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This transcript is from a CSIS event hosted on June 18, 2025. Watch the full video here.
Dr. John J. Hamre: Hey, everybody. OK. Can we – OK. Everybody, we – I feel like I’m Kim Jong-un sitting here. (Laughter.) You know, this really feels stupid.
But, fortunately, we have Senator Dan Sullivan, and – Senator Sullivan? Oh, we don’t have any sound on your end. Let’s see if we can – can we hear you now? Not yet. OK.
Senator Dan Sullivan: OK. How about now?
Dr. Hamre: Oh, now you’re on. Good.
Sen. Sullivan: OK. Great.
Dr. Hamre: Senator, thank you. You happen to be busy legislating today so it’s –
Sen. Sullivan: Oh, we’re doing a lot. I literally just walked out of the hearing with Secretary Hegseth – the Armed Services hearing – and the General Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
So we’re – that hearing is going on right now, and matter of fact I talked to him about some Asia Pacific issues so I can give you hot off the presses information in that regard. That was about five minutes ago.
Dr. Hamre: OK. Well, thank you. Thank you for taking the time to be with us, Senator.
This is a conference on how do we support, sustain, and strengthen the trilateral relationship – Korea, Japan, United States. You have been one of the important leaders in the Senate on America’s security policies and activities in Asia.
Would you just reflect for us on where you think this stands and the priority that this trilateral relationship should have?
Sen. Sullivan: Well, I think in terms of INDOPACOM the priority is still really high and, as a matter of fact, Victor Cha, who’s done such a great job at CSIS, he and I hosted a dinner with a number of senators – a bipartisan group of senators – just last night with the Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau, who is a very impressive guy.
And one of the topics we talked about was the meetings he was going to be having – geez, I’m trying to remember from the dinner last night – in the next few days on the trilateral with Korea and Japan. So that’s, I think, about as important as you get.
You know, I think Senator Rubio’s – now, this isn’t the trilateral but Senator Rubio’s, I think, literally one of his first meetings as the new secretary of state was an AUKUS – I’m sorry, a Quad meeting, which I think was his first day on the job he had a Quad meeting with his counterparts.
And then, as I mentioned, I just came from the Armed Services hearing where Secretary Hegseth, General Caine, are – the chairman of Joint Chiefs – are both testifying, and in my opening remarks before I started asking them questions I complimented Secretary Hegseth on the fact that he’s already taken two trips to the Indo-Pacific region and very importantly – and this was something that I’ve encouraged every SecDef to do.
Fortunately, every SecDef has done it since the founding of this big security conference, the Shangri-La Dialogue. There’s always been a U.S. secretary of defense at that really important security conference. Secretary Hegseth went there just a couple weeks ago. He was the keynote address.
John, I’m sure you read his speech but it was an outstanding speech and I just complimented the secretary a couple minutes ago at the hearing saying, thank you for going there, General. Thank you for going to that important conference and, Mr. Secretary, thank you for your speech, which focused a lot on our partners and allies and a lot on reestablishing deterrence as it relates to the Chinese Communist Party, the PLA, and other threats in the region.
So I think the administration is off to a strong start. But to your question, look, the trilateral is so important and I’m really glad that you’re having this conference about it – Korea, Japan, and the United States – and I want to compliment CSIS, John, under your leadership. For so many years you guys have done a great job on all of these issues.
But there are many dimensions to that relationship. Of course, military – mil-to-mil – which has been somewhat troubling; trade. But the one that, as you know, I care a lot about – and I saw it in action very recently back home in Alaska – was the ability to focus on energy. I think it’s a great opportunity, particularly with this administration – they’re focusing on it – trilateral between the United States, Korea and Japan, in terms of energy is an opportunity that we need to seize. And the administration is certainly starting to do that.
Dr. Hamre: Well, thank you, Senator. And just to follow up on that, I’ve had probably four or five delegations from Japan and Korea. All of them have raised this issue of Alaska energy.
Sen. Sullivan: Yeah.
Dr. Hamre: And I told them, I said, Alaska’s not for sale. We’re not going to sell it. (Laughter.) But we certainly want you willing to invest in it. Where do you see this going?
Sen. Sullivan: Well, I’ll tell you a funny story. Many years ago, when I was the commissioner of natural resources and energy back home in Alaska, I met with the Russian ambassador at the very end of the – very end of the meeting. This was Kislyak, I think, when he was ambassador. He said, Senator – or Commissioner – I have one final issue I want to raise with you. I said OK, Ambassador, what is it? He said it’s really important, all the way from the top. I said, please, what is it? Let me know. And he was like, we’d like to buy Alaska back. (Laughter.) It was a joke, of course. But that was, you know, probably the greatest real-estate deal of all time, maybe with the exception of the Louisiana Purchase, but two cents an acre in Alaska.
So I don’t think the Japanese and Koreans want to buy Alaska, but they’ve been there a lot. And let me give you a really important example.
Dr. Hamre: Yeah.
Sen. Sullivan: I was just home two weeks ago and I hosted President Trump’s really outstanding energy cabinet. So this was the chairman of the Energy Dominance Council and the secretary of interior, Doug Burgum, who’s doing a fantastic job; the vice chairman of the Energy Dominance Council, the secretary of energy, Chris Wright; and the EPA administrator. They were up in Alaska, John, for about a week. And I hosted them in Anchorage and then we flew up to Utqiagvik, also known as Barrow, one of our really most important native communities up there. We did a town hall. We spent the night. We had a great community dinner. And then we went to the North Slope, met with all the great workers up there, focused on the oil and gas opportunities.
But guess who came with us – very important representatives from Japan, including the vice minister of METI, and a top official from JERA. That’s their big energy company; top officials from Korea; top, top officials from Taiwan, including the ambassador. They were all there as part of this Alaska LNG project.
So this is a fantastic opportunity for everybody. We have – and I pitched this here in front of CSIS before – but we have an unlimited supply of natural gas on the North Slope, literally that can supply Alaskans, our military and our allies in Asia for 50 to 100 years. What I’ve said to the Japanese is it would be like a virtual pipeline, because it’s only a six-day cargo shipment, with no strategic chokepoints, from Alaska to Japan.
Now, we were the first place anywhere in the world to export LNG. We started exporting LNG to the Japanese in the late 1960s. But the trilateral component of this can be, I think, an enormous opportunity –- Japan, Korea, as major buyers; Japan and Korea as not only buyers of clean-burning Alaska natural gas, but also hubs to send out that gas around Asia.
In many ways – you know, I did a CODEL to Japan and Korea this past fall, led by Senator Hagerty, Bill Hagerty, a great guy; knows a lot about Japan, certainly, being a former ambassador. He laid out this project, the Alaskan LNG project, as like the private-sector counter to the Chinese Belt-and-Road Initiative – private-sector dollars, private-sector capital, getting our allies energy that they need.
And here’s something really important. Unfortunately, some of our allies – I’m just going to call out the Japanese – are still reliant on Russian gas. That’s not a good idea, despite, you know, the last administration and this administration asking the Japanese, hey, come on, what are you doing? And another one that I have always just scratched my head over, Qatari gas. You know, you got a big conflict going on right now in the Middle East. We knew that that was – that had a huge potential for that to happen. The Iranians hate it that the Qataris are draining that giant gas field. I think Qatar is enormously vulnerable. And yet, you have countries doubling down on Qatar gas. It’s got to go through several strategic chokepoints. You know, let’s face it, Qatar uses some of those revenues to help fund terrorists, like Hamas. Why our allies would double down on Qatar gas as opposed to getting Alaska natural gas makes zero strategic sense – zero.
And President Trump is very, very focused on this project. He highlighted the Alaskan LNG project in his State of the Union address. His Cabinet officials, all of these great members of his Cabinet, are pressing this project. So I think it makes strategic sense. When the – when the FEED work is done – the front end engineering and design work – I think it’s going to make economic sense. You know, you have certain Japanese interests who kind of say, oh, this doesn’t pencil out. It’ll pencil out economically. And we need to get it done now. It’s a great opportunity. It’s a great way to deepen the trilateral energy relationship. And it’s a pretty exciting time right now in terms of this project.
Dr. Hamre: Thank you, Senator.
Let me ask you to put on your armed services hat. And I’d like to get your thoughts. We’ve heard about reports that the administration may want to take 4,500 troops out of Korea and send them, I guess, down to Guam.
Sen. Sullivan: Yeah.
Dr. Hamre: The question is, is are we shifting our security focus from Northeast Asia to Southeast Asia? What do you – what do you make of that?
Sen. Sullivan: Well, look, I’ve been hearing the same reports. And, as matter of fact, as you know, you have hearings. I just came from a hearing where I got to ask the secretary and the chairman questions. I’m going to go back to the classified hearing here in a couple minutes. And then you can ask questions for the record. I’m going to ask those questions. I’ve been hearing reports. I don’t know to what degree they’re, you know, accurate. But I will tell you this, and I’ve been raising this issue quite a lot. I think we are dramatically overconcentrated with our military on Guam – dramatically.
And, you know, right now the estimates are between now and 2033 there’s going to be almost an additional $50 billion in military construction on Guam. This makes zero sense – zero sense. I’ve raised this with the INDOPACOM commander, the secretary of the Navy in recent hearings. I will do this in my queue for questions for the record with the secretary and General Caine. We need to disperse our forces in the INDOPACOM region, and not concentrate so much on Guam. I think there’s been a very significant lack of strategic thinking that the default position – and this has been going on for years – on INDOPACOM, when we’re saying, hey, we need to move our forces out in the region. The default position has been Guam.
And, let’s face it, you know, if there’s a conflict with China, they’re likely to put several missiles into Andersen Air Base there and incapacitate that base. And we’re going to have half the U S military footprint there? It makes no sense. So I have not heard directly the rumors of removing forces from the Korean Peninsula. You know, the Korean government did a good job working with our military over the last decade to build up Camp Humphreys. That’s an incredible facility now, south of Seoul. The Korean military paid – and government paid for most of that. It moves our forces kind of out of Seoul. Made huge sense. So that was a great investment by the Koreans for the American military there. So I don’t think we want to disrupt that.
But moving forces to Guam, it just makes no sense to me. Completely overconcentrated. And, you know, you’re – as usual, CSIS and you, John, are prompting my thinking. I’m probably going to go back to this classified hearing and ask the secretary about that. (Laughter.)
Dr. Hamre: Yeah, well, we’ve kept you too long, Senator. I just – I would just one request. And that would you – I would just request you take a CODEL to Korea and Japan sometime here, if you can. It’s –
Sen. Sullivan: Well, listen, I did – I was just on one in September. And by the way, it was a really good CODEL, led by Senator Hagerty. It has Senator Thune on it, who’s now our majority leader. It had – very bipartisan, had some strong Democrats, senators like Chris Coons, Gary Peters; some really smart newer senators, Katie Britt. It was a really, really strong CODEL. But I’ve done four CODELs to Korea and Japan in the last two years, so I think I probably hold the record – (laughter) – in terms of the importance of those two countries to the United States.
And as a senator, you know, they’re not just important; they’re our neighbors, right? They’re very close to my state. As I like to remind people, Anchorage is closer to Tokyo than it is to Washington, D.C. And a lot of people don’t know that. You’d be amazed how many admirals and generals don’t know that. (Laughter.) So I’m always in the – I’m always in the education business. (Laughs.)
Dr. Hamre: Well, there’s a lot of heads nodding here in the room. Senator, we know you have to get back to your hearing. You won’t be able to hear this applause directly, but we’re going to welcome you and thank you for what you’ve done for us. Thank you, sir. (Applause.)
Sen. Sullivan: Hey, thanks, John. Thanks very much. (Applause.)
(END.)
