as to our u. S. Military has done an awful lot to help the chinese in this regard. Speaking of disregarding International Law, let talk about one of the headlines in the last few days, which is north korea. If each of you could talk about your experience with north korea during your tenure, what lessons you learned and what you would tell ash carter about what we or i guess president obama its not fair to pin that on ash what we should be doing by north korea today. I think bill perry should answer that question first. I think, bill, you won on this one. Well we had in fi first year as secretary, we came very close to a military conflict with north korea. Now that was happily resolved without conflict by the agreed framework. But the agreed framework, which by way the North Koreans agreed to freeze their activities at the Nuclear Facility and did freeze them. But that agreed framework was terminated early in the administration of george w. Bush. And theres been nothing constraining, no such constraints on the nor koreans since then. I think it was a mistake to give that up, but thats history now. We have two, three administrations now have said they would not tolerate Nuclear Weapons in north korea but proceeded to tolerate them. And we are now faced with a societal, a modest, Dangerous Nuclear arsenal in north korea. I think the mechanism being used to deal with this is call the sixparty talks which, in my judgment, again, spectacularly unsuccessful. Not based on any subject on what theyre doing, just based on the object of judgment of what the results have been. So the situations very dangerous, i think in north korea today not only build the nuclear arsenal, making it bigger and stronger and farther reaching, making very aggressive comments about how they might use this nuclear arsenal. I think its urgent we get a serious, diplomatic effort trying to deal with that problem. Sixparty talks might be right mechanism for doing this but have not had the right strategy for dealing with it i think primarily the United States and china have had a different assessment of the threat and therefore never able to agree on what to do about the threat. Perhaps when this latest development in north korea, the chinese may now come to believe as we do this is a serious problem and needs serious action. I think the next step in the United States would be to try to formulate a program on which we can base new negotiations and then try to get agreement with the chinese other members of the sixparty talks to get agreement on that on those goals and that strategy and proceed forward. The best basis i can think of for negotiating strategy with north korea now is what the professor, former director has called the three nos, which means no new Nuclear Weapons, no more Nuclear Weapons, and no transfer of Nuclear Weapons. Thats not the same as what the goal has been in the past, to get north korea to give up their Nuclear Weapon, which is a pretty barrier to try to get over. If we could agree on that as a negotiating strategy, we might be able to make some progress with north korea, at least containing the danger we face now. If we succeed in that we might go farther and look at negotiation to actually eliminate them. But i see a history of 15 years, i guess, complete failure in the socalled sixparty negotiations. Its not because we dont have the right people at the table. They are the right people but we dont have the right strategy for trying to deal with north korea. We need to put serious attention on this problem because its a danger to our proliferation problem, danger to the asia prafk region and a danger really of Nuclear Conflict or Nuclear Terrorist group ewing Nuclear Weapons. All of these dangers aring e ag by the developments in north korea going on today. By the way, i think the latest test, in my judgment, is a test to make the Nuclear Weapon they have smaller, more compact so they can fit on the warhead of a missile. Whether i, myself, im highly skeptical, it was a hydrogen test. Even if it was not, that was not the main danger. The main danger is theyre making it them compact enough to get on a warhead. Dr. Brown . I think bill perrys proposal is certainly a reasonable one, as an objective for us. The question is, what do the North Koreans get in exchange . And that will be a very difficult negotiation. Moreover, the chinese, i think, will always be very reluctant to put a lot of pressure on north korea because if north korea collapses, for whatever reason, the prospect of an extension northward of south korean influence and prospectively u. S. Influence will worry the chinese. So its a good proposal. But its not clear what the quid pro quo will be. Secretary cohen . I agree with both secretary perry and brown. But secretary brown raises a question good, what do the North Koreans get out of this . Well, what have they been getting out of this . Theyve been engaged in nuclear extortion, blackmail. Feed us, fuel us before we strike again or explode again. So one thing theyve been getting is more food and fuel, certainly from the chinese, perhaps others. So i would hope that the chinese would look at what they are subsidizing and find ways to moderate that or modulate it in a way that sends a very strong signal that theyre unhappy with what north koreas doing. I think thats something we could do. Or they could do. Secondly, we should pursue, as bill perry has said, a multilateral, whether sixparty talks or another forum, and try and get a multilateral agreement on what needs to be done long term in dealing with the North Koreans. But we also should be prepared to act unilaterally. I think we should take action on the financial side putting a much tougher squeeze on some of the north korean elite and reimpose some of the sanctions that were imposed previously. I would hope also that we would consider and have the South Koreans and japanese consider having on their territory. This should be a concern, i know a concern to the chinese, but nonetheless this is something that is important to us and to our allies to have a defensive capability that would be able to at least knock down that kind of Missile Technology that theyre trying to develop. And finally, i think that we should go back and insist that the inspection regime because what bill perrys been talking about is danger of proliferation, the danger of nuclear proliferation. North koreas one of the principal sources of the proliferation, working at times with pakistan, working at tiles with iran, and as iran now is in the agreement with the United States and others, theres still a danger that north korea could still be a source of some testing that otherwise would take place in iran or elsewhere. So i think we should look at ways of saying, no, no, shipments coming out of north korea that are suspect, going to various ports, we should insist our allies open those cargos for inspection and not make it optional but make it mandatory, make it mandatory. And those that dont would face sanctions from the United States. I tonigdont think we can affor have the North Koreans trading in Nuclear Materials. Not only Nuclear Weapons about you Nuclear Materials it self. There are groups desperate to get hands on a Nuclear Device or nuclear experiences and explode it in an american city. Thats what secretary perry has worried about, written about. He writes about it if a factual way. I write about it in fiction. But were both concerned that is something that would be a terrible, terrible thing in the world, no matter where it takes place, that a nuclear bomb is exploded in an urban area causes hundreds of thousands of deaths. It something we need to take action. We havent been taking action. Do it multilaterally, unilaterally as well. Secretary hagel . I would add a couple. I think my three predecessors covered most of the issues. But it was just a few days after i took office, in february of 2013, that the North Koreans launched longrange missiles over the top of japan and other countries in the pacific. That obviously precipitated some new attention. And that within days had me out in a press Conference Announcing that we were going to build out another eight groundbased intercepters in alaska down the coast. Now that alone was not going to deal with the problem. But i say that because, just a reminder, that wasnt very long ago. And then with the latest incident that bill perry mentioned, we all know is another reminder. But just a couple of other points i would make. Harolds point about the chinese, ive always believed that there will be ultimately very little progress made on north korea without the chinese. And it wont be because the chinese are supporting our policies or any benevolent reason, but it will be in their selfinterests. Its very clear, as harold pointed out that when you look at chinese situation, the last thing they need is millions and millions of north core re. S fleeing across the border. More to the point the South Koreans are hair triggered on this. And as joe and sam and others in this audience who know who have been to korea and had responsibilities, working with the South Koreans on this to keep them from doing something here that you cant recalibrate, its too late, that could start something, is a big deal. The third part of this, i think, and just another point, i have heard from third party sources, credible sources in asia pacific when i was there, when ive been here in the United States and also from various chinese leaders, off the record, that this north korean problem continues to perpetuate American Military presence in the region, even more and more, and we keep using it, the United States, as an excuse to keep more of our military, to protect our allies and alliances and treaty obligations with japan and south korea. So the interesting part of that is, its if they say that, if the chinese believe that or some of them, then why wouldnt that incentivize them to some extent, plus their own selfinterest to resolve some of this . I think its going to be a continued manage this process. But i do think well get a breakthrough and its for the reasons in i think, again, my three predecessors noted, working internationally, whether its sixparty talks or another forum, working with the chinese, as close as we can, i think with the japanese are doing as they are changing some of their Constitutional Responsibilities for national security, the South Koreans