transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:10] Welcome to The Proceedings Podcast. I'm Bill Hamblet, the Editor-in-Chief at the US Naval Institute. It's Friday, April 17th, 2026. Good to have you on board, everybody. This episode is brought to you by Booz Allen. From rugged 5G on warships to unmanned systems deep below the ocean, Booz Allen builds technology that works where it matters most. Their AI-driven, mission-ready capabilities help the US Navy operate and win in contested environments. No manual, no roadmap, no problem. Learn more at Booz allen.com/defense. All right, all eyes have been on the Middle East, Iran, and the Strait of Hormuz for the past seven weeks or so, but the war is having major impacts in East Asia as well. My guest today is a man eminently qualified to talk about the situation in the Indo-Pacific. Retired Navy Admiral Harry Harris served as the Commander US Pacific Fleet from 2013 to 2015, before moving up the hill from Pearl Harbor to Camp Smith to be the Commander US Pacific Command, now Indo-Pacific Command until his retirement in 2018. He was then appointed US Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, and served in that role until 2021, and now he's the Chairman of the Naval Institute's Board of Directors. Admiral, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2:
[01:32] Hey Bill, thanks for having me. Thanks for all the work that you all do and in the interests of Full disclosure, because of who's sponsoring this episode. I'm a strategic advisor to Booz Allen. So let me begin before I get to your specific question here, by acknowledging the great news that we all heard this morning, and that's the opening of the Strait of Hormuz to all merchant traffic. No doubt, this was the outcome of diplomacy backed by hard power, hard American power. Bravo Zulu, well done to have O'Brack Cooper and his CENTCOM team, and Vice Admiral Kurt Rentshaw and his Fifth Fleet team. They're making this very challenging operation work seamlessly and flawlessly. Well done to them. Now, let me get into your question. So without naming names or countries, my colleagues in the Indo-Pacific are obviously very concerned about the ongoing war with Iran, and their concerns about the economic impacts of Operation Epic Fury are compounded by their concerns about terrorists and the like. Now, I'll add, and I've been told, and I've told them this. They now have a tremendous opportunity to shame on them if they fail to realize it. I won't speak to the tariff deals other than to say that these deals have been made, and despite ongoing litigation in the US courts, our allies, friends, and partners now have to follow through on the commitments that they made. Let's not dilly-dally about that. Now, regarding the war with Iran, the economic implications are wide-ranging, and not only for our friends, allies, and partners, but also for our adversaries. To our adversaries that have, or perhaps I should say had positive relations with Iran, Iran is now seeing what fair-weather friends, their friends really are, and shutting down the Strait of Hormuz hurts them, our adversaries, and Iran, far more than it hurts us or our allies, and friends, and partners. To the issue of security ramifications regarding Operation Epic Fury, these of course are significant. These recent operations, Midnight Hammer over Iran last summer, Absolute Resolve in Venezuela, and now Epic Fury, they demonstrate the capability of American military and the resolve of our political and military leaders. Now, if you're, let's say, country X out there, and you see American and Israeli attack on Iran, and you want no part of it, well, fine. Every country follows what's probably the prime directive of international relations, and that is they act in their enlightened self-interest. You can even say, hey, that's not our fight, that's Washington's fight. Again, fine. But when America then asks for your help and you say no, don't be surprised if America then acts in our enlightened self-interest downrange when it comes to relations and agreements with you. Now, there are so many things that our friends, allies, and partners can do today that will be helpful. In the interest of time, I'll just name three of them and then stand by for your following questions. Some of these countries have robust mine warfare capabilities, specifically mine sweeping and mine hunting. We need that today, so come join us. Some have proven maritime security and maritime domain awareness capabilities, and some have robust air defense and counterdrone capabilities that could protect GCC, Gulf Corporation Council, airfields, and oil fields, and American bases in these countries. Where are you when America asks for your help?

Speaker 1:
[06:12] Admiral, how about our allies in the Indo-Pacific? Do you think Japan, South Korea, or Australia will contribute to a naval blockade, mine clearance operations, or eventually some sort of security mission, if it comes up in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz?

Speaker 2:
[06:27] I hope so. I'm optimistic about all this. But eventually is the key word, right? Unfortunately, immediately is not the word. Now, while this may have started out as a US and Israel versus Iran fight, it now has global effects and strategic implications. Also importantly, President Trump has asked for help from our allies and friends. Now, I've already talked about what form that help could take. I'll add to that by saying North Korean nuclear weapons case. Regardless of where you sit politically, diplomacy across at least five different US presidential administrations failed in the North Korean case. We had the 1994 agreed framework, the 1999 Perry report with recommendations. We had the 2003 to 2009 six party talks, and the 2012 leap day deal. These were diplomatic efforts aimed at preventing North Korea from achieving its nuclear ambitions. Later developments included the 2021 calibrated practical approach, and of course, the top-down negotiations in 2018 and 2019. But these occurred after North Korea had already demonstrated a nuclear weapons capability. And these last two efforts were aimed at getting North Korea to renounce its nuclear program. By then, we were already shooting well behind the duck. So the bottom line, in my opinion, is that we waited too long and relied too heavily on diplomacy to prevent Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions from becoming reality. Today, the US and Israel are heating this lesson. And after diplomacy failed to deter Tehran, they're taking active, direct kinetic action to compel Iran to renounce its nuclear weapons program. The implications for our allies and friends of the effort in the Middle East rises to the level of an existential strategic and economic concern for many of them. I tell my friends that they should be proactive and don't take the US for granted or abandon what is in many cases their only ally when we ask for their help and assistance.

Speaker 1:
[09:06] Let's dive a little bit deeper on all those issues. I'm sure you're still talking to specific friends and partners, military and non-military, who maybe you served with over in East Asia, particularly Japan and South Korea. What are you hearing from them? You don't have to name names, but just in terms of their thinking about maybe sending naval forces over to assist Fifth Fleet, to assist CENTCOM in reopening the Strait, in keeping it open, in peacekeeping operations, once things get to some semblance of normal or an agreement with the Iranians?

Speaker 2:
[09:48] The jury is still out, right? They are reluctant, perhaps as many countries in the world are, but they've been asked by the president to help. I've listed, I've given you some opportunities, I mean some ways that they could help, and they have the opportunity to do that, or they can again act in what they perceive as their light of self-interest and say no. I think that they will come to some form of help downrange. Hopefully, they will. I think the word today that we got about the opening of the strait is very helpful. Again, that's diplomacy backed by hard American power, and we'll see how far that goes, and we'll see what the next steps are. If all goes well, we can still use the help of our friends, allies, and partners in areas like mine countermeasures and mine warfare, and also to help patrol the strait, to help escort shipping, and all that. But we'll see. I don't know. I'm optimistic. I hope they will. But I can't say for certain, of course.

Speaker 1:
[11:11] Gotcha. There have been a lot, and now let's shift to the Western world, and particularly Western Europe. A lot of angry words at the political level about the value or reliability of America's allies and partners, including, most pointedly, NATO. You served as the 6th Fleet Commander, which is dual-hatted as the NATO Naval Striking and Support Forces Commander. Can the United States rely on NATO or is it context dependent? Does it have to be context dependent?

Speaker 2:
[11:44] Yeah. That's a great question. Well, everything is context dependent, is it not? Now, I'm not going to get into the politics surrounding your question. That's well above any pejorative that I ever had. But to your specific question, I believe, this is a personal belief, I believe that NATO can rely on the US and vice versa. Should something happen somewhere that would cause Article 5 to be invoked? Article 5, of course, is the article governing collective self-defense or collective defense. To those who would suggest, and there are many out there, to those who would suggest that what's happening today in the Middle East is not NATO's fight or is somehow outside NATO's area of responsibility or AOR, they are wrong. I would recommend that they consider recent history. I would remind them that NATO has operated well outside its AOR routinely this century. Let me just consider the 13-year ISAF combat mission in Afghanistan. Now, this was the only time that Article 5 has actually been invoked, and it was invoked to help the US. Consider the six-year operation resolution support also in Afghanistan. Consider the eight-year NATO training mission in Iraq, which ended only this year. Consider operation Ocean Shield. That's the counter-power operation off of Somalia, and in the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea, and in the Indian Ocean. And of course, Operation Unified Protector back in 2011, which was the intervention in Libya. So the idea that NATO response and actions are limited to the mandated, treaty-mandated NATO area of responsibility has been disproven by history. And so the idea that they cannot help in the current situation in the Middle East is simply wrong. There are other operations too, but you get my point. I do think that when Iran launched ballistic missiles against Diego Garcia, even though these missiles were effectively countered and neutralized, the UK lost an opportunity and they should and could have done more. Bottom line, as I said, in response to your first question, when America asks for your help and you say no, don't be surprised if America then acts in its own enlightened self-interest down range. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[14:33] I was thinking also while you were talking about all those different operations and times when NATO operated outside of what we tend to think of as NATO's core central area of responsibility, Central Europe and the North Atlantic, that the Iranian ballistic missile threat, which has been growing over the last two decades, the reason for the United States forward deploying Aegis destroyers, the DDGs that are based in Rota, which are ballistic missile capable DDGs, is against that Iranian ballistic missile threat. They would operate in the Eastern Mediterranean to protect both Israel, but also to protect Iranian ballistic missiles that might be headed towards Western Europe as well. Then there's the Aegis ballistic missile system on land, which I believe there's one in Romania and there's one in Poland too, correct sir?

Speaker 2:
[15:33] That's correct. Aegis is short. Those are there to protect our NATO allies and us and all of that. They're already there and they're there because primarily of the Iranian threat. So our NATO allies should remind themselves of that fact, that we have long protected them from an outside threat from a risk. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[16:06] So it's been 15 years since President Obama's pivot to Asia, and the past four presidents, including President Trump, one and two, have all expressed a priority to focus on the Indo-Pacific and de-emphasize the Middle East in their national security strategies. But to paraphrase Leon Trotsky, you may not be interested in the Middle East, but the Middle East is interested in you. Do you think it will ever get out of this Middle East do loop?

Speaker 2:
[16:32] Yeah. Bill, that's a great question. Let me start briefly by talking about the Indo-Pacific generally, and then get to your question specifically. I believe that President Trump recognizes that the United States is a Pacific nation and a Pacific power, and that the US faces one of our most dangerous strategic environments in our history, including a vulnerable homeland, China's unprecedented military buildup, and the direct threat that it poses to our security, our economy, as well as a range of other persistent threats, including Iran, which we're seeing play out now, Russia and North Korea and terrorist organizations. Now, the administration's new national security strategy and national defense strategy prioritize defense of the homeland, emphasizes the centrality of the China problem, and calls for reorienting the US military from Europe and toward the Indo-Pacific, and calls for increased burden sharing by our allies. Look, the US has enduring interests in the Indo-Pacific region, which I've said before, is at a precarious crossroad where tangible opportunity meets persistent challenges. In this vast region, we're a massive share of global trade and capital transit every day. Energy prices and market volatility don't stay over there. When things bad happen over there, they reflect over here. So over the past 15 years and five administrations, the US policy toward the Pacific has evolved from, as you said, the pivot to Asia in 2011, the rebalance to the Pacific in 2012, the free and open Indo-Pacific or FOIP in 2016, the Indo-Pacific strategy in 2020, to what I would call FOIP 2.0 today. And across this time, we managed to change the name of the region from Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific. We created about four new strategic frameworks. We invented a bunch of new acronyms, and we convinced everyone that this was all part of a coherent long-range strategy. Now, while I applaud the efforts of past administrations to up the importance of the Indo-Pacific, according to our own GAO, the General Accounting Office, two elements were missing from the pivot to Asia and the rebalance to the Pacific. Specifically, an actual definition of what the rebalance was, and two, what the desired end state would be. Now, to this, I would add a lack of appropriated resourcing. For the past 15 years, while our national strategy, in fact, did shift toward the Indo-Pacific, our budgets simply did not. So we started to get after this in 2021 with the Pacific Deterrence Initiative. But even that was flawed because the money wasn't specifically appropriated for Indo-Pacoc. It was authorized from the DOD top line. Former HASS chairman, Mac Thornberry, rightly called this quote a budget diversion, unquote. Now, our strategies were also affected by self-inflicted budget norms, including the Budget Control Act of 2011, where this sequester and the ensuing budget chaos that came out from that. Plus, while the world gets involved, as I've said before, for example, Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia's 2014 invasion of Crimea, all of which prevented full deployment of resources to the Indo-Pacific. In other words, we developed four different strategies for the Indo-Pacific, but not a single effective budget for it. Today, though, unlike the previous strategies that I've mentioned, the current administration is actually putting resources between 42.0 across the government and importantly into industry, especially shipbuilding and munitions, and by getting our allies to do more for their own defense. But again, the world gets a vote, and we see that vote play out in the Middle East. The US is a global power with global responsibilities, which is why we need the defense budget, the administration is asking our Congress for, and even so, the US can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can deal with significant challenges in the Middle East, even as we continue to meet our treaty and defense obligations in the Indo-Pacific. No one should doubt this, and no one should test the US resolve in this area.

Speaker 1:
[21:58] You make a good point, sir, that all the speeches, all the words don't amount to a whole lot unless you put your money where your mouth is. The Pacific pivot has got to be more than just an oral strategy. It's got to be backed up by money and moving resources around. It's been really interesting, and I know you followed this because you spent so much of your career in the Indo-Pacific or the Pacific. But the Chinese military, the PLA, seems to have advanced well beyond the hide your capabilities and bide your time advice of Deng Xiaoping. The PLA Navy is now so large, it can't be hidden, but they're still taking, they still aren't taking a real leadership role around the world like the US military, the US Navy does. China gets more than half of its imported energy from the Persian Gulf, but we're not seeing the PLA Navy heading towards the Persian Gulf, heading towards the Strait of Hormuz to do anything, to create security around that economic choke point. Does that surprise you, and when do you think that might change, and what would make it change?

Speaker 2:
[23:10] It doesn't surprise me at all. As I said before, Iran and Venezuela are now seeing what fair weather friends, their partners are, especially China. I believe that China's military, despite its size, is a long way in terms of both capabilities and time for being able to do what the US has done in Venezuela and is doing in Iran. Operation Midnight Hammer, again, that's the devastating long-range precision, stealthy, survivable attack against Iranian nuclear facilities last summer. This has to be a wake-up call for Beijing. I don't believe they could put anything like that together today. That said, China is a learning machine. If you step back a few years to the beginnings of the Ukraine War and to the present status in Ukraine and then add to that Venezuela and Iran, that timeframe, I think you can be assured that Beijing is watching these operations closely and they're learning. But they're also wondering, I think, they're wondering if the PLA military, which hasn't been tested in sustained combat operations since the Korean War would fair in modern 21st century warfare. They're wondering if their army modeled after the Soviet model is as bad as Russia's appears to be. They're wondering if the PLA Navy, the PLA En is as vulnerable as Russia's Black Sea fleet clearly is. I do think they're learning that control of the Internet is vital, and they're learning that drones have changed the nature of warfare in the 21st century. All of this is important as we consider China going forward, but I don't think they have the capability to replicate any of these operations in 2026.

Speaker 1:
[25:24] Sir, that's a great point. I'm reminded that, I think it was around 2009, the Chinese started contributing to the International Counter-Piracy Task Force off of Somalia. You mentioned that a few minutes ago. Do you think that there will be some sort of an international presence, an international peacekeeping naval force for security in the Strait of Hormuz? If there is one that comes out of these peace talks between the United States and Iran, do you think that China would contribute to that as they did to the counter-piracy operations?

Speaker 2:
[26:04] Yeah, I think that there could be an international maritime escort kind of a mission in the region. There's something like an international form of Operation Earnest Will back in the day. I don't want to call it a peacekeeping mission. I think it's more a maritime escort kind of a mission.

Speaker 1:
[26:32] Yeah, security.

Speaker 2:
[26:34] Yeah, probably like that security mission. I think that China might contribute to that, but I don't think we'd want China to contribute to that. We have to see what the parameters are and how it all lays out. That's not saying that countries can't do an independent version of that on their own. But to be part of, for example, Ocean Shield, that's a NATO operation. I think we have to be careful how much we bring China into these things, because again, they're a learning machine. In 2014, when I was a Pacific Fleet Commander, China was in RIMPAC for the very first time. They did it again in 20, they came back in 2016, and they came back a lot better and more prepared to participate in a range of training operations that we were doing in RIMPAC 2016. I believe that the right decision was made by then DOD, now DOW, but then DOD and the White House not to include China in 2018. For that reason, I'd be careful about including them in some maritime security operation together with us in the Middle East.

Speaker 1:
[28:03] Yeah, I'm reminded, I think it was in that RIMPAC 2016, might have been 2014, but I think it was 2016 that China not only came and participated, but they also brought their own AGI, so they were participating in RIMPAC and spying on RIMPAC at the same time, which was really not very diplomatic behavior.

Speaker 2:
[28:23] Yeah, and it was neither diplomatic nor necessary, right? I mean, if they're participating in it, then they could collect everything they needed to collect. But, you know, tone deafness has been a hallmark of operating with them over time.

Speaker 1:
[28:38] My guest today has been Admiral Harry Harris, former Commander US Pacific Command and former Ambassador to South Korea. Sir, I know you're in high demand, so thank you for your time and your insights today. Our audience and I appreciate the strategic context. Okay, this episode is brought to you by Booz Allen. From rugged 5G on warships to unmanned systems deep below the ocean, Booz Allen builds technology that works where it matters most. Their AI-driven mission-ready capabilities help the US Navy operate and win in contested environments. No manual, no road map, no problem. Learn more at Booz allen.com/defense. If you like the show, ring the bell, subscribe and tell a friend. Until next episode, remember, victory begins at The Naval Institute.