Captain Lehto is the first US Coast Guard Attache to the US Embassy in the Philippines. He has previously served at Pacific Area, District 14, Sector New Orleans, and Sector Puget Sound

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Dr. Alexander L. Vuving came to the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in 2008 from Tulane University, where he taught courses on International Relations, International Security, China and the World, and a field seminar in International Politics. Prior to Tulane, Dr. Vuving was a Post-doctoral Fellow and an Associate of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government. He was also a Visiting Research Fellow at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. Dr. Vuving’s research interests focus on the Evolution of Power Politics, including great power competition and the grand strategies of major powers; Soft Power, including its nature, mechanisms, and sources; and the longer History of Human Power, including its physical and biological roots, its coercive, structural, transactional, and attractive ways, and its game-changers—the state and the scientific revolution. With regard to contemporary issues, his major areas of research include the rise of China, Chinese strategy, regional security architecture, the struggle between a rules-based and a hierarchical international order, conflict resolution in the gray zone, Vietnamese politics and foreign policy, and the South China Sea. Dr. Vuving uses a multidisciplinary approach to his research, ranging from game theory and evolutionary biology to economics, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and political science. He has published in major academic journals and global affairs magazines and presented at leading universities and think tanks around the world. Numerous media outlets, including the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Associated Press, and Bloomberg, among others, have featured and quoted his views. Dr. Vuving serves on the Editorial Board of the academic journals Asian Politics and Policy and Global Discourse. He is a referee for Oxford University Press, International Security, and Asian Security, among others. He was the guest editor of a special issue on “How China’s Rise is Changing Asia’s Landscape and Seascape” for Asian Politics and Policy.

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A former U.S. diplomat, Hank serves as Executive Director of the U.S.-Philippines Society, which he helped launch in 2012. Hank graduated from Bucknell and holds a Master’s degree from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. He served four years as an officer in the U.S. Navy.

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Dr. Annette Bradford is a Japan Foundation Indo-Pacific Partnership Program Fellow researching the implementation of maritime security capacity-building activities. Annette also consults for Oxford EMI, a leading consultancy and training organization for higher education internationalization and English-medium Instruction (EMI) teacher professional development.

Annette holds an EdD in Educational Administration and Policy Studies from the George Washington University, an MA in Linguistics from the University of Surrey, and a BA in Modern Languages from the University of East Anglia.

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John F. Bradford is the Executive Director and Founding President of the Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies (YCAPS). He is also an adjunct senior fellow in the Maritime Security Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. His research focuses on Asian security with special attention given to maritime heritage and security cooperation.

Prior to becoming a full-time researcher, he spent more than twenty-three years as a U.S. Navy officer. As a Surface Warfare Officer, he served as Commanding Officer, Executive Officer, Combat Systems Officer, Chief Engineer, Navigator, and First Lieutenant in ships forward-deployed to Japan. His staff assignments included service as Deputy Director for the U.S. Seventh Fleet Maritime Headquarters, as Regional Cooperation Coordinator for the U.S. Seventh Fleet, as Country Director for Japan in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and Asia-Pacific Politico-military Branch Chief on the Navy Staff.

John holds a PhD from King’s College London. As an Olmsted Scholar, CDR Bradford studied in the Department of Political Science at Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia and completed an MSc (Strategic Studies) from RSIS. He is also a graduate of Japan’s National Institute of Defense Studies and is proud of the training he received as a midshipman aboard the Royal Malaysian Navy ship KD Rahmat.

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Carl Baker is executive director at Pacific Forum. Over the past 30 years he has been a regular participant in a variety of security-related regional forums and has written extensively on preventive diplomacy, multilateral security architecture, nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and nuclear security.

Previously, he was on the faculty at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies and an adjunct professor at Hawaii Pacific University. A graduate of the U.S. Air War College, he also holds an M.A. in public administration from the University of Oklahoma and a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Iowa.

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Gregory B. Poling directs the Southeast Asia Program and Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he is also a senior fellow. He is a leading expert on the South China Sea disputes and conducts research on U.S. alliances and partnerships, democratization and governance in Southeast Asia, and maritime security across the Indo-Pacific.

He is the author of On Dangerous Ground: America’s Century in the South China Sea, along with various works on U.S. relations with Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and Southeast Asia at large. His writings have been featured in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Wall Street Journal, and the Naval War College Review, among others. Mr. Poling received an MA in international affairs from American University and a BA in history and philosophy from St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

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Ray Powell is the Founder and Director of SeaLight, a maritime transparency project of the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University in California.

Ray served for 35 years in the U.S. Air Force, including posts in the Philippines, Japan, Germany, and Qatar, as well as combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He commanded the U.S. Air Force Honor Guard from 2009-11. He also served three tours in the Pentagon; as the U.S. Air Attaché to Vietnam (2013-16); and as the U.S. Senior Defense Official and Defense Attaché to Australia (2017-20).

Ray was a 2021 Fellow at Stanford’s Distinguished Careers Institute, and co-hosts the “Why Should We Care About the Indo-Pacific?” podcast.

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Brad Glosserman is Deputy Director of and Visiting Professor at the Center for Rule-making Strategies, Tama University, Tokyo, and Senior Non-Resident Advisor for Pacific Forum, Honolulu. His latest book, with Gilbert Rozman, is “Japan’s Rise as a Regional and Global Power, 2013-2023: A Momentous Decade” (Routledge 2024)

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Prof. James Kraska is Charles H. Stockton Chair of International Maritime Law and Department Chair, Stockton Center for International Law at the U.S. Naval War College and Visiting Professor of Law and John Harvey Gregory Lecturer on World Organization at Harvard Law School.

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