Richard C. Bush

[Renaming the street of China's embassy in Washington] is the sort of symbolic shaming that the [People's Republic of China] and many politically conscious Chinese really dislike. Of course, what the regime did to Liu Xiaobo violated every reasonable moral standard, and this action will make some in the West feel good. But it will not speed his release by even one day.

I was a bit surprised by [the president's decision to leave Asia out of the address at West Point] myself. The main answer, I think, is that this was an army audience and the army, along with the marines, have borne the brunt of ground interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. So it's important for army officers to know, going forward, how the U.S. government is going to use them — and, more importantly, not use them. And that's what he did. If he had done the graduation speech at the Naval Academy, which is on the front lines of rebalancing, it would have been a very different, Asia-focused speech.

It is useful for people like [Nago Mayor Susumu Inamine] to come [to Washington] and just remind us that that opinion exists and for us to hear that narrative. It may not change anything.

It's not the kind of situation where you can draw red lines, because China does lay claim to the territory where it's operating. It's not a situation where anybody is totally in the right and China is totally in the wrong.