well, i'm joined now by charles e. dale. he is a senior advisor and the australia chair at the center for strategic and international studies. he joins me tonight from new york city. it's good to have you on the show, mr. dale, i want to ask you, if china, we're not this emerging military power, that it is, would we would be having this conversation about this nuclear submarine deal? absolutely not. but when you say emerging power, we have to note that it's not only the exponential growth of the chinese military, but it's increasingly more assertive use. and if you subtract those 2 things, you would not have seen arcus in the 1st place. so this is a reaction to what the chinese have been building, what they've been modernizing and how they've been using over the past 2 decades. china is warning against what it calls a dangerous road that the u. s. the u. k. and australia are following up. but either china is also following a path of increasing armaments, isn't it? well, it's not following. in fact, in many ways it's leading t