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In your speech at the National Defense University, you talked about Partnerships, one of your
priorities, saying, "The Navy and Marine Corps are naturally suited to develop these relationships,
particularly in the innovative, small footprint ways called for by our Defense Strategic Guidance."
What are these innovative, small footprint ways and how are the Navy and Marine Corps
naturally suited for them? We come from the sea. Our platforms are sovereign
pieces of America. We don't take up a single inch of anybody else's territory. We come
from the sea, we do the things that you do to build partnerships, we do training together,
we do exercises together, and we do some operations together. We also do some humanitarian things
and disaster relief from these same platforms. We go in with medical, with dental, with veterinary
services, or we deliver supplies. You can surge equipment, you can surge people, what
you cannot surge is trust. And the fact that we come from the sea, the fact that we're
not looking to establish a base, the fact that we do the job that we are sent to do
and then we leave, but that we do this over and over again, year after year, with our
partners, with our allies, with our friends around the world gives us that basis, that
bedrock of trust, for any eventuality that may come down the road.
In November, you are scheduled to make an international trip to visit, among other places,
Vietnam. How do visits such as this further the Navy's maritime security goals and enhance
our partnerships with our international allies?
Well if you look at the national security strategy that we have, it's a maritime strategy.
It's very dependent on the Navy and Marine Corps and continuing to have a great Navy
and Marine Corps to do it. Part of that strategy... there are three legs of that strategy. One
is to concentrate on the Western Pacific, second is to focus on the Arabian Gulf, but
third is to focus on building these partnerships with places like Vietnam that we can, again,
work together, we can come from the sea, we can train, we can do either bilateral or multilateral
things together with either one country or a group of countries so that we are more interoperable
so, that if a disaster strikes, if you need to give some humanitarian assistance somewhere,
that we can do it together, that we can increase our reach instead of one country trying to
do it all which, in today's world, is pretty impossible. We have these partnerships, we
have trained together, we have worked together, so if something happens, we can do things
together and know how each other reacts. China will play a role in next July's Rim
of the Pacific Exercise. Can you talk about our developing partnership with China and
what challenges and opportunities it presents given the National Defense Strategy's call
for a rebalance to the Pacific? Well exactly what you said. This rebalance
to the Pacific, the focus on particularly the Western Pacific, is going to cause our
interaction with China to increase and what we want to see is more interaction. What we
want to see is more work together, understanding how each other operates, more transparency
as to what they are doing, and what we are doing. We invited the Chinese to RIMPAC in
order to further these goals, in order to make sure that as we focus on the Western
Pacific, and we've never left the Western Pacific, we've been there for decades, but
as we focus on it that our interactions with China and with other nations in the region,
that we are on the same page in terms of how we operate together, in terms of what expectations
there are, in terms of making sure that the sea lanes remain open, making sure that the
global commons are protected.