Dr John Chipman, Director-General and Chief Executive, IISS
Thank you very much. I will have the Secretary answer those two questions and then we will close the session. Mr Secretary?
General (Retd) James Mattis, Secretary of Defense, United States
We have the Law of the Sea. I recognise your question, General, but the Law of the Sea is not the only law that we go by in the sea, that one act. I would just tell you that there is a tradition in the sea, there is traditional areas of the sea that have been used as international waters since time began, and we believe that those kinds of standards should be maintained. They should not be unilaterally changed. No matter what one nation’s interests are, we have to work together if we are going to have the freedom of commerce that all nations can benefit from.
As far as having any warning or how we address North Korea, right now we are doing our best through the UN, through engaging with Beijing’s good offices, working with the international community, obviously working with the Republic of South Korea, Japan. We are working diplomatically, economically. We are trying to exhaust all possible alternatives to avert this race for a nuclear weapon in violation – to go back to an earlier question – of the UN restrictions on North Korea’s activities.
We have also seen North Korea engaged in proliferation activities, which means those nuclear capabilities are not solely being retained by North Korea in their own defence. They are actually exporting some of that capability, some of that knowledge. And so, to us, we want to stop this. We consider it urgent. But at the same time, we are working diplomatically and economically, and we obviously work very, very closely with the UN command – this is not just an American command here, a UN command. The sending nations – being those that sent troops under the UN Security Council Resolution in 1950, because that war was never ended – those nations are still committed to maintaining the peace on the peninsula. So we work obviously with them as well in terms of the military options, but right now we are doing our very best to exhaust all economic and diplomatic initiatives to get this under control.
Dr John Chipman, Director-General and Chief Executive, IISS
Mr Secretary, thank you very much for a splendid speech and for the strength, clarity, precision and forward-looking character of your answers to the many questions here. Please, all of you, would you do two things? First, stay in your seats, because in a moment the French, the Japanese and the Australian Defence Ministers will take the stage for their plenary. The second thing to do: please thank the Secretary for his opening plenary remarks.（From Shangri-La Dialogue website） |
