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Tom Mahnken, president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank, praised Carter's emphasis on developing partnerships. "Secretary Carter was right to emphasize multilateral approaches in the Asia-Pacific region.

To date, however, the US has avoided such direct challenges. Indeed, argued Bryan Clark of the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments, the American approach has been remarkably indirect. “The US can be seen as playing a ‘long game’ in which it improves relations with and its military posture in countries on China’s Southeast Asian periphery and to reduce China’s influence, while in the near term giving in on China’s efforts in the South China Sea proper,” Clark said in an email (emphasis added). What has this tack achieved since the last Shangri-La? The Philippines has hosted Air Force A-10 attack planes. Singapore is hosting Navy P-8 patrol aircraft. Vietnam agreed to host a US Army stockpile of humanitarian supplies, and the US lifted restrictions on arms sales to Hanoi. All this “goes along with this idea of not contesting the South China Sea islands directly, but instead building more lasting relations and military posture along the periphery,” Clark said. “If properly equipped, forces in Vietnam and the Philippines could hold China’s island facilities at risk and negate some of the advantage they provide China.” “That may work,” Clark continued, “but only if the increasing Chinese militarization of the South China Sea does not in the end convince its neighbors that the US will not be able to support them militarily….. Eventually, the U.S. will have to contest China’s effort to make the South China Sea a ‘Chinese lake.'”

The United States should consider jointly handling nuclear weapons with South Korea and Japan so as to prevent the key Asian allies from seeking nuclear armament of their own, a U.S. expert has suggested…"How might Washington prevent nuclear proliferation if South Korea were to decide that it needed to offset North Korea's nuclear arsenal, if Japan were to determine that it had no other option to balance against a rising China, or if both of these outcomes occurred?" Montgomery said in the report...

Kate Blakeley, a defense budget analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said the BBA has "broken down" for FY-17, despite the attempts of Senate appropriators to maintain it in their defense bill. "With stark differences of opinion between the House and Senate, the odds of getting either a policy or an appropriations bill before the election is very low," she said.

As Mark Gunzinger and Bryan Clark argue in a recent report, defending against these threats will require non-kinetic technologies capable of defeating larger missile salvos at a far lower cost than the “hit-to-kill” system in operation today. Specifically, Gunzinger and Clark call for a mix of shorter range, lower cost, kinetic capabilities combined with “left-of-launch” technologies, such as lasers and electronic warfare countermeasures that enable defeat of a missile before it has been launched...

Seapower chairman Forbes made the point even more directly in a memo sent to his colleagues before the hearing: “According to one of the best independent naval analysts (Bryan Clark of the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments), the Navy is ‘facing a fundamental choice: maintain current levels of forward presence and risk breaking the force or reduce presence and restore readiness.’ I believe Congress must pursue a third option: to increase funding for the Navy to levels that will enable it to do what our nation asks without running its ships and sailors ragged or sending them into battle unprepared.”