This is CBS I In The World. I'm John Batch with my colleague and friend Gordon Chang at

Gordon Cheat Chang. It is June 1942. Chester Nimitz commanding the Pacific Fleet against

the Imperial Japanese Navy has three carriers to send out against the combined Japanese

fleet headed to Midway. Three carriers, one badly-damaged and at Coral Sea the Yorktown

had to be repaired overnight how they did it is a miracle but in any event three carriers

to win the Pacific right now. That dire moment is always with us and we welcome Professor

James Holmes of the US of the Naval War College to help us understand the most recent excitement

in Pentagon when they or someone has realized we have three carriers or the equivalent

to face the combined might of the people's liberation army navy. Professor are very good

evening to you. When did this come to the Pentagon that China is ready to send out its fleet

and we're not ready to answer. Good evening to you.

Gentlemen, good to be with you this evening as always. Well, you know, I think it's sometimes

a good, sometimes I fall back on science fiction. There was a there was a term in Robert

and Robert Highline's famous book Stranger and Strangeland, the idea of rocking something

GR okay, which is basically to feel something in your guts. It's one thing to know something

intellectually. We've known China was a problem for a while now but to actually feel it

in your guts and actually act and actually act on that so on that conviction that China

is a problem. I think those are two different things. So again, I think the intellect has

led the actually feeling it in your guts and actually actually started to do something

about it. Plus, just after all this time, after all the hoopla after the Cold War and

basically saying, well, you know, pieces at hand, there were that we're not going to

have we're not going to have any more military conflict in the future and so forth. I mean,

...