[applause] our guest is an admiral who graduated from the United StatesNaval Academy in 1976. He had a 37 year career and some extraordinary stations along the way, including as the Combatant Commander of u. S. Southern command from 06 to 09 and of course his nato ally supreme commander. He earned his phd as well and masters of arts and law from the Fletcher School of law and diplomacy which he subsequently went on to lead as dean after his retirement from the navy. The author of ten books, but hes also an operating executive with the Carlyle Group which most americans know as perhaps the preeminent Venture Capitalist Fund in the United States. He chaired boards of the council. Hes among the most treasured guests i have on my radio show, and im leading personally a campaign to get the admiral on the board of at least one and hopefully three of Big Tech Companies so that google, facebook and amazon bring to their perspective and discussions of you to the National Security of the United States from someone knowledgeable about all these things. For his 37 years [applause] i would also like to point out he spent 11 of those years out of sight of land. So that is quite a recommendation. Please join me in welcoming the admiral. [applause] thank you, sir. What were going to do tonight is different for our audience and our audience on cspan. Im going to ask the admiral a few questions and well do a presentation. The author of ten books, i dont have a copy of his memoir, but my first question is that, titles matter, admiral. Why did you call it the accidental admiral . Well, anybody who really follows the navy knows that the place you want to end up in the navy as a four star is the pacific. You want to be out there where nimitz was and halsey and all the great naval admirals, and i was kind of tracking to go to the pacific, and then secretary of defense bob gates called me up and said we need you to go to europe and work at nato. I said mr. Secretary, i dont really know much about nato or europe. I said im a pacific guy. That did not win him over, and so i felt this was kind of an accident that i ended up in europe, and then secondly, because all of our lives are accidents. All of our lives, the big turns, we can never predict them. And so i wanted a title of the book that emphasized that you can have a brilliant plan for your life, but there will be intervening moments, and so the accidental admiral i have often said the most important words in the english language are have you ever considered . And i know a guy. [laughter] who is that guy and i know a guy that made your career, admiral . Admiral mike mullen, who was the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff at the far end of his career, but early in his career and early in mine, hes probably ten years senior to me, which is kind of the perfect distance for a mentor in the military, when he was the head of human resources, if you will, we called them in the navy detailers, he was my detailer and broke me me out of kind of a standard seagoing career and said, you know, stavridis, you have something going on, were going to send you to the Fletcher School of law and diplomacy. Were going to put you in a position do a phd. Thats very unconventional. And he was there at the beginning of my career and then at the far end, when i was getting ready to become a four star officer. He was a very strong advocate. The point i want to make is he was a mentor who followed up. So often people talk about being mentors, but they dont have that followup. They dont truly engage again and again. Admiral mike mullen was there for me at every step. The first book i got to know you in is the one im holding up here, our friends who are listening or watching on cspan, this is a book you can give to anyone at any time in any career, and it will be invaluable to them. And i found it to be invaluable. Would you explain to people you wrote with this and what it does because it is really extraordinary . So the title tells it, it is the leaders bookshelf. The idea is to identify 50 books that can make you a better leader. And because, hugh, nobody has time to actually read 50 books, whats in here is a synopsis of each of these 50 books and the leadership lessons that fall out from them. Its not a bunch of boring leadership books. Its actually novels, like to kill a mockingbird, a connecticut yankee king arthurs court. Its an autobiography, theres biography like nimitz that we will talk about it later. Its a very eclectic list of books. People can do the People Magazine version and kind of read through it, or they can say wow, that one really catches my interest. I am going to actually sit down and read in love and war by vice admiral James Stockdale and his wife cybill. Whats remarkable about this, the first two, general mattis who was in your chair a few months ago, has an appendix of 63 books to his memoir, and you both are adamant that young and old officers be reading. Can you expand on that . I can. I had a chance to have dinner with a handful of the rotc junior cadets who are here this evening, hugh. They asked me what can i do to prepare myself for military service . I think there are a lot of things that are important, physical fitness, knowledge of ship handling, tactics, all of that, but the most important thing is to read because the day you graduate from a university is the day that you own your education, and at the end of your life, you will be the sum of what you have continued to invest in that education. Read, read, read. And to practically answer the question, only through picking up a book, a novel, for example, lets take gates of fire, about the battle, by steven preston, you can put yourself in that moment. Its a simulator. It is a chance to test yourself against the highest standards. I think reading is powerful and important, and its a force multiplier in our life. The next book is sea power. I love this book because it taught me first of all all i needed to know about Global Climate change, because as you point out, the ice isnt there where it was when you first started. Whether or not youre a scientist, you are going places in the arctic you never went before, but it is named for a book that has a fairly good pedigree. A good friend of mine, commander cook, an aviator in vietnam said im not sure im going to read a book called sea power because his Naval Academy class of 63, but he converted. Explain to the audience what sea power was intended to do and the legacy it carries. The subtitle of the book sea power, the history and geo politics of the worlds ocean. Instead of writing a book about people, i decided to write a book about where the characters are the worlds oceans. Chapter on the atlantic, pacific, mediterranean, arctic, the south china sea. And i think theres power in that because in each of those chapters, i talk about the history of that region of the world and tie it to the importance of the seas. And that is the connection to the admiral you were thinking of, Alfred Thayer, the greatest strategist the navy has ever produced, who created this idea of a global navy. The reason we have a powerful seagoing navy, a powerful marine corps, is because of these vast oceans. 70 of this planet is covered by water. 95 of all trade moves on the oceans. 70 of the oxygen youre breathing tonight comes from photosynthesis in the sea. The oceans matter. Thats the genesis in the book and the theory is we ought to have a strategy for dealing with those oceans as surely as al fred thayer articulated a strategy 120 years ago. My last few questions have to do with two of the chapters in this wonderful new book sailing true north biographical sketches. I picked these two admirals, one of the millions of sailors on thousands of ships under nimitzs command. He wasnt on a ship most of the time. The other one i want to ask you about is zumwalt because he was under nixons command. Theres a nice symmetry there. The first one i want to ask you about would chester make it in the navy of today . I think the real question is would he even have made it out of the Naval Academy of today . When he was a mid shipman, he was often known to go we would say over the wall, unauthorized liberty, go out in town and buy beer for his classmates and bring it back. And theres a wonderful vignette about nimitz that even as a mid shipman, i picture him as a stately tall great executive hair, just the whole package, hes in this beer shop, and he sees what he thinks is a civilian over there, and he buys his beer and he moves on. The next day it turns out that civilian is one of the officers at the Naval Academy. And so nimitz is like oh my god, my career is over. But he gets a Second Chance. And i think theres power in that idea, hugh, that to get those chester nimitzes, you got to give people a Second Chance from time to time. I certainly got many Second Chances in the course of my career. Theres power in that lesson. Now, i read with great interest the zumwalt chapter because at the nixon library, were curious about and constantly researching the relationship between the president and the pentagon. There was at that time under the admiral a very controversial scandal. Can you expand on what that was and whether or not bud zumwalt really knew that was going on . There was this sort of i dont want to use the word of intelligence gathering of civilian officials by the military. It sounds terrible and it is. It was probably more benign than that. It was probably more in the category of well, this person in the us who thinks this way well, this person in the white house thinks this way, and this one thinks this way, be tu but the appearance of kind of gathering intelligence in order to move a military agenda was pretty damming. The record is unclear whether he was fully witting of that or not. Im going to give him the benefit of the doubt. I met him and knew him. I think he was an individual of high integrity, and i will talk about him in a moment or two. But the lesson here for all of us is be careful of the optics, be careful of how something appears because it can drag you down, if you are not very careful to maintain yourself at the highest levels of standards of all times. And a followup question about that, zumwalt was quote deep selected. Nixon did a lot of deep selecting as president. He reached for Daniel Patrick moynihan. He reached for people who he pulled kissinger from harvard and kissinger had never met him. Whats the advantage and does the navy need to do more deep selecting or less now . Id say more, and as you know, but maybe the audience does not, we just deep selected the current chief of naval operations, admiral michael gilday. A couple of months ago he was a three star kind of thinking about well maybe if the stars align, i might get a fourth star some day. The secretary of the navy, richard spencer, faced a crisis in that the original candidate, admiral bill moran had an issue, had to step aside. So instead of going to that four star bench, secretary of the navy, richard spencer, reached way down, relatively speaking, to a three star officer and elevated him over the entire four star community. Its happened before. Zumwalt and before that admiral burk was elevated as a three star. The advantage of doing it is you get a fresh set of eyes and no one who is elevated has any baggage to pay off. You get a clean break. That can be very advantageous. And i would argue as the navy goes into this very turbulent 21st century, we would be well served to do a little more deep selecting that gives me the perfect transition to a clean break. It is my pleasure to turn the stage over to admiral stavridid so give you a presentation. I hope your clicker is there. It is. I will be back up. Sir, thank you very much. I want to say thank you to hugh and to the nixon library. I want to also just sort of spend a moment while the furniture is moved which it is. Thank you, hugh, betsy is here as well, his lovely wife, navy mom, navy daughter, got a lot of navy going on in the house tonight. I see that. That was a wonderful introduction. Normally when people hear that introduction, supreme allied commander and all that, and then they actually see me. They typically have two reactions. One is wow, i thought you would be taller. [laughter] and the other reaction is they say well, you know, stavridis, if you are really that cool, why werent you a Navy Fighter Pilot like goose and maverick because i was a destroyer officer i just drove ships around. To be honest with you and really honest, i desperately wanted to be Navy Fighter Pilot when i was a young boy, but i had a really traumatic experience at an airport that made aviation really difficult for me. [laughter] heres what were going to do, and im going to do this in about 25 minutes. Were going to sail fast, but i want to talk about the oceans, but what i really want to talk about is character. And i need everyone to understand the difference between leadership, jim mattis was here a while back. Im sure he talked about leadership. Im not here to talk about leadership. Im here to talk about character. Leadership is what we do to influence others. It is a big door, and it swings out there, influencing millions of people as it did for me when i was a nato commander, but that big door of leadership swings on a very small hinge, and that hinge is human character. You cannot swing that door of leadership unless your character allows it to swing. So i set out to write a book about character. We are awash in books of leadership. There are a lot of them. I wanted to write a book about that inner voyage, how we lead ourselves. Thats character. And write about what you know about. I decided to write using a framework of ten admirals. So were going to zip back in history, 2500 years, and were going to pull it right up to the present and talk about ten very dynamic admirals. Im Greek American. So there has to be a Greek American not american, but a greek in this thing. And this is 2500 years athens faces an existential threat. Athens is threatened by the persian empire. The persians of course are the iranians of today. Theyre about to conquer athens, the city state, with the power of persuasion, convinces his captains to go and fight a bat until which they are outnumbered 5 perhaps 10 to 1 in these that the rowing captains of that day launched. Heres the advantage that he had, all of the rowers were free men, no slaves. That persian fleet, five times the size, was rowed by slaves. He said to his captains, tomorrow you must row for your family. Tomorrow you must row for your city. Tomorrow you must row for freedom. They destroyed that persian fleet. It is an extraordinary story of accomplishment and charisma, but within three years, after that victorious battle, his arrogance overtakes him. And he ends up alienating his countrymen. Hes banished from greece. He ends his life in the court of the persian emperor. Its a greek tragedy. And it is a story of how you can be given incredible gifts, but if you allow your ego and your arrogance to overtake them, you will metaphorically end up in the court of the persian king. Lets go to a different part of the world. Lets go to china. Were now in the year 1400, 1405, the chinese emperor invests in this admiral. The admiral is entrusted with an enormous treasure fleet, constructed of wood, which explores the south china sea, the indian ocean, and to give you a point of comparison, about europeans and chinese, look at those ships in the upper right, see that massive wooden one, thats the scale of zheng hes ship, which is 500 feet long and has a crew of 600. You see that little toy boat next to it . Thats the flagship of Christopher Columbus, the santa maria, which 100 years later, in 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue, thats what the europeans were sailing to explore the world. The chinese were sailing massive ships. And by the way, that treasure fleet, that economic juggernaut of the 1400s looks a lot like chi chinas strategy today, one belt, one road. Theres a lot to learn from zheng he about his ability to organize, his ability to fulfill what his boss wants him to. Lets jump a little further forward to the time of the spanish ar armada, sir francis drake, he saves england. He leads the british fleet that defeats the spanish armada, but in the caribbean, hes known as a pirate, a rapist, a murderer. He enslaves. He burns cities. He kills indiscriminately. He is perhaps the darkest character of these admirals. Hes a patriot. Hes also a pirate. How many of you have been in disney world on the ride pirates of the caribbean, like everybody, based on sir francis drake. Here is my favorite british admiral, vice admiral lord nelson. He fights another existential battle. He defeats napoleons fleet in 1805 at the battle of trifalgar off the coast of spain. I liked admiral nelson a lot, because he was about 55 tall, a man of normal height [laughter] but he was fearless in combat. He lost an arm, his right arm in one battle. He lost an eye in another battle. And he was beloved by his sailors. He took care of his sailors and his captains who worked for him adored him. He was a team builder. Wins an existential battle, beloved by his sailors and captains. Was he perfect . Not so much. This is emma hamilton, beautiful young actress we would think of her today. He has an adulterous affair with her, over a number of years. He fathers a child out of wedlock. This guy would never get through Senate Confirmation today. [laughter] and you see that picture of him, you know, looking at the signal . Because in those days you looked at signal flags to know where to sail your ship. Looks good; right . He was a difficult subordinate. Hes actually putting the telescope to his blind eye because he doesnt like the order from the admiral, and hes saying to his flag captain, i dont see any signal there. Go ahead and come. This is where the expression to turn a blind eye to something actually comes from. So a great hero of his country. His moral compass doesnt always sail true north. And a very difficult subordinate. So like all of us, complex character. Who else . Well, we talked about our friend Alfred Thayer mohan, arguably the most intellectual officer the navy has produced. In the 1880s and 1890s, he produces a global strategy for america, not just for the navy, but why America Needs the oceans. It was said that an intellectual is a man with spectacles on his nose and winter in his heart. This was Alfred Thayer mohan. He is not a living giving person. His life balance is not good, but what he does is think and write and pursue the truth wherever it takes him. He creates the naval war college. Arguably the most important of all of our war colleges in military educational institutions. So not a warm chummy figure. Hes a miserable commander at sea. He commands a ship badly once, but boy is he smart. Again, that mixture that is character. Who else . Heres one not many people will know. This is a british admiral, and his name is Jackie Fisher. Hes a british admiral at the turn of the last century, and what i like about Jackie Fisher is he comes into the british navy, when there are sailing ships and muzzleloading cannons. By the time he commands the british navy, as the sea lord, it has gone from wooden ships, sails, and muzzleloading cannon to steel hulls, done with coal, moved on to oil, longrange firecontrolled platforms, huge cannons, submarines are coming in. Hes an extraordinary innovator. Hes a contemporary of winston churchill. And hes also hugely egotistical. He is the only one in the room. Hes that quintessential person who has to show you how smart he or she is the minute the door opens. So this massive ego, but tied to this brilliance and this taste for innovation. Lets come back to america, and lets go to i would argue the best admiral in american history, certainly, fleet admiral chester nimitz. Comes out of fredericksburg, texas, landlocked, wants to go to west point, ends up going to annapolis, becomes a steady growing force within the navy, commands the bureau of personnel. Hes got a good steady career going on. What happens . 7 december 1941 happens. The pacific threat is destroyed. The Pacific Fleet is destroyed. The navy and the nation turn to chester nimitz. Hes told pack a bag, go to pearl harbor and take command of the Pacific Fleet. The problem is the Pacific Fleet is sunk. Its in the bottom of pearl harbor. Luckily the carriers were out. Theres a few submarines there. He takes commands of the Pacific Fleet, not on one of those gorgeous battleships and beautiful White Service dress uniform. He takes command in a set of khakis with a smell in the air, watching bodies being pulled out of the smoking hull of the arizona. Thats resilience. He squares his shoulder. He builds a team, with people like nimitz and macarthur and others and methodically slowly he takes apart the japanese empire. Two ships, upper left, thats the arizona, folks. If you have not been to pearl harbor and gone to the temple of the navy, go and see the arizona. Thats the start of world war ii. Bottom right, whats that . Thats missouri. Thats missouri. Thats the ship upon which the surrender document of the japanese emperor was signed. This is the beginning and the end of the second world war. What happened in the middle . Chester nimitz happened in the middle. Its a great story of resilience, and through that whole period, he never raises his voice. He doesnt engage his ego. He builds teams. This is a kind of admiral you want. Well, lets jump forward and wrap it up with a few more admirals. Zumwalt was mentioned. I like admiral zumwalt. He had a big personality. He had huge eyebrows. He was someone who was deep selected to be the chief of naval operations. He was ininnovator, but not of technology. He didnt come up with the new devices. The innovation of bud zumwalt was reengineering the navy as a society. He faced the tension in race in the navy, in the 70s. And he faced up in ways that ultimately helped bring us together. He had many many innovations. The thing to know about admiral zumwalt is he was value driven, every day of his life. He woke up saying whats the right thing to do . Thats a pretty good quality in anybody. How about this character, any nuclear submariners in the mix here . There must be one or two. Not so many. So this admiral very famously pulls the navy into the nuclear age. Hes brilliant. Hes very difficult. Hes famous for making life hard for everybody around him, by demanding that everything be done to perfect specifications. He is cantankerous but boy is he smart. At the end of the day, he creates the nuclear navy. By the way, an immigrant to the United States, born in russia, comes here when hes 6 years old. So last admiral, grace hopper. In navy, we call her amazing grace. World war ii happens. She has a phd in mathematics from yale university. She is brilliant. Shes teaching mathematics at the university. She knows she wants to be in the war effort. The problem is, the navy is not bringing women in. She only weighs 105 pounds. The minimum weight to get in the navy is 120 pounds. She starts drinking milk shakes. [laughter] a good problem to have. Eventually she puts on enough weight, but what really happens is, we need her, we need her brilliant mind because were inventing the idea of computers. We have built the first mainframe which is 8 feet wide and 50 feet long. And weve got to figure out how to program this thing. The idea of programming doesnt exist. Computer science doesnt exist. She invents all that work a small group of people she invents all that, with a small group of people. She writes cobalt. Still used today. I started programming in that myself in the 70s. Met grace hopper. She was tiny, energetic, always had a smile on her face, the young grace hopper. Somebody you wanted to have a beer with. She was terrific because she was unafraid to try everything new, intellectual curiosity was her character trait. So theres ten admirals. And right about now, you ought to say okay, admiral, what do you think . What are the attributes of character that come out of those ten admirals . So im going to hit them very quickly, and then were going to open it up for some comments and questions. First attribute that i believe comes across again and again and again as a character attribute if you want that big door of leadership to swing, the quality you have to have is this, empathy, listening better. Who is this . You dont know who that is. Hes an officer in the 1930s, listening for incoming aircraft. Its a very innovative system for its day. I put it here as metaphoric. Good leaders are empathetic. That was chester nimitz. He walked into the room to listen, before he started to talk. Thats a pretty good quality in a leader. Intellectual curiosity, reading. Hugh and i talked about this a moment ago. Grace hopper when she died had 10,000 books in her two bedroom apartment in new york city. I have like 5,000 books in my library. My wife calls it a gentle madness. I love books. I love reading, but grace hopper beat us all. In that apartment, with 10,000 books, were the most complex books of mathematics and engineering, as well as detective novels and james bond fiction. She read vociferously, intellectually curious at all times. Heres some books im reading lately. By the way, it is not just nonfiction. It is novels. Find time to read some fiction. You want to understand whats going on in china . Bottom left, in the tension between rural and urban, pick up waiting. Want to understand what its like to live as a refugee in syria . Check out exit west. You want to understand what its like to live in an authoritarian society . Read Margaret Atwoods latest book, this is the sequel to the hand maids tale. It will chill you and it should. Fiction allows us to combine with the facts we learn in nonfiction and put us in that simulator. So intellectual curiosity again and again i saw in these admirals. Values, we have to cherish our values. Democracy, liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of education, freedom of the press, gender equality, racial equality. Look, we execute them imperfectly, but they are the right values. I will give you a very practical example of values. Look at that beautiful picture. You look at that and you think wow, im proud of my u. S. Navy. And someone gave this to me as a gift, a couple of decades ago, and i hung it up in my office, and then i started to really look closely at this thing. And theres something really wrong about it. Look at the first row. You see all those officers, and then look at the sailors, very aligned. Look at the second row in that photograph. Theres three people missing; right . So anybody who is in the military if we turn to the junior rotc unit to set up a formation, they wouldnt have a gap like that in the second row, right . So where are those chief petty officers . Well, i got a magnifying glass, and i finally found them. I dont have a pointer here. But there are three africanamerican chief petty officers. They were all in the way in the back of the formation. Thats the correct reaction. Photograph taken in 1949. Navy is desegregating, trying to get better. What happened in this photograph . I dont know. I will give you a highlyeducated guess. I would guess the second in command of the ship set up the photo. Then the captain came down from the ship. We know who the captain is. Hes right in the center, first row. He has scrambled eggs on his cap. Hes a commander. Hes got a really grumpy expression on his face. My guess is, 1949, he came down and saw three black faces, chief petty officers. They would have led they would have been the chief cooks on the ship. And he said you three, go stand in the back. Why do i show you this picture . Two reasons, because as people of character, we ought to look closely at things and understand exactly what is before us. And secondly, we ought to ask ourselves every day, what am i doing now that in 50 years is going to look oh so wrong . Thats a good test of character. Teamwork, nelson, this is a takedown of a group of somali pirates by French Special forces, pretty routine photo. Except heres what you dont know, those are French Special forces. They were landed there by an italian helicopter, refuelled, overwatched by a portuguese Maritime Patrol aircraft, you should the command of a nato under the command of a nato commander, an american, heres punch line we found this thing with information from iran, piracy. It is one thing nations can agree on. The point is, teams can have strange different angles to them. Nelson understood that. He built teams better than anybody else. Thats an attribute of character. And i think this is the last one. So beautiful ship again; right . This is the uss main. Uss main is very famous in naval history for a very tragic reason. This beautiful cruiser blew up in havana harbor in 1898. And when it blew up, the nation, the United States immediately fell in line with reporting that said this ship was blown up by spanish terrorists. We used that word. Okay. So what happened . Spanish american war happened. Remember the maine. Randolph hearse, journalism, we launched into this war. A lot of people died. We acquired some colonies. It was not a happy chapter all things considered. When we salvaged this ship, 50 years later, we discovered that the maine had not blown up because of an external mine attached to the hull. It blew up because of an internal boiler explosion. The premise of the spanish american war was not right. So i will tell you where you find a picture of the maine. You find it on the wall in my office, wherever i have been, in my career, and i keep it there to remind me that before we lose our temper, before we launch into a war, before we make the big decisions, we ought to stop and make sure we have all the facts. And i also keep it there to remind me that no matter how well you think youre doing, your ship can blow up underneath you at any moment. Admiral, thats a good lesson. To wrap it up and then well open it up, character is hard. Its a lot harder than leadership. Again, im Greek American, so im required to have one mythological reference in all presentations. He pushes a bolder up, but the gods punish him and the boulder runs back down. Character is hard. We try so hard. We make mistakes. The boulder rolls over us and the seas get rough in the voyage of character. Stay with it. Those seas will calm for you if you spend time thinking about the importance of character, which i would argue transcends leadership. It is the enabler of leadership. Last slide, and this comes with a quote. I love this photo. Taken about five years ago. These are somali migrants. They are standing on a beach in the red sea. What are they doing . Theyre lifting up their cell phones, flip phones, trying to get a better signal. News flash, that does not help. [laughter] theyre doing it anyway. Metaphorically what is happening in this photograph . Theyre reaching for the light. They want to connect. They want to be part of a larger world. They want to get to the next step in their journey. This is a photograph of hope. Of hope. And my last thought for you tonight about character comes from napoleon. And i love quoting napoleon because short people have to stick together at all times. [laughter] if you remember nothing else from our evening together in this marvelous, marvelous library, the center of intellectual thought, which probes every day the biggest questions of character, if you remember nothing else, remember this, from napoleon, napoleon said a leader is a dealer in hope. A leader is a dealer in hope. Everything else i have talked about tonight devolves from that inner quite sense of selfconfidence that inspires others with hope. Not with fear. But with hope. A leader is a dealer in hope. That is the heart of character. Thank you very much. Pleasure being with you. Thank you. [applause] admiral, thank you. We do have time for a few quick questions. We will moderate this. Were tight on time. He flew in from vietnam this morning, and hes flying out to istanbul this evening. And our first question will come from one of the many cadets with us from troy high school, navy jrotc. What is your question, sir . Well, sir, my question would be what would you say to cadets who arent exactly able to enlist right away but have an aspiration to get back to their country and serve their country . Typically these people would be those who have highfunctioning autism or adhd, something that precludes them from joining service right away, but they still have the aspiration to want to, you know, cause these changes and to innovate . What a wonderful question. And im going to answer it as follows. Im often approached by people very nicely who say to me, admiral, thank you for your service. And i really appreciate that. But heres the answer to your question, there are so many ways to serve this country. Certainly in uniform, and im proud of everybody here who has worn a uniform or is wearing a uniform. Military service is important. How about police . Firemen . Emts . Peace corps volunteers . Diplomats . Cia officers . Schoolteachers in Rural California teaching packed class rooms for 48,000 a year. You think they are serving the country . I do. Nurses in inner city clinics. Lawyers who volunteer to help people who are accused of crimes. Journalists, not always popular, but let me tell you something, i would go into combat in afghanistan, all tricked out with my bullet proof everything and my helmet, guys on my right and left with big guns. I was actually pretty safe. Next to me would be someone like Richard Engel from nbc news who is standing there in an illfitting bullet proof vest that i assure you wouldnt stop a bullet. He has a little tin pot helmet on off to one side, hes risking his life to tell us whats happening. Do you think hes serving us . I do. So my answer is, find a way to serve, within your capacity, within your proclivity, within what works for you, but find a way to serve, and my ask for everybody tonight is when you see others who are serving the country, stop a schoolteacher and tell him or her thank you for your service. Stop a postman, and tell them thank you for your service. Theres a lot of ways to serve this country. That would be my answer. Thank you. [applause] back to the room to your right. Admiral, first, thank you for your service. I appreciate that. Thank you. Secondly, you mentioned resiliency in regards to nimitz. Right. And being thats such a profound statement on why you believe hes one of the greatest. Can you touch on what are the characteristics or behaviors people need to develop resiliency . I got back from Saugus High School spending time with some parents and students. I think it is a great message for all of us on how to become more resilienresilient. Resilient. Let me tell you about two of my contemporaries, bill mccraven on the right, Michelle Howard on the left. Resilience. Michelle howard is 4 feet 10 inches tall. Shes an africanamerican. She comes from a pretty challenging background. She goes to the Naval Academy, rises up through the ranks. Anybody see the movie captain phillips about the takedown of the somali pirates . One star admiral Michelle Howard is in command of that mission, goes on to become the first four star africanamerican woman in navy history, and shes a good person. Shes a person of immense character, and what she overcame in terms of bias is pretty inspirational. Thats real resilience. On the right admiral bill mccraven, you know, he looks like hey 6 foot 2 eyes of blue everything is perfect in my life. Not so much. Right before 9 11, he has a parachuting accident, breaks his back. 9 11 happens. Hes in the hospital, watching all the other seals go off and deploy. He comes back from that, works with me at deep blue as a captain. And then goes on to a very storied career, but heres what you may or may not know about bill mccraven, hes been fighting leukemia for ten years. Hes an incredibly resilient person. Regardless of how you think about anything politically, those are two people who have demonstrated extraordinary resilience. One Michelle Howard under circumstances very hard for anybody here to understand, frankly. Africanamerican woman, coming through the navy, tiny little person. Thats a pretty tough deck stacked against you, frankly. She broke every seal. Bill mccraven, very common, id guess half the people in this room have faced a significant medical chal len at one time or another medical challenge at one time or another. He does it with grace and pragmatism and shows the best resilience in dealing with something thats actually quite common, but he does it with such grace that i admire him deeply. Resilience is extremely important for all our admirals and for all of us. Others . Sir, back in the room to your left. Got ya. Admiral, i was one of those mid shipman who went over the wall at the academy. [laughter] and attended my 50year reunion, and the buildings look the same, but i was wondering what does the Naval Academy and other like other training do to instill character in the people who will be our military officers of the future . I think were better at this than we were when you and i kind of drifted through the Naval Academy buying beer on the weekends, inside joke there, but i think today all the services take these issues of character very seriously, and at every level, we work hard to make sure that our young men and women are going to make the right moral choices, and, you know, weve got a controversial issue going on right now about some special forces folks the president has chosen to pardon. I dont know the details of those cases. I want to focus you over here, on someone named lieutenant michael murphy. Anybody know who he is . Yeah. Hes a recipient of the medal of honor in afghanistan, where he died, in 2008, on a seal mission that went terribly wrong. He faced a very difficult moral choice, which was whether or not to kill a young afghan boy who had stumbled on to their patrol. And his team, there were four of them, had a debate about that, as in if we dont kill this guy, hes going to go rat us out. Michael murphy said, we dont kill civilians. They let him go. The team was attacked. Three of them died. The survivor, Marcus Latrell wrote a book called lone survivor. Forget about this. Go read that story. Thats what your military is all about. Not this. It is over here. [applause] ladies and gentlemen one more . We have time for one last question. Before we get to that question, i want to make sure you all know we have copies of the admirals book autographed up in the museum store. Be sure to pick one up on your way out. It makes a terrific christmas present. Our last question from this gentleman right to my left. What is your question, sir . Thank you so very much. Sure. Supreme commander nixon foundation, nixon library, to everyone, thank you, sir, because thats precisely what we need. Thank you. Allow me one quick second because my daughters asked me today dad where are you going . I need to hear the admiral. Why . Because hes talking about character. Thats what i told my daughters. Let me ask you my good sir, without getting into politics, but at a desperate time when our nation so needs character, were in hollowed grounds, rest in peace president nixon, rest in peace president eisenhower, rest in peace president roosevelt, my question is good sir, would you consider running at one point in time . I mean that with complete seriousness. I was vetted for Vice President by hilary clinton, and i was subsequently invited to trump tower to discuss a cabinet post with donald trump. I think thats two bullets going by my head. [laughter] my answer is my answer is, i would be honored to serve the nation again, and how that unfolds, i dont know, but just as surely as i ask these young cadets, and your daughter, and my daughters, and others, to embrace the idea of serving the country in whatever form makes sense to you. I too will answer that call again, if asked. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be with you. Thank you. [applause] thank you, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] safe travel home. [applause] heres a look at some authors who have recently appeared or will be appearing soon on book tvs after words. Our weekly Author Interview program that includes bestselling nonfiction books and guest interviewers. Recently university of virginia history professor explored the political history of tobacco in america. And coming up, joe rickets will offer insights into becoming an entrepreneur and also recount his finding of td ameritrade. And this weekend on afterwords, New York Times contributing opinion writer discusses the me too movement. How much do we get to hear about like when do we hear about all the women who quit various fields because they were sexually harassed at work . All of those people are invisible. And they are not out i mean, were starting to talk about it a little bit, but think of how many people that actually is. The questions of what happened to their careers. Right. In light of harassment or whether or not they themselves were harassed or were working in an environment where harassment and discrimination meant they didnt have those avenues. Nobody talks about their ended or quashed careers or ambitions. Exactly. But it is an emergency. A National Emergency that we figure out how these men can be redeemed and get everything back that they have ever wanted. Afterwords airs saturdays at 10 00 p. M. , and sundays at 9 00 p. M. Eastern and pacific on book tv on cspan 2. And all previous after words programs are available as pod casts and to watch online at booktv. Org. At the Defense Forum foundation in washington, d. C. , gordon chang offered his thoughts on south korea reuniting with the north. Heres a portion of the program. Moon jae in is a korean nationalist, not a south korean one. His goal is the unification of korea. It is no surprise then that during his summits with kim jongun, the north korean ruler, moon has emphasized the union of the two koreas. Since the devision of the Korean Peninsula in 1945, every Korean Leader, north and south, has advocated unification. But moon appears to be the first Korean Leader since then to accept the unification proposals of the other side and hes doing his best to achieve that unification as quickly as he can. Now to pave the way for the unification of the two koreas, he is trying to make south koreas form of government compatible with the norths. Most fundamentally, Moons Democratic Party of korea in 2018 tried to amend the constitution of the republic. They tried to remove the notion of quote unquote liberal from the concept of democracy. Fortunately, moon failed in his effort. Now, the souths conservatives, the opposition, turned back that effort, but moon has kept on trying. His ministry of education has been trying to change the textbooks, trying to take out this concept of liberalism. They have succeeded in part because in the textbooks for the middle school, as my great friend has pointed out, they did delete the word freedom. Remember, north korea thinks its democratic, so if south korea is a democracy, but its not liberal, it is not free, well, then it looks a little bit like north korea in at least theoretical terms. Moon jae in after all, whats the name . Whats the formal name of the state that he leads . Its the democratic peoples republic of korea. To watch the rest of this talk, visit our website booktv. Org. Search for gordon chang or the title of his book losing south korea using the box at the top of the page. craft and advance reforms that would make america work for all of us. Im proud to welcome a guy who spends almost as much time in the Supreme Court as the justices themselves. Two years ago, when he was arguing his 35th case, record set by