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CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (CSIS) CSIS-BOB SCHIEFFER SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM DIALOGUE: SOUTH CHINA SEA: A KEY INDICATOR FOR ASIAN SECURITY COOPERATION FOR THE 21ST CENTURY MODERATOR: BOB SCHIEFFER, ANCHOR, “FACE THE NATION”, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, CBS NEWS SPEAKERS: KURT CAMPBELL, ASST. SECY. OF STATE, EAST ASIAN AND PACIFIC AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE AMBASSADOR STAPELTON ROY, DIRECTOR, KISSINGER INSTITUTE ON CHINA AND THE UNITED STATES DAVID SANGER CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES ERNEST BOWER, DIRECTOR, SOUTHEAST ASIA PROGRAM, CSIS TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2010 5:30 PM WASHINGTON, D.C. Transcript by Federal News Service Washington, D.C. H. ANDREW SCHWARTZ: Good evening and welcome to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. My name’s Andrew Schwartz and I’m our vice president for external relations. We are proud to be able to host this series in partnership with Texas Christian University and the Schieffer School of Journalism. We’d also like to thank our sponsors: The United Technologies Corporation, who have been generous allowed us to make this possible. I’d be remiss if I didn’t recognize one of our distinguished guests here: Adm. Keating, who is in charge of PAYCOM and a very good friend of the center. Admiral, welcome. (Applause.) Thank you for being here. We have a terrific panel tonight. And I’ll let you get right to it. But I’d also like to thank Assistant Secretary Kurt Campbell. Who, of course, was here at CSIS for many years – a great colleague and a great friend – and with that: Bob Schieffer. BOB SCHIEFFER: Thank you very much, Andrew, and welcome to this first fall session of the Schieffer School of Journalism forums here held with our Washington partner CSIS. Today’s topic, I have to say, is exactly the kind of thing that I think is just perfect for these forums. We’re going to talk about policy in the South China Sea. This is something that has gotten only scattered notice from experts in the field. And yet it could be of enormous importance of what’s going on out there. And we have a – you know, for example: Washington is leaping into the middle of a territorial dispute in the South China Sea. This is an area that’s rich in oil and gas, fish – a dispute between China and the Southeast Asia nations. Seldom have we gotten in the middle of something like that. We are planning naval exercises with South Korea and waters that China is claiming to be its territorial waters. We’ve all been reading in the paper about China and Japan in this incident involving the Chinese fishing boat captain who the Japanese released back to the Chinese. So what does all this mean? Is there a new American attitude toward the South China Sea? Has China taken a new attitude towards these waters? And we really have a great group here to talk about this. Right here is Kurt Campbell, who is the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. You’ll find biographies of all of our panelists in your booklet, so I’m not going to read those, but safe to say, these are all experts in this field. Stape Roy of the Woodrow Wilson Center, he is a career ambassador, spent more than four decades in the Foreign Service. Ernest Bower, senior advisor, director here at the CSIS Southeast Asia Program, an internationally recognized on economics, politics and business in Asia, and of course, my old friend David Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, also author of a New York Times bestseller, “The Inheritance”. Well, I’m going to get right to it, and I think before we get out to sea – (laughter) – we need to talk about what’s going on in North Korea, Kurt, because Kim Jong-il has promoted his youngest son a four-star general. There’s been some sort of a promotion for his aunt. What does this all mean and what do we know about it? KURT CAMPBELL: Well, first of all, Bob, it’s a pleasure to be here, congratulations to you for this wonderful dialogue and to TCU, and it’s great to be back at CSIS among so many friends and colleagues. I know we’re going to talk about the South China Sea today, but obviously there’s an enormous amount of attention about what’s transpiring in North Korea. We’ve been watching the preparations for this party conference for some time. There appear to be reports out of Pyongyang about the promotions that you have referred to. The truth is that we know remarkably little about Kim Jong-il’s youngest son. We think he is around 27 or 28 years old. Pictures that we have of him are uncertain, from an earlier period. We think he studied abroad for some period of his high school or education. We know almost nothing about him, and we believe that the aunt you’re referring to is married to one of the very senior officials of the North Korean party and is the sister of Kim Jong-il. Beyond that, to be perfectly honest, we are watching and looking for details just about like everyone else. Recently, we’ve done a careful look at what we think we’ve known and compared that with predictions associated with North Korean developments, and it is interesting and cautionary to see how wrong we’ve been in the past. And so I think our key here is to be careful, to make sure that we’re in very deep consultations with our friends in the region. I’ll be in Japan and South Korea next week. We obviously want to hear their views. Our positions about what’s necessary in terms of reengagement and six-party talks and other kinds of engagement remain consistent, and frankly, we’ll be waiting and watching carefully. MR. SCHIEFFER: I’m going to go to David, because David, I know you have been doing some reporting on this. What do you pick up about this from intelligence people? DAVID SANGER: Well, as Secretary Campbell said, we know very little about Kim Jong Un, and the fact that we’re not even certain what year he was born gives you the depth of the black hole that’s out here. I have had some U.S. government officials who spent a lot of time looking into his background, colleagues of Kurt’s in the U.S. government, say that it was not until they actually began to look into Kim Jong Un’s background that they began praying for Kim Jong-il’s good health – (laughter) – which I had never really heard before from U.S. government officials. Not usually a common sentiment that you hear. During the last trip to China that Kim Jong-il took, which was about four weeks ago, the Chinese quite conspicuously took him down to a number of areas where economic development had flourished, places where they had begun early with market reforms. And this would have been someplace between the fifth and 50th effort to try to convince him to do some market openings. It would, of course, open up the society along the way, and I think the big question is, does this transition indicate that they are ready to go do that? So far, there is absolutely no evidence of that, at least that I’ve seen, and there is considerable evidence that the leadership is concerned about what it’s like to turn a country in this kind of straits over to a 27 year old. Remember, when Kim Jong-il took over, he had had years of being trained by his father, and everything that we have seen happen in the past few weeks and months is a compressed version of what they did over 20 years with Kim Jong-il, and so they just don’t know what they’re getting. And the big question is, why are they stacking so many members of the family around him? MR. SCHIEFFER: Do you – when you say, people were praying for his father’s good health when they realized what was happening here, is that just because of inexperience or because they’re rushing this, or is there something different about this son? MR. SANGER: I think what they’re worried about is – and you saw this with the sinking of the South Korean ship – that they’re quite concerned that in order to establish his military credentials, especially now that he is newly – I don’t know how many stars he got the other day, but four stars? That’s a pretty good promotion from not being in the military the day before. (Laughter.) I think their big concern is that in order to establish his stripes, he would provoke a series of incidents that would be a way of establishing his credentials as anti-American, anti-South Korean, you know – do exactly what his father did over a time period to establish his credentials. There are interpretations of the sinking of the South Korean ship, that it was part of this, and it’s got to be of concern to many in the U.S. government with the president going to Seoul just after the election. MR. SCHIEFFER: Stape and Ernie, before we kind of go to sea here, do either of you have anything you’d like to add to what you’ve heard? STAPLETON ROY: No.