General (Retd) James Mattis, Secretary of Defense, United States
There is a little bit of an echo up here, so we are working together to make sure I have the right questions, ladies and gentlemen. On the rules-based order, we have enduring interests and I think that when you look at those enduring interests you find the enduring motivations to reinforce and hold fast with the rules-based approach. I do not think that this is something new. I think it is as old as history – and the fight between those who want a rules-based order and those who try through coercion to find ways around it, frankly – and it is simply something that we have to work together on. I think that one point I would make is that we have plenty of valid reasons for many nations to work together in maintaining the rules-based order today. These are valid because we can quantitatively show the value in commerce and in security where we work together.
As far as on the ASEAN centrality, I think that we need organisations that allow people to come together to discuss common problems, and I think that ASEAN provides that forum. Where ASEAN goes, these are sovereign nations, they have to work together and we respect that. We are happy to be linked to ASEAN and our status that we maintain, the relationship that we maintain, and support it. But in the economic arena especially, I think ASEAN will play a role as we look at how do we have not just free trade, but we have fair trade among all of the nations involved there.
Let me jump over here to the South China Sea. Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to have to work together on this. I do not think there is room right now to get into pushing adversarial approaches. What we have to do is take into account, number one, what each nation’s interests are there in the South China Sea, and then we have to have mediation capability in order to ensure that small nations, large nations – all nations – can work them out to mutual satisfaction, because that is the only way we will have an enduring solution. One size does not fit all in the sense of one nation imposing its will there.
On the TPP situation, ladies and gentlemen, it is going to be a fresh approach. Obviously there were many disappointed about the TPP decision, but at the same time it only directs us to bilateral approaches and other multilateral approaches that we will engage in. I have no doubt that we will stay engaged on those. It means one avenue did not meet our nation’s population’s desires, but it does not mean we are turning our back on relations that we would work out on a bilateral basis as a result.
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