Cleo Pascal

This is not political.

This is just, if you have some expertise and knowledge about the Navy and about where the U.S.

has been and where it's going, you know what the Central Pacific is.

And there have been periods when the leadership in the past did such a good job, and I would argue we're in that period now, that it got overlooked.

100,000 Americans died

getting across the Pacific during World War II.

And we were very honored at the Navy dinner last night to have somebody who had fought at Okinawa at the dinner.

And he, a man from Boston, and he talked about the psychological warfare involved, how the Japanese were buzzing

The ship's just out of range constantly.

And getting a sense of the emotion of what it must have been like to be in that fight day after day, month after month, year after year is really, it's...

I can say awe-inspiring.

I think you've said these are giants, and they certainly were.

And they bought us a piece in the Pacific that was so well-crafted by those, again, many, many naval people who went into government.

And we had every single U.S.

president from 1961 to 1981 had served in the Navy in the Pacific at some point.

Of course, Johnson, there's a little bit of question over how much he served, but they were there.

They saw what it was like and they crafted agreements like the Compacts of Free Association with Palau, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia that were so elegant that they kept the peace.

But the Chinese, as you've stated, through unrestricted warfare are now on the ground actively trying to undermine it.

And you can see the sort of economic warfare that you're describing with the U.S.

It is in advanced stages in the parts of the U.S.