School of War - Ep. 23: James Holmes on Sea Power

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

James Holmes, the J.C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College, joins the show to discuss sea power, the war in Ukraine, and the possibility of war in the Pacific Times 00:58 - Introduction  01:57 - Time spent considering Russia and the NATO alliance’s naval power 04:05 - Russian President Vladimir Putin’s grand strategy 05:35 - What does Ukraine mean to Putin? 06:58 - The Crimean War  10:32 - Closing the Bosporus 16:15 - Does the war end well for Putin?  21:28 - Zelensky’s survival  23:12 - Worst-case scenario for Putin  25:43 - What the outcome in Ukraine will mean for Taiwan 28:35 - China’s challenge in Taiwan 31:02 - How security concerns in the early American Republic influence China’s thinking 35:25 - Should the United States shift national security focus to Asia? 

More today about the war in Ukraine, but also about sea power. The Russian interest in Ukraine, and especially in Crimea, has an ideological dimension, but also an aspect of maritime strategy. What is Russia's approach to maritime issues? And what is NATO's? How should the United States balance between the threats posed by Russia and by China? And how does China look at naval warfare? And who are the canonical strategists who can help us think these issues through? It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of the way. 17, 1941, a date which will live in infamous.

The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stale. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. The people who not see these buildings now. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean.

Thanks for joining the School of War. I'm joined today by Professor James Holmes. He's the J.C. Wiley Chair of Maritime Strategy, the U.S. Naval War College. He's the author of, among many other things, a brief guide to maritime strategy. And as we were just discussing before we started recording, you know, the original thought behind this episode was following on the great conversation we had with Frank Ludwig a couple months ago about air power. I was going to interrogate you along similar lines about sea power and kind of keep it at 30,000 feet and conceptual. But we're recording this here and I'll say the date and the time because things are evolving so quickly on Tuesday. Tuesday, March 1st at about 10 in the morning, we're in the midst of a pretty significant war

right on the edge of NATO and Ukraine. And it seemed odd not to drill down on that and talk about that, but talk about it in a way that still explores its historical dimensions and the broader questions of strategy that connect to it. So first of all, Professor Holmes, thanks so much for joining the show. Hey, I greatly appreciate the invitation. So let's, you know, you teach at the Naval War College. You are, you know, obviously, in the center at the center of the Navy's professional military education and the shaping of its strategic vision for the future. You know, on balance compared to the amount of time and energy

that goes into thinking about China and the Pacific, how much time is spent thinking about Russia, about the NATO alliances, naval considerations? You know, what's what's the quantity and what are sort of the broad strokes of that conversation? Well, I mean, I think we're trying to do it all. We certainly got oriented towards China, I could just point to the organization of the college to help make the points. In 2006, the college founded what it calls the China Maritime Studies Institute, which is a group of language specialists that basically sit and study what to study what Chinese strategists and officials are saying about various issues.

That's what they do. They do that. They speak and they're right. I think I've actually lost track of the timeline. Some years later, this is probably four or five years ago. We created a Russia Baratime Studies Institute to do basically the same thing. again, so China was sort of the leading indicator, and Russia in Russia is sort of the following indicator, but we have gotten serious about both. There's always wargaming going on across

the street in our wargaming department and so forth, and I think there are many Europe games as well. I will say that three administrations now have been very clear that the Indo-Pacific is the priority theater for the United States, which is one reason, one reason us maritime people were glad to, we're glad to see the withdrawal from the Middle East, which was sucking up, you know, depending on the, depending on the day, one to two carrier battle groups, just providing close air support in Afghanistan. I mean, that's a huge part of our operating naval air power. But, I mean, but it's become quite clear that China and Russia either deliberately by colluding with one another or just by happenstance or being opportunistic and trying to

stretch us at both ends of Eurasia. And I think we have to respond to that as well. So, yeah, it's a, I mean, the college is like everywhere else. There's factions. There's the Asia faction of which I'm one. Then there's the Russia and Europe faction that's always struggling for for visibility and resources as well. Got it. Got it. Well, we'll come around to Asia then, I think, in a bit, but just to drive in the general direction of Ukraine. And, you know, I know you keep an eye on Putin and on Russia in addition to your other areas of focus, and you published on it recently. When Vladimir Putin looks at the world in a strategic sense, what does he see? Well, I mean, I guess there's sort of a land and a sea component.

I mean, the land component is, I mean, he's been pretty up front. He doesn't want NATO at Russia's border. I mean, this is much like China and North Korea. They would not like to see a unified Korea for the same reason. A great power just doesn't want a rival great power operating right off its frontiers. I mean, I know he's issued his list of demands and so denotification and all that foolishness and so forth. But that's really what it is, is that I think the geopolitics.

I mean, this is reaching back a buffer space is something that's very, very important to Russia. And President Putin seems particularly attuned to this. The maritime component, I think, is, I think this, and I think this goes back to my saying that China and Russia are trying to stretch us in the maritime space around Eurasia as well. I mean, if you look at the map, let me just look at the map. Look at all the, look at all the seas that unfold Eurasia. These are what the marginal sea, marginal C, according to Nicholas Spikeman, probably the greatest geopolitics scholar ever back in World War II. He points out that if the United States or any globally dominant sea power wants to radiate power into the rimlands of Eurasia, which is where the action is

usually at, it has to be able to command those seas or else the Navy and the amphiboutes, which I just can't get there. Beyond the sort of generic questions of buffers and keeping great powers, you know, out of their littoral waters and things like that, for Putin and Ukraine specifically, what is the meaning of Ukraine for Putin's vision of Russia? Does it occupy some special place that, you know, some other territorial, you know, adjacent territory may not. Yeah, I think so. I mean, you'd have to ask a serious Russia historian about this. But I mean, Ukraine, Kiev and Russe is the original seat of Russian civilization.

So, I mean, even apart from all the geopolitics stuff, I mean, it has an emotional resonance just because that's where the Russian state originated way back many centuries ago. So there's that, there's the geopolitics. And I think those are really the things that have obsessed Putin. And I do think he's, I do think he's demanding regime change in Ukraine at the very least. I mean, I think that that's what I interpret denotification to mean, i.e. moving and removing a fascist government, which is what he's trying to say, which is, which is kind of absurd.

But it does seem to be the banner that he's that he's flying underneath. So I don't know if it actually means actually incorporating Ukraine back into Russia. There's been talking about Belarus being incorporated back into into a greater Russia for some time. And that hasn't happened. And I would suspect that Putin would, I think he would probably settle for sort of that sort of status for Ukraine in the future. Russia-friendly government that's responsive to Moscow's wishes. Yeah, I have to say when the news came out in the last couple of days that Turkey was going to close off the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, you know, a couple of things struck me. One, that there was a potentially serious naval dimension to this war that I had not previously considered.

And if you had asked me to, you know, predict where you might actually get some sort of. of armed encounter between NATO forces and Russia forces. A few days ago, I would have said, well, you know, there's all sorts of, you know, you're bombing around Leviv, you're bombing around the western border of Ukraine, up against NATO states. That's probably where you're going to see, you know, some sort of potential path to escalation. I would not necessarily have picked the straits at the bottom of the Black Sea, but here we are if you see Russian ships, you know, attempt to contest the closure of these straits.

Turkey is, you know, of course, a NATO member and things could get complicated and interesting there very quickly. And then I further thought, you know, well, gosh, we kind of been here before. The Crimean War, what, 150 years ago, in certain respects, has parallels to the present conflict. I know you're a scholar of Julian Corbett and others who gave a lot of thought to that period in history. Does that, does that seem right to you? Do you think there's something that the 1850s have to tell us about what's going on today? Yeah, I think it's a recurring. I mean, a lot of these things. Mark Twain famously said that history never repeats itself, but it does rhyme. And I certainly hear rhymes out of that era. To me, to me, the latter rhyme, though, is just because a lot of the

standoff between NATO and Russia is happening in the eastern Mediterranean, it always, my go-to example is always back to 1973 during the era of Israeli war, which was a time, which is a time that really threw a shock into the United States Navy leadership, because it underlined that the Soviet Navy was now a serious peer force to be reckoned with. I mean, we, we, we, we, we, we had seen the Soviet Navy start acting globally and so forth. But during that expedition, the Soviet Mediterranean Squadron and actually outnumbered the U.S. 6th fleet based in Italy. And also we looked at the Soviet Navy. We saw that it shifts were younger than ours.

We had an aging fleet. They had a very young fleet and so forth. This was something that really gave us pause, which in a sense was a good thing because I think that was a wake-up call for us to start getting serious about the sea again after the Vietnam era. and all the bad thing, the oil shocks and all that kind of stuff that were on everybody's lips when I was a little kid growing up in the 1970s. And what's the nature of the situation in the eastern Med today in terms of the Russian Navy? Yeah, I think they're basically just trying to deter us from intervening in the war in the Ukraine. I don't really regard it as all that likely that we would get into a scrap with the Soviet ships. We have about equal numbers in the area, but our numbers include a couple of aircraft.

I think the Italian aircraft, I'm not sure if the French Charles de Gaul is there. I know that we have Harry S. Truman and the Mediterranean and the Cub War, which flies F-35s is also there. So the numbers look about the same, but I would say we're more capable. But nonetheless, they're just trying to deter us from doing anything in Ukraine. But I think there are differences from 1973 that are pretty striking. But at the same time, I mean, it's the same geographic space. And Soviet Union wasn't a direct combat, nor were we end up in the 1970s. the three war but nonetheless we were we were trying to back up our allies and that resulted in a

show up naval force in a very crowded maritime terrain i mean if you look at the if you look at the if you look at the reach of tactical aircraft and aty ship missiles fired from land these days they can overshadow most if not all of the eastern mediterranean depending on where those batteries and airfields are i realize this this question kind of moves us into the area of guesswork but i'm just curious to know your thoughts of you know what the outcome of of the closure of you know these straits of the access from the the eugene the eastern mediterranean up into the black sea how that's going to play out you know is is putin's going to accept that are the turks ultimately going to take their foot off the break there you know how

how does this end you know that's a good question i was actually i was actually you know pleasantly surprised when when anchora did put it put down its foot on this under the bunch row convention which is kind of kind of weird to see that being late breaking headlines at a 1936 treaty but so would is. And yeah, I mean, that's, it's hard to say. I mean, that the Turkey knows that it has to live with Russia forever. The United States and NATO may come and go. Russia will always be there, but as will Ukraine in some form or another. So it's kind of a delicate balancing act that Turkey is polling. Whether they, man, it's really hard to say whether Russia would actually try to force the straits and then force Turkey's hand. Possibly so. I mean, quite clearly,

Putin is in gambling mode. So you never know. I will say that I don't think, I don't think it's going to matter that much. I would have a hard time seeing NATO put a fleet into the Black Sea. I mean, just for the same reason, I bet land-based defenses that can reach out in the sea can overshadow much of the Black Sea. And that's just not, that's just not good operating terrain for a large mobile fleet, like a carrier strike group. Yeah, I'm curious, I got to ask just because I will confess I'm ignorant of the details.

But what is this 1936 treaty that Turkey is using as justification for closing the straits? Oh, I'm sorry. It sounded like you were all forced up on that. Yeah, it's out there on the Internet, as most treaties are. On the Montreux Convention, it basically gives Turkey control of the Straits. And it actually, and it actually specifies, I haven't read it in quite some of my time myself, but it actually specified that at time of war, the straits shall be closed to warships. And Turkey has interpreted that to mean that Black Sea Fleet ships of the Russian Navy

that are in the Mediterranean can go back, but nothing new can come in, which is one reason why we saw the Russians moving amphibious craft and so forth into the Black Sea in the last few weeks is so they could do that that sort of flanking maneuver by water that they've done in the last couple of days. And you think that they, well, presumably they did it, A, to have them on station when the fighting began, but perhaps they also anticipated this move. It seems, it seems to surprise me. Yeah, I was, I mean, you don't normally, I mean, Russia, yes, Russia, I mean, excuse me, Turkey is as a nature of remember, but it is, it is far from on good terms. with the rest of the alliance. So it is kind of, it was a little bit of a shock to see that, to see that happen. If it were France, if it were France controlling the straits or somebody like that,

then it would be a big surprise. But Turkey's been on the ads and has tried to be more friendly with Russia in recent years. But there we are. Yeah. But there just, there, there, there seems beyond this, there seems to be, I've, I've seen other indications of Turkish friendliness in general, less towards its NATO allies and more towards the Ukrainians. And then, of course, you have the, you had the Turks and the,

the Russians go a few rounds out in Azerbaijan as well in the last, you know, in recent history. So there is a, there, as you put it, the Turks have to live with Russia forever. That living with them, though, seems to involve a fair amount of competition. Yeah, I think so. I say, I mean, it really has been kind of dizzy to see how Europe, how Europe has turned around, sort of pivoted on its attitudes towards, I mean, think about Germany. We've been trying to get Germany to spend above 2% of GDP on defense for many years. And all of a sudden in the last 24 hours, they've decided they're going to do it.

They're going to ship arms to Ukraine. They're going to, yeah, I mean, I think inertia is a very powerful force in human nature. And it's really hard until you get a real jolt to the system, to your worldview or whatever you want to call it, to truly get you to come to terms with the surroundings as they exist rather than as you wish they existed. And I think that's, I think that's possibly what we're seeing happen. Yeah, I have to confess, I, for all the obvious ways in which the German pivot towards, seriousness on Ukraine and then towards its own defense obligations

is a positive thing. There's a nagging, I have a nagging worry somewhere from the back of my head that reviews the general contributions of the German state to international security since its creation. It's really sad.

I mean, if you look at the state, there was a time not long ago when Germany had eight functional combat aircraft, eight, that this is supposed to be the strongest state in Europe. Yeah. Yeah, they've got a lot. If they start spending, so they start spending more lavishly, that's a good thing, but it's going to take them a long time to make up lost ground. Yeah, that's true. I suppose I was being slightly more, slightly more radical in my concern, which is that this being a good thing, not only in the short and the middle run, but also in the long run, is tied up in the assumption that German interests remain NATO's interests and the EU's interests and America's interests in the long run, which, you know, it seems, I agree. It seems like kind of a.

laughable thing to say in 2022, but, you know. I have to say I grew a, I started off life as a German hand and spending time in Germany. I would never say, I don't want you to be like you were during the Third Reich, but I wish you would be a little bit more like you were during Imperial Germany, especially under Bismarck. I mean, if they could be a little bit more like Bismarck, you know, strong and but just sort of self-restrained, that's a good thing, which by the way is, that's kind of what Japan thinks of it, Japan thinks of itself as being a little bit more like Imperial Japan pre-war II.

before all the conquests and so forth. They look back to the time, the major emperor is in sort of that way. And I think that's, I think that's guides how they do foreign policy. Yeah. So let's, you, let's talk about how,

how this might end for Putin. I mean, he signaled this, this nuclear alert, which, you know, reaction to it has been sort of mixed. Some people have been very concerned about it. Others have suggested this is sort of right out of,

sort of out of standard doctrine and nothing to be too concerned about. You know, First of all, what's your take on that in this bigger, bigger picture? Do you think there's a way in which this ends well, ends well for Putin? I don't think it ends well. In fact, I think you could make the case that it already has not ended well, just because, I mean, pretty clearly Moscow wanted a quick decisive victory, but like within a day or two over Ukraine. And that has not happened.

In fact, it's been a kind of strange to see President Zelensky as a former stand-up comedy, a comedian. I mean, he's not, he may not be Churchill, but I mean, he's got some, he's clearly got some backbone and some rhetorical skills that have really fired up the Ukrainian people. I think that's a good thing. But there's been a lot of chatter around my apartment this morning about why things haven't gone better for Russia. I think sort of the drift of opinion is that Russia's holding some things back because it worries that NATO might get into the fighting and it might need that air power to engage with Poland or whoever the case may be. I don't think nature is going to get involved beyond helping the Ukrainians, help themselves

by shipping him arms and equipment and so forth. But that's kind of, that's kind of where we are. As far as, yeah, as far as ending well, I mean, he gave, he gave the Ukrainians at that summit meeting yesterday a checklist. I don't think the Ukrainians can accept regime change as a condition of ending the fighting. I mean, that's just, I mean, they're basically just giving up if they do that. So I don't think Putin's going to get that without actually conquering the whole country. And probably, probably waging a successful counterinsurgency after that. It seems like the Ukrainians have been, have been anticipating this for a while.

and they may well have planned ahead to wage an insurgency if indeed there's a decapitation in Kiev. I have to say, you know, it's worth reflecting on the fact that, you know, Putin by trade is an intelligence officer, not a military officer. And he's coming off of the succession of, you know, successful military gambits, all of which were high stakes and unpredictable, all of which broke his way, but all of which were much more limited and just scale. I mean, much more limited than what he's attempting now. The number I keep seeing thrown around as sort of 200,000 troops, give or take. Yeah, I think 190 was the was the count on the eve of the invasion. Yep.

That's a big country. That's a big country. It's Europe's second biggest country. Full of people, especially as you go west, you don't like Russians. In fact, I did a piece like just last weekend, which I just sort of went back to the master to the strategic can and look for guidance on how to stage an insurgency. And I said, I called it how to stage in a insurgency. And I said, I called it how to stage in insurgency against Russia. Well, let us in on the let us in on your insights. How should how should the Ukrainian stage an insurgency if it seems likely comes to that? Well, I mean, it's I mean, it was

sort of the basic. I mean, I haven't been to Ukraine, so I don't know the terrain, the way the home team obviously knows their own terrain. But I mean, just some of the big things. I mean, I just reach back to Klausovitz. Klausovits in, I think it's a, I think it's a book six chapter 26, the nation in arms. The nation in arms, he thought was a new thing at that point. But then he goes, he sort of offers a disclaimer and then he goes on to give some really pretty penetrating insights on on what kinds of peoples and what kinds of countries are well suited to to an insurgency. He says things like, do not despair. I mean, yes, you may lose the initial battles and so forth, but you still have options.

If you can rally the people, if you could discover new resources and new strength within yourself, that's a good thing. Also, if you show pluck, that helps you attract foreign support because your outside supporters have confidence that you might win and thus not drag them down. to defeat as well. Dispersed. I mean, that's a classic, I mean, that's a classic insurgent tactic. Don't mask, don't mask for a major battle. Spread out in ambush. Do the Maoist stuff. Spread it out. Get organized. Do ambushes on small enemy units and so forth. So they know that's, so they could, I hope they've been reading their mouth because I think that's something they

could put to work for them. And then obviously just use all the advantages to go to the home team, the terrain, you know the people, you know the human terrain. And just it just puts, I mean, help the insurgents swim in the sea of humanity that surrounds them, as as Mao might have said. So, yeah, it was just kind of a quickie, but those were the three things that sort of stood at when I sat down to peck away the other day. Yeah, I saw a video a day or two ago of a crowd of Ukrainians protesting some Russian troops were gathered on the steps of a city hall somewhere, I think, in northeastern Ukraine,

some regional, regional city, not one of the, not Kharkiv or Kiev, obviously. And they were shouting at them, you know, Russia go home, Russia go home. And I thought to myself, gosh, you know, so I can probably set your watch to, you know, there's minutes and seconds to the time it takes for that crowd to transform into, to an insurgency rather than just an ad hoc protest. Yeah, I mean, the region does have a history of insurgent fighting, reaching all the way back to World War II and the Balkans, of course, the partisan is in Yugoslavia. Yeah.

Yeah, how much do you think Zelensky, I mean, you talk about pluck, I think, you know, we can politely decline to discuss Ukrainian pre-war preparations, given the sort of heroism and remarkable leadership that Zelensky is displayed since the fighting has begun. And it really has been a remarkable thing to watch. How much do you think his survival matters in all of this? Wow, you know, that's a great question. I'm not sure there's a general answer you can give about an insurgencies.

I mean, you could think of, you could think of insurgencies that have been decapitated. such as after the Philip, after the Spanish-American War, Aguinaldo laid down arms on the eve of the presidential election here in the United States. And that, it didn't end the war, but it did sort of tell us who was going to win in the end.

It still took several more years of pretty nasty fighting. But ultimately, the Philippines was annexed to the United States that became American territory for half the century or thereabouts. On the other hand, I mean, with we've been here, people who do counterinsurgency for living, talking about leaderless jobs and all that sort of thing so i think that i think there's no general there's no general answer to me to me he feels like an aquanaldo though so if you may if you if you if you if you pin me down i think i think possibly without his inspirational leadership uh we

we would just have to see whether anybody else could take up that standard which is probably why russia has uh reported the smuggled assassins into ukraine to to hunt him down and his advisors yeah and if i were put that'd be pretty upset that they don't seem to have uh succeeded yet I mean, you could look at Vietnam. I mean, after the demise of Ho Chi, man, North Vietnam fights on and so forth, not under the same inspirational leadership, but they get it done.

Yeah. Yeah. I guess the worst case scenario, I mean, everyone's been very optimistic the last few days because of this, you know, tremendous Ukrainian resistance that's been occurring on the outskirts of Kiev and Kharkiv.

But, I mean, I've been the sour note in a number of conversations pointing out that, you know, Rome wasn't built in a day. Baghdad wasn't taken. And in two days in 2003, let's give it a couple weeks. The Russians will probably succeed ultimately in reducing these cities, even if they have to do it with tremendous brutality.

But following that, I think, is when you really get into the sort of the possibility that Putin is the dog who caught the car. And I guess the worst case scenario for him is a Zelensky who survives, makes it out west. You have a kind of rump state in the west that needs to be reduced, but his military is so exhausted. And as you, it's a great point you made a few minutes ago that he's holding a lot in reserve probably to hedge against the possibility of a NATO intervention. So you have to grind it out to reduce that rump state. Meanwhile, fight all these fights in the rear. I mean, as you know as well as I do, you can succeed in counterinsurgency warfare. You can beat a counterinsurgency, likely the kinds of tactics that he would have to employ to do that would be so brutal, you know, happening in Europe in a way that it is hard for observers to sort of psychologically do.

dismiss, as I think a lot of people have sort of psychologically dismissed what's happened in Syria in the last decade. And it's just, it's hard to see, it's hard to assess the benefit versus the cost for Putin in that scenario. And it doesn't seem to be the one he was contemplating. I don't think so either. I mean, the Klazavis tells me that, I mean, he tells you that if the weaker could contender can stretch out on the counter and do, to do damage to the stronger competitor, ultimately, ultimately the strong really have to want in a whole lot in order to keep paying those costs for a very long period of time. And that's really what insurgency is all about. I would say, I would say that external counterinsurgents tend not to win. Domestic counterinsurgents

tend to win. I mean, so if it were a purely internal thing within Ukraine, I think I think it would, the odds would be on the government's side. But again, I mean, we've seen, of course, our experience has been painful. Even the Soviet Union's experience in Afghanistan was painful, trying to try to do that sort of thing. So I think that, yeah, if it goes into, if they, if they win that conventional victory and then and ultimately go into a counterinsurgency but I don't yeah I don't like Russia's chances yeah whether whether the Putin could spend it as a victory that would be sort of that would be sort of the I guess where the rubber meets the road politically so to do our own pivot to Asia here in the in the conversation what is what is the outcome one way or the other

in Ukraine mean for Taiwan and for Chinese designs on Taiwan I mean it's sort of a sort of a dual-edged short for China. In a sense, if Russia does very well, and if it had actually managed to steamroll Ukraine, I think that that might have been bolded China because it would show that the military forces of a power like China, as with Russia, could actually get one of these operations done in shorter,

which is what it's all about for Beijing. Mike Gallagher, a representative out of Wisconsin, he likes to say if there's a short war over Taiwan today, that means China has won. And therefore, therefore, if the United States needs to, to do is sort of what we've been talking about on the part of Ukraine. First of all, convince China that it will not get a, get a short war by mounting a deterrent

at peace time. And then obviously putting in, putting in place measures to stretch it out so that the United States, the U.S. forces, whoever else may join in the, in the effort to sucker Taiwan can actually get forces to the combat zone in the face of Chinese anti-access defenses and so forth. So if Beijing, if Beijing interprets Russia's forces, feed in Ukraine in that sort of positive light. This might actually help Xi Jinping decide to take the risk. They should be through the dice in the Taiwan straight. On the other hand, if things do go badly, if Russia gets bogged down, I think that might give

Xi pause. I don't like Xi Jinping. I have no use for his purposes in the world, obviously, but he is an adult. And he seems very prudent to me. And I think he would be more inclined to hesitate rather than do something early in the next few weeks or months or whatever. There's been a lot of talk about 2027 being the time frame in which China would like to have the military option in place for a guaranteed win over Taiwan.

I think that I think that I think he would be more inclined to continue his military buildup for the next five years or so forth and see what happens then. Yeah. Actually, I actually don't think he said a deadline, by the way. Admiral, Admiral Davidson last year, again, he made huge headlines. People were still talking about the six-year window up to 2020s. I don't think that's, I don't think that's the Chinese. They like to talk about anniversaries and so forth, and they do.

But I don't think they put themselves on a firm timetable to do something in 2027. Could be before then, could be after. I think that's just one they want the option in place. Interesting. Yeah, just by the way, just because you raised him, I just want to say, I'm a Mike Gallagher fan. He's a smart guy and going places that people should pay attention to him. Yeah, I had dinner with him a couple weeks ago when he was in town. Very, very smart, man.

That's, yeah, I was kind of, you sort of, when you meet with a congressman or a senator or somebody like that, You sort of assume that their staffers have worsened them up on what to say and so forth. No, not at all. I mean, this is a guy who I think does his own writing. He writes very well and obviously keeps up on the issues. Agreed. Agreed. So so many ways into this, maybe one way we could think about it is.

So, I mean, I defer to you and essentially agree. I mean, she clearly is going to probably think differently about Taiwan one way or the other based on the outcome of Ukraine. How difficult of a military problem? is the invasion and conquest of Taiwan versus the difficulty of the problem that Putin is actually dealing with right now in terms of Ukraine. For the PLA, you know,

is this on the spectrum between, you know, walking the park to so difficult, they probably shouldn't attempt it, how hard is knocking off Taiwan, whether attempted in 2027 or 2030 or, you know, in some meaningful timeframe going forward compared to the difficulty

that Putin faces right now? Well, I think it's really hard I mean, you just have to look at the map and see it. I mean, it's a very different. It's a very different problem. Obviously, the Taiwan Street itself is a major problem just because we know have, I mean, we did amphibious stuff in World War II. I mean, we know how hard it was.

Think about Ego Jima and all those other Okinawa, especially all those U.S. Marine Corps landings, U.S. Army landings that took so many lives on both sides. I mean, so that's hard. The island itself, I mean, the geography, I've spent a lot of time on its Iowa, monitor, usually go in Asia. There are a huge number of very high mountain peaks. This is terrain in which it would be very easy to but to some matter of resistance in the back country

and really give an occupying power a really hard time. And of course, you can't leave out the military element as well. Of course, the ruling government in type 8 needs to do things to make things even harder on the PLA if it wants to try across street amphibious invasion. They're doing some of this. I mean, they've certainly at least tried to de-emphasize major platforms like, you know, major warships and so forth in favor of smaller warships all packed with anti-ship missiles.

They're working on submarines. We'll see how that goes and then so forth. This is what Bill Murray here at the World College some years ago called the Porcupine strategy. And my friend Tosha-Ioshaar, and I followed up on that with sort of a maritime version of that, looking at what Taiwan could do in the water surrounding Taiwan to augment the porcupine defenses that. that bill wanted to put station on land so it's an anti-access problem it's it's basically it's basically anti-access an area denial Taiwan is is sort of what Taiwan needs to work on yeah so so there's obviously this regime-oriented dimension to chinese thinking about Taiwan where Taiwan is as it the unfinished business of the revolution the last remaining piece of the sort of

inviolable territory of China that needs to be you know returned to government control there's also a a kind of strategic piece to it that in certain ways, Chinese thinking about South China Sea, you know, also the area to the northeast of Taiwan, the way that China is thinking about it and acting within it has some echo of American thinking about the Caribbean, you know,

a hundred years ago. This was something I was just talking over with Bruce Jones at Brookings a couple of weeks ago. And I asked him, is there anyone out there doing serious work on this parallel? that is to say, the parallel of the construction of American power and American naval power and projection in its sort of, you know, local Mediterranean, if you will, at the turn of the 20th century versus China's thinking about the projection of naval power within the first island chain today. And he said, yeah, sure, of course.

There's a whole team at the Naval War College essentially crashing on these questions and doing all sorts of interesting work. You know, what do we have to learn about Chinese thinking about its own security concerns by looking at the earlier history of the American Republic? thinking about its own security concerns. And I think people are going to think that I, that I primed you with that question. I've been working on, in fact, I did my dissertation on, on Theodore Roosevelt and the Monroe Doctrine

in the Caribbean Sea, his handling of European interventions in Santa Domingo and Venezuela in places like that. And that sort of morph naturally over into looking at other seas around the world in similar terms. And not only looking at the geography, but as you said, looking at how the local great power tends to think about those seas, what prerogatives it asserts, and so forth. My very first time out to Taiwan was I had a fellowship out there in Taipei in 2005, and that was exactly the project that I did.

And I called the piece China's Caribbean in the South China Sea. There you go. It's kind of, it's kind of, it's, I mean, there's, the parallels are pretty striking. I mean, if you look around the, the Caribbean rim, one great power and a lot of, in a lot of smaller powers. that also have to worry about outside intervention. So now trying to see today, one great power and a lot of smaller powers that are worried about, in this case, the local power being the interventionist power. And as China has made abundantly clear, except I think that this question comes up a lot,

and I think it's a good one, but when somebody sort of poses it as a gotcha question, hey, I mean, in fact, this is what the Chinese are always doing. Hey, we're not doing anything differently in Asia than you all did in the Caribbean a century ago. And I always point out that there was no nine dash line in closing the Caribbean rem at which the United States claimed sovereignty. I mean, sovereignty means this belongs to us. Sovereignty is nothing more than state ownership of geographic space. There was no such thing. The United States, I think the United States, especially in the years under Taft and Wilson, really got out of control intervening in Latin America under the Monroe Docter.

But at the same time, they never claimed it as sovereign property. So yes, maybe sort of the same thing. But at the same time, what China is trying to do is an order of magnitude more severe than what the United States ever did. And, oh, by the way, the United States disavowed that sort of foolishness in the 1920s. And the Monroe Doctrine, more or less, certainly the Teddy Rosa Corps or Larry went away. And the Monroe Doctrine has been hibernating for a very long period of time as well. So, yeah, a matter of degrees, I guess. Yeah, well, indeed, as you put it, the sort of extent of severity applies not only to the policy with respect to South China Sea versus Caribbean,

but indeed to the kind of leadership that the United States has shown in the world over the course of its period of supremacy versus the kind of leadership that leadership in quotes in that sentence that China would show if it occupied that you know hegemonic position yeah by the way you can you can apply those you can apply that comparison to the Arctic as well I mean that's that's also very it's very different obviously for a lot of reasons but because you don't have a one dot predominant great power facing off across there you have it's a NATO Russia thing and it with a couple of other countries thrown in.

So that's, but yeah, I mean, in a sense, we're watching a new sea coming, a new geopolitical sea coming to being at the top of the world as, is that becomes more navigable for more of each year. We're running towards the end of our time here, but I want to, I want to ask you, especially since we are, you know, we are seeing Putin play such an aggressive hand. We're seeing Europe at the center of the conversation in a way that it hasn't been for some time. I was just, just one day to point to illustrate the obvious here, I was at a, the Halifax international security forum in November. And there's an evening with breakout dinners,

you know, and I don't know, say there were 20 dinners. There were like 18 dinners on Asia and China, maybe one dinner focused on the Middle East and one, one dinner, the subject of which was NATO and European security. And that was November. That was November, whereas I understand it already in the sort of the classified sources, you had pretty strong information pointing towards where things were attending in Ukraine, it wasn't really puncturing out into the open source. world yet. Now, of course, everyone is talking about Europe. Everyone is talking about NATO. Yeah, we'll see. It'll be interesting to watch and see whether that persists or whether this will be just more of a temporary thing. Yeah, by last time in the UK, I was over to,

oh my gosh, I'm now, I'm now zoning on out of the, out of the location. The foreign and the Commonwealth office runs an old estate south of London where you can convene into international gatherings. They had me over to talk about this. out trying to see. And it was really, I was really shocked to see how our European friends had had swivel to basically pivoted towards Asia themselves, at least in their attitudes. Everybody, everybody wanted, I was the only American, I think. So everybody wanted me to tell them what they could do for us in the Indo-Pacific. Thankfully, we've seen them do some stuff for us. That's been pretty impressive, like the Royal Navy's deployment to Japan and the Philippine Sea this past year.

Yeah. Well, here's the question. I'll close this with them, which is, given the crisis that we have. Wilton Park. You see? Wilton Park. Got it. I'm not seen Al after all. It happens. Not yet. Not yet. It takes time for the file to load sometimes. It is the general notion. We could phrase it however we want different bumper stickers, give different people heartburn. But pivot to Asia, rebalancing, seeing the Indo-Pacific as the primary theater is, as you've pointed out, a series of administrations have directed, you know, the government to do. Is that still the right strategic concept? As far as pivoting to Asia? Yeah, as far as it, should the United States continue, should, when we think about our security concerns and the biggest possible lens is focusing on Asia and the Pacific at the expense of the Middle East and Europe, the right, the right lines. And we could also debate, you know, at what level of expense, right? You know, is it a complete cutoff of considerations in the Middle East and Europe? Is it, you know, 50% in one and 30% in the other?

You know, we could debate all that. but is the primacy of the Asia-Pacific as the region of future conflict the right way to look at the world? Yeah, I think so. I mean, the economics, the geopolitics. I mean, I would like to. The Pentagon always talks to when you're doing military planning. You always talk about the supported force and the supporting force. I would hope we could work out some sort of division of labor whereby the European Union and especially NATO are the support dead force in Europe and the Atlantic and the United States is the supporting force, whereas we would hope.

will take the lead in the Indo-Pacific in concert with other allies and friends like India, Australia, obviously Japan, South Korea and so forth. It wasn't one of the exact dimensions of that pivot of that pivot art and resource terms. We have about 60% of the fleet and associated joint forces in the Indo-Pacific now, whether that's the right number. Obviously, obviously is a naval guy. I would love to see Admiral Gil dig get his way. He's been talking about a 500 ship navy, including a sizable contingent of unmanned

craft of all types or unmanned surface and subsurface craft. Well, if we had the, if we had the resources, I mean, think I think about back to 1940 when would Congress, interestingly, in the, in the wake of the fall of France, that was what galvanized Congress to pass the two ocean Navy Act of 1940 and essentially build a second United States Navy so that we could have a self-sufficient fleet in the Atlantic and another one in the Pacific. I mean, to me, that would be sort of the best case scenario. It remains to be seen whether this Russian invasion of Ukraine will apply that sort of stimulus to Congress, which is not passed a defense budget. Well, it actually passed a defense authorization bill, but it hasn't appropriated funds to pay for it. So we're

limping along, we're limping along right now on continuing resolutions that freeze funding at last year's levels that don't let us move around the money in innovative ways, cuts into operations and train. I mean, it's just, it's just a bad thing. If this Russian invasion of Ukraine actually electrifies Congress a little bit and helps them get serious about geopolitics. politics. I think that would be a good thing all around. But yeah, as an Asia guy, I'll say, I'll say yes, Indo-Pacific way to go. Well, I wholeheartedly agree with your, your observations on the budget and on Gilday's plan for the Navy. And I take your point on on Asia. And it's hard, it's hard to look at the numbers. And it's hard to look at, you know, China compared to Russia

in objective terms and not decide that, you know, we ought to have some sort of main effort consideration for the Pacific. That said, you know, we'll probably get, we'll probably get all that worked out in the next 10 years or so, only to be surprised by some catastrophe in the Middle East. Or who knows, South America. You know, it's kind of interesting. The Tuition Navy Act boosted U.S. Navy tonnage by about 70%. If you run the numbers between today's fleet and in a 500 ship fleet, it's almost exactly the same percentage of it's about something like two-thirds, about two-thirds increase.

Of course, that's just tonnage. That's not all important. But yeah, so that's kind of, is it 22, or is it's 2022, 1940? It kind of feels like it. Yeah. Yeah. I think journalists and scholars writing at the time, right in the 1920s and 30s, used to refer to a period in which they were living as the post-war period.

Yeah. And now we call it the inner war period. Yeah. Of course, we kind of call in Gray, the late call and Gray said that for anybody who pays attention to history, all periods of peacetime are inner war periods. Kind of a bleak view, but I can't disagree with it. James Holmes, professor at the Naval War Corps. College, sir, thank you so much for joining us.

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