Holding the Line: Denial Defense Along the First Island Chain

**Mike Green** (0:00)
Welcome to The Asia Chessboard, the podcast that examines geopolitical dynamics in Asia and takes an inside look at the making of grand strategy. I'm Mike Green of the United States Studies Centre in Sydney and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
Welcome to The Asia Chessboard. I'm Mike Green and I'm here for our 125th episode with someone who's going to put it all in perspective for us, Toshi Yoshihara. Toshi is Senior Fellow at CSBA, the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, a think tank well known for its detailed and precise breakdown, not only of budgets, but of military strategy doctrine and operations. Toshi came to CSBA from the US Naval War College, where he was the inaugural John A. Van Buren Chair of Asia Pacific Studies and a professor of strategy. Toshi, been looking forward to this. Thanks for joining us.

**Toshi Yoshihara** (0:56)
Mike, thanks for having me. And congratulations on the 125th episode.

**Mike Green** (1:00)
Yeah, eventually we'll get one right. This will be the one. Well, first question, who is John Van Buren? The name holder of the chair you had at the War College. Is that an admiral we should know about?

**Toshi Yoshihara** (1:10)
John Van Buren is a local benefactor in the Newport, Rhode Island area. I think he was an executive at Standard Oil back in the day. And he's been a real strong supporter of the Naval War College. He basically funded the Van Buren chair and I happened to be the inaugural chair for that position.

**Mike Green** (1:33)
And the focus is on Asia Pacific.

**Toshi Yoshihara** (1:36)
That's right.

**Mike Green** (1:36)
The Naval War College has a storied history thinking through conflict in the Pacific, even though it's on the East Coast of the United States with those very famous war plan orange games up in the top floor, I guess, of the main building. I forgot the name of the main hall. And you've probably seen those old black and white photos from the 20s and earlier of admirals and professors with wooden mock-ups of fleets and basically spread out all over the floor and pushing them around with long poles and trying to defeat Japan in a notional series of exercises from the other side of the Pacific. Big big challenge, which is a lead in to what we're going to talk about today, the First Island Chain, the Second Island Chain, deterrence in the Western Pacific.
Naval War College is a great place and so is CSBA. But how did you get there? How did you get? Did you play with toy ships as a kid? Was your mom or dad Navy? What's the origin story for Professor Toshi Yoshihara in Naval Strategy?

**Toshi Yoshihara** (2:34)
Yeah, so my origin story basically starts in the early 1990s when I was an undergrad at Georgetown in the School of Foreign Service.

**Mike Green** (2:43)
Hoya Saxa?

**Toshi Yoshihara** (2:44)
Hoya Saxa, absolutely. I had the pleasure of working with a great professor and a mentor who ended up becoming my Senior Thesis Advisor, and I'm sure you know him, Chongpin Lin. He, of course, later would become the Vice Minister of Defense for Taiwan. Then I ended up working for him at the American Enterprise Institute as a research assistant. Of course, as you know, it was a very interesting time to study China at AEI at the time, because the director of the Asia Studies Program was none other than Ambassador James Lilley, who was a legendary figure in China studies. And so it was through Chongpin's mentorship and my time working at the AEI that got me really started in China's military modernization. And I think if you look back to that period in the early to mid 1990s, you know, that actually was a period in which the study of the PLA was kind of a niche area, because the PLA was frankly kind of a non-issue, I think, inside of Washington. And as you might recall, the familiar refrain back in the day about China's coercive option against Taiwan was this a million man swim, right? So a very sort of condescending attitude about China's military capabilities. And so, you know, when I look back to the period when I got my sort of first start in studying the Chinese military, it just goes to show how far the Chinese had come within basically a generation. But back to my story, so after I graduated Georgetown, I decided to try out law school. And so I decided to work at a law firm to see what it was like, and I ended up hating it. That the part of the profession that was most interesting had a very poor quality of life. You basically didn't have a life. And the areas of the practice that promised a decent quality of life was also deadly boring. And so I decided really at the very last minute to not take the LSATs and instead take the GREs to go into grad school for IR, to study on international relations. And so in many ways, learning what I hated helped to reinforce and to understand what I truly loved. And so from that, I continued to do strategic studies, went to a PhD program at the Fletcher School, again, just maintaining my focus on China's military. And then through a series of twists and turns, ended up getting a job at the Air War College. And that was how I got my start in professional military education. And eventually made my move to the Naval War College, where I taught strategy for about a decade before coming to CSBA. So I think the thing that I like to tell the younger folks who want some career advice, I always tell them from my own experience is that it's okay to try to figure things out along the way. It's okay not to know what you want to do. It's okay not to get locked into a particular career track. And it's totally okay to change your mind.