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DEPUTY SECRETARY BURNS: The growth and prosperity that we seek for the Asia Pacific region and
that's so central to the future of the global economy, obviously depends on the secure and
stable environment. The alliance relationships that the United States has invested in so
heavily over recent decades are designed to contribute to exactly that kind of security
and stability, and so that's why we attach such importance to continuing to strengthen
our treaty relationship with Japan and with the Republic of Korea. And also to strengthen
trilateral cooperation amongst the three of us.
We've also sought to build and expand new security partnerships with the countries of
Southeast Asia, of ASEAN, given their increasing significance across the Asia Pacific region.
We've focused on strengthening our military-to-military relationship, our defense relationship more
generally, with India, which is increasingly an important defense player and important
contributor to security across the Asia Pacific region.
We obviously pay a great deal of attention to our healthy relationship with China and
to the importance of a strong military-to-military relationship as a part of that relationship,
which I think is likely to continue to be the single most important bilateral relationship
that the United States has as you look out through the coming decades.
So in order to ensure the kind of growth and prosperity that's so important, not just to
the future of the United States, but to the future of the peoples of the Asia Pacific
region, it's very important for us to continue to focus on security, to focus on protecting
sea lanes, freedom of navigation, all the underpinnings of the kind of growth and prosperity
that we want to see.