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Military Analyst Call

Hosts: Mr. Bryan Whltman, Mr. Dallas LawrenceOSD Staff Ms. Tara Jones. LCDR Greg HicksTranscriber: MurohvON BACKGROUNDand embargoed(tape started n progress)

There are a lo t of nuggets in this report, and I hink - unfortunately you don't have itin front of you, but you'll see it on DefenseLink; i f 11 be posted on the web som etime his afternoonon DefenseLink. B u ll thinkif Ican give you on an embargoed basis some of th8 nuggets in thereit may be of help.First lei m e say a couple things about context and the tone. The tone of the report is deliberatelynon-alarmist. I mean. theSecretary of Defensewanted us to be factual, descriptive,analytical;soit ust lays things out; it doesn't have a lot of alarmist adjectives. On theothe r hand, a lot of thestuff in the n is. as I'llmention, a lot of tt is womisome. On the other hand, the point - he reporttalks about limitations I mean, there are a lot of things the Chinese cannot do.They cannot do afull-scale amphibious invasion- ertainly not do it very easily or without giving us a lot of strategicwarning.They are not yet able to project power significantlyoutside, you know, their immediate periphery.So there is some good discussion of som e weaknesses; on the other hand there are a lot ofthings in there that are - 1 thinkare worrisome.And the contex tofth.s- again the President bel eves we have a good relationsriipwith Cn na acon sh c tw e relationshipw ift China n a lot of spheres and that is tne context in which we wntethis report We re not Dealing he war drum we're not yo^ Know saying China s a threat or not athreat we re beina descnntve And as I sav that's oartiv because that - n s is the context of the. , . . . - . -. ..... .., .. -.. .., .President's overall policy which we are a part of.All right, the second aspect of context is interagency clearance. This is a good newsstory Thisreport has been massaged several imes In several drafts through the interagency. The StateDepartment, the NSC staff, the intelligencecom munityhave had a good look at this, variousstages. A tot of the rum ors out there are wildly off the mark about, you know, huge brawls n theinteragency.This has been a pretty good process of clearance. The final product- n fad, for several monthsor weeks this has been blessed and we've been refining t ourselves or the last several weeks,and the interaaencv D-s has been orettv aood. And Secretaw R ice even said this She wasjust inChina l&t week and we held thething fo r a week so it wou ldn't com e out just before orduring her trip. But she was totally aware ofthis. She even told the press and the Chinese thatshe endorsed he report It reflectsnot only Pen tagon concerns, but the U.S. government'sconcerns.So this is b lessed by the wholeU.S government and that's very importan t If s anantidote o a lot of these w ild stories o f brawls, and it gives even greater weight to the conclustonsof the report.But let me mention a bunch of things that I hink you'llfind Interesting, and that I ind a littleworrisome. One iswe've tried to m ake the point that China's interest China 's modernization isnot us 1a matter of concern to me Unneo States, it ought to oe a concern to the region An0 wesay this exp cdly Ana you might also go back and look at Secretary R ~ m s fe a 's peech nSingapore where he t a k a abOJt th s An0 in Singapore he made a point ot say look this isn ti t L S ssue I s no1 just a J S -China matter, i t s yo^ Know an issue of interest o everybody

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tn the region The speech that the Secretary gave on June 4, youcan find it on, you know,DefenseLink, But that's a point we make. So a lot of the report Is written, you know, not to say oh,th s s L S -Ch na faceoff 0-1 t conceris me region Ana tnere are a codple of maps to snow theranges of Cn nese m ss es And to-

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know where- 1 am not sure where they are but it's a strategic system and they - t's, you know,as I say, it's going to be deployed in the next few years.Theresa doctr na po nt - me! used to use the phrase local wars aoer h gn-tecn cononons 'tnat was me r oefn ton of tne a no of *ar they expecteo lo fght Tney ve refine0 th s Tney -se an onrase no* 11s r-a en ""oralwars mdef con0 nns of nfofmalma man Local wars ..noerconditions of informationalization Its a kind of ciumsv translation but thev re obviouslv trvlnu tokeep up with the revolution in military affairs We don't know too much about what this'ne'w -phrase means, but that's their doctrine; that's what they- how they now- hat's what they geartheir planning to It's, you know, one of the new developments we talk aboutTheres anotner po nt n the report dlmentioned n passing that a lot of me r new systems areIn ngs Inat we 0 a m nnow aoom Tney have a nabit recent y of lo ing 0-1 a new system Anoseoeve opment we Acre not aware of Th s nas happened in a few nstances an0 that s men1anedn tne repon An0 I n ni< tnats wm n of noteAnd the last thing I'll mention now is - there's a long discussion of European effort to lift the armsembargo, the EU arms embargo, onChina. This has been a big preoccupationof my officeand infact of the whole U S , government, rying to fight this and discourage the Europeans rom liftingthe arms embargo. And we have achieved at least a temporary success.But in this report, we spent some time explaining why this is-why this is of concern and what weare worried about You know, we think the Chinese would be able to obtain in Europe a lot ofmilltarv or dual-use technolooies hat would beof areat aualitative benefit to them. and vou know.again,^ think we've mentioned t in the past but this timewe spend a little more time onthis, youknow, explaining whywe object to Europeansales of technology.Lastly there's a point- again, this is another point I don't want to forget- think we've said this Inprevious reports- hat the balance of power is shifting in the Taiwan Strait, That's the trend. Iknow we ve sa 0 tn s oefore 0-1 we n a e o say l ga n Tne balance of power n me Ta wanStrait s sn fting in Be ing s favor oe case of this yod know mooern zation and oeca~ se fTaiwan s yo-

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Hey sir, how are you?Mr McCausland Good,

Tne f rst point ao o ~ t roliferation We don t spend a lot of Lme on t In Ins reportmere are otner 1 tn nn -otner p-0 icationswe ao on Cninese pro feralon actv 1es an0 de aonesome lest mon. on th s mvsef So inat*; not wnai tho< wood 3 abOd Secona on tne rea on8

convers&ons with a lot of these countries on this subject And you know the Japanese -youmay remember the U S -Japanese oint statement of a few months ago, it was a ministerialmeeting here and there was aioint statement n which both sides mentioned he Taiwan asue asa matter of a common strategic objective or common- think that was the phrase. There's no-and the Japanese defense white papers speak quite explicitly about the Chinese missile threatand so forth I can tell you it does come up in discussions with the Indians, with theVietnamese -the Vietnamese prime minister was here a few weeks ago-with Southeast Asian countries. AndSecretary Rumsfeld was in Slnaanore n June for this mulWateraI conference of defenseministersand he mentioned his in his speech, precisely to make that point And they say thefeedback he got from just about everybody was you know they view this with the sameconcern and none of us - but the bottom line is nobody wants to preiudge what this means ornobody's saying the conflict is inevitable, and there's a tendency in mm tof the region to, youknow, hope for some constructive evolution, but I hink we are- and that's our view, as well. But Ithink we've done something constructive here ifwe've added some realism into the discussionbecause I think you have to face this reality.Mr. McCausland Thank you

The Russians, Idon't know You mentioned the Russians. i hink we have started toput this on the agenda with the Russians They are overwhelmingly he biggest arms supplier andselling the most dangerous sytems And I know this - and there'sa debate within Russia oryears about whether this is smart from the Russian point of view But that's something we haven'tmade a lot of headway We've made headway with the EU;we've made headway with the Israelisin, you know, trying to constrain or shut down some of this trade. But with the Russians, hat's abig problemMr Maginnls Mr. Rodman, Bob Maginnis. A two-part question. One on the Blue Sea Navy (?Iand whether or not their submarine force is not only becoming larger, but far more sophisticatedAnd then secondly, Global Security sent out something recently with some pictures of an oldSoviet aircraft earner. Is fact is it going to be a casino as they suggest perhaps,or is it going to beused?Mr Rodman. The Blue Sea, well the submarines- yeah, there's a lot of discussion of that I hinkwe know that that's a threat- he Chinese are developing this capability with not just the kilos (?)from Russia but their own indiaenous Droductton I mean. there are limitations- here are a lot ofcapabilities they don't haveyet We think our Navy, you know. out matches anybody else Butthey're- hey're developing this and there's a tot o f discussion of that. General Allen wants to -

We watcn tne %ornar nes pretty closely the cornonat on of wnat tney're00 ng wi n me r Song c as s s-Dmannes.their type 98 m-deaf attach ooat- 93 sorry -inat scorn no 0-1 me new YOLOm s s ~ f i r n a ie whim s bv tne wav a LDmar ne that we a on 1mowexisted until it was rolled out Those are some fairly sophisticated systems So obviously we rewatching the roughly five concurrent submarine programs, to include the kilo purchase and a newballistic missile submarine we re watching those very closely We cant get inside them, but wesuspect there is some fairly significant technological improvementover some of the older classsubs that they have

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Voice - The carrier, what do we think about the carrier? Idon't thinkWe naven 1 aec oeo let wnats going 10 happen to mewrr er k WOL a oe a net of agooa cas no [a-gnter f me{ deveoped hat capability but they may oe oeve op ng t.rSl10 testsome future capac ty for o- Id ng a carrer or for nava av at on or tney co-Id be restor ng 1a tnouon its n rea v n orettv Dad sham So I hink the i-rv s st 101.1wnn n tne nte oencec o m m h v on where this th i h s m i n i to ao But that ; &od auestion Because oirsult of acarrier is a very clear indicator of somi naval aspirations and national aspirations simply for -beyond the current configuration; t's going to be a sea-controlled navy if we start seeing earnerbeing built

Mr Lawrence Next question?Mr A arc Yean Ken Atlard Have you g ~ y seen any inoications- and am fasc nateo oy Insreferences to nformat m a condI ns because I have oeen an avio fan of me st-If ever since Ireao :"at wn te oaoer on ~nrestncted arfare that cameOLIack in the ate 90s ha re vOJseenany indications that that is anything more to them than pure doctrinal speculation? ~ltho ughheyappear to take that very seriously

We as* General A len to p ten in But I hin< they clear y see th s as meoefn t or. of mooern vkarfare Tney m a yze closely everything we 00 everyime we re mVoNe0 na m a n r e a m e f anices anahfzinn i Somet mes tne, DJI themte.i(es n me shoes- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -;four o ~ ~ o n e n tometimes h e ~rv to se e i h i t can weemia te that the Americans have doneYou know the" have a lono w a i oo0 in vou know C41SR and intearation of thinas but I hink, " . ,they are clearly interestedin that and see how- hat's the way to go I don't knoiwhat - and wesee them doing a lot of R&D(,?) anti-satellite capabilities-dearly, computer network operationsof different kinds, and there's definitely some discussion of that in this reportV o c e m >ow ave a chance to look at t - the 2004 Cn nese- ne PRC defense whitepaper ~ s e sn s erm for the f rst time - ocal wars ~n d e rne cononons of nformat ona zallonAn0 a says correcuy we re not entmly m e w3at Inat means We,no* tney nave fo OJveo very c ose y the mprovemems ana sophistlcalon O ' O L ~ ommano an0contro caoab I s me morovements n o-r ISR botn in terms of ennanc no commano an0control and targeting and in particular, hey have followed the augmentation by space of ourcommand and control-C41SR capacity in warIf you - one of the folks that we actually quote in the report is General Jiany Guang-kal who If t o ~ ass,me s mown to some of /OL He has written on In s Sue - nope am not la nting mysource mmea ate, oy men1 on ng ns name but I thinx he s emb ematc of we merest in mereifoi.i%m of mr tan; affa m m e addent of i

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advocating some reevaluation of that. It also ust high lights he risk of Chinese miscalculation.There's another theme in the report I hink in various places, where (we 're?) at the risk theChinese might miscalculate (inaudible) in a crisis, or tha t ust any c risis involved (involves?) aninheren t risk of things happening in wavs that the s ides don't expact. So i hink it's something thatwe have to pay alte ition to. it shows -reminds us of risks of escalation in a crisis, but I hope theChinese, you know, are thinking of thesame thing - he risk to them of any use of force. Youknow they may have in mind for example, imited use of force or coercive steps age nst Taiwanmat. ~ O Jnow tney may %ink are yo- know. are not a I o n war O J ~ thers who are the target Oftnem maw internre! tnem ~i f f f trenn~o .. r t anotnpr element Imean the nsk of mscalcuiat on, - - - - - - - -is something serious a nd it imposes a responsibilityon us to deter unambiguously In my viewVoice (Mr. Mclnerney?): Does it, does It suggest that perhaps there are elements in the Arm y thateven the po litical apparatus doesn't feel they w n controt?

No rt may- i hink they are a d iscip lined army but, you know, and policy, you know-as far as we know tne r poicymak ng app aratu is discipi nec But I mean this fellow ssomewhat o&oe the poi cymaking chain he's in an aw dem c setting, he nas a reputat on formooino off a lo t So am not sure no* aiithor tative- 1 mean IwoUdn t assume he s soeakmaDave, my coieague David ~ g i v e ~ho helped in the report1 f you want to add something

Well, I think as the Assistant Secretary said, there's some discipline; there's a gooddegree of discipline in China's, you know, civil military apparatus and decision making on the useof force. No w (and?) i would draw a clear distinction between this individualwho is a militaryacademic,and somebody that would actually be responsible or ma intaining he chain ofcommand for nuclear weapons use.But I hink you asked a central question. Is this indicativeo f whether there is in factcomplete control over the military?And to me, the statement,wh ile ludicrous. Iwas watchingmore the Chinese leadership reaction to the statement than Iwas General Zhu Chengu'scomm ent n particular And I rankly wasn 't impressed by the Chinese -b y the strength of theirdisavowal of that comment One of the points we m ake in the, in the report s that this reportattempts to den t@ tne capaoltie s of Vie Cnmese military and its modern zat on and tne

potentla capacty of those capabilities in tne fu t ~ r eWhat we say of course me old imeii genceequation wn ch is threat equa s capab lities pu s men tions in the repon s we don I now theCn nase intentions and we seek: to ferret those a-it in so manv different wavs Wnen we nave aaeneral who is a vew senior leader in the Nationa l Defense University alking in those terms andreceives only a velvet glove in return then that may be an indication f an intention So we've gotto watch this sort of thing very closelyMr Lawrence We probably have time for two more questionsMr A ard Yean Ken Aia rd aga n On the cross stra ts problem Did yo^ loo< at a Iat asymmetricwpab ties tnat are often en out of tne traditonai cacuius as to how WOJIUne y do i t f tneychose to ao P

That is something we definitely looked at and there's some discussion hereo fdifferent scenarios, you know, not only a full-scale am phibious nvasion, there are a lot ofcoerc ive options which we think the Chinese are looking at that are more complicated from ourpoint of view, precisely because they, you know, have asymmetric elements Dand, do you want-John Allen?One of the things that we do taik about - ou mention the asymmetric capabilities -we taik about itwithin the context of anti-access, although Iwant to p reface hat remark thatcompared to the United States military ust about anything wou ldbe asymmetric. But when wetalk about anti-access, we look at some of the programs and systems that China s trying to

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develop, many of which fall under this term of assassins mace types weapons systems, which inthe Chinese context are programs and capabilities designed to generate turning points in battle.So we IOOKt some of me new S-omar nes ant snip CI-J e missles bal st c m ss es as well as-for examp e some onger-range ba stic m ssnes that China might oe owing at for an am1access m ssion So m o o we do aodress asymmetryqd$e a on in I ns reportVoice Do you think you've got a (inaudible)Voice: Yes, sir?Voice: Yeah, those of use who ere going to bequeried by the media are going to undoubtedly beasked, well, how does one accountif ne possible can for the alleged delay in the report, and I'mnot necessarily convinced there was any big delay, but that story is out there. How would Oneaddress something like that?Iell, 1 would say ..Voice: ...words put in my mouth,

No, no, no I appreciate yourVoice But this is something that people won't get off of

Well, I appreciate your asking, because obviously his will be asked The report is alittle bit late A lot of it is lust the clearance process. It akes time, we have the State Department,the NSC, the intelligenci community We did a draft: it went through this process, hen SecretaryRumsfeld saw it and he had his own contributions o it - mean, it's his report, so he was entitledmaw s~ggeslns of o ffefent ~ inos o we ha0 to yo, mow go OacK aga n Tne as1 few Newspan of it &as as ment oneo, Secretary Rice was n China ana fie 0-rse ves nao me * I omen! on ! i s toner and to sa; ook #e 00" Iwant In s o come 01 LSIetore yo- re mere orhi yo^ re mere he wa 1I {our oack, and sne agreed ~ i l nnat compete$Voice That's very helpful, thank you It certainly comports with what my instincts were on what'sgoingon Thank youI mean, you ell know how the bureaucracy works.Voice: Absolutely

And this was just, you know, bureaucratic stuff and nothing melodramaticMr Nash One last thing, if Icould. This is Chuck Nash When you brought up that there wereseveral systems that you did not know existed, that sort of, you know, runs back to the wordsintelligence failure, or whatever, when you hear those kind of thirds, so you might want to thmkabout how you describe that when you put that out.Iell, you're right I mean, it's one sentence in the report, and we're obviously.Mr Nash I know, but ifs a i fs a, yeah

No, but deliberately, we're not trying to advertise this overly, and give the Chinesetoo much satisfaction, and it - but it's something that's just a fact that we thought we ought tomention And it's something we have to consider when we make assessments And there's-there is a discussion in there about the lack of transparency; 1 mean. this is a theme of the report,they don't - you know, there's not transparency n their defense budget as Imentioned already,and there's just lack of transparency on a lot of things and plus, you know, a lot of traditional

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Chinese state craft keeping things secret, but there's a little- no, you can read Into that sentencewhat you want and I hink you're correc t to see some of the implicationsof it.Mr. Nash, Well it also

(crosstaln) he ~nce rlalnty bout what they're up to and wnat they re strategy s an0maybe we have to be conservative given that - ne recent experience of find ngOLInat tney reoo ng more than we expect-Mr. Lawrence: Gentlemen, that's a ll we-t also (inaudible) the question of what were those systems that we didn't know about?You mentioned he submarine.Well, the subm arine s one of the dramatic examples. I hink maybe we don't wantto say too much in a public document about other things, but, the U-on (sp) submarine 1s one.Voice: One last quick question. Can you review reel quick - assume the testimony is wdh what,the Senate Foreign Relations Committeeor Senate Armed Services, who exactly is testifying?are you testifying? s General Allen testifying?1e1 rt s a Dnefing If s Armed Sewces Comm.dee in both paces I t s a Cosedbr efmg doing fimt toe HASC - he House Armed Services Committee in the early afternoon andtnnn the Sanate Armed Swu CM CnmrnittaA ater and it's staff and Memoa n SO it's not a ~ ~ b l l c. . ..hearing t m ght we1 be -they may try to get us up there for a public hear ng ~ O Jnow somelater date but mais not on todays agendaVoice And you'll be doing the briefing sir?1robably I hink they'll try to invite me: there's no thingscheduled at this PointMr. Lawrence. Gentlemen, thank you very much for calling in today. Just to recap, this Is onbackground, anybody quoted should be quoted as a senior Defense Department official, andreturning to Mr. Whitman's comments, this is embargoed until either after the briefing. Or you'rehearing it onN, nd as we all know. after the first House briefing. Iam sure it will start to comeout (laughter).Once the report 1s available, we w ill email It to all o f you. In addition, we'll get som e of thosequotes out to you that were from, tha t Secretary quoted during his briefing

My wnoe, no think that Ioon't Im ca ling those things to yoJr attent on on abackground oas s m u s e say we re trying to. we're portray ng the report as very oaa n d ,ana it nas atrenoths and weaknesses ELII nmk VOL ouvs w o~ ld ooreciate some of thesen~gg ets na I hink yoi.