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Friends & Fellow Citizens
#66: The Rough Seas of Maritime Security in the Indo-Pacific feat. Jon Kaskin and Rear Adm. (ret.) Sinclair Harris
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Since its founding, the U.S. has been a country built on a long maritime history. But in recent decades, to what extent have competitors and adversaries undercut America's maritime strengths and strategy? Mr. Jon Kaskin and U.S. Navy Rear Adm. (ret.) Sinclair Harris discuss more on the state of U.S. maritime and the national security and economic challenges that arise from China and the Indo-Pacific.
Click HERE to learn more about the Navy League, and check out some of their reports below:
China's Use of Maritime for Global Power Demands a Strong Commitment to American Maritime
Legislative Path to a New Maritime Transportation Strategy
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IMPORTANT NOTE/DISCLAIMER: All views expressed by the host are presented in his personal capacity and do not officially represent the views of any affiliated organizations. All views presented by guests are solely those of the interviewees themselves and may or may not represent the views of their affiliated organizations, the host, Friends & Fellow Citizens, and/or The George Washington Institute.
Patriotism. Faith. National unity. Education. Physical responsibility. The values that define America. Fascinating stories and talks from America-loving patriots dedicated to preserving freedom, opportunity, and justice. Welcome to the Friends and Fellow Citizens Podcast. Hello, everybody, and welcome to episode 66 of Friends and Fellow Citizens. I'm your host, Sherman Talowski. Thank you so much for joining me this week. I hope you are all excited for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States. Hope you're all looking forward to some delicious food and spending valuable time with your family. As a quick reminder, make sure to subscribe to our podcast. You can subscribe on your favorite podcast app, or you can subscribe to our email list, or I highly recommend that you subscribe to our email list so that you can get the latest notifications when episodes come out or any special news and announcements that will come far away. Make sure to do that when you're finished listening to this episode or this week's episode and episode 68, which is two weeks from the release of this one, will be parts one and two respectively. So make sure you stay subscribed and look out for episode 68, which is a continuation of this week's conversation. Now I'd like to introduce our two guests for today. The first is Rear Admiral Sinclair Harris. Sinclair Harris serves as LMI's Director of Business Development for the Department of the Navy. He retired as a Rear Admiral after a 34-year career in the U.S. Navy. He has commanded at every level from ship commanding officer to fleet commander. His last assignment was as the Vice Director for Operations to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffour. Publicly serves as president of the National Naval Officers Association, National Vice President of the Navy League of the United States, and on several other nonprofit boards supporting sea services and their families. Our second guest today is Mr. John Kaskin. Mr. Kaskin was a member of the Senior Executive Service for over 25 years. He retired with 37 years of government service as the duties of the Director of Strategic Mobility and Combat Logistics Division for the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations in June 2012. He is now a part-time senior fellow at the Center for Naval Analysis. He was recently appointed as a member of the National Academy's Marine Board, and he was awarded the SCS Presidential Rank of Meritorious Executive in 1999 and 2009 and Navy Distinguished Civilian Service Medal in 2012. I am very excited now to welcome our two guests, Mr. John Kaskin and Rear Admiral Sinclair Harris. Thank you both so much for coming on to Friends and Fellow Citizens today.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for inviting us.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. All right, well, let's kick off with a bit about the overview of some of the national security issues we're dealing with in the maritime industry. Really just get a sense of what we're looking at here with the big picture. John, I'm going to start with you on this question here. What are some of the top issues that you think are particularly relevant when it comes to this bridge between the U.S. maritime industry and our national security focus at this time?
SPEAKER_02Well, I think the primary concern that I have had uh for the last uh couple decades is that we don't have enough uh ships in the U.S. merchant marine to provide the strategic sealift capability and capacity that we would need to support uh a major uh contingency uh in the Pacific, uh particularly in a contested environment. Uh and you know, we basically are back to a situation where we have a peer competitor in a contested environment, and we have nowhere near the capability and capacity that we had at the end of the Cold War. So lack of U.S. shipping, uh owned shipping and uh U.S. flag shipping, uh as well as the sealift capacity that we would require from it, as well as the government fleets, is way inadequate to meet the requirement. The second concern I have is our shipbuilding industrial base. Um again, uh it's less than a quarter uh of what it was at the end of the Cold War. Even uh 20 years ago, we had 20 major shipyards, we're down to eight. And we don't even have the repair capability uh to handle battle damage repair uh that was would be required uh because of loss of all of that shipbuilding capacity. And the third is uh merchant mariners. Uh because of the decline of the US uh uh shipping industry to 180 ocean-going ships or insufficient mariners, do you crew up the reserve fleets uh in a protracted war, which is what we would expect to have to uh happen uh if we went into conflict uh uh in the Pacific. So those are our three major concerns I I have uh on what is no longer available in the US uh maritime industry to meet our national security requirements.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. I'm gonna turn to Sinclair now to ask if there's anything you'd like to add to those three points that John had just made, uh, and or any other issues that you think are also relevant to our conversation today and really the national security landscape that we're facing nowadays.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you, uh Sherman. And uh I completely agree with uh John on the areas that he emphasized. I would capture that uh all of them under one phrase: a maritime nation. America has lost its mojo and the spirit of being a maritime nation. And we are, and we can see it every day. We look on the news and see the reports of the uh ships that are stacked up outside of LA Harbor and you know, threats of no Christmas this year, because Santa's uh reindeer actually rides on the waves more than anything else. Uh, and it and our lack of uh true emphasis as a maritime nation in getting people to serve, either as longshoremen or merchant mariners, having the number of ships needed to uh prevail against uh the threats of others in times of our economy and and allowing our supply chain to be so doggone fragile. We have to uh remember that we are a maritime nation and we've got to work towards it. It's not something that is a given. The other thing I would bring up, and I would give kudos to our new Secretary of the Navy, uh the Honorable Carlos Del Toro, and he captures his concerns as the four C's. And for those of you who've not uh identified the four C's or read any of the things he's put out, it's all about China, it's all about culture, it's all about climate change, and it's all about COVID. And each one of those has been uh certainly uh had a deleterious effect on our national security and certainly have hurt ourselves as a maritime nation.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. And uh Sinclair, I'm gonna stick with you uh for the next question here. Um could you emphasis, emphasize a little bit more about that second part that you mentioned, about some of those challenges? Um, particularly, I guess we'll start with COVID first, um, since that's still going on as the pandemic. Uh, obviously, the the scale of that it changes a lot, and certainly I think we're in a much better position, obviously, than we were a year ago or certainly 18 months ago when the pandemic started. Uh, just give us a bit more detail about how COVID has affected some of those uh challenges of, I guess, maybe recognizing or meeting up to the challenge of making the U.S. as that maritime nation as we should be going near the future.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think COVID um has touched every single aspect of American life and and life around the world. I think it has contributed to the uh a shortage that we had we had a shortage going into COVID of uh merchant mariners and uh stevadors, and I think it's made it worse uh because quite frankly, a lot of them were older and and and disproportionately affected by uh COVID. Uh it has certainly made the screening that has to happen uh to operate safely more difficult. Uh and in terms of operations of our ships at sea, uh, I would tell you that I I believe that uh the fleet has done an incredible job of uh sustaining itself through uh the COVID crisis, but at great costs. And I think you can see that with the aircraft carrier uh uh issue that happened last year that took up so much of the news. So I think it's touched every single aspect of uh life across our country and in the military and certainly in the Navy.
SPEAKER_00And John, I'm gonna turn to you now, and I want to touch upon the first point that you made, which is about the lack of ships, and maybe tying that a bit into that second point about industrial capacity. Um, but what can you tell us about how we got to this point of me of seeing these two challenges? The lack of ships, uh, the limited industrial capacity. We've often heard a lot about uh the changing economy over the last few decades with regards to manufacturing. Um, you look at various parts of the United States. I'm applying to a school for a PhD program in the Norfolk area, and I know that you know that area is a big shipbuilding area. What can you tell us about how we got to the point where we are today when it comes to the lack of ships as well as the limited shipping industrial capacity we're in now?
SPEAKER_02Well, I think um it was it's a reasonable outcome of what we thought would be the case after the end of the Cold War. We thought at the end of the Cold War we would no longer need to worry about uh a major computer competitor uh that would be contesting us. Uh we were hoping that uh China was going to, as through its entry in the World Trade Organization, uh would become a friendly trader in economic competition on the basis of the uh of the world order of rules that uh we had established uh uh under the OECD uh as well as uh the United Nations. And so that we were hoping that uh with uh China's growth uh its uh government uh would uh become uh more amenable to a uh uh a uh I can't say democratic, but more on uh agreeing with uh the values uh that uh the rest of the world uh had endorsed. Uh and we thought through globalization that uh we would uh take advantage of uh a comparative advantage, uh that we would uh if countries could uh produce goods and services at less cost than we would could, uh then we would take advantage of it and we would be able to trade uh areas where we had comparative advantage. And that we really didn't feel that there were any national security justification for maintaining the capabilities that we had developed uh during the Cold War. I mean, we got we sold off our strategic stockpiles so that we wouldn't, we didn't think that we really needed to maintain that uh that's those critical materials uh in that we would need in time of a mobilization if we were going to fight the Soviet Union. Um and we thought shipping we could get it at the lowest cost, and we thought uh getting ships overseas uh at the lowest cost, uh, and using services from other countries was fine because we didn't see envision that there was going to be uh the future that we are now currently experiencing. So, I mean, we and with respect to the military, we went to uh becoming as efficient as possible in eliminating any resiliency and redundancy uh in the in the capacity and capability that we had because we didn't really expect that we would need it. So, I mean, it was an understandable outcome, uh, I think, um, and that we basically thought we didn't need an insurance policy or more than what we had were investing in because we didn't perceive uh that we were going to come into the situation where we may have to have uh the call upon our insurance.
SPEAKER_00And just to follow up on that, John, in your personal experience, you've obviously spoken to a lot of people from the shipping industry. What have they been saying about the change in the world economy and how that's affected workers, affected customers, affected shipping? I mean, we'll touch upon a little bit about the the backlog that we see uh right near the port of Long Beach and Port of Los Angeles. Uh how have these experiences uh shaped the urgency for the issues that are which you've raised so far?
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, with respect to the U.S. uh flag merchant marine, uh it we basically outsourced uh most of it. The number of uh U.S. owned companies that up that uh uh that actually own ships uh without having a parent subsidiary are almost uh down to none except for the ships in the Jones Act. Uh again, it was uh if you're uh an international ship operator, uh you will, if necessary, have ships under U.S. flag if you're given a subsidy to operate them under U.S. flag. But otherwise, you're going to get the cheapest labor you can find worldwide. You'll get the ships built at the cheapest place you can worldwide, uh, and you'll operate them as uh at least cost uh that you can uh under uh flags uh of uh international shipping registries uh that are at low cost, because uh you're competing with other shipping companies that are doing the same. And so uh, you know, from their perspective, uh it was a race to the bottom. Uh, and in many cases, a lot of these ship operators uh were making marginal uh uh returns on their uh investment, in most cases, not covering their cost of capital. That's how the shipping industry operates uh in a global competitive environment uh with no uh restrictions. Uh and uh but however, when you do do that, uh you eliminate uh uh any resiliency again, just the same as I was mentioning with the military, military. You get rid of your resiliency in your uh in your redundancy. And so when the system gets perturbed like we have experienced uh recently, uh it creates uh a disaster effect because there's no uh slack in the system to be able to accommodate those perturbances. So I think what you'll see uh or what we're experiencing now uh is exactly what people would forecast if you let the system uh proceed on its own without uh either international or uh government interferences.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. I'm gonna turn to Sinclair now. I want to ask a bit more a bit more about kind of a similar question to why I asked John a little bit earlier, which is uh this whole idea of the changing, I guess not just the changing economy in the world, but also the changing security environment. John had mentioned earlier about the kind of the end of the Cold War up to this point. What can you tell us about the change in the uh maritime security landscape with regards to some of the points that John has made, um, and particularly I guess in reference to the U.S. Navy and really how the US government has approached this idea of what U.S. maritime strategy should look like after the end of the Cold War.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think it's been pretty well documented that we took um a great pause uh following uh World War II and the Cold War, uh where you know we weren't building up a 600-ship navy. That's when I joined the Navy, you know, to make sure that we were able to win against uh the threat from uh Soviet Russia. Um after the Cold War ended, uh we took a pause, we took a break, we took our knee, uh uh our took a knee, if you will, as a country in terms of maritime operations, what we're gonna invest. We had a number of different strategies that we went through. 9-11 happened, and of course the focus of 9-11 was about uh going after terrorists, and and then we get into a nation building. I'm not gonna even go into there, but that's what happened. Um, all these things uh took away from our the importance and the emphasis we had on maritime operations and and the like. And and we didn't really see any competitors out there. All the while, what's happening? China is saying, well, it's our time again. We're gonna build up from here. Uh we we were we were important before, we're gonna be important again on the world stage, and the one of the best ways to do that, do that is at sea, and with very few restrictions and a government that significantly uh uh pays for uh the infrastructure and for the structure and the platforms uh to build up a Navy quickly, they've been getting after it while we've been you know just taking a knee. Uh I think that's what happened in simple terms.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and about the shipbuilding capacity, because I know that you've also worked in this area too, or you focus on particular areas of where we can build that capacity, uh, what can you tell us about the challenges that face America when it comes to this shipbuilding capacity? You mentioned earlier about how China has been working on this. What have we been doing, or what have we not been doing, really, is kind of the better question. Um and how uh how is that kind of having an effect on our national security posture in the Indo-Pacific and around the world?
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm I'm going to start, but I'm gonna ask John to weigh in here because we talked about this uh with our colleagues many, many times. So when I um joined the Navy, we had many yards that were building ships. Today I think we may have five that are really building capital ships that can support a Navy. That means that the capacity to build and maintain a Navy, which is in our constitution, uh, has been diminished. Um same time, you know, the number of sailors and the merchant mariners has gone down as well. But uh we we we stopped building uh enough ships so that the industry had a clear and unambiguous uh demand signal uh on the ships that would be needed to maintain the fleet. Uh this has caused uh us to lose capacity because companies are not in business just you know out of their own, you know, you know, niceness or ability to be patrons. They're all patrons, but they have to bottom line that they've got. To adjust to and they're my that requires some pipeline, some demands to know that they can invest and continue to invest to modernize, uh, which we haven't done. One of the big problems we see right now is in our public yards. Uh, if you Google the letters S-I-O-P, PSYOP, you will get enough videos and articles that will make your eyes water about what's happened to our four public yards that do the work of our on our nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, as one example. But we've had we've had a problem with the uh commercial ones as well because they need to have a consistent demand for that modernization and building to go along, and we have done it.
SPEAKER_02The Mercharine Act of 1936, which was uh passed uh to get us prepared for World War II, specifically focused on programs that would help uh maintain the shipbuilding industrial base. And one primary program was called the construction differential subsidy program, which would pay up to 50% of the cost of a ship built in the United States uh that would operate in foreign trade. Um when the Reagan administration came into office, uh that program was disestablished. And it was producing, uh I think uh in a vicinity of 10, at least 10 ships a year that were being built for that program. And the thought was under the Reagan administration that the buildup of the Navy from to the 600-ship navy would keep the shipbuilding industrial base busy uh and that uh uh there wouldn't be any real shrinkage of the industrial base. However, um that's not what happened. Uh the after the end of the the Cold War, we shrank the the US uh Navy to half of what uh the Reagan buildup was, and the commercial shipbuilding industry um was all dependent on the on the Jones Act, which we'll talk about later, um also ran out of work because it had been recapitalized. So there were several years where there was no uh work going into the commercial shipyards, and those commercial shipyards are also the ones that can build naval auxiliaries, amphibious ships, uh, and the other uh smaller combatants, uh less complex ships. And so there was uh a vacuum there uh that we weren't able to build up because at that point in time uh Korea became uh involved in shipbuilding uh and later on uh China, and they were starting to produce ships at such a low cost that there was no way for U.S. shipyards uh to compete uh under on a price basis. Uh so uh when we lost the capacity with through the loss of subsidies and then the reduction of government work uh as well as commercial work, that capacity was lost because uh there was no program there to to maintain it. And um, that's what has resulted. And so there's we're still in that same situation. Uh there are no government programs uh to re uh to increase input uh into those uh shipyards to uh maintain them even the ones that we have today. Uh some of them are right on the cusp of going out of business because there's a lack of work uh of the types that would be necessary to sustain them. Uh and there are you know there are options uh to be programmatically that uh could be put into play to reverse that situation, but they're gonna cost money. I mean, what much of the capability and capacity that we had in the past, like the strategic stockpiles, all were uh were national security investments. And that's what would be required in the future if we wanted to buy the buy back that capability and capacity.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. We'll absolutely touch upon the Jones Act a little bit later, uh, because that's such an important piece of legislation uh that still has so much value, so much weight today. Uh but John, I want to ask you something about the current economic environment and how the challenges of nowadays is we're moving through the pandemic, and we've got labor shortages, we have uh supply chain problems. We obviously touched upon the visuals of the all those ships backed up at uh the port of LA and Long Beach, not just that poor too, it's it's really all across. We're seeing also, even if you look uh on the ground, we're not even having enough truck drivers to be able to haul these containers. My question to you is what sort of challenges is the current economic conditions putting on the shipping industry, and how does that hinder some of the issues that you raised about our shipping shipbuilding capacity uh through for not just really through COVID uh but through the many, many decades uh up until at this point?
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, the the current situation uh we are experiencing now is uh is uh in a national problem. It's not uh a US um shipping problem because uh U.S. shipping uh makes up less than uh, well, around 1% of the international trade that comes in and out of the United States. Uh and if those ships are carrying military cargoes, they'll get priority for load and offload at uh at the ports. Um but there's so few of them, uh it really is uh minuscule uh in comparison. So I mean we didn't have a lot of shipping out there in any case. So um so the impact uh you know the reason that we're having the problem now is is multi uh faceted. One is uh the ports are actually uh moving more cargo than they had last year. Um so it isn't that they don't have enough uh capability and capacity to move the cargo, it's just as you mentioned, after they get it uh into the port, uh moving it inland uh and releasing the chassis and containers. I mean, it's a very complex situation that the administration is attempting to address. But it isn't the the U.S. shipping industry uh that is really the issue. Uh the international shipping industry, uh, as I mentioned before, uh established a pipeline that was operating with a very little slack. I mean, uh because of the elimination of uh price fixing and conferences, the number of carriers uh had reduced over the last 20 years to a fraction of what there were uh before. And without uh with fewer uh lines and they're in and they're in uh conferences, uh there's just not enough excess capacity to be able to again take uh uh to accommodate the perturbances. And one of the perturbances is the uh the increase in domestic consumption. Uh, because of COVID, uh which is uh hopefully a temporary factor, a lot less money was being used in services and uh much more in in goods. And so there's I just saw something today that said uh China had uh the greatest surplus they've ever had in the last month. So I mean they're produ they're even with all the impact that they're having overseas, they're still producing more goods that are shipping across the Pacific uh than we had in previous years. So, you know, there's plenty of shipping there. The problem is that a lot of that capacity is being lost because it's is sitting there outside these ports, and when ships don't move, uh they're not productive. And so you've lost 10 or 20 percent of your capacity because the ships are waiting two weeks to offload off of LA Long Beach. It only takes two weeks to go across the Pacific. So you can see what all of this uh has overall in the shipping industry. So I I guess I am not uh I'm not uh in I'm indirectly saying that uh that uh the per the issues that we're s uh dealing with now uh are a cascade. It's probably the perfect storm uh of what you could have uh of all happening at once, and the system was never, never developed, uh had the uh the excess capacity to to accommodate that. It was designed not to have it.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. I'm just imagining some of the some of that fresh food coming from uh other parts of the world just going bad on on these containers. Must be, I mean, just as an example of how you know when you when you are waiting for so long, running against the clock all the time, and now you're always behind, and now the clock is always just always ahead of you. Um so Claire, I want to turn to you now, and this is actually a good transition, I think, to our second part of this episode here, and really I want to look more at our the challenges that we're facing when it comes to putting together a solid maritime strategy when it comes to the U.S. Navy's ability to uh counter and compete uh with China, especially in the Indo-Pacific. I'll just point out one story here and I'll turn to you. I read a story from the Associated Press today about the the satellite images that show that China has essentially been building these mock-ups of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier destroyer in uh a desert. And some people are speculating that that is some kind of indication that the Chinese really do mean what they say when they say that they want to be the predominant power in the Indo-Pacific and ultimately the world. Or what can you share with us about the China's military buildup and what really has changed so much or in terms of their posture in the Indo-Pacific? And what I guess we if I may ask also for what have we been lacking in terms of a solid enough focus, or I should say refocus, since you mentioned that pause earlier, for uh that focus that we should be having in the Indo-Pacific to counter these challenges as China's military gets built up?
SPEAKER_01Well, this uh subject could take us days to unpack in any way that that would make a lot of sense. And I would I would ask that uh anybody who's really interested in understanding the answer uh take a chance, uh take a time to read uh some of the articles that have been put out by uh organizations such as the Center for Naval Analysis or the Naval War College, uh, where you've got really really great thinkers and writers who have talked about this agnostic. Look, the bottom line is this uh the Chinese have got no restrictions on the buildup of their fleet, and and they see uh the uh the operations of the United States fleet going through the international waters uh as a violation of their territorial waters, which is incorrect. Uh but that's how they see the world. And and they see the United States working with our partners, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the like as impinging on their territorial freedoms, uh, which again is incorrect. Uh, but that's how they see the world. And and when you have that as a mindset and understand that Chinese uh have a more holistic, uh, quite frankly, uh strategy in terms of exercising uh today they call it uh their one belt road initiative, or belt, I'm sorry, belt and road initiative. They took the one out of it. Um when when you see that they've got no problem moving the funds and the people and doing whatever they want to do uh in order to support the capability to dominate both economically and militarily, uh, to support their economic uh uh ambitions, it makes it very hard for the United States where we kind of go up and down in what we're we're funding. Now, the military has for a long time, I've been retired for six years and long before I ever got out, uh, has been talking, especially the Navy, about the Pacific and a pivot to the Pacific and putting more emphasis on the Pacific and having more of our fleet operations there and the different exercises that we do. But in terms of the growth of the uh PLN Navy and and how they work in concert with their Coast Guard and they work in concert with their fishing fleet, which you can see right off the coasts of our neighbors in South America all the time and other places, uh they they've got a very holistic strategy and plan, and they continue to press forward, you know, with that mindset that uh makes it more and more difficult for the United States to operate even as we put more emphasis on the Pacific. I I don't know if any of that's clear, if if I'm making it clear, but it means it's a very complex uh uh challenge that our military has in total, and our partners and allies have with us in trying to work uh with and around China as they build up their military, they design and build islands in the sea and they militarize them.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. And I want to ask you about the Chinese psyche, because that's something that's very interesting because we always want to try and evaluate the threat of an adversarial nation and power, but it's not always easy to do that when you have cultural differences, when for so long people are so focused on the economic side when they don't look at and and see how a nation thinks or how they see the world. Uh Sinclair, what what would you say has been lost about or misunderstood most about the Chinese government and how they think when it comes to this holistic side of things? And if you can give any examples of that, that would be great as well.
SPEAKER_01I I tell you, this this is a be a a kind of hard one for me to uh explain in a absolutely correct way because I'm I do not count myself as a China expert, but I would tell you that I think that we do a lot of mirror imaging, where you know, we in the West think that everybody thinks the same way about things that we do. And I don't think that's true. Uh I think that uh from whatever I've read, you know, there's any number in in China that feel that for about a century uh they were embarrassed by how Westerners uh were impinging on Hong Kong, mainland China, and and and took away from the prosperity and the place that they had in the world before that, and they're and they're they're they're just trying to correct the record, you know, and get back to that power. And they're doing it again across all aspects of a nation's power, diplomatically, militarily, through information and economics, all at the same time.
SPEAKER_00Those are really good points. I absolutely agree. John, did you have something to add to that?
SPEAKER_02No, there have been a lot of folks in this country that really have been aware of the Chinese psyche. It's just a question as whether the policymakers were reading what they had to say. Uh, I did a book review uh for the Society of Angle Architects and Marine Engineers called Red Star Over the Pacific, uh, China's Rise and Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy. And what it is is uh it's by Toshiyoshihara and James R. Holmes. And what it is, is a compilation of open source literature, basically from the time of Mao to today, on what the Chinese strategy was and and has been, and it's been continuous. The only thing that has prevented them from executing the strategy that we're seeing today is they didn't have the resources to accomplish it. With the buildup of their economy, they've been able to execute a strategy that has been stated in their open source writings for decades. So it isn't that we aren't aware of where they are uh wanting to go and have been uh in the path that they've been following, is that we've been ignoring it uh at a policy uh level. Uh and uh you know it we're uh unfortunately uh having to now have to take uh catch up on uh having lost that bubble. Is as uh Sink mentioned before, uh we had our focus on uh fighting ground wars and terrorists while the Chinese were continuing the buildup that was written in this book.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and I do think the book, which seems so interesting, I do think that it really complements the wealth of knowledge that we have here in the United States. And we need to take advantage of that and use it as part of the policymaking process. I uh hope that our policymakers all around will take note and or uh be able to take this into account when they're making those critical decisions. Understanding the psyche of the nations we deal with every single day are super, super important in foreign policy. Turning back to Sinclair, one thing that uh bothers me a lot is that we have something called the Tower Relations Act, which essentially says that we will defend Taiwan for it is not an independent nation, but it's also not part of China, and this strategic ambiguity comes into play. The problem is we've seen so many uh deficiencies in our shipbuilding capacity and uh industrial capacity for our not to mention the strategic interests that have changed over time. How in the world are we even supposed to uphold the Taiwan Relations Act if we don't even have that maritime capacity to deal with an emerging situation like an invasion of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which we don't want, but it's something that we definitely need to consider as a potential possibility.
SPEAKER_01Well, you've asked a $64 question there, Sherman. And uh and inside of the Pentagon, inside of DOD and the international community that concerns itself about the Pacific, the conversation about Taiwan goes on and on and on. Um look, we we believe that the people of Taiwan uh deserve the autonomy that they fought for when you know the two uh split apart. Uh we believe that uh Taiwan has made a significant investment in their defense and we continue to support that um through the years. Uh as China got to the point where they could overwhelm Taiwan, uh some would probably tell you, yeah. Um will they be or will they be there soon? Uh for certainly because they continue to build up. The question is, will it be such a bloody mess that uh China would uh have to pull back if they started this fight? How much does China want Taiwan as a whole and undisturbed so they get all the manufacturing and all the capability that comes economically uh uh and industrially from uh a China, uh Taiwan? Um, and and what are the things we can do to curtail that or make it so that uh people in Beijing do not believe that today is their day to start that invasion of uh Formosa, of Taiwan. Um these are hard, hard questions to answer. And I don't know that there are any easy answers there, but I know that we, the United States, uh continue to work diplomatically, uh work to support them in different ways militarily, uh, and try to walk that fine line uh between support of an ally and you know going to blows uh with China.
SPEAKER_00And Sinclair, w what do you think about some of these diplomatic successes that we've had with Taiwan? And I know that this is the diplomacy side, not necessarily on the military s military side, but I do think that there's this there and we do need to ha uh have as many sources of power as we can to achieve objectives. Uh when I say for successes I mean things like the Taiwan Travel Act, which allows for uh diplomats and even I believe uh even members of the National Security Council, I guess, or even uh people from the Pentagon. We've had people from the Pentagon uh go over to Taiwan and meet with their uh with Taiwanese counterparts. Uh what would you say about some of these successes and how it reflects any changes in terms of the the urgency as well as the willingness for policymakers and those in the national security realm to be able to get ready for um for whatever challenges that come across in the Indo-Pacific.
SPEAKER_01Well, frankly, I'd be more positive about the the continued increase in diplomatic and engagement efforts between the United States and Taiwan. As I uh uh have the same feeling with our other allies, South Korea, with Vietnam, with the Philippines, with Australia for sure. Uh, you know, China likes its neighbors nervous, and and we like our neighbors strong. And we have been working to help strengthen those around uh China which really don't want to be put under the thumb of uh the PRC. So I I think that more engagement is better, uh and and they're diplomatic. Uh they help information wise, correct the record, you know, make sure they know that we are we're there for them and that we the international community of which the United States is still uh uh significant uh in the leadership of is with them. I think it's I think it's critically important and and it's a positive sign that we've begun making more gestures like this uh that would hopefully cause China to hold back on any kinetic options or other things. But you do see them flying their aircraft into the areas closer and closer to the uh the air the the territorial airspace of of uh Taiwan. So that's a concern.
SPEAKER_00Ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude the first part of our conversation with John and Sinclair about U.S. maritime strategy in the Indo-Pacific. Part two will be coming out on episode 68, so make sure you subscribe to our email list and to this program so that you don't miss a single episode. To all the Americans listening to this program, safe travels and have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. Have a great rest of your day and a fantastic Thanksgiving week. Remember, a day in America always gets better when we are with our friends and fellow citizens, and we're gonna be able to do that.
