Several military, diplomatic and economic experts on China will come together in Lakewood Friday for the 2009 Pacific Northwest Security Forum, an annual event that invites the public to learn about pivotal geopolitical issues.

China was chosen as this year’s theme because the country is so much in the spotlight, from last summer’s Beijing Olympics to Washington state’s close trade ties with the Chinese, said retired Army Lt. Col. Doug Adams, the chairman of Friday’s program.

“It’s a little bit of a different look for us because we have been a national-security-focused forum in the past,” Adams said. “But the U.S.-China relationship is more than just national security.”

THE MAIN EVENT: The 11:30 a.m. lunchtime keynote presenter is former U.S. Ambassador Darryl Johnson, whose topic will be: “U.S. and China: Conciliation or Confrontation?”

Johnson grew up in the Puget Sound area and studied at the University of Washington and the University of Puget Sound. He is a guest lecturer at the UW Jackson School of International Studies.

AFTERNOON PANELS: The U.S. has a hot-cold relationship with China, and that duality will be reflected in a pair of panels.

Partnership is the word that best describes the 1:30 p.m. panel. It will feature Joe Borich, president of the Washington State China Relations Council, and Ron Chow, a Lakewood businessman who works closely with local sister city delegations and goes to China four to five times a year.

The discussion shifts to competition with China during the 4 p.m. panel. Participants include Dr. Phillip Saunders, senior research fellow for the National Defense University Institute for National Strategic Studies; Brig. Gen. Neal Sealock of Spokane, a former defense attaché to China; and Brig. Gen. Jeff Mathis, Fort Lewis’ deputy commanding general and a former special operations soldier with East Asia experience.

WHERE: The last three years, the forum was held in downtown Tacoma. This year it moves to Lakewood at the Sharon M. McGavick Student and Conference Center, Clover Park Technical College, 4500 Steilacoom Blvd. S.W.

COST: $45 for the keynote luncheon and afternoon panels. There’s no charge for those who show up only for the panels.

WHO’S ATTENDING: Active duty and reserve service members, veterans, civic and business leaders, and ROTC students are expected to attend. But anyone is welcome.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Click here.

Matt Misterek: 253-597-8472

Bill Harrison, the former Lakewood mayor, retired Army three-star, former commanding general at Fort Lewis and I Corps, and the honorary chairman of this year's Pacific Northwest National Security Forum, said he's a little ticked that more people didn't turn out for the daylong series of speakers.

With this area's vast community of retired military and defense industry types, they should have done better, he says.

Our offhand estimate put the attendance at about 100, maybe a little less. It was off significantly from the few hundred that attended last year.

Next year's edition is already set for March 24, and with a topic that may prove a better draw: China.

PS This year's sessions are to be broadcast later on TVW and on the Pentagon Channel. More information when I get it.

UPDATE: The forum sessions are now up at TVW and the first session will be broadcast 7 p.m. Monday.

Thinking about cyberwarfare you get this mental picture of their geeks crashing our networks with a virus, countered by our geeks crashing their network with a worm, and back and forth. It wouldn't necessarily work like that.

If the United States were in a state of open conflict with the cyber adversary and commanders didn't want to risk any further threat to their networks, "we just might drop my favorite network attack tool – a JDAM," said Col. Tony Buntyn, vice commander of the emerging Air Force Cyberspace Command.

"Go back and configure that router," he said. "They're not going to."

Likewise, in Kosovo, U.S. tacticians wanted to knock out a telephone network that was being used by Serbian forces but didn't want to destroy it. They used what Buntyn called "a war dialer" to simultaneously call every number on the network, repeatedly, and crash the system.

"We can't do that anymore because of the 'do not call' list," he said.

That was a joke.

But he said the nature of warfare in cyberspace is just beginning to evolve.

"We know a lot about kinetic warfare," Buntyn said. That is, there's a science to calculating what will happen when a particular sized bomb is dropped on a particular target.

"But what is the collateral damage of releasing a worm? Or releasing a virus? Or attacking a router?" he said. "We don't have that science. What is the science of cyberspace operations? We don't know. We have a lot of questions."

Even the No. 2 at the Air Force's new command charged with thwarting America's online adversaries runs afoul of the Powerpoint gremlins.

Col. Tony Buntyn reached the point of his presentation Tuesday night where he was going to play the Air Force public relations video showing airmen serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, only the vid, embedded in his Powerpoint slides, wouldn't play. An IT guy almost got it going, but alas, no luck.

"You just never know," shrugged Buntyn, who's been selected for promotion to brigadier general as vice commander of the Air Force Cyberspace Command. "You create a presentation on one computer and put it on another and sometimes things work, sometimes they don't."

His own tech troubles aside, Buntyn gave a quick overview of the new command and its mission in the closing briefing Tuesday night at the Pacific Northwest National Security Forum, held at the Greater Tacoma Convention and Trade Center.

He followed other speakers who talked about the issues and challenges ahead for the new U.S. Africa Command.

Buntyn, a Texas Air National Guardsman, said the $5+ billion a year command will be spread out at bases across the country. Where they'll place the headquarters of 541 airmen is subject of hot debate, with more than 19 states vying to host the site. The Air Force won't decide until late next year, Buntyn said.

The Air Force in 2005 set out to create the new command, calling it "a strategic imperative." The service even changed its mission statement, adding " ... to fly and fight in air, space and cyberspace."

"We're serious about this," Buntyn said.

But the military needs access to the Internet for all its operations. Unimpeded use is critical to the nation's participation in the global economy. Other countries have already written cyberspace into their military warfighting doctrine, he said.

"Our adversaries understand how to use cyberspace. They use the internet to command and control, to direct their teams, to recruit. They use the electromagnetic spectrum to detonate improvised explosive devices," Buntyn said. "They understand cyberspace. We've got to do the same."

During the Q & A a guy from the audience offered this one: What is the average taxpayer going to get out of this new Africa Command?

Said Herron, the Africom guy: Hopefully more stability and security there and here, which would mean fewer conflicts requiring the participation of the U.S. military over the long haul. "It's a tough sell," he acknowledged. But if you take it at face value that there are real strategic threats and national security interests in the continent, then the command will mean that Africa will no longer be an after-thought for three different combatant commanders, but in fact the sole focus of an entire arm of the U.S. military.

Page, the intel guy: "In terms of our values as a country, defending peoples' rights to live healthy, happy free lives, our investment in Africa is very efficient, very important. We can do a lot more good there than, say, buying more tanks for our NATO allies who have the ability to look after their own security needs."

And McFate, from the think-tank: It's hard to calculate the cost of national security. Years ago, if you'd said it would be a huge strategic blunder for the United States to turn away from Afghanistan, you might've gotten laughed at, he said. Now, not so much.

"There are many ways we can think of doomsday scenarios, and you don't want to be a bad salesman, but at end of day it's a hard case to make to Congress. ... As Africom goes forward, I think it will be making that case more and more before Congress."

More from McFate, the one guy on today's panel of Africa speakers who does not work for the United States government. There are two big points about what the nation has learned from its Iraq experience that are shaping the way the Pentagon is building Africom.

• The post-combat phase of military operations -- security, economic development, reconstruction, etc. -- has become more important in determining the outcome than the combat phase.

• Prevention is better than dealing with the reaction after the fact – "all those things you can do to prevent the conflict in the first place." Through military-to-military relationships, the command can create conditions for the rule of law and secure development.

Sean McFate, third speaker up today at the forum, has a diverse background, to say the least. The director of the national security initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C., think-tank, is a former Army officer, has worked for Amnesty International, and for Dyncorp (rebuilding the Liberian army). I suspect there are not many who have those two on their resume.

He worked for three years in Africa and says the United States has at least five strategic interests in the continent, in no particular order.

• Counterterrorism. "As 9/11 has shown, fragile states can harbor and incubate terrorist threats that can become direct strategic threats to the United States."

• Energy security: Nigeria is the fourth or fifth largest exporter of oil to the United States, the largest in Africa. If Nigeria devolved the way Kenya did in January, it would send the price of oil soaring (as if it could get any higher). "That is now a strategic threat," he said.

• Humanitarian concern: The spread of civil wars in African nations to regional conflicts.

• International crime: Thrive on lawless lands. Not only trafficking in people and narcotics, but could also be a waypoint in the shipment of weapons of mass destruction for terrorist attack against the United States.

• China: Africom is not a response to China's growing influence in Africa. Nor does China represent a Cold War-like adversary in Africa. But that said ...
China has gone in last 15 years from net exporter of oil to second-largest importer of oil, to the U.S. Second, they are looking for new markets. That for them partly is Africa. They also engage in bloc voting, in UN and elsewhere, to get a majority of votes to help them get favorable trade deals and in the long-standing diplomatic dispute over the status of Taiwan. They have made enormous inroads while the U.S. has been busy in Middle East, "writing checks with no strings attached."

Matthew Page, the deputy national intelligence officer for Africa, has no shortage of things that he says he's worried about as the United States stands up its new Africa Command.

His lists:

Rising food and fuel prices
Rebels, rebels and more rebels ...
-- Sudan/Chad/Central African Republic
-- Mali/Niger
-- Burundi/Eastern Congo
-- Niger delta (Nigeria)
Democracy in retreat
-- Zimbabwe, Kenya, Nigeria
Weak states
-- Guinea-Bissau/Guinea
-- Somalia/Somaliland/Puntland
Islamic extremism in East Africa/Sahel

The hot spots he sees over the next year or so as Africom comes on line:

Higher food and fuel prices
Somalia: famine in a power vacuum
Sudan: A messy divorce?
-- North-South peace agreement
-- 2011 Independence vote
Aging Autocrats
-- Guinea, Senegal, Cameroon
Upcoming Elections
-- Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, South Africa
Ethiopia/Eritrea: Another border war?
Maritime insecurity

But there are positive trends, he says:

• African-led peacekeeping ... regional brigades slowly taking shape. West African make most progress. African Union taking leadership role in these issues. UN mission in Sudan a hybrid with AU.
• Military professionalization. As regimes become more and more comfortable in their own skin, take units that were built to protect regime and transfer them to peacekeeping and disaster aid.
• Regional diplomacy. Doing more talking before conflict breaks out.
• Post-conflict reconstruction.
• A few economic successes. Botswana. Mozambique. Some countries managing their resources well. Some developing infrastructure projects, also looking at improving social services like health and education.
• Emerging middle class. Proliferation of communications technologies. Better wired into global community.
• International relationships.
• Rejection of foreign Islamists.

Col. James Herron, deputy director of the Africom liaison office at the Pentagon, said it was never the case that the United States was going to replicate its existing European Command or Central command on the continent of Africa -- that is, large numbers of U.S. military personnel stationed on bases around the continent.

But that was the perception that went out with the news that the United States was standing up the new command, said Herron,
speaking at the Pacific Northwest National Security Forum in downtown Tacoma.

The new command's prospects are profiled in a piece this weekend in the Washington Post.

So now the commander, Army Gen. Kip Ward, has ordered a go-slow approach.

"We started off on the wrong foot by saying we are going to do this without really every consulting the Africans to start with," he said. "I compare it to showing up at your doorstep and saying, 'hey, I'm moving into a room of your house.'"

Ward has traveled the continent to try to assure African leaders that that's not the plan.

"He has said, 'let's back off a little bit. Let's develop the command as it should have been developed in the first place, then see how it goes," Herron said.