U.S. Relations With the People's Republic of China (2009)

Joint Chiefs of Staff

JCS Speech

Government Executives Events Group Discussion: Military Leadership

As Delivered by Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Tim Clark, Editor-in-Chief, Government Executive Magazine; James Kitfield, National Security and Foreign Affairs Correspondent, The National Journal , National Press Club, Washington, D.C. Wednesday, November 04, 2009

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MR. KITFIELD: Okay, and recently -- switching to China, which is the 800-pound gorilla in the Asia room -- you know, Sec. Gates recently hosted a top member -- I think it was the vice chair of the People's Liberation Army. I talked recently with Adm. Keating, who was talking about the outreach and trying to reestablish warmer military-to-military relations with China.

At the same time you hear some rather disturbing things about their actions and cyber warfare and probing U.S. computers all the time. They have made some announcements about putting offensive capabilities in space.

So it always draws, you know, what is their strategic intent here, what do you make of their modernization militarily, and what sense do you get out of where China is heading, and are you able to establish a really warm sort of military-to-military relationship?

ADM. MULLEN: Well, it was Gen. Xu that was here visiting Sec. Gates last week and I met with Gen. Xu and Gen. Ma and others of his party. And I was actually happy to see him come here. And we just restarted military-to-military relationship recently, having had it called off by the Chinese before that, tied to another incident. And what I hope we can get through is this on-again/off-again aspect of our military-to-military relationship.

I think your question is well put in terms of what is their strategic intent? They've invested heavily on their defense side. They've increased their investment on the defense side. They're developing technologies very focused on United States capabilities. Our aircraft carriers, specifically, is one, but the ballistic missile technology, their focus on space, their shooting down of a satellite a couple years ago. And they are heavily engaged in the cyber world and it's a concern.

So that issue is certainly one that we consistently address. I'm just hopeful that we can have enough of a relationship with their military leaders to be able to talk with them about these challenges and address them and listen -- also listen to their concerns.

On the one hand, they're a growing country and certainly they have growing global requirements, even growing regional requirements, and that they grow their military certainly isn't anything that I don't understand. It is -- if it is in the vein of a force -- you know, a positive force, a security force only for them, certainly that isn't of concern.

I'm hoping that we can have enough of a relationship with them that we can avoid any serious conflict in the future. It's a very stable region, generally speaking. Certainly we all have concerns about North Korea and what he is doing with respect to destabilizing the region and the nuclear weapons, and I think we can best address these issues together.

MR. KITFIELD: Do you sense that -- and you talk about avoid any future conflict, and that just brings to my mind Taiwan.

ADM. MULLEN: Sure.

MR. KITFIELD: And do you sense that they are sort of asymmetrically still focused on being able to intimidate Taiwan? You know, we talked about the missile deployments across the straits, the submarine capability to keep us at arm's length. Talk about where that sort of always a sticking point in our relationship is.

ADM. MULLEN: Well, what I've seen with the election of a new government in Taiwan, that there is a more stable relationship between the two, between Taiwan and Beijing, and in that regard it seems to be moving in the right direction, and we're still very clear on our One China policy in that what we want to see is a peaceful resolution between Taiwan and Beijing over time.

And we have obligations to support Taiwan as well, which we have done and I believe we will continue to do. But most of all we would like to see this resolved peacefully, and I think you're right to point out that certainly when we think about conflict in that part of the world, that's often very much on people's minds.

I just think, you know, in recent months, those tensions have gone down and the likelihood that something that like would break out I think has been reduced.

MR. KITFIELD: Good.

MR. CLARK: Admiral, you just brought up the topic of cyber warfare, and the Chinese, as James was saying, seem to be active in that realm. Could you talk for just a minute about how you assess the cyber threats to the country and about how we are developing our defensive and offensive capabilities?

ADM. MULLEN: I think it's a growing concern. It's an area of -- and I think, Tim, you used the word "warfare" -- of warfare that we, all of us, particularly military leaders, have to pay a lot more attention to. It's not a part of the world I grew up in.

And leaders have to be knowledgeable to be able to make decisions -- war-fighting decisions, resourcing decisions, training decisions, recruiting decisions -- to make sure that we address this growing area of warfare in a very comprehensive way. And it's one that concerns me a great deal.

It concerns me inside the military, it concerns me inside our government, and it concerns me inside our country, sort of the three big domains, if you will. Obviously the one that I'm involved in on a daily basis is the military side of this.

We have actually made some significant investments. We're standing up, as you know, with the approval of Congress, a four-star cyber command specifically to focus on this, which I think we have to fundamentally do, but I also think we're at the beginning of understanding the totality of the challenge that we have here.

We've got to hire and recruit young people that understand this, and it's one of those areas that I think potentially the downside here is really, really significant. And it's not just China because we see Russia is very active in this as well and there are other countries that are of great concern.

So I think we have to really continue to focus on this and bring it into what I call mainstream war-fighting as opposed to just out there in the technical realm that somebody is going to take care of because that just isn't the case anymore.

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