This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Pacific Forum. The think tank’s mission has been all about peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.
Pacific Forum President and CEO David Santoro and former director, now Board Chair Ralph Cossa dropped by The Conversation to discuss foreign policy under the Trump administration, and how the think tank came to the surface.
"The idea of the Pacific Forum actually started during World War II," Cossa said. "Joe Vasey, at that time, a lieutenant commander on a diesel-powered submarine was being prosecuted by a Japanese destroyer… They were running out of air, and they had to surface. And Joe said, 'If I live through this, I'm going to find a better way of solving problems than people dropping bombs on one another.'"
In 1975, Vasey retired as a two-star admiral and created the Pacific Forum. For 50 years, the foreign policy research institute has worked to help stimulate cooperative policies in the Indo-Pacific region.
“Vasey’s mission was to convince Americans that Asia still mattered, and convince Asians that Americans still cared and had interest there,” Cossa said. "I think that job has become important once again, and that's essentially what we're trying to do. We have to both persuade the American people and also the administration."
"We need to double down on our commitments in Asia and reinforce the three most important words are: reassure, reassure and reassure, because right now, people are nervous, and one of their options, if they no longer have faith in the United States, is to either get in bed with the Chinese or the Russians, or develop nuclear weapons on their own, which would create a great deal of instability in the world. So these are the types of things that we're worried about now and that we're looking at now.”
From Feb. 12 to 14, the organization hosted the Honolulu Defense Forum, which included high participation from European nations. The gathering was in solidarity against the so-called triad of troublemakers — North Korea, China and Russia.
“It's not 1945 or 1990 anymore. We are in a very different world where we have strong adversaries that we have to contend with. And China is certainly one, but, you know, Russia, North Korea and many others. If we're not working together, we're not going to succeed, and so we have to certainly employ military force when necessary. But beyond that, there's a whole world that we've too often ignored, and this is also where we need to be," Santoro said.
Santoro hopes that the Honolulu Defense Forum, which started last year, will continue to grow.
"I do believe that the United States is still committed to its alliances, to its role in the world, but we will have to see until we see proper strategy documents and see where the country is going from there," Santoro continued.
This story aired on The Conversation on April 14, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m.
