This is CBS, I'm John Batch with my colleague and co-host and friend Gordon Chang at Gordon

G Chang. We welcome Professor James Holmes of the U.S. Navy War College, addressing remarks

in general about the conflict in Asia right now with the People's Republic of China's

Navy growing daily and the demands on the U.S. Navy growing daily. In a conversation recorded

in 1945, the Professor answers questions about two technical terms that apply to the Navy

today. One is adversary agnostic, planning on adversary agnostic planning, and the other

is capabilities-based planning. Professor Avera, good evening to you. What does adversary

agnostic and capabilities-based planning? What do those terms mean in reference to today's

contest and the Pacific between the U.S. Navy and the PLA Navy? Good evening to you.

Thanks, John and I, Gordon. These are a couple of terms. I'm actually not a huge fan of

them. I think they're related terms. They come in something called the joint concept

for competing, something that came out of the Pentagon within the last few weeks, which

is basically about how you compete short of warm in the South China Sea or the East China

Sea or places like that. The concept talks about how the joint force should respond to this

and handle this sort of competition to give the United States a strategic advantage. But

it feels very abstract. There are no specifics about the universe. Adversaries are so forth.

And the concept is very forthright about that. It says it is adversary agnostic meaning

we should be able to use this concept on a new manner who the adversary is. Which makes

the whole concept. I think by itself it's not all that useful because it is very abstract

from the real world as we know it. I do think the Pentagon will be filling in with a

series of documents explaining how you apply to put this thing to work in the South China

Sea or whatever the theater might be, Black Sea or somewhere like that. As far as capabilities

...