© 2024 Hawaiʻi Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Here's how the invasion of Ukraine impacts diplomatic and military connections in the Asia-Pacific

Men walk in a street destroyed by shelling in Chernihiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Evgeniy Maloletka/AP
/
AP
Men walk in a street destroyed by shelling in Chernihiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Ukraine is more than 7,000 miles from Hawaiʻi, but developments there are having an impact in the Asia-Pacific in both the military and the diplomatic worlds. Retired Air Force Brigadier General and former U.S. diplomat David Stilwell shared why the invasion of Ukraine is so important to the region.

Stilwell was the Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs from June 2019 through early 2021. Prior to that, he was the director of the China Strategic Focus Group at Indo-Pacific Command on Oʻahu from 2017 to 2019. He spent 35 years in the Air Force and was also the Defense Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing from 2011 to 2013. He originally entered the military as a linguist. He’s fluent in Mandarin and Korean, and speaks some Japanese.

This interview aired on The Conversation on April 18, 2022. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.

Bill Dorman has been the news director at Hawaiʻi Public Radio since 2011.
More from Hawai‘i Public Radio