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Interwar-Period Gaming Today for Conflicts Tomorrow: Press ‘Start’ to Play, Pt. 3

By Major Jeff Wong, USMC

Interwar-Period Gaming  Insights and Recommendations for the Future

The militaries of Germany, Japan, and the United States utilized gaming between the First and Second World Wars to help them overcome challenges relating to doctrine, organization, training and education, and capabilities development. The Versailles Treaty prohibitions prompted Germany to use means other than live-force exercises to study and mature its combined arms concept, test naval and air doctrine, and drive planning for the invasions of Poland, France, and the Low Countries in the European theater. Japan effectively used wargames to inform doctrine and war planning, but biases affected game outcomes and subsequent planning of future campaigns, particularly the Battle of Midway. Japan gamed both strategic and tactical elements of its ambitious Pacific campaign, studying in detail essential tasks as part of its Pearl Harbor and Midway operations plans. Game insights prompted planners to change parts of its Pearl Harbor attack, but failed to sway leaders to examine more closely a critical element of the Midway campaign. The United States, particularly the Navy, combined wargaming with analyses and live-force exercises to study upcoming likely threats and advance naval concepts and capabilities such as carrier aviation. In the United States, Naval War College games of different variations of Plan Orange exposed officers to the theater, operational, and tactical challenges of a conflict against Japan. Many games played over the years between the world wars created a baseline of understanding about how naval officers would fight when war broke out. Now, nearly a century later, today’s U.S. military should apply best practices from those interwar years to spur innovation and overcome the kinds of strategic, operational, and institutional challenges that plagued these adversaries before the Second World War.

This is the final part of a three-part series examining interwar-period gaming. The first part defined wargaming, discussed its potential utility and pitfalls, and differentiated it from other military analytic tools. Part two discussed how the militaries of Germany, Japan, and the United States employed wargames to train and educate their officers, plan and execute major campaigns, and inform the development of new concepts and capabilities for the Second World War. This final part offers recommendations, taken from effective practices of this period, to leverage wargames as a tool today to provide a strategic edge for the U.S. joint force tomorrow.

Wargaming for Today

First, the U.S. military must expand and deepen the use of wargaming at PME institutions as a training and educational tool. Similar to the interwar period, wargames should be used to train officers to make decisions from a commander’s perspective, gain insights into likely adversaries, and learn about the war plans to counter or defeat them. Wargaming design should be part of the regular curriculum to reinvigorate this technique within the uniformed military, since PME institutions are intended to broaden officers’ professional horizons and allow them to explore new ideas. 

At the interwar-period Kriegsakademie, some students had never experienced the brutal combat of World War I and never faced decision-making under fire. Wargaming woven throughout the curriculum gave these future leaders an opportunity to practice “commandership” from the commander’s perspective. Thus, students playing in wargames estimated situations based on given scenarios, outlined courses of action after assessing situations, executed plans, and then absorbed honest critiques of their decisions. In the 1920s and 1930s at the Naval War College, students also received a primer in commandership against the backdrop of a Pacific naval campaign. The students who played the games, as well as the faculty members who designed and umpired these events, shaped and fed a shared mental model about the strategic, operational, and tactical challenges of fighting the Japanese in the coming war. Officers returning to Newport as faculty members brought with them recent operational experiences, including fleet experiments that shaped carrier aviation and informed the requirements of new capabilities.  

Beyond the Naval War College and the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, current U.S. PME students are not taught how to plan and develop wargames as part of their regular course work. At U.S. Marine Corps University, for instance, wargaming is taught during a six-week elective at Command and Staff College (if enough students express interest in the elective), but the course fails to relate how games are relevant to real-world war planning and critical U.S. defense processes such as capabilities development.

At the next-level PME institution, students of the Marine Corps War College (lieutenant colonels and commanders) participate in a wargame as part of the curriculum’s Joint Professional Military Education II (JPME II) requirement, but they are never taught how to plan, execute, and analyze a game themselves. Within the Air Force, the Air Force Materiel Command offers three-day introductory courses with curricula tailored to the needs of a client command or organization, but these courses fall short of the integral nature that wargaming fulfilled for the German Army, Japanese Navy, and U.S. Navy during the interwar years.

The Board of Strategy plots moves during a Naval War College wargaming session in the cabin of the USS Wyoming (BB-32). Such rigorous preparatory training during the interwar years. (U.S. Naval Institute Archive photo)

To yield substantive benefits, wargaming must be integrated into service PME starting with captain-level career courses. The first exposure should be at the rank of captain in order to give young leaders intensive, virtual decision-making experience before they assume company command. Company command is the appropriate time to introduce gaming to an officer’s development because his unit gets four times larger (a Marine rifle company has 182 personnel by table of organization, compared to 43 personnel in a Marine rifle platoon) and he must have the mental acuity and confidence to operate without constant supervision from superiors. Gaming gives leaders this experience.  

As an officer’s career progresses, the wargaming curriculum should teach students how to develop, plan, and execute wargames on a larger scale. At top-level schools, an officer should be expert at applying game insights into the vast U.S. military bureaucracy, feeding future-leaning commands and organizations within the supporting establishment that play a key role in developing future strategies, concepts, capabilities, and resource allocations. With its emphasis on decision-making and reflection on the implications of those decisions, wargaming provides a tool to foster imagination and intellectual growth inside and outside a formal schoolhouse setting. Teaching wargaming design to uniformed military members empowers them to create the intellectual venues themselves when they return to the fleet, flight line, or field – much like the officers of the German Army, Japanese Navy, and American Navy did during the interwar period.

Second, the U.S. military should more closely bind service-level wargaming, analysis, and live-force exercises to provide the intellectual and practical test beds to explore and develop new concepts, capabilities, and technologies to overcome unforeseen warfighting challenges. The games and exercises should be conducted as distinct events that are separated by weeks or months, unlike the infamous Millennium Challenge 2002 event, which attempted to synchronize a wargame, experiments, and exercises involving live forces around the world. 

Wargames, analysis, and exercises are complementary elements of a cycle of research that offered fresh approaches and shaped new capabilities during the interwar period. Wargaming provides an environment for players to make decisions and understand their implications without expending blood or treasure. Insights derived from games are generally qualitative in nature. Analysis uses mathematical tools – primarily computer-generated models in today’s military – in an attempt to duplicate the physical processes of combat. Insights derived from analysis are usually quantitative in Both wargames and analysis, however, are only abstractions of reality. Together, they can inform exercises that give real forces the opportunity to implement in the physical domain the new approaches and ideas suggested by wargames and analysis. (See Table 1, Comparison of Campaign Analyses and Wargames.)

Table 1. Attributes of campaign analyses and wargames.

U.S. Navy Commander Phillip Pournelle writes that each of the tools “suffer from their own biases, simplifications, and cognitive and epistemological shortcomings. When integrated judiciously, however, the cycle of research gives leaders at all levels critical facts, synthetic experiences, and opportunities to rehearse a range of events in their minds and in the Fleet or the field.” (See Table 2, Comparison of Exercises and Wargames.)

Table 2. Attributes of exercises and wargames.

The cycle of research has increased momentum at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory’s (MCWL) Ellis Group, which hosts weekly wargames to examine emergent Marine warfighting challenges. The games serve as an incubator for concepts and capabilities under development. During a game in 2015, dozens of uniformed officers and civilian experts gathered around a large sandtable separated by a barrier. A young Marine infantry captain explained how he planned to land his company.  On the other side of the barrier, red cell members – retired field-grade officers and staff noncommissioned officers – determined how they would oppose the landing. On the group’s periphery, analysts recorded observations made by the participants. Scribes filled whiteboards with insights from the game, which they matched against the command’s prioritized list of warfighting challenges. U.S. Marine Corps Brigadier General Dale Alford, MCWL’s commanding general, adopted the weekly games after observing the Naval War College’s Halsey Groups use operations analysis and wargaming to examine naval warfighting challenges. “It was mostly about getting the right people involved and in the same room,” he said.

Third, wargaming leaders must ensure an accurate and intellectually honest representation of the enemy. Most games played by the Germans, Japanese, and Americans during the interwar period featured two sides: friendlies and adversaries playing against one another. Some of today’s large service-level games are one-sided, with friendly “blue” actions being played against pre-scripted enemy reactions or a control group attention divided between representing “red” and running the overall event. However, if war is “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will,” as Carl von Clausewitz suggested in On War, these games must adequately portray the adversary’s will.  One-sided wargames lose the essence of the opposing will when the enemy’s actions are not represented by another human being seeking to win. Retired U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, who previously served as director of Command and Staff College, required all Command and Staff College games to be two-sided affairs. “You need two free-thinking wills … within the bounds of the problem,” said Van Riper, who has consulted on many joint and service games since his retirement from active duty in 1997 and served as the red cell commander during the Millennium Challenge event.

This honest portrayal goes beyond using an expert versed on enemy (e.g., “red cell”) capabilities, limitations, and doctrine. During the Wehrmacht wargames before the invasion of France and the Low Countries, the red cell correctly suggested that French-led Allied Forces would be slow to respond to a German main effort thrust through the Ardennes – prompting planners to shift resources to the army group approaching from the forest. The red cell did not portray an idealized version of the French doctrinal response, which would likely have prompted German planners to shift resources to a different army group and resulted in a different course of action. From the Japanese wargames before the Battle of Midway, historians and professional gamers often cite the sinking – and revival – of two Japanese carriers as an admonition against biases, poor assumptions, and predetermined outcomes.

Fourth, future wargaming efforts should use different types of games for different purposes and desired outcomes. A greater variety of games can attack a problem from different perspectives. A larger number of games provides more opportunities to create fresh solutions. For a new, evolving subject, a wargame with more seminar discussion, less action-counteraction play, and fewer rules might be more appropriate in order to generate player insights and spur creativity. On a topic for which much is already known, a wargame with less seminar discussion, more action-counteraction play, and more rules based on hard data might be more suitable to refine players’ understanding of capabilities.

Back to the Future

The German Army, Japanese Navy, and U.S. Navy used wargaming to shed light on strategic, operational, and tactical uncertainty during the interwar period. In the German Army, wargaming formed the bedrock for the education of officers and provided opportunities for commanders and staffs to rehearse complicated operations such as the offensive against France and the Low Countries in 1940. For the Japanese Navy, planners utilized wargames to examine different ways to employ the Combined Fleet in the opening salvo of the Pacific campaign. The Germans successfully used red cells during their wargames to accurately and honestly portray French forces’ actions during the 1940 campaign, while the Japanese demonstrated the dangers of predetermined notions during wargames before the Battle of Midway. The U.S. Navy found wargaming to be an effective tool for educating officers as well, inculcating the practice among generations of officers who attended the Naval War College and fostering a shared mental model through hundreds of wargames that focused on a potential future war with Japan. Likewise, American naval officers also wargamed carrier aviation, discovering optimal ways to employ forces that massed firepower and extended the reach of the Pacific Fleet. These insights fed the cycle of research that allowed American naval officers to study, experiment, and develop new concepts and capabilities leading up to the Second World War.  

Interwar-period wargaming provided users with a chance to shed light on an opaque future. Although the threats are different, senior U.S. defense leaders face similar ambiguity now. The reassertion of Russia in world affairs, a militarily stronger China, and a multitude of powerful non-state actors have dramatically changed the strategic landscape. Fast-developing capabilities, nascent technologies, unmanned weapons platforms, 3D printing, and human-machine interfacing are among the potential factors of the next great conflict. With no cost in blood and minimal in treasure, wargames can empower U.S. military leaders to exert intellectual leadership and innovate to be better prepared for the future.

Major Jeff Wong, USMCR, is a Plans Officer at Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Plans, Policies and Operations Department.  This series is adapted from his USMC Command and Staff College thesis, which finished second place in the 2016 Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Strategic Research Paper Competition.  The views expressed in this series are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Marine Corps, the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.  

1.  Commander Phillip Pournelle, USN (analyst at the Office of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defense), interview by Jeff Wong, September 24, 2015.

2.  As discussed previously, wargaming is different from COA Wargaming, which is a phase of the joint and services’ planning processes, e.g., the Military Decision-Making Process and Marine Corps Planning Process.

3. Colonel Matthew Caffrey, USAF (Retired) (wargame instructor at the Air Force Materiel Command), interview by Jeff Wong, October 15, 2015.

4. Gary Anderson and Dave Dilegge, “Six Rules for Wargaming: The Lessons of Millennium Challenge ’02,” War on the Rocks, November 11, 2015 (accessed April 1, 2016): http://warontherocks.com/2015/11/six-rules-for-wargaming-the-lessons-of-millennium-challenge-02/.

5. Philip Pournelle, “Preparing for War, Keeping the Peace,” Proceedings 140, no. 9 (Newport, RI: U.S. Naval Institute, September 2014), accessed October 15, 2015: http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2014-09/preparing-war-keeping-peace.

6. Peter Perla, The Art of Wargaming, 287.

7. Brigadier General Dale Alford, USMC (commanding general of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory), interview by Jeff Wong, November 23, 2015.

8. Carl von Clausewitz, On War ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 75.

9. Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, USMC (Retired) (faculty member at Marine Corps University), interview by Jeff Wong, February 2, 2016.

10. Pournelle, interview by Jeff Wong, September 24, 2015.

Featured Image: NEWPORT, R.I. (May 5, 2017) U.S. Naval War College (NWC) Naval Staff College students participate in a capstone wargame. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jess Lewis/released)

Hyper-Converged Networks and Artificial Intelligence: Fighting at Machine Speed

By Travis Howard

Lieutenant Stacey Alto sits in the Joint Intelligence Center aboard the Wasp-class Amphibious Assault ship USS ESSEX (LHD 2). As the Force Intelligence Watch Officer (FIWO), her job is to absorb relevant information related to current and future operations of the Essex Amphibious Ready Group, as well as the general intelligence within the operating theater. Her zero-client, virtual desktop environment (VDE) 6-panel display at her watch station allows her a single-pane-of-glass into Unclassified, Secret, Top Secret, and Coalition enclaves through the Consolidated Afloat Networking and Enterprise Services (CANES) network.

One of her watch standers, an Intelligence Specialist Second Class, approaches her desk with new information from the Joint Operations Center (JOC), the nerve center of ARG operations, announcing new orders from the fleet commander to enter the Gulf of Oman, which represents a shift in operating theater from their current position in the Arabian Sea.

Stacey goes to work immediately, enlisting the help of two Intelligence Specialists and one of the Information Systems Technicians standing watch in the Ship’s Signal Exploitation Space (SSES). She queries the onboard widget carousel on her CANES SECRET terminal. Using a combination of mouse, keyboard, and touchscreen, she pulls together several ready-made widgets and snaps them into place, each taking advantage of a pool of “big data” information stored on the ship’s carry-on Distributed Common Ground System-Navy (DCGS-N) and off-ship sources from the intelligence cloud. Her development work gets passed to the next watch team, as they set the application’s variables for data parsing, consolidating inputs, and terrain mapping to put together a relevant, real-time intelligence picture.

By the time Stacey returns to her watch station almost 24 hours later, the IT personnel in SSES have put the new application through the automated cybersecurity testing process and have released it to the onboard “app store,” which Stacey can now install on her virtualized, thin-client desktop within seconds. She calls the JOC, the Marine Landing Force Operations Center (LFOC), and the ship’s Combat Information Center (CIC) announcing the system’s readiness with separate logins at the appropriate classification level for each watch station. By the time ESSEX enters the Gulf of Oman, the application has mapped adversarial positions and capabilities, pulled from several disparate databases afloat and ashore, all at varying levels of classification necessary for operational planning throughout the ship.

Building a More Maneuverable Network Afloat

The above scenario is almost a reality, representing several emergent advances in network technology and application portability (the “mobility” factor) that the Navy will soon capitalize on: a hardware and network-layer software architecture known as hyper converged infrastructure (HCI). The performance and cost efficiencies realized by this architecture will pave the way for disruptive changes to how we maneuver the network across the entire spectrum of operations: as a business system, as a decision support system, and as a warfighting platform.

Hyper-convergence is the integration of several hardware devices through a hypervisor, which acts as an intermediary and resource broker between software and hardware. Independent IT components are no longer siloed but combined, simplifying the entire infrastructure and improving speed and agility of the virtual network.1 The advantages of HCI seem obvious, but the real disruptive effect is how we can build upon it. The opening scenario describes on-demand application development at the tactical edge. This is achievable through HCI efficiency and another emerging network process known as Agile Core Services (ACS), a joint software development initiative being built into several programs throughout the Navy and Air Force, and one that CANES (as the afloat and maritime operations center network provider) is leveraging.

Hyper-Convergence in Network Hardware combines storage and processing power into a single appliance for simplified management, faster deployment, and could even lower acquisition costs ( Helixstorm.com)

ACS allows applications to use a common mix of services at the platform level, reducing cost and time of development but also forcing all applications to “speak the same language.” All that is needed to make on-demand, tactical application delivery a reality is a framework for plug-ins that takes advantage of big data we already have aboard ships and available at both the operational and tactical levels of war.

Previous articles in the United States Naval Institute’s magazine Proceedings have argued for thin-client solutions aboard warships,2 leveraging the CANES network program to ultimately achieve network efficiency that can remove “fat clients” (standard computer desktops) from the architecture to be replaced by thin or zero-clients (user workstation nodes with virtualized desktops and no onboard storage or input devices beyond keyboard and mouse). Removing clients from the equation eases the burden on shipboard technicians, consolidates the information security posture, and overall presents a more efficient network management picture through smart automation that makes better use of available manpower. HCI is the architecture solution that will eventually enable a full-scale, afloat, thin-client solution.

Hyperconverged.org is a website dedicated to delivering the message of advantages that HCI can bring,3 and lists ten compelling advantages that HCI brings to any IT infrastructure, to include:

  • Focus on software-defined data centers to allow faster software modernization and more agile vulnerability patching
  • Use of commercial off the shelf (COTS) commodity hardware that provides failure avoidance without the additional costs
  • Centralized systems and management
  • Enhanced agility in network management, automation, virtualization of operating systems, and shared resources across a common resource manager (such as hypervisor)
  • Improved scalability and efficiency
  • Potentially lower costs (caveat: in the commercial sector this may be truer than in the government sector, but smart contract competitions and vendor choices can drive down costs for the government as well)
  • Consolidated data protection through improved backup and recovery options, more efficient resource utilization, and faster network management tools

The advantages of HCI are numerous, and represent the true next step in IT architecture that will enable future software capabilities. How can we, as warfighters, take advantage of this emerging technology? It cannot be overstated that our current processes for procuring and delivering software-based services and capabilities must be revamped to keep pace with industry and take advantage of the speed and agility that HCI brings.

Faster, More Efficient Application Development is the Next Step

In our current hardware development methodology, programs of record within the Department of Defense (DoD) have little difficulty determining a clear modernization path that fits within the cost, schedule, and performance constraints outlined by the DoD acquisition framework. However, software development is an entirely different story, and is no longer agile enough to suit our needs. If we can iterate hardware infrastructure at near the speed of industry, then software and application development becomes the pacing function that we must address before we can realize the opening scenario of this essay.

The key term when discussing the speed of system development is agility, defined by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as “the speed of operations within an organization and speed in responding to customers…or reduced cycle times.”4 The federal government, DoD in particular, has been struggling with acquisition reform for some time, and with the signing of the National Defense Authorization Act in fiscal year 2010, Congress placed renewed emphasis on the need to transform the acquisition process for information technology. Several programmatic changes to acquisition helped (such as the approval of the “IT Box” programmatic framework in the joint requirements process), but the agility of software development and modernization remains challenged. Ensuring proper testing and evaluation (T&E) methodology, bureaucratic approval processes to ensure affordability, joint interoperability testing, and lengthy proof-in testing are just some of the processes facing software applications prior to gaining approval for full-rate production and fielding to the warfighter.

Matthew Kennedy and Lieutenant Colonel Dan Ward (U.S. Air Force), in a 2012 article for Defense Acquisition University, argued for agility in system development by discussing flaws in the current “agile software development” model.5 Developed in the early 2000s, this model is not as agile as the name would imply, and still defines requirements to be developed in advance, which doesn’t leave room for innovation or rapid, iterative changes to keep pace with the speed of industry. Exciting initiatives are being fielded in the commercial sector, such as cloud-based development and learning models, and mobility technology that many of the services would use to great effect. Innovative prototyping of disruptive technology at the service or component level of DoD, such as the now-disbanded Chief of Naval Operation’s Rapid Innovation Cell (CRIC), proved that there are operational advantages to emerging tech such as wearable mobile devices, if only we could “turn a tighter circle” within our acquisition framework and work with agility to field newer and better versions to the force.

Thankfully, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel when implementing a more agile software development framework; we must take lessons from industry and apply them to the unique needs of each of the DoD components. This may be easier said than done, but Kennedy and Ward, and indeed likely many other acquisition professionals and scholars, would agree that it is entirely possible if leadership demanded it, and the policies, procedures, and resourcing followed suit to support it. Kennedy and Ward offered a common set of software and business aspect practices to support agile practices that would allow a predictable, faster software refresh cycle (not just patches, but cumulative updates) to ensure software remains agile and relevant to the warfighter. Using small teams for incremental development, lean initiatives to shorten timelines, and continuous user involvement with co-located teams are just some of the practices offered.6

Improving our software development and modernization framework to be even more agile than it is now is necessary considering the recent industry shift to software-as-a-service and cloud-based business models. No longer will software versions be deliberate releases, but rather iterative updates such as Microsoft’s “current branch for business” (CBB) model. With this model, Microsoft envisions that Windows 10 could be the last “version” of Windows to be released, which will then be built upon in future “service pack-like” updates every 12-18 months. Organizations that do not update their operating systems to the latest CBB will be left behind with unsupported versions. Not only does such a change demand a rapid speed-to-force update solution for DoD, but it represents a disruptive process change that will ultimately allow us to reach the opening scenario’s on-demand tactical application process, leveraging big data in a way that units at the tactical edge have never done before – and in a way that may never have been imagined by the system’s original developers.

Hyper-convergence infrastructure, together with agility-based application development and modernization, represents a near-term possibility that will enable true innovation at the tactical level of war and put the power of information superiority into the hands of the warfighter. While re-developing the acquisition framework to achieve this may be difficult, it is entirely possible and, many would say, necessary if DoD is to keep pace with emerging threats, take advantage of emerging technology and innovation, and ultimately retain its status as the best equipped and trained force the world has ever known.

Artificial Intelligence: The Next AEGIS Combat System

Now let’s imagine another scenario. USS LYNDON B. JOHNSON (DDG 1002), last of the Zumwalt-class destroyer line and used primarily to test emergent technology prototypes in real-world scenarios, slips silently through the South China Sea in the dead of night. She is the first ship in the U.S. Navy to possess Nelson, a recursively-improving artificial intelligence (RIAI). Utilizing an HCI supercomputer core, Nelson acts as an integrator for the various shipboard combat systems in a similar concept to today’s AEGIS Combat System, except much faster and with machine-speed environmental adaption.

American relations with China have broken down, resulting in a shooting war in the South China Sea that threatens to spill into the Pacific proper, and eventually reach Hawaii. In an effort to change the dynamic, DDG-1002 forward deploys in stealth to collect intelligence on enemy force disposition and, if the opportunity presents itself, offer a first-strike capability to the U.S. Pacific Command. JOHNSON is spotted by a surface action group of three Chinese destroyers, who take immediate action by firing a salvo of anti-ship cruise missiles followed by surface gunnery fire once in range.

At the voice command of the Tactical Action Officer, Nelson goes to work, taking control of the ship’s self-defense system and prioritizing targets in a similar fashion to Aegis, only much faster, while constantly providing voice feedback on system readiness, target status, and battle damage assessments through the internal battle circuit, essentially acting as a member of the CIC team. Nelson’s adaptability as an AI allows it to evolve its tactical recommendations based on the environment and the sensory input from the ship’s 3D and 2D radars, intelligence feeds, and even the voice reports over the battle circuit. Compiling the tactical picture on a large display in CIC, Nelson simultaneously responds to threats against the ship while providing a fused battle management display to the Captain and Tactical Action Officer. The RIAI does much to lift the fog of war, and automates enough of the ship’s defensive and information-gathering functions to allow the humans to focus on tactically employing the ship to stop the threat rather than reacting to it.

While hyper-convergence, coupled with agile and rapidly-developed software innovation, is the emerging technology, recursively-improving artificial intelligence is the ultimate disruptive technology in the near to medium-term and represents the giant leap forward that many research and development efforts are striving towards. AI has often been relegated to the work of science fiction, and while many futurists see it as the inevitable “singularity” to happen as soon as the mid-21st century, it has not quite gained acceptance in the mainstream technical community. What must be focused on from a warfighter’s perspective is the near-term (within the next 30-50 years) prospects of advances in quantum computing, neural networks, robotics, nanotechnology, and hyper-convergence. These advances could put us on a path towards artificial intelligence within the lifetime of generations currently serving or about to serve in the armed forces.

The debate over whether recursively self-improving artificial intelligence is possible continues,5 with some theorists stating that such an AI cannot be achieved because intelligence could be “upper bounded” in a way that transcends processor speed, available memory, and sensor resolution improvements. Others suggest that intelligence “is the ability to find patterns in data”7 and that, regardless of the more fringe theories surrounding AI, transhumanism, and the ontological discussions of the singularity, “a sub-human level system capable of self-improvement can’t be excluded.”8  It is the sub-human AI, capable of adapting to changing data patterns, that makes a combat system AI an exciting near-future prospect. 

Conclusion

This article presented two hypothetical scenarios. In the near-term, a Navy watchstander takes advantage of a hyper-converged infrastructure network environment onboard a U.S. Navy warship to rapidly develop a tactical application to take advantage of disparate databases and cloud data resources, ultimately producing a battle management aid for the ship’s next mission. This scenario took advantage of two emerging technological concepts: hyper-convergence in hardware infrastructure, a reality some major defense acquisition programs such as the Navy’s CANES has already resourced and on-track to field in the coming years, and agile software development in defense acquisition, which is a conceptual framework that must be developed to ensure more rapid and innovative software capabilities are delivered to the force.

The funding for these technological advances must remain stable to deliver HCI to our operating forces as a hardware baseline for future development, and policy makers must continue to find efficiencies in IT acquisition that lead to agile software development to really take advantage of the efficiencies HCI brings. Additionally, DoD IT leaders must think critically and dynamically about how future software updates will be tested and fielded rapidly; our current lengthy testing and evaluation cycle is no longer compatible with either the speed of industry’s vulnerability patching, a fluid content upgrade schedule, or the pace of adversarial threats.

The second scenario describes a near-future incorporation of recursively-improving artificial intelligence within a combat system, which builds upon hyper converged hardware and recursively improving software to deliver a warfighting platform that can defend itself more rapidly and learn from its tactical situation. The simple fact is that technology is changing at a pace no one dared dream as early as 20 years ago, and if we don’t build it, our adversaries will. A recent (2016) article in Reuters, and reported in other media outlets, showcases the People Republic of China’s (PRC) desire to build AI-integrated weapons,9 citing Wang Changqing of China Aerospace and Industry Corp with saying “our future cruise missiles will have a very high level of artificial intelligence and automation.” DoD must adapt its processes to keep pace and remain the world’s leader in incorporating emerging and disruptive technology into its warfighting systems.

Travis Howard is an active duty U.S. Naval Officer assigned to the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington D.C. He holds advanced degrees and certifications in cybersecurity policy and business administration, and has over 16 years of enlisted and commissioned experience in surface warfare and Navy information systems. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of the Navy, Department of Defense, or the United States Government.

References

1. Scott Morris. “Putting The ‘Hyper’ Into Convergence.” NetworkWorld Asia 12.2 (2015): 44. 28 Jan 2017.

2. Travis Howard, LT, USN. “’The Next Generation’ of Afloat Networking.” Proceedings Magazine, Mar 2015, Vol. 141/3/1,345

3. Hyperconverged.org. “Ten Things Hyperconverged Can Do For You: Leveraging the Benefits of Hyperconverged Infrastructure.” Retrieved Feb 2 2017, http://www.hyperconverged.org/10-things-hyperconvergence-can-do/

4. Matthew Kennedy & Lt Col Dan Ward. “Inserting Agility In System Development.” Defense Acquisition Research Journal: A Publication Of The Defense Acquisition University 19.3 (2012): 249-264. 4 Feb 2017.

5. Ibid

6. Ibid

7. Roman Yampolskiy. “From Seed AI to Technological Singularity via Recursively Self-Improving Software.” Cornell University Library. arXiv:1502.06512 [cs.AI]. 23 Feb 2015.

8. Ibid

9. Ben Blanchard. “China eyes artificial intelligence for new cruise missiles.” Reuters, World News. 19 Aug 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-defence-missiles-idUSKCN10U0EM

Featured Image: Electronic Warfare Specialist 2nd Class Sarah Lanoo from South Bend, Ind., operates a Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS) console in the Combat Direction Center (CDC) aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln as it conducts combat operations in support of Operation Southern Watch. (U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 3rd Class Patricia Totemeier)

Sea Control 135 – Rear Admiral Jeff Harley, President of the U.S. Naval War College

By Ashley O’Keefe

Join the latest episode of Sea Control for a conversation with Rear Admiral Jeff Harley, president of the U.S. Naval War College (USNWC), to talk about the ways in which the College is adapting to a rapidly changing strategic environment. We’ll learn about the USNWC’s updated mission set, their outreach to the international community, and their part in the new renaissance in wargaming, among other topics.

Download Sea Control 135 – Rear Admiral Jeff Harley, President of the U.S. Naval War College 

The transcript of the conversation between Admiral Harley and Ashley O’Keefe begins below. Special thanks to Associate Producers Roman Madaus and Ryan Uljua for helping produce this episode.

Ashley: Good afternoon, and welcome to this week’s Sea Control podcast. I’m Ashley O’Keefe, and I’m here today with Rear Admiral Jeff Harley, the president of the United States Naval War College. He’s a career surface warfare officer, and a foreign policy expert. He has a masters from Tufts – the Fletcher School – and the Naval War College, and he’s been the president here at the U.S. Naval War College (NWC) for almost a year. We’re really looking forward to this discussion. Thank you again for being here, Admiral.

Many of our listeners have heard of the U.S. Naval War College, and most know about your core mission of educating and developing future naval leaders. There have been some big developments here in the last year, with an expanding mission set and several new initiatives launched here in Newport. Can you describe some of the impetus for those changes?

RADM Harley: The big change that we have is a function of our strategic plan – meaning that we have a plan on how we’re going to keep the College relevant. When you look at the strategic environment around us, you’ll recognize the exponential change everywhere, whether it’s in leadership or in technology. The demands placed on the educational system as a result of that exponential change require that we do things to ensure our relevance. So, some of the initiatives that we have are a function of that change – of trying to keep up with that change and maintaining our relevance.

We have a number of missions here at the college, but I’d like to start out by saying that when people say we’re the U.S. Naval War College, we’re really none of those things. We’re not U.S. – we’re an international school. Of our student body, one-sixth of them, some 110 students, are international students. We are not a naval college, we’re a joint college. We have students from all over the interagency, civilian agencies, all of the different services – we are a joint college and not merely naval. We are a war college in the sense that we study war, but we truly study the constructs of peace, the understanding of policy and strategy and the interrelationships between the two, all with a goal of preventing war. And then, probably trivial, but we’re not really a college, we’re a university, because we have four or five different colleges within our system, as well as a very large research arm that includes wargaming capacity. So, we’re really none of those things –U.S. Naval War or College. If we changed our name it would be something like the ‘International Joint Peace University,’ so it would be fairly complex.

But the impetus is really the change that’s going on around us, and so we’ve expanded our missions to reflect that change and that requirement for us to maintain that relevancy. And so we also look of course for how we can make a great institution even greater.

As you said, our principal mission, the core mission upon which everything else builds, is the education and development of future leaders. That’s our student body throughput. It’s also a reflection of our distance education capability. We have hundreds of thousands of people enrolled in our distance education programs through the College of Distance Education.

In the past, we had principally four missions, and the second one would be helping to define the future Navy. Whether that’s through fleet architecture studies, or helping to red-team those studies or helping to provide the home of thought – the strategic underpinnings of those kind of dialogues.

Our third mission was to support combat readiness, and we do that through our College of Operational and Strategic Leadership. And what they do is they have a number of advise-and-assist teams that work closely with the fleets. They participate in conferences, events, and wargaming all over the world to do that.

Our fourth mission always was to strengthen global maritime partnerships, which we do on a number of levels, including the International Seapower Symposium which happens every other year, a number of regional alumni symposia, as well as the international student throughput that goes with that.

The additional missions that we’ve added in some ways reflect things that we already do, but they also reflect expansion in these areas as well. We’ve added three relatively new missions.

The first is promoting ethics and leadership. Of course, when we talk about educating and developing future leaders, we’ve always had a leadership component, but we folded in a great deal of additional study in the curriculum and are working with the Navy Leadership and Ethics Center (NLEC) to expand the impact of our education and training provided through the education system at the various touch points. That continues to expand.

The second of those three new missions is contributing historical knowledge to shape decisions. We’ve always had a strong history here reflected in world-class archives and our History Center, and we’re expanding our Maritime History Center to be a Maritime History and Research Center. We’re trying to build this into a hive of activity. Understanding history is critical. History may not repeat itself, but it certainly does rhyme, as they say. So, having a world-class history research center here is critical to our future development within the College. Of course, in the 1970s, Admiral Stansfield Turner had the Turner revolution, in which he imbued history throughout the entire curriculum, and it remains to this day part of the national treasure of being able to attend this College, the historical underpinnings that you get in terms of understanding strategy and policy.

The last mission is providing input to the international legal community. We do that through our Stockton Center. That center contributes to the international dialogue on everything from the law of the sea, to law of war, to conflict prevention and humanitarian assistance, and simply so much more. The impetus was indeed the change that’s going on around us – the need to maintain our relevance here at this extraordinary institution and these new missions are simply a reflection of that need.

Ashley: Thank you, Admiral. It must be a really exciting time to be here at the War College. When you talk about these new missions –  or at least, writing down the things that were already happening to some extent – what is some of the work that you see coming out of places like the Maritime History Center, the Stockton Center, that’s exciting to you? What do you think are some of the impacts that you see coming from those places inside of the War College?

RADM Harley: Well, I would think that we’re at the forefront of so much of the thinking in so many different areas. So, illuminating history is the contribution of the History Center, again soon-to-be renamed History and Research Center. History has that critical role in so many things we do, and again, there’s so much history embedded in the institution. But also within our curriculum, providing that historical foundation, which, often for many of the students with very technical backgrounds, is the first time that they get this extent of the historical underpinning. And then the Stockton Center contributes an enormous amount at the maritime level, the national level, and the international level. On the issues of the day – key, critical issues that you see every day, such as the law of the sea issues in the South China Sea, vis-a-vis China, or the law of war, or conflict prevention, or the interfaces with the United Nations… it’s pretty extraordinary, the things that we’re doing.

I’ll just torture you with this idea of using those kind of examples of history and of the international law center as simply being a reflection of the contributions that the College makes at the national level. We’re continuing to expand how we ensure that relevancy of those seven missions. We’re doing that through what I call the “izes.”

The first of those is that we’re going to continue to operationalize the Naval War College. We’re doing that by enhancing the operations analysis that we do in concert with the Naval Warfare Development Command as well as the modeling and simulation that takes place within the Pentagon and other places. We’re operationalizing in terms of the way that we’re adding additional warfighting education to our curriculum. We’re adding particularly in terms of sea control and all-domain access. We’ve reflected the strategic environment in which we live through the stand-up of the Russia Maritime Studies Institute here last fall so now we have world-class experts in a critical area of geopolitical interest for our nation.

We also are navalizing our curriculum. We’ve always been a joint college, at least for the past several decades, but I think that we’ve become reliant on this idea that sea control is something that you already have, and in today’s world of anti-access capabilities, it’s really important that we teach sea control and maritime capabilities, all in accordance with the Chief of Naval Operations’ Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority.

We’re also futurizing the College. We’ve got our expanded and much more robust cyber curriculum, we’re teaching unmanned systems, we’re teaching space, we’re teaching the new and emerging technologies that influence the strategic environment. Within that futurization initiative is the creation of an Institute for Future Warfare Studies, which is going to allow us to look 30 or more years out into the future, instead of the tendency to look a very short period of time out, because of exponential change. But you can study future probabilities, and you can look that far out, and you can look at force architectures that would be required to work in that environment thirty years from now.

And then the last thing that we’re doing in terms of those “izes” is that we’re internationalizing our College. And by that I mean that we’re expanding the international interfaces that we have and we’re increasing the number of regional alumni symposia that we execute with our international  graduates in between our International Seapower Symposia that we conduct every two years. We’ve increased the number of Chief of Naval Operations International Fellows that we have onboard as part of our faculty. In fact, just a month ago, we brought on the former head of navy from Japan, Admiral Takei, so now Professor Takei is part of our faculty and staff. He brings a great deal of warfighting and educational experience to help shape the contours of the education that we provide both to our student body throughput, but also to our wargaming, and to our advise and assist teams that are really all over the world. This fall, we hope to bring on board the former head of navy from Norway. In doing so, we’ll have the Atlantic experience, the Arctic exposure, and obviously some NATO experience. So that will increase our CNO international fellows to four, and we’ll look to continue to expand that program because of the great skill sets that they can bring to the College and to the education for our individual students.

So those four “izes” really put into context the means and the lines of effort by which we aim to increase the relevance of this great institution.

Ashley: It’s exciting that as the College expands and creates value on so many different levels that it’s not insular, it’s really very global in perspective. And many of our listeners are in fact not in the U.S. – they’re foreign naval officers, they’re otherwise interested maritime security people. So when we think about how the College does interact, I understand that you take in foreign naval officers for education, but what are some other places where the College is collaborating internationally, maybe you could talk about the regional alumni symposia and what those bring to the table.

RADM Harley: The big effort that we make is the International Seapower Symposium here in Newport. The next one will be in the fall of 2018. That will be a largely attended event; it’ll have something on the order of 85 heads of navy here. To keep the momentum going between the International Seapower Symposia, we do hold these regional alumni symposia. About a month ago, we held one in Lima, Peru. It was focused on the Americas – all the way from Canada to South America. Simply extraordinary – we talk regional and local issues, we bring world-class experts in from the respective nations as well as from the U.S. Naval War College.

It helps us maintain the alumni relations and develop a deeper understanding of the issues that affect the regions. And we rotate, throughout the cycle, to get to all the different areas of the world. Our next one is scheduled for this fall. It will be in the Middle East, and then we’ll be in Asia in the spring, then we’ll do the International Seapower Symposium next fall, then keep the rotation going between Africa and Europe. So it’s a pretty exciting opportunity to maintain those alumni relations, and their connections to the College that many of our international student graduates have come to know and love and respect for the contributions that we make in this international dialogue.

Ashley: One more last hot topic before I let you go, sir. Everybody loves to talk about wargaming. It’s been hot since, I suppose, Sims and Luce, but today we’re talking about it as well. So what are some of the new developments? I see it pop up a couple of times in some of those new mission areas that you talked about – could you maybe just explain a little bit more what you’re doing here?

RADM Harley: I think you’re right, there’s certainly been a renaissance in wargaming, led by Deputy Secretary Work in the Pentagon, and we’ve revitalized our wargaming program in a number of different ways. We’re really focusing hard on integrating the wargaming through the ops analysis community. By that I mean with the folks who do modeling and simulation and those who do experimentation. So, there is a greater effort to have that level of integration, so that your wargaming is informed by the experimentation that’s taking place. The experimentation that you’re doing is informed by the wargaming that you’re doing – and apply that same argument to the interfaces with modeling and simulation.

We’re also slowly expanding the amount of wargaming that we do with the student body. We of course have groups that are student-led. That’s essentially their elective while they’re here at the College. But we’re trying to get wargaming exposure to every student who comes through this great college, so everybody will have an opportunity to participate in wargaming.

We’re expanding the analysis that we’re doing in the wargaming, putting the appropriate focus on the quality of the analysis to make the quality of the wargames even better through the strategic enterprise of our Navy. The scheduling of the gaming has been refined to the point to offer the optimal output for the capacity that we have, and integration with all of the other entities that do wargaming as well. So you’re absolutely right, there’s so much going on with our wargaming, with our research, all integrated into the broader Navy analytic agenda. We’re excited about the ability to imbue each and every student with a fundamental understanding of  the contributions that wargaming can make.

Ashley: Well, sir, I think that you’re going to get a spike in applicants here as our CIMSEC listeners all get excited about the things that the College is doing, and just how vibrant this community is here. Is there anything else that you wanted to cover or leave our listeners with anything to close?

RADM Harley: Well, I’m humbled and honored to serve here at your USNWC. We do look forward to being able to maintain the dialogue with the international community, providing appropriate strategic thinking to our national leadership, particularly on maritime issues. We do so much to contribute to that dialogue and we’re just honored and humbled to be a part of that dialogue that takes place in this most demanding and complex of times.

Ashley: Thank you again for your time this afternoon, Admiral!

Rear Admiral Jeff Harley is the President of the U.S. Naval War College.

Ashley O’Keefe is the CIMSEC Secretary for 2016-2017. She is a U.S. Navy surface warfare officer. 

Trump-Xi Summit, Looking Back One Month Later

By Tuan N. Pham

As the dust settles and more disclosures are made, what can be said now of the Trump-Xi Summit a month later? 

Last month, I wrote an article titled “After the Summit: Where Do U.S.-China Relations Go From Here?” where I posited that China appeared to have a lot to be gratified about in 2016 in terms of advancing its rising regional and international role. The 6-7 April Trump-Xi Summit was the latest strategic signaling to the world that Beijing has abandoned its longstanding state policy of “hide capabilities and bide time” and will now assume its rightful place on the world stage as a destined global power. I also suggested that the heavily choreographed summit seemed more about atmospherics than substance as evidenced by President Xi’s exacting protocol demands prior to the summit, President Trump’s decision to launch missile strikes against Syria during the summit, and the summit itself not yielding any concrete accomplishments beyond pledges of increased cooperation, new frameworks for dialogue, and a state visit to Beijing by Trump later in the year. One month later, as the dust settles and more disclosures are made, what can be said now of the summit?

Part 1 of this two-part series asks what the perceived and actual outcomes are from a Chinese, American, and international perspective. Part 2 will then ask which leader came out relatively stronger, what the ramifications for U.S.-China strategic relations are, what to expect when Trump visits China later in the year, and finally where the strategic opportunities are for the U.S. and how Washington can leverage them.

The Chinese Perspective

Looking back at China’s official public releases, think tank commentaries, and authoritative media reports of the summit, an overarching strategic communications theme was apparent across the tightly controlled and synchronized Chinese public information domain – “the summit charted a course and provided a roadmap for the China-U.S. relations, and established a new cooperation mechanism that will enhance and protect the all-important strategic bilateral relationship.” Supporting talking points shared (and probably coordinated) amongst the various Chinese interlocutors encompassed: (1) complementarity between the economies of China and the United States far exceeds any competition between them, (2) a thousand reasons for two countries to be good partners and not a single reason to damage the China-U.S. relations, (3) that China is firmly committed to the path of peaceful development, does not wish to play a zero-sum game, is not seeking hegemony, and is willing to work with the United States to maintain world peace, stability, and prosperity, and (4) that the U.S. relationship with China will depend on the hope for a “new pattern of relations between great powers” based on the principle of “no confrontation, no conflict, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation.” Common catchphrases used by Chinese government officials, pundits, and news media to characterize the summit included “mutual understanding, mutual trust, mutual respect, and mutual shaping.”

Given the circumstances, it seems that the Chinese public diplomacy apparatus – which Beijing uses to signal its policy priorities – struggled to make the case that the summit resulted in any substantive or tangible outcomes. Instead it expended an inordinate amount of attention on the intangible personal relationship between Xi and Trump and on the former’s proposed four dialogue mechanisms covering diplomacy and security, economics, law enforcement and cybersecurity, and social and people-to-people exchanges. This is not too surprising considering that Chinese think tank punditry and authoritative media reporting prior to the summit were, by and large, focused on building up Xi, jockeying for summit positions, expressing desired outcomes, and in some cases, grandstanding and hedging.            

What may be more telling is the coverage by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, think tanks, and authoritative media of areas of bilateral tensions – North Korea, Taiwan, South China Sea (SCS), and trade and commerce – during and after the summit. To date, they have been largely limited, vague, positive, and most importantly, provided no indication that Beijing is considering major changes in its policies in the aftermath of the summit.

The one exception may be North Korea. There have been sporadic dialogues in the Chinese media – most notably in the Global Times, a nationalist newspaper run by the state-run People’s Daily, that suggest a growing policy debate within China questioning Beijing’s longstanding support to North Korea, warn of potential sanctions, and caution Pyongyang if it “carries out a sixth nuclear test as expected, it is more likely than ever that the situation will cross the point of no return…all stakeholders will bear the consequences, with Pyongyang sure to suffer the greatest losses.” These media commentaries, while sometimes used to test reactions to potential foreign policies, do not necessarily represent the views of the state. But the warnings appear consistent with Beijing’s recent actions to include implementation of previous United Nations Security Council sanctions and the Xi-Trump phone call on 24 April to discuss possible solutions to the North Korean nuclear issue and denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.

However, while encouraging, these latest Chinese cooperative moves may be motivated more by Xi’s desire to project goodwill with Trump than to help resolve the North Korean problem. Beijing has shown time and time again that its strategic interests in maintaining the status quo on the Korean Peninsula and ensuring a stable North Korea along its border override its desire to cooperate with Washington to denuclearize the peninsula. The coming months will reveal Beijing’s true intent, and more importantly, its sincerity and resolve this time around. Placating words are meaningless without persistent and consistent actions. Washington should trust but verify.   

The American Perspective 

The White House praised the summit as a positive and productive opportunity for both presidents and their wives to get to know one another, and for their respective staffs to build rapport for the work ahead in reviewing the state of strategic bilateral relations and generating results-focused outcomes that would benefit both countries. Trump and Xi agreed to work in concert to expand areas of cooperation while managing differences based on mutual respect and to elevate existing bilateral talks to reflect the importance of making progress on strategic issues of mutual concern. 

Overall, the meeting details were rather sparse for policy flexibility and probably indicative of the U.S. limited objectives for the summit considering the timing and duration of the meeting: (1) get through the state visit without any enduring policy encumbrances; (2) size up Chinese counterparts for future negotiations (trade, commerce, North Korea, Taiwan, SCS, etc.); and (3) set favorable conditions for the forthcoming and more substantive cabinet-level dialogues and state visit to China. Generally speaking, a major summit within the first 100 days of taking office may be too soon, particularly with the principal nation-state competitor, understaffed national security team, and an unsettled China policy.

Despite the positive and upbeat portrayals of the summit by Beijing and Washington, there was a wide divergence on whether the state visit was a success or not amongst U.S. think tank and media analysts. Some read the lack of a joint press conference or joint press statement as a failure; while others judged the summit as successful simply because it provided an opportunity for Trump and Xi to meet, lower heightened tensions, and set the conditions for future dialogues and negotiations. However, most agreed that the U.S. missile strikes on Syria overshadowed the summit and the summit itself produced few substantive or tangible results. That being said, many saw enough pleasantry between the two sides for restrained optimism in the coming year.

The International Perspective

Most foreign media outlets were cautiously hopeful prior to the summit. Many welcomed the meeting as an occasion to reduce the rising tensions between Beijing and Washington, lower the risk of a disruptive trade war with global ramifications, and explore a new constructive and stabilizing relationship between the two economic and military juggernauts. After the summit, the same foreign media outlets largely acknowledged that there were few substantive or tangible outcomes and the U.S. missile strikes against Syria detracted from the meeting. Some even intimated that the latter may have been a subtle signal to China that the United States is ready to act militarily and unilaterally when faced with threats abroad to include North Korea. Nevertheless, the cordial tone and lack of controversy were generally considered positive steps towards ameliorating tensions in U.S.-China relations during the first eventful months of the Trump Administration.  

U.S. regional allies and partners were rather anxious that Washington would make some sort of unilateral accommodation to Beijing without consultation and at their expense. In Tokyo, there had been apprehensions that the Trump Administration would attempt to use “the scent of a huge deal with China” as leverage to extract concessions from Japan, ease plans to step up pressure on Pyongyang, and give ground in the East China Sea (ECS) and SCS. In Seoul, there were fears that Washington would offer uncoordinated peninsular concessions to Beijing in exchange for pressuring Pyongyang. In Taipei, there were concerns that Trump would continue to use Taiwan as a bargaining chip in its trade negotiations with Beijing and possibly for North Korea, too. In Canberra, there were worries of being left behind on potential economic agreements.

All appear relieved with the summit’s lackluster outcomes. Trump’s telephone calls with Japanese Prime Minister Abe before and after the meeting seemed to allay the Japanese concerns. The Korean response was generally mixed with the Korean Foreign Ministry hailing the summit as successful and meaningful, while the Korean media calling out the meeting for its lack of any agreement on the North Korean nuclear and missile issue. The Taiwanese were likely reassured that the Chinese proposal for a Fourth Communique did not come up, in which Trump would again accede to Xi’s wishes by agreeing that there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of it, instead of the U.S. longstanding policy that it acknowledges the Chinese viewpoint but does not accept the viewpoint. The Australians were simply content that no economic agreements were made that upset their robust bilateral trade relations with China. As for the rest of the region, the media provided limited coverage – as is typical for events outside the region – with post-summit commentary predominantly observed in Singapore. As expected, Singapore took a neutral and measured position of the summit – “does not appear to have gone badly…and achieved little more than just sketching out the challenges which lie ahead on North Korea, SCS, and trade and commerce.”

Conclusion    

This concludes the short discourse on the perceived and actual outcomes from a Chinese, American, and international Regional perspective on the Trump-Xi summit and sets the conditions for further discussion in part 2 on the assessment of which leader came out relatively stronger, ramifications for the U.S.-China strategic relations, expectations of Trump’s visit to China later in the year, and U.S. strategic opportunities and how Washington can leverage them.     

Tuan Pham has extensive experience in the Indo-Asia-Pacific, and is widely published in national security affairs. The views expressed therein are their own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Government.

Featured Image: Talks between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump at the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Thursday and Friday have put bilateral ties back on track. (AFP)