i don't think government has gotten much more precise since then. they took shortly to heart because the first meeting of the board was the following monday here at ottawa. and since then, our countries and our militaries have shared a lot of things from fighting side by side on the front lines of normandy to the battles of afghanistan where there are no front lines. our successful operations together in places like libya emerge from fully developed training exercises such as the recently completed the largest amphibious exercise in the past decade which took place off our southern coast. and canadian leadership is readily apparent. in one of the last true frontiers of the globe, the arctic.

it's a frontier we share and a frontier where the maritime component is becoming increasingly important. i grew up in the american south. i was governor of mississippi, but last spring i went to isax in the arctic and you couldn't find a much more different place than mississippi to be, but you also couldn't find a much more important place and one that's becoming more and more important as time passes. today we have to rely on our shared history and our shared values to meet the new things that we face. some people separate the challenges that we face as economic and military. but at the bottom of the challenge we face is the broad challenge of making the globe we inhabit more secure. for the united states, after a

decade of two ground wars and a changing and dynamic security environment it was time for us to take a significant review of our national strategy and defense priorities. at the direction of the president of the united states, the secretary of defense, the three service secretaries and the joint chiefs developed a new strategy that meets the dispirit and complicated threats with a military that is somewhat smaller. but more flexible, more agile, can answer any call and can provide our national leadership with the fullest range of options possible. and president obama for the first time in the memory of anybody at the pentagon, was personally involved in the formulation of this new strategy. because he knew that in

reshaping our defense priorities we cannot and should not choose between fiscal responsibility and a strong national defense. we have to have both. as he and others have said economic security is national security. and we have faced some pretty tough budgetary targets under 2 budget control act passed by our congress. one of things i want to emphasize is that the defense budget unveiled by the president ten days ago was driven by strategy and not by dollars. we navigated by some key guiding principles for the new defense strategy. one was to maintain the world's finest military and avoid at all costs hollowing out that force. a smaller military that is capable of a full spectrum of missions is superior to a larger

force ill equipped because resources are not made available for things like training or maintenance or modernization. another key principle was to preserve the quality of the all-volunteer force and those who have borne the battle over the last decade. our fleets asset of ships, aircraft, vehicles and submarines, don't sail, fly, drive or dive without the men and women who wear the uniform of the united states. our new strategy has an understandable focus on the western pacific and the arabian gulf. but it does maintain our worldwide partnerships and our

global presence using more innovative, low cost light footprint engagements. america and its military will remain globally engaged and forward deployed. for my department, the department of the navy, this new strategy requires a navy and marine corps team that is built and ready for any eventuality, in land, under the air, on the world's ocean or in the vast cyber seas. we see our maritime team playing a role in the growing demand, things like deterring and defeating aggression from state and nonstate actors. conventional or irregular threats. projecting power, maintaining presence to assure open sea lanes and providing disaster relief and humanitarian assistance whenever and wherever they are needed.

my favorite navy recruiting poster says sometimes we follow the storm to the shore. sometimes we are the storm. we do it with the same people. we do it with the same platforms. and we do it without taking up an inch of anybody else's sovereign soil. while the security environment that we all face is complex and changing, our shared interests are simple and enduring. interests of security, prosperity, respect for universal values and international order. those common goals form the basis of the grand strategy reaching back to roosevelt and king and if anything, are even more vital today in a globally connected era.

future crises and future threats may and probably will take a lot of different shapes. we can't prepare simultaneously and fully for every possible contingency. so we need to focus on flexibility, on agility, on creating a force that is ready for the most likely threats but ones that can adapt quickly and effectively to the unpredictable. our navy has experienced that to a remarkable degree in just the past year. early last may, our group of sailors as a part of the joint force finally brought osama bin laden to justice. and just last month, we rescued two hostages from pirates in somalia. at the same time we were doing those two things, we had 20,000

marines in combat in afghanistan and 4,000 sailors on the ground in afghanistan doing a variety of missions. on one of my first trips to afghanistan, i went to the poteka province, very mountainous, very rural province. and met a provincial reconstruction team there which was commanded by an american submariner. his top two enlisted were submarine chiefs. now, i bet you that when he joined the navy and opted for submarines, he did not expect to find himself in the mountains of afghanistan. but he did a superb job as did that entire team. that's the flexibility, that's the agility, that's the ability to take on any sort of job or

task or mission and do it well. last spring, on the first day of the libyan operations, two of our submarines and one service ship shot 122 tomahawk missiles into libya. that same day, we had five ships off the horn of africa, fighting piracy and another ship circumnavigating africa in the africa partnership station. that same day, the ronald reagan strike group which had been on its way across the pacific to do combat air support over afghanistan learned of the tsunami that had hit japan and in under two hours turned and went to help the people of japan. that strike group used exactly the same techniques, exactly the

same things that they were going to use in providing combat air over afghanistan to make sure that the right things got to the right places on the right aircraft going to the right parts of japan to help with humanitarian assistance in the wake of that terrible disaster. that same day, we had ships in the caribbean and the eastern pacific interdicting drugs. and other ships going around south america and in the southern pacific doing medical and dental and veterinary work. when our captains leave or the commanders of the strike groups or amphibious ready groups get ready to leave on deployment, one thing that i always tell them before they head out is that the one certainty is uncertainty.

they will face something almost surely that they did not anticipate but for which they will be prepared by their training and their ability. our sailors and our marines repeatedly have proven they can meet anything that comes over the horizon. and canada has been there with us, providing first combat support and investing in the afghan children and youth, operation mobile -- i'm sorry, i'm from the south, mobile, alabama. mobile in libya. fighting piracy off the coast of

somalia providing humanitarian assistance in japan and haiti and around the world. your commitment to these operations and so many more underscore a fundamental point. we best meet the issues of today's global security environment by working together. confronting threats to global peace and prosperity is not and should not be the task of any one nation. building and sustaining strong security partnerships is a central and enduring element of our national security strategy and it remains a key element of the new security strategy we announced recently. and our two nations have demonstrated from building strong security institutions in europe and asia following world war ii to assisting former soviet states in the aftermath of the cold war to our work around the globe today that partnerships are actually -- are incredibly vital.

nowhere are those partnerships more important than in the global maritime commons. assuring the free passage of the sea lanes is critical to the free exchange of goods and ideas. we see that exchange every single day in our militaries where we operate together, train together, and are educated together. partnerships like the one between the united states and canada are one way we can maximize our resources and expand our reach in a time of fiscal constraint. another means is to focus on improving the cost effectiveness and reducing our vulnerabilities. and for our navy, that means we have to maintain our aggressive efforts to reduce our dependence on overseas oil from potentially or actually volatile areas of the world to use all the sources of our energy more efficiently.

our energy efforts have already made us better war fighters. by deploying to afghanistan with solar blankets to charge radios and other electronic items, one marine patrol drops 700 pounds in batteries from their packs. and they don't need to be resupplied as often. using less fuel in theater can mean fewer fuel convoys which will save lives. for every 50 convoys of fuel we bring in to afghanistan, a marine is killed or wounded. that's too high a price to pay for us. being efficient in what we do is part of that. and we're doing a lot of efficiencies. everything from new hull

coatings to our ships, to replacing light bulbs with l.e.d.s, to using smart grids and smart meters. but we've got to get -- we've got to do more. than just be more efficient. thankful thankfully, canada provides more than a quarter of the oil the united states uses. but that still leaves us buying too much from those who may not be our friends and who may not have our best interests at heart. all you have to do is turn on the television in the last year and watch the news on emerging threats and multiple threats to energy security. we are too vulnerable in this area. we would never allow some of these countries to build our ships or our aircraft or our ground units, but we give them a say in whether those ships sail,

those aircraft fly or those ground vehicles operate. and an even greater vulnerability is to the price spikes and shocks that come from oil. oil is a global commodity and the price is set globally. sometimes on speculation and no more than rumor. but every time the price of oil goes up a dollar a barrel, it costs the united states navy $31 million in additional fuel costs. when libya started last spring, the price of oil went up $38 a barrel. almost overnight. now, libya is an oil producer. but in the global scheme, it's not huge. but that one operation, that one uprising caused the price of oil

to shoot up almost $40 a barrel and for us that was a $1.1 billion bill that we had to pay. and the only place that i or any secretary has to go to get that money is out of operations. so it meant that we steamed less, we flew less, we trained less because of that. even iran's near threat to close the strait of hormuz boosts the price of oil. as the people in this room know so well, when you run a military organization you look at vulnerabilities. you look at vulnerabilities in potential adversaries but you also look at vulnerabilities of your own force.

when i was nominated for this job and began to be briefed on the department of the navy, energy dependence jumped out as one of the biggest vulnerabilities that we have today. and the reason that we are doing what we are doing in energy, the reason that we're moving to alternative energy is that it's a matter of security. it's a matter of national security. it makes us a better military force and with canada providing leadership on alternative fuels as well as fossil fuels, we'll be better partners with each other and with the world. there's a lot more we can do. to improve our defense, to stabilize our energy sources and to create a more secure world. king and roosevelt started us on this course. and it remains the right course for us today together.

i think president obama said it best two months ago during a bilateral meeting with prime minister harper. he said perhaps no two nations match up more closely together or are woven together more deeply, economically, culturally, than the united states and canada. i believe that as long as our course together is guided by our shared values and principles we will prevail as two partners, two neighbors, two friends, in the worlds of your national anthem, strong and free. god bless canada, god bless the united states. thank you all very much.

questions? >> ask your questions in the usual manner, go to the microphone and identify yourself, please. try to keep your questions fairly short. thank you. >> morning, mr. secretary. i'm david redd from the department of national defense. could you talk a little bit more about the partnership's angle? your strategic guidance mandated a shift towards the asia-pacific region, but it also mandated more cooperation with countries who have frontages on to the pacific ocean. so tell me, what exactly are the administration's expectations of its pacific allies? if you could wave your magic wand over the pacific basin, what air and sea capabilities would you like to see your allies acquire and maintain in the years to come? thank you. >> well, one thing i think it's important to note, while our new

strategy focuses on the western pacific and the arabian gulf regions, this is not new for either of us. this is not a new focus for the united states or canada to be in the pacific. in fact our fleet right now is 55% in the pacific, 45% elsewhere. and we're gradually going to move that to where it's 60% in the pacific. in terms of our allies, we want to keep doing what we're doing in things like surface and anti-submarine capabilities in isar, in the myriad of ways to overcome the tyranny of distance in the pacific. canada participates in rimpac and has every single time the

ring of the pacific exercise that that has been -- that's the largest maritime exercise in the world. canada is one of the only two countries that have been there every single time. with our ships and our submarines to cross deck with our aircraft in terms of training, in terms of doctoring, in terms of operations and how we do it. if i could wave my magic wand, i think we would be pretty much where we are today, which is closely cooperative, which is making sure that we do exercise together, making sure that our platforms are compatible, making sure that our -- both leadership officers, but also our total force knows how each other operates by common education, common training, and that we

approach the pacific together as partners and not as two separate nations going into that region alone. yes, sir? >> thank you. my name is matthew ary. i'm a journalist with intelligence review. i was going the pose my question in regards to some of the military buildups that we've been seeing right now across the pacific basin, obviously. and a various number of leading military officials across china, the most recent of which was dai su fo the pla have been warning they've been seeing things like military bases built in the north of australia as well as applying in the united states as a defensive or containment against china. and i would say if you had a

chance to speak to these leading military officials like mr. su, what would you say is a response to their concerns? >> well, for one thing what we would like is we would like engagement with china. we would like to approach these issues together. we would like some more transparency on what they're doing, on their military buildup, their -- the things they're buying, the capabilities that they're acquiring. we would like some more transparency on why they're doing that. we've been very transparent about the fact that we've been in the pacific, and we've been in the western pacific now for decades, at least since world war ii. we have been a continuing and persistent presence there. we're going to insist on freedom of navigation. we're going to insist on making sure that goods and ideas can move freely and openly. not only there, but around the world. and we can do that better

together. the fact that we are in the western pacific is not new. it is not -- it is something that is a part of what we have done for decades and will continue to do for decades to come. we are moving our marines from a concentration in okinawa to guam, to -- as a rotational force into australia, because we have trained with the australians, again, for decades. and we will continue to do that. we also are going to continue to be very active in the region in doing things like partnership building and humanitarian assistance. our marines get a request for humanitarian assistance or disaster relief on an average of once every three weeks. and many of those are in the

pacific, and we will have our forces where they need to be in order to get those things done. >> good morning, sir. good morning. >> there you go. >> thank you. bernard bristol, military college. thank you for your comments this morning. continuing with the asia-pacific theme, could you identify key american interests in the asia-pacific as it is today, and how american naval power might be deployed to address those interests. and within that rubric, specifically the south china sea. >> i think i just mentioned some of the key american interests, not only in the western pacific, the south china sea, but everywhere, which is free movement of ships and goods, free -- freedom of navigation. the straits of malaca and 40% of

the world's trade goes through those straits annually. we for the good of the economy not only of north america, but for the world need to make sure that those -- those sea-lanes remain open, that they remain free from piracy or any other sort of things that might block them. we are going to -- as i said, have had a persistent presence. we have a carrier homeported in japan. we have an amphibious ready group in southern japan. we have marines and air assets. i think you'll see in the future our newest ships being deployed to singapore. you'll see other assets being deployed for lift for our

marines which are going to be rotational. in australia they'll be a mix of rotational and permanent in guam and any place else that we end up in the western pacific. so i don't think you'll see a big -- big change in where our assets are, but there will be some -- some movement. but the important thing is that we will continue to be a very persistent presence in the western pacific. one of the reasons i think that is important is that when we routinely send carrier strike groups or amphibious ready groups or other kinds of ships through whatever bodies of water there are in the world, if there is an incident, if there is a misunderstanding, we don't escalate it by sending in a

carrier strike group or an amphibious ready group. it's already there. it's a part of our normal presence. it's a part of what we do on a day-to-day basis. and i think that it is important that we have that, particularly in the western pacific. yes, sir? >> yes, my name is bob near, retired canadian army and member of the association. one of the questions i have is regarding the term comprehensive approach. in your own presentation, you covered a great deal of ground. but for the past half decade or so, the approach to these international security issues and dealing with problems has been this comprehensive approach involving all the instruments of nation and government, academic, military, industrial, and so on. yet that wasn't mentioned anywhere in what you were saying. so i wonder if you could tell us where that concept actually is going. would you say the united states is backing away from the idea of comprehensive approach as an idea that seemed to have legislation, but based on our current experiences has proven not perhs