Transcripts For CSPAN2 In Depth Adm. James Stavridis USN Ret. 20240712

Admiral why do you refer to yourself as the accidental admiral . [laughter] what a great question. You can choose to hear a particular course you will lose ultimately in a different direction. And then to be in charge of all activity and with the commander of us Pacific Command position for senior admiral. My boss, a wonderful boss, secretary gates called to say forget about the pacific we will send you to nato i bk the first and only admiral to be the supreme allied commander and it was an accidenthe. That the navy was an accident as a career . Soet somewhat. That my father had kernel of marines growing up in that environment and going to Quantico High School thinking it would be them marine corps everybody goes out on a cruise going on a cruise are in san diego. Late in the day on the peer and the sun was setting looking out on all that ocean and i just wanted to be a sailor. I told my dad and mom they were hoping it would be a marine that years later my dad said that came out okay. Host but you almost left the navy after five years. I did. Nt tnt to see for five years in the early 1980s. Host as Supreme Commander of nato, 2009 to 2013, you say in the accidental admiral you wrote 250,000 words, mainly to teach yourself, not others. Guest indeed. I felt as though a big part of my job as the supreme allied commander of nato is to take ideas and move them across this enormous command. At the time there were 28 nation with three on a destroyer and then to florida where i come to you from today. At the end of the fiveyear period like a bunch of missile. I was very capable but i couldnt launch and idea to save my life. The navy offered me to go to Tufts University which is a graduate school of International Relations and i learned how to launch an idea. Exclusively focusing maritime operations. As Supreme Commander you say in the accidental admiral, he wrote 250,000 words to teach yourself, not others. Indeed. My job is to take ideas and move them across this enormous command at the time there was 20 nations. Almost all volunteers on active duty. R aircraft, 800 oceangoing ships, a very big command. You get the idea. I thought it was communication oftr the strategy i spent a lot of time writing for myar own benefit because i learned for the benefit of those in the command. Host what is about the chateau what is that . The official residence it is a beautiful french chat show on 26 acres and maintained and financed by the belgian government and just south of brussels. Not a great place to live on not only a great place to live but where we can host ads dinner for all heads of state and the senior military officers. , partners, allieses, friends and opponents one of the most memorable dinners was the Supreme Commander of the allied commander we are both 5foot 5 inches tall and i used to joke to secretary gates to meet with the general and how did the meeting go i would say its great we saw everything i to i which we did at our towering 5foot 5inch height but it is an example that we need to engage with those on the team all that occurred in the shed to. As a time as a nato Strategic Commander i was often asked what kept me awake was a simple one word answer to what really kept me awake may surprise you which is convergence. Im particularly concerned that i looked around and those years and i was concerned about afghanistan, cybersecurity but the potential of convergence with groups to the United States and terrorist otroheorganizations in the proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and it is like ghostbusters dont let the streams cross. I learned a lot of al qaeda finding its way to a Nuclear Device we have to be concerned not only al qaeda but the Islamic State of boko haram and l shabbat in these groups try to obtain to obtain weapons of mass distraction on destruction and over the last ten years my view that has added to that concern is cyberand cybersecurity because they are becoming more adept at using the tools of cybercapability for infrastructure with the context of ten years ago when i was focused on extremist organizations i am concerned. Any be isolated as the Supreme Commander . Of of course. You haveve to fight in a job like that every day to break out of the cocoon your staff will put you in. This is true for any leader of organization. Your staff once you take contro control, dictate that tempo of your day, schedule your trip trips, control the information coming in and your Communications Going out. They do that because it creates order where chaos might exist its a function of a staff but as a commander you have to fight against that isolation you have to fight to get out of that sources of information to find ways to communicate to your organization or demand you have a voice in your schedule with your priorities if you are the ceo and the leader of an organization the most preciousos asset is your time. And one thing i a would do a more practical point is we can think our priorities are xyz and a good exercise is to get your calendar and look back at the previous six months and say to yourself am i prioritizing my time with my priorities . And occasionally i would find i am prioritizing abc instead of xyz. It is i crucial to use your own view of what your time should be and how it should be spent and what that means to get out of that isolation. Host was it easier to do when you are on a ship to Wander Around on your own . It was. I wrote the book about that years ago when i was in my thirties called the destroyer captain. Its a very sharp book. A series of excerpts from the journals i kept to be the commander at sea. A beautiful brandnew guided missile destroyer. I wanted desperately to connect with my crew and on the ship like that, 500 feet long, longer than a football field with the crew of 350 but its a small especially out at sea and the captain you get to decide and will you spend the time and your cabin were to get out on foot patrol to know their backd all of this contribo the accomplishment. Host what does r. Lee burke class mean . Guest for every type of ship, destroyers, cruisers, Aircraft Carriers, submarines, the first check of that type is called a class. Its the first ship in a class leader of every destroyer of the particular type built exactly the same as the first one is called a class destroyer. For example, i commanded 52. My wife, laura, is the proud sponsor who got to break the champagne bottle and is the sponsor of 113. 113. So, every one of those destroyers is a class destroyer and they were all built along the lines of the very first one so it is wonderful to have a ship named after anyone that is a particular honor to be the lead class and that was bestowed on admiral burke who was the greatest and most impactful chief of naval operations. He was the cnn over six years. Hes an iconic naval figure this thats all the ships in that class. I will close by saying the second of the class was named after john kerry who was a revolutionary war navy captain contemporary roughly of John Paul Jones and was a superb naval officer. Those of us who served are very proud of that, but we are proud of, just like my wife is proud to bepo the sponsor of 113 named for a middle of the honor of pearl harbor. All of us that served in any of those destroyers are proud to be destroyer men or women and to serve in the early class destroyer. Host all of your books contain leadership lessons. One of those are a combination of lessons are bold organizational fidelity. Guest another way to put this, theres always in tension for a leader in the traditions and culture of his or her organization that can provide innovation. And a good leader knows coming and youll hear me say this again i expect in the course of a twohour conversation, life is not an on and off switch. Its not a binary choice between simply accepting tradition or innovating constantly. That is a false choice. Instead of thinking of it as an on and off switch, we need to think of it as a doyle like the dinner in your dining room that you adjust to find that once between respect for thens traditions in the heritage of the organization against keeping the organization moving forward. I think that is one of the keys to leadership and i will give you a practical example from one of my heroes, Winston Churchill who was the equivalent of the secretary of the navy of the British Royal navy in the early part of the 20th century. And he was constantly wanting to innovate and drive change and therefore he was constantly in conflict with the admiral and at one point, he simply heard too many times well, we cant do that. Its against the traditions of the navy and he exploded and said i will give you the traditions of the navy. In other words, there is time when we have to move forward he found someone in early 20th century and the two of them formed a partnership that helped to move the royal navy along. Host your most recent book is called failing true north. What is true north . Guest adherence to what we broadly conceived of the as moral and ethical behavior. So, in my mind, that means you are trustworthy, you were honest and care about others. You are kind to others. You have empathy to try to put yourself in the shoes of the other and not just your friends and family, but the shoes ofop your opponents and those with whom you disagree. You believe in things like democracy, liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of education, gender equality, racial and quality. What, we execute those values imperfectly, but they are the tright values and then taken together, the value set plus the personal qualities i mentioned, that is what it means to say of true north. Host and you write them also motivated by the growing sense that we are witnessing the slow death of character. Guest er. I also say in the book i think we over share publicly and we underperform in thinking about our character. Heres the important point about failing true north. Its not a book about leadership. Its a book about character. Those are two very different things. Leadership isip a big thing her. Its a big door that swings in the world of influenza sufferers and the door of leadership swings for good or for ill. Think of franklin ddelta roosevelt one of our great president s certainly in the top five, perhaps in the top two or three along with washington and lincoln. That door of leadership he exerted to get us through the great depression, to get us through the second world war, that door of leadership was enormous, and it is one for good. On the other hand, think about eight leader like paul parts of cambodia. Ruthless,ut but he was an effective leader. He could mobilize the society. His big door of leadership led to an awful genocide in the killing fields of cambodia. Leadership isoo that door. Big doors swing on small hinges, and that small hinges character, its the human heart. And it determines where your door of leadership is goingng to swing. So i wanted to write a book that talkedut about character. We are awash in books of leadership. Just walked i in airport and youll see dozens of them in every bookstore. We are underweight and books about character and ideas of failing true north and south i chose to write about the topic and in the category of what do you actually know about the concept, i decided to write a character in the context of admirals and i chose ten admirals from history that went back 2500 years ago all the way through the late 20th century. A brilliant woman who dragged the navy kicking and screaming. Their stories are stories of character and the title of the books failing true north, ten admirals and the voyage of character. Host we will get into some of those in a minute. Got to go back to your quote about character, like you said, we over share and our Attention Spans have shortened. Are those comments are that at e in particular . [laughter] guest co. No. They are directed at all of us. But i think we can all point to public figures today who would benefit from doing a little more reading and doing a little more thinking and a little more internal contemplation. To take the example into the twitter sphere, recently twitter expanded from a maximum of 140 characters to 270 characters, and it created a firestorm among twitter users who said its going to make them just too long. Think about that for a minute. 270 letters. So my argument is sure, we need tweets they are like espresso but you dont want a diet that consists of 50 shots of espresso before lunch. You need a diet that has some tweets, some short, punchy reading. N you need to be reading come in my view, newspapers and understanding the daily cycle of news. You need to understand events through things like reading the economistt magazine, for exampl, which is, i think, one of the great magazines in the world. Its almostrs 200yearsold. It has no bylines in it, hence no reporter he go involved in it. It is resolutely journalistic, and its detached from that daily news cycle, and in addition to all of that, we need to find a time, all of us, to read some books, both nonfiction which weve talked about but i would also argue great novels to help us understand the world. The coming your reading diet is like your physical fitness by it. You dont just want to do one exercise all the time. You want to have a pretty broadbased diet. Host what does the back of your Business Card say . Guest the back of my Business Card is blank. Perhaps i should think about putting something clever. I will tell you a quote i like a lot that i think about putting on the back of my Business Card, which is from arguably the greatest modern greek writers. On his tombstone indeed, he visits the following idea, which he would put the same as the quote on his gravestone which is i want nothing, i fear nothing, i am free. And i want it there because i think we need to be fearless in our lives. We need to do what we think is right without favor or fear, and we also need the perspective that whatever we do, we are only here for a brief moment or two in this world. So if i were going to put something on the back of my Business Card i think i would put a quote from a modern writer. Host in the bookshelf you write that a Thomas Jefferson quote is on the back of your personal Business Card. Guest its actually on the front. [laughter]ar is a famous quote by our second president , someone we should all admire. Jefferson said i cannot live without books and so on the front of my Business Card is back, right down there on the bottom. Host we are going to play a little video. This is from 2015 from a cspan program. Its from a retired admiral. You mentioned her in your most recent book, s failing true north. Lets see if you can recognize the voice. Voice. And ive been in command i w would say is when you get your yeatest sense of satisfaction. Some of that when you are in command you are with sailors and marines. There are people who make miracles happen in every mission, and you just can only be delighted as a leader of to help work people through to Mission Success and to be an observer of that and then to congratulate every single individual on the team to help you win the day somewhere. Host admiral, did you recognize as margo howards voice . Guest of course, how dare you give it away without allowing me to come up with it. That is my very good friend, admiral Michelle Howard of the first africanamerican to be a fourstar woman admiral and United States. I like being around her. Im taller than she is. She is heard in that clip awful, kind, someone who absolutely sales true north. I first met her, believe it or not, when she was a shift in at the Naval Academy and i was a few years out of annapolis and i went back to see in the midsummer nights dream she was part of the cast and midsummer nights dream. Sheem is really quite a remarkae person. Just retired as a fourstar navy admiral. She is someone i have enormous respect for and hence the reason shes part of the profile in sailing true north. Host and you write that, quote, love of country despite the manifest flaws and mistakes we often make as a nation, is a quality that leads to service for others and improved businesy lucky enough to develop true patriots. Guest its so true. And i want to make a point here since you raised this idea of service, which is the following. People say to me all the time, and i appreciated, thank you for your service, thank you for your 37 years in the u. S. Navy, and i appreciate that a lot. Heresre my point there are so many ways to serve this country, certainly the military is one, but how about our firefighters, how about our emergency room technicians, how about our police, how aboutur our doctors and nurses on the front line of fighting covid. My sister came up to her career working in the Charleston School district. The teacher starts there is a he2,000 that year teaching a packed classroom. You think shes serving the country, i do. I think we need to talk and think a lot more about service. That is inextricably tied to character guy and i believe we ought to think people in the military but we ought to thank all of the people he mentioned and i will throw in a few more. How about our diplomat and police corps volunteers and cia officers . We have so c many different ways you can serve this country. And i will throw in another one. How about our media . I will tell you when i went into afghanistan as a supreme allied commander surrounded by my personal security detail, wearing bulletproof attire, steel helmet, i would look over to the side and i would see a journalist, someone like my friend, Richard Engel was our Foreign Correspondent and nbc news. He was standing there within ill fitting very small not bulletproof vest and hes got a flip phone. I am armed with a 45 caliber weapon i will never use because i am surrounded by special forces who are going to use there is a very capable they push comes to shove as the saying goes. All of those people serve the country in a wide variety of ways. So, my pitch whenever people say to me thank you for your service if i appreciate that. Go find a teacher and tell her thank you force her service. Go find a firefighter and thank him for his service. Go find a diplomat and thank her for working as the deputy chief of mission in a big, tough embassy overseas. Theres a lot of ways to serve the country. Michelle howard embodies one form of that service. There are many others. Host that is another one of the leadership lessons that comes through in the book being a part of something larger than yourself. Host guest you have to be. And i heard that phrase for the first time when i walked in the door of the u. S. Naval academy kin 1972. Otherwise known as 1. 2 million years ago and it was funny i was just over the last couple of days the class of 2024 which arrives this year, 2020 as a four year course in annapolis, they went through and because of covid, they were coming in over the course of several days to create social distancing, but it was the same to look at those young faces of men and women with this desire to take on a huge challenge, to be part of this class that walks through the door and to be part of serving the country, to be part of something bigger than just yourself. And i saw that in the class of 2024 as they walked in and got their heads shaved, looking a lot like mine right now, and they continued. I know that class will be yet another marvelous class of graduates from annapolis. All of them a part of this kind of broken minor service, and its not just in annapolis. It is of course i have to admit west point come our great rival, but certainly the air force academy in, kings point of new york. All these schools are places where young men and women go to choose to be part of something larger than themselves. And i think that is the first step in leadership but more importantly the first step in the journey of character. Host thanks for joining us in in depth on booktv. This month our guest is retired admiral and author James Stavridis who served in the navy from 1976 to 2013 including a stint as commander of u. S. Southern command and supreme allied commander in nato from 2009 to 2013. He served as the dean of the Fletcher School at tufts after that and currently works for nbc news and is an operating executives at the carlyle group. He is the author of several books, some coauthored, some his own. Here is a partial list. He was an editor on an update at command at sea. He wrote the accidental admiral, which we talked about it, specifically about his time in nato in 2014. The leaders bookshelf came out in 2017, with coauthor r. Manning ansell. Sea power, the geopolitics of the worlds oceans came outce in 2017. Sailing true north came out last year. Teten admirals and the voyage of character. He has a new novel coming out in 2021 entitled 2034 and model of the next world war. If you have questions or comments you would like to make to admiral stavridis, heres how you can do so. 202 748820 202 7488200 in ead central time zones, 202 7488201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones, and can also text in a question or comment to the admiral. 202 7488903. That is the text member. And we have all of our social media sites as well. Twitter, facebook, instagram. You can make comments there as well have booktv is our handle. We will scroll through all of these addresses including your email address, so that if you want to make a comment to the admiral, you can do so. Now, admiral, we talked about some of your books, but one book we didnt mention is a proposed book called veep stakes. Guest right about now in 2016 i was headed for Vice President s by candidate Hillary Clinton and john podesta, who was her campaign manager, former chief of staff to the white house and a friend of mine, john podesta called me up and said admiral, would you be willing to be vetted and i said sure. Ive always said im open to the idea of service. By the way, im a registered independent. I have always been so. In addition to being vetted for Vice President , i was invited to trump tower after the election to have a discussion with the president elect trump about a cabinet position. So, i mentioned it in the context of i am a bipartisan figure in many ways. So, i said to chief of Staff Campaign manager john podesta and of course secretary clinton was nice enough to call me as well. Sure, i will be vetted. That turned into quite an experience. Its quite an experience to be vetted for Vice President. And it means providing the campaign with every article youve ever written, any media currency youve ever made, all of your bank records, your s social networks, all of your school transcripts, dental rnrecords, medical records, evey tax return, things like that, 20 years i think. It is a big, long process. And its also done with a lot of secrecy because it was something the campaign wanted to keep secret as long as they could. Eventually it broke in the New York Times and became public for rollover amount, six weeks, bit was done behind the scenes. So, i would be sending allis of this unbelievable highly Sensitive Information to a bunch of email addresses and at one point, i said to be very close friend and adviser of mine, retired captain phil harlowe who himself is a former spokesman at the cia and knows the intelligence world well. I said i hope im not rescinding all this information not to the Clinton Campaign but somehow to russian s intelligence. That got us both chuckling and we found that pretty implausible that they started to think about how that would make a pretty interesting novel so we did a treatment of a kind of pathos individual whos chosen to be vetted for Vice President from the start sending all this information he thinks to the campaign except unbeknownst to him hes sending it to an intelligence organization. Andel so, thats why described s the First Quarter of the book. When that is revealed and he has to figure out how do i get out of this and so we thought that ifelt that itwas clever but it o be tongueincheek kind of like a novel by chris buckley, thank you for smoking, may be that kind of book or maybe something in entertainment. A greenlight entertainment. But we wrote it all up and send it off to our agents and publishers and editors and it was resoundingly rejected because everybody said its so implausible that a campaign with the trips like that. Now four years later, im not so sure. Who knows. Maybe we wont us to the plot but that is the story of veep stakes, which is what is happening right now as former Vice President biden who knows it quite well personally. Hes in the process of picking a woman as he has said to be his atndidate, so its really apropos at the moment. It was a fun little treatment to write up and is Still Available if anybody is watching this. Host what do you think thaofthe military folks servingn elected office . Guest 100 in favor of it. Can i give you a good example . How about president dwight david eisenhower, who was not only a superb channel, brilliant organizer, was the supreme allied commander of nato, is the president of columbia university. A lot of people missed the turn. And went on to be a highly successful twoterm president of the United States. There were many marvelous books out there about eisenhower. I would encourage people to read a crusade in europe which is his autobiographical treatment at this time in command. He was also by all accounts of someone who sailed true north and made his occasional mistakes in life and politics, but i think overall it was a superb mid20 century president. During the period of time when there was danger in the cold war, he was someone who managed that set of challenges brilliantly from 52 to 60. And a great book about that is evan thomas is another big eisenhower was a superb bridge player and could block his geopolitical opponents. So there is but one example. And frankly we could go on but i think that theres plenty of precedent among the elected office with senators and representatives as there is at the level of eisenhower and i will close on another one that kind ofen got away and that woud be colin powell. In the administration appointed. Host that they were the callers have to say. We b will begin with jim in caliente california. You are on the admiral James Stavridis. I want to say how impressed i was by your use of the word kindness. This isnt a quality that i normally associate with military figures and i think its quitete wonderful. How far in advance does the military plan in terms of weapon systems strategy and so on on a related note, how can we defuse what looks to be increasinggl wh china and area of the South China Sea. I noticed there were two groups that were going there now and i would like your thoughts on that. Thank you again. Host are you a former navy . Caller no im not. Host thank you, sir. The military is the absolute gastion of longrange planning i will sometimes on that and i would say shortrange planning is in the one to two year frame and in the three to hear. Longrange planning is five to ten without wire plans that look even further than that. Military planning is both tactical in other words if god forbid we got into a war with china and we have plans on how we would execute the war if we got into a war in the Korean Peninsula because they woke up in a bad mood and decided to attack the south, not a an impossibility. Mp we have plans on how we would respond to that. And additionally, we have thise kind of longer range plans and an example of that would be during the midyear theory between world war i and world war ii. The navy in particular did a great deal of Detailed Planning a no plan survives First Contact with the enemy the enemy gets a vote. You could add a beautifully orchestrated plan at the end of these actions would be part of health plan unfold and i think that this general patterns that said that a good plan executed is better than a perfect plan that they never get around to putting on the table. You can let your desire for perfect become the enemy of real and good. You have to know when to put your pencil down and put your pin in place and resource and be prepared to execute it and know that there will come twists and turns but one of the skills and the military is planning and i will close on this by saying is taught as a process of even our young men and women of the Service Academy again when they had midcareer points with command and staff as a legendary bastion of Detailed Planning and again at the colleges for the lieutenant colonels, navy commanders, navy captains, Army Marine Corps colonels and each learning and providing more detail. Does it mean the plans are perfect, but there is i assure you the detailed plan for virtually every contingency and be encountered a. The other question is very much of the moment. What can we do and i will rephrase it this way what can we do to avoid stumbling into another cold war this time with china and i think that is the most important question that oua government should be thinking about internationally right now, the relationship between the United States and china. We have some significant disagreements with china. Their intellectual property theft, cyber intrusions. The chinese claim the entire South China Sea the size of the caribbean and gulf of mexico combined, china claims it as a territorial i sea because it is full of hydrocarbon, oil, natural gas below the surface, andur above all because 40 of e worlds free to move through there. We are concerned about human rights with china and how they treat 1. 5 million muslim descendents in china who are pushed into essentially concentration camps and human rights in hong kong which ought to have another 30he years of to systems in formatio one nation e a lot of disagreements with china. To the question of how do we approach china number one for the first part of the excellent question we need a plan and here again i can assure you the military has plans for military engagement which i deeply hope we avoid. But we dont have a National Plan and we need one. My view would be doctor Henry Kissinger perhaps our greatest living expert on china, surround him with the most talented people that understand china economically and in the world of finance and in the world of culture and history, in the ande world of military operations etc. Create a National Strategy for how we approach so number one lets get the plan. Number two, philosophical use the following approach. Confront where we must go to cooperate wherever we can. In other words, avoid that tension that exists between the United States and soviet union for decades. We should have a blended approachee which says we will confront you on intellectual property theft. We will confront you on your excessive claims of territoriality on the South China Sea and we will confront you when you seek to intrude on elections which i fear may happen this year much as russia did in 2016. So, to confront where we must but lets find some cooperation whatever administration comes into power for example the return to the paris peace accords. We can cooperate on the environment, we can cooperate with china in i the arctic where they have significant desire to move through the seas. We can cooperate on that medical diplomacy. How about the u. S. And china working together to address covid19 in the emerging markets in the world its the right thing to do for the humanitarian perspective and its also pragmatically we can cooperate with disaster they have hospital ships and i deployed them as a senior admiral. They have deployed. China has hospital ships. Can they work together. So, we should cooperate where we can. Third and finally, we need n toe respectful of china. Their history, their culture, one of the chapters in sailing true north is about in the early 14 hundreds conducting voyages throughout the South China Sea and indian ocean all the way to the coast. We need to understand that culture. That doesnt mean we are going to acquiesce in claims to own the entire South China Sea. But we need to put ourselves into the shoes of china, study them, understand them, read their literature. That would be my prescription for dealing with china as we go forward. Thanks for the great question. Host next call comes from kerry in detroit. Caller thank you for taking my call. I just have a comment and a quick question. Im also a navy vet and they served primarily on the air force space and said something about service. I am a huge proponent for the service. How do we integrate the conversation about personal service for the country at this time where it seems like the narrative now is about the darker parts of the country, how do we turn the conversation into an americans serving america as a whole. Thank you for taking my call. Host admiral . Im glad we are talking to from a navy vet and thank you for the work for the veterans. I think that entire organization of the Veterans Administration i will give three quick ideas. This part is a much longer conversation. Those who are serving need to talk about it in our communities and be active role models. They need to be engaged the need to post what they are doing. It is an enormous conversation it is a messy conversation and that is the beauty of america and its also one of our challenges. N we are not an authoritarian country. We are just one set of places predominate. So, number one, but all of us involved in service and believe erat its important, lets talk about it in every way we can imagine. Write a better to the local newspaper, take the question you asked mthat you asked me and seo the detroits newspaper. Number two is to all of us and i see this again as a centrist and a registered independent vote for candidates that you think will treasure the idea of surface at every level. Look at a candidates background and say to your self is this candidate going to be somebody that will embrace the idea of service and will support those who go into service, and believe me, i understand how politically loaded to confidence like that is today. Nd and here i am talking to you whether you wake up in the morning watching morning show on msnbc and by the end of the night watching to see what rachel matthau says on msnbc, or you wake up in the morning with fox and friends. On the air with ryan try and kilim talking to everybody acrs the political spectrum. We ought to be getting candidates to believe in service and i will tell you why, because of service at the end of the day is nonpartisan. Its bipartisan and nonpartisan. As voters, we ought to be looking at the candidates that will buy the kind of quality that let you to join the navy and continue a life of service with Veterans Affairs and third, this is a longer conversation but a longer t idea is we have incentivized service. We ought to have a system and we do this toeg some degree today e ability to get into th go into y and collect something called the g. I. Bill that will help pay their education later on. We need comparable programs in my view for other walks of surface for peace corps volunteers, teachers and local communities underserved communities. We need to incentivized service and i think it could be to do that is through education we found that for decades. It would be a good idea to expand that. I think that would be money well spent. These are ideas and i hope that you will be my ship date as we steer in the navy to kicking all aspects of this challenge and this particular challenging moment. Host we have one hour left with our in depth just come at all stavridis. Heres how you can contact him. First of all phone line lines 202 7488200. If you live in east and central time zones 202 7488201 for those in the mountain and pacific time zones. You can send an email to booktv cspan. Org. And you can text a message and if you do come if you would include your first name and city just like we ask for the colors, 202 7488903 is the text number. And finally, we have several social media sites all ready to take your comments. Facebook, twitter and instagram. booktv is our handle. Lets take this call from albert in arkansas. Please go ahead. Caller yes, sir. Very few american citizens understand countries and how people are in other countries around the world. The poverty status o are the richest of us are education status, and one of the things i ended up joining the peace corps when i was a young man back in the 70s and theres nothing like first hand knowledge about who people are, how they feel about america and all of a sudden, poverty. You dont look at people if you lived in Central America for pl eight or nine years as being poor. I would like for you to talk a little bit more about service if you can as far as the peace corps, and i appreciate your service of course and its amazing how balanced you are. Balance in education, balancinge and reading. Also, im interested in reading for high school students. Im hoping you were involved in some of that. Thank you very much, sir. Guest thank you. And again i will return the compliment as i did to my navy ship date a moment ago. I will say thank you for your service in the peace corps. I agree with all my heart about the importance of the peace corps. Let me say a couple specific comments. So, ase peter said a little whie ago, when i finished up my 37 year career in the navy, my long misspent youth in the navy, i started to think about what can i do next with my life and, you know, i started to ask mentors. Everybody had a plan for admiral stavridis. Some said you need to go to the Defense Industry in hightechnology projects and others said you need to go to business and to focus on the emergence of tech. Others said you could go and be in operations direct for a big Nongovernmental Organization like the red cross. There were a lot of good ideas, and i waited them out and i asked them into her that i respect the most of all the people i had the privilege to work for and be around come and i mentioned him earlier and secretary of defense robert gates. Secretary gates instead of immediately giving me the planse for stavridis, secretary gates said well, you know, at al admi, what kept you in the navy for 37 years. That may give youat some clue as to what you might want to do next. I thought about it and it is a great question. I havent thought of it in that context. Would have kept me in the navy. There is a lot that i like about the navy. I likevy wearing sharp looking uniforms and being a mariner going to see. I like traveling around the world. I liked allik these things. The thing i loved was mentoring young people and taking care of young sailors in helping guide the gorgeous trajectory of their so i said that to secretary gates and he said to me you should go into education. Those were the most powerful words for me. We forget this about secretary gates. Everyone can remember he was the director of the cia and everyone can remember he was the secretary e of defense in both e bush and obama administration. Hes the president of texas a and m. And before that he was the dea theme of the bush schoot texas a and m. He mentors me and helped me become the dean of the Fletcher School of law and diplomacy. That is where i really came in contact with the peace corps because the largest single cohort of ground of all of these marvelous graduate students who come to the Fletcher School come out of the m peace corps, so i learned a lot and i met so many bright men and women whori had taken two years out of their lives and devoted them to effectively mentoring others. Thats what you do in the peace corps, typically. You are teaching others to do a wide variety of things from literacy to agriculture to cultural education. It is a marvelous way for somebody to give tove the world, but at the same time to serve the United States because by becoming a piece peace corps volunteer, you go and represent your country in the best possible way. In a way that young people of other nations look up to and respect. You are putting your time where your idealism is. Not everybody does that. I have enormous respect and i will close by simply saying that one of our very close family friends, one of their young daughters, young by my standards, somebody in their 20s, just cameyo back from two years as a peace corps volunteer. We were at a wedding of her brother just a few months ago and i had the chance to sit and talk with her in depth about her experiences in east africa. Its a wonderful way to serve the country byay completely id commend it to anybody that may be listening. And again, we ought to incentivize it and provide the same kind of rewards we do to the young man or woman who decides to go into the marine corps. So, thumbs up for the peace corps. Host before we get to the next caller, ive been pronouncing your last name for years wrong. Im hearini am hearing somethint from you; is that correct . Guest i think it sounds roughly like you are pronouncing it. Believe me, ive been called everything you can imagine into the most common myths pronunciation is admiral strativarious. [laughter] host all right. Jerry and proclaimed, go ahead with your question or comment for admiral stavridis. Caller [laughter]di that was a perfect change for you. I cannot think of a better person with the balance in the thought process of. I worked with people with disabilities, formerly incarcerated and its not about making money. I never made a lot i of money in my life, admiral, but its about giving back and helping those that are less fortunate. I think that is a great move that you made and i know young people to be thankful down the road. I just want to say thank you very much for the Free Ivy League education today. Youve picked up where you left wf. I was watching sailing through north and as soon as i heard them argue about character as the enabler of leadership, you like to quote short people you told me that napoleon who is a dealer in hope. You mentioned africanamerican young lady that came from a challengingad background that tk down the somalia pirates and became the first fourstar esadmiral africanamerican a person that they said had immense character. If theres one thing i want to ask before i go. In your threestep plan with china, i didnt hear you mention anything about the media. You have a picture hanging up in your office, you said, of the uss maine that blew up in havana harbor in 1898, causing the outbreak of the spanishamerican war. Spanish american war. There was a lot of the media with their yellow journalism, like Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer but claimed the spanish were responsible for blowing it up. I think you used the word that they were actually called terrorists back then. Later on you mentioned host can you get to your question please . Guest yes im sorry. Later on the navy salvage the ship, they discovered that it was not a host i apologize. We are going to leave it there. Theres a lot on the table for the admiral to respond to. Guest i will finish your story for you because it is a very good y one. A uss battleship blows up in havana harbor. Immediately the eula journalists as you called them correctly spin the story of a mind that is placed on the exterior of the ship that blew it up. Then we launched this war. In fact when the navy salvage the ship 50 years later, we discovered that it blew up because of an internal explosion, probably o a whaler. I keep a picture on the wall to remind me of that incident because there are two powerful lessons. The first one pretty obvious. Wherever you are, however high and mighty you are, recognize your ship can blow up underneath your feet at any moment. Have a plan b. And recognize the world can change forever in an instant. Thats a good thing to hang on the wall. Second is the point you were making which is before you take precipitous action, before you lose your temper and in this case start a war or choose somebody out or fire somebody, before you do that, make sure you have the facts right because so many times, that additional set of facts which you are just so sure its accurate turns out to be not so much. Kind of like iraq than the United States invaded iraq, the new Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. That was false intelligence as it turns out. Nobody lied, but our intelligence communitys got it newrong. They got it terribly wrong and we ended up going to war. Think how different the world would be. Who knows, better or worse, but how different the world would be if we hadnt launched into iraq. Another example. Thats why i keep a picture of the battleship on the wall in my office wherever i am. And theres one here just outside the door. The other photo by keith, which i hope you can see over top of me, is a picture of myself and s senator mccain. Going to the told that for a second. Thats me and senator john mccain. Perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time particularly in light we were aspiring to be real warriors tough hardened seals but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over. If y. But to do the Little Things right. Thats an easy one again. Many of you will see this book which i believe that excerpt is from at the university of texas in my book not because he was a general or a big writer but he is in my book he is an enormous part of character and i think Abraham Lincoln said all men that can stand adversity to testaments character gives him power. I think the ad rural personifies that for me he is resilient andha handles being in a powerful positional one position extremely well. And he has done with medical challenges in ways i cannot even comprehend. I have never spent and in the hospital never had a stitch in myit body im in my sixties. Him not so much and just two examples of the relatively senior officer he was in a terrible parachuting accident. His parachute only partially opened and somehow he survived that but was hospitalized for a significant period of time as a result was not part of the wave of terrorism and that he trained his whole life as a seal. He came back from the injury with a great career as a senior steel officer and then ended up with a form of leukemia and then to take those chemicals to reverse for a period of time and then back again. And then he deals with that. And then i said how are you doing with the leukemia . He said its just another mission. I deal with it every day. And that is vilma craven that has that resilience i have a lot of respect h for. Paul from orlando. Caller good morning. Thank you. Why the treat it is for land lover civilian like me to talk to you. And then i value your opinion. I am very concerned about how aggressive china is becoming so forgive me if this is redundant. And breaking add three d with hong kong would be a like to get your comments, admiral. That there is no student visas this fall at american universityst and i dont think its any wrong to kickoff the New York Stock Exchange and i would love for the wto to reclassify china not as a developing country but as a developed country i will take my comments of the year. We love you on cspan2 but we miss you on washington journal. Have an good weekend. We did cover some of this and i will pick up on your points. All the things you mentioned are examples of very reasonable responses that ought to be considered as part of a larger strategic framework. That is what you probably would agree that what weba need is not one or two pull this credential but a strategic and coherent plan. What you mentioned is all worth considering. In addition to what i mentioned earlier and unlike hong kong which is part of chinas sovereign territory with that caveat that it would enjoy the status as the socalled one nation to systems. In manchester on set of regulations to have a distinct economic situation. China is violating that so in addition to the points you made a what i mentioned earlier there is real leverage there. It resolutely wants to pull taiwan into the china ovsovereign orbit. And that ambiguous relationship with taiwan. We could build on that with those military operations with those carew on cruisers and Aircraft Carriers. And these are all we could be conducting to give china pause. And then also give pause with the spectrum of response. And economically based education all of that needs to be approach with china and coherently and as part of a holistic plan. I want to make a really important point. Hundreds of thousands or millions of chineseamericans living here in the United States many here for many generations m. One of them is my son i the law on soninlaw who is a firstgeneration american. The first of his family born here. His parents emigrated here as students. His mother is a very successful dentist his father a very successful investor. He is a i physician he is on the front line of covid. And the result of immigration in the United States has enjoyed over the years. And those more appropriate ways. Or for china and the wto. And then to be up a very severe cold war or a shooting war and that deep culture medic personal relationships that are in play and my soninlaw is a physicia physician. Host you have a new novel coming out called 2034 novel of the next world war. This is a text message we received. I am a 33 year active duty officer why are more americans not as extremely concerned of the statues of granted washington and other historical figures that is definitely under attack by the leftwing. It t is. I disagree with most of what i heard i agree with a portion of it. First of all any statute anywhere should be torn down by a mob that is not appropriate we should have a national conversation, and we are beginning to which individuals from what period of history are reexamined as we look at the spectrum and the confederates generals and are more and roles to take up arms against United States of america but also to take up arms against their nation in defense of the system that includedut slavery and they dont pass muster to have statutes put up and where there are such statute and there are many around the country come its time to have a commission as we come to the conclusion its time to take them down and put them in a museum. They should not be glorified with statues in public places. On the other hand we have our founding fathers. I am well aware of the instances my fellow veteran points out of individuals who had gone after statue like president grant. I am very aware of Thomas Jefferson it was a slave owner. I can understand that emotion but that is a different set of circumstances and we should have a collective conversation in my vote would be to take down on the statues and the monuments they were not perfect slave is that in the life and times their contributions are striking in the statues and monuments need to remain on display perhaps that is a that valid historical point and to tear down the Jefferson Memorial or monticello. And theres room for meaningful conversation i dont think mob turned out statues or anything else and if i sat down with my brother officer we could have a meaningful conversation from his concerns or my concerns. Calling in from washington isnt that a navy town . It sure is. Caller as a matter of fact what i want to talk about i am a korean war veteran and as the admiral knows and one that the navy might consider and i wonder how often if they have any knowledge for whom their ship is made in us senator from mississippi and serving in the senate from 1989 and voted against all civil rights legislation and he also voted for doctor mlk birthday to be a national holiday. He got a ship named after him not because he was a strict segregationist but a part of the appropriations committee. When the navy would show up for the request for the coming year he was only too happy to fulfill them because he was a big fan of the military. Lets get an answer from the admiral. Terrific question. Another good example of National Level conversation someone that i am not deeply versed but i believe he was also a prosecutor who prosecuted or failed to park prosecute a significant case of the murders of africanamericans in mississippi. I dont know all the details that you correctly point out of john sees dennis to be supportive of segregation and the utterly failed policy in every dimension. I would be open to a conversation about uss if that is a sweep of name changes but in the good news category the u. S. Navy Just Announced the next Nuclear Powered Aircraft Carrier doris miller i know a lot about doris miller who was an africanamerican coming out of texas preworld war ii and ended up as a cook because thats all you could do in the navy before we managed to get away from segregation and on december 7th, 1941, heard the attack on pearl harbor , charged up to the bridge and tried to see it on save the life of the Commanding Officer then went down to the fiery deck to a personal command of charge with the antiwar and to guns and probably shot down a japanese aircraft and untrained to do that. No regard for his life or safet safety. He was awarded the navy cros cross, probably should have gotten a medal of honor. But the good news again is the navy has now chosen to name the next Nuclear Aircraft killer after him. Shift names always have some controversy. But as i look at the Navy Ship Names there are a couple of others we have to look at. And to be named for a confederate naval officer may have a ship called the chancellors bill named for the confederate name of the battle the usernames worth looking at alongside those that are pretty obvious to me of the Army Installation around the country made for jackson and beauregard and lee who took up arms against the United States and those are clear decisions and those against lets have a conversation take this as a national teachable moment and move forward in a way that does not tear apart or destroy her history. I dont think thats whats happening but history is like the liver you never cross the same river twice because it moves on. That is history. Look at it with clear eyes to understand the river has moved on. What does that mean for us as a nation thats an important conversation. How do we get to fortt bragg and fort hood were named after confederate generals . Some more name during world war ii. Ey they were. It is a long and complicated story and in many cases there were collections of southerners those that were invaded by the north. And as you point out correctly this is not the immediate aftermath of the civil war but part of a growing sense of the early part of the 20th century that we need to glorify the crowd and this is the rise of the kkk including Woodrow Wilson who often is named as this kind of thinking. Again, that part of the river has moved on and its time we make those changes i would be very surprised if the t bases are not changed or the robert elees statues in high schools are not addressed in the thai time they were. You write about admiral nimitz a leader of leaders but also indicate he was not respectful of women and nonwhites. Indeed how do we judgeer somebody like chester in those regards . Play a tape of his life. He comes out of texas like dori miller, hes never seen the ocean when he goes off to annapolis but rises to become the most iconic war fighting admiral in American History and takes command of the Pacific Fleet. Not because he thought he would standing on the deck of battleship every battleship is some and when he takes command a couple weeks later, and there are still hundreds of them. Broken and shattered and what does he do . Resilience. He builds teams and takes the very best and reshapes them to find and then to have the commanding parts of the Pacific Fleet and working with Douglas Macarthur as the army counterpart. He does everything right in terms of prosecuting the war and sits and then to surrender with the japanese empire. Like me he was ahead of his time. He was not respectful of color. He would not but he was this way in the 19 forties judging by the standards i dont think that this is you taking up so i stay in westchester nimitz to honor his memory to put into a context of the history of what he is doing. Iwe will say that bioethics, artificial intelligence, were doing things but they will judge just as well. I hope those who judge me the context of times but can also make decisions about my legacy. Of trying to like to thank you to come on cspan so cspan to invite you as a guest. The way you answer questions but that cognitive thinking is probably so superlative. I love the navy the first ship was the destroyer and i left the navy for the 1084. I love the navy and realized it is the number one spokesperson for the United States people in those countries want on went out of the way to talk to us and asked questions so we our representatives. I was the first person off the ship and the last person back on and no matter where we stopped so what people had regarding americans they could not understand why they were so happy. But i have two questions which im sure everyone in the military would love to hear your answers. In general all you have touched upon these two but not directly so based on the matters today in the world. Get your questions very quickly we appreciate that. How do you rate the non nuclear war standing of the world right now . And the second question is knowing what you know, what are the top four circumstances that could happen in reality to trigger world war iii. We appreciate that. E height of the cold war and cuban missile crisis kind of situation. You asked for four scenarios. Im only going to give you two, although they are outlined. The two possibilities that could drag us into a world war would be a conflict between china and the United States, which could occur in the south china. As a result, inadvertently, of the two navies bumping up other and an incident that then escalates, even as we are giving thi doingt program for cspan2 at the moment, there are two Navy Carrier Battle Groups in the South China Sea. Again, these are the seeds that china claims as territorial waters. So from the chinese perspective, they have to battle groups steaming aroundd the greatly of the United States. Code that could escalate . That is one i would be concerned about particularly. A second one would be a cyber attack. And this could come from china, russia, Even North Korea and esan have significant cyber capabilities. And we think to ourselves how bad could a cyber attack the. Okay i wont be able to go on the internet for a couple of days. Think again. The internet of things, as it is called, today has about 20 billion devices when it, and it is the backbone for transportation, electricity, water, all of the fundamental infrastructure in our society. So, a cyber attack that went after infrastructure in the United States would demand a significant response and i think that could lead to an escalati escalation. I will throw one other one into the standard that would be russia in a scenario where russia has a dramatic change of leadership. I think thats unlikely. I think Vladimir Putin has probably solidified its control over that country but i can see ouenarios where russia falls out of totalitarian control if you will and yet has 8,000 Nuclear Weapons. That is very concerning. And then fourt the fourth and f, india pakistan. There are two Nuclear Armed powers constantly at each others throats. At the moment the Nuclear Capability of both is under control and under good control of the military of both countries. That could certainly lead to a Nuclear Exchange which would be disastrous globally. So there is some scenarios that ought to keep you awake at night. But again, i want to leave you with the thought that we have been in a worse position before. I think we were much more at srisk. Cuban missile crisis five minutes to midnight, two minutes to midnight. I think we are 20 minutes to midnight, meaning all the scenarios ivet. Got, they wille time to allow diplomacy and economics and other nonmilitary aspects to help pull us back from the brink. Thats certainly my hope. Host 11 minutes left with our host, admiral James Stavridis. Nancy and Saint James City florida. Caller fascinating show. Thank you for taking my call. I wanted to talk for a minute about leading up to your next book and the preface to my question is my husband and i were at the southern festival of books back in october, 2019, and Elliott Ackerman who was a thoughtful speaker was on a panel also record on cspan for booktv discussing the war and the military. Hed written places and he was sitting with another author that have attended the crowd at our end it was a great program. I am curious about the process of you code writing your next book 2034 with someone like rElliott Ackerman versus writing novels on your own or nonfiction on your own and then could you give a little insight peak into your upcoming novel throughout the march of 2021. Guest i sure can. By thehe way, robert himself isa very successful novelist writing historical fiction, a whole series of books about the American Naval captain at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century and please, if my best to your friend and great writer himself. I tell you how i became a novelist. I approach my inbox and they were all nonfiction. Ive always wanted to write a novel. I was nonfiction. Any booklist i offer to people i think we learn best for reading fiction so i went to my editor and i said im ready to write a novel. He looked at me and said you are a great writer but you are no novelist. I said yes i am, like a l little kid. I know how to write a novel and he said all right, all right. Give me an outline. Elliott has a new novel out that i would highly recommend about a love triangle in istanbul. He said how about if you and elliott take your idea about the novel and collaborative than. The way we did this was why he aould do kind of the outline, the big idea of the strategy and elliott is a gifted novelist wouldve been right people into it and make the characters come alive. I think it is a nice mix as we have come out and the sneak peek is the subtitle which is 2034. That is the year suites at roughly 15 years from now. 2034 and novel of the next world war and its a story about how the United States could impact the stumble into a real war with china and what would that look like. How would it start. Would there be Nuclear Exchanges, would there be strategic a Nuclear Exchanges august of that tactical Nuclear Exchanges. What role would iindi fool wouy because as the century unfolds, india is going to get more and more important. What is the impact on people who get swept off in a global war likee this and the cast of characters had russians and iranians and very rich palette of characters. Its also not a long book. Its not like the war of remembrance or ait technothrill. Its not tom clancy showing the latest device in the war. It is a cautionary tale about what it would look like and what its impact would be. And i think that its a very moving book at the end of the day. I think of it as some of the literature that came out of the cold war was cautionary about the United States and russia almost getting into a nuclear war and having a tactical Nuclear Exchange. Or the novel the bedford incident, about a meat eater destroyer that seeks to track a Russian Submarine and the captain becomes a modernday moby dick tracking this Russian Submarine and account and mouse game they play off the coast of greenland and iceland and that could have dragged those two nations into the war were on the beach by novell, and australian about a Nuclear Exchange that contaminates the worlds environment. These are cautionary tales, novels, fiction not designed to be predictive, they are hopefully the office of protective. Host as we do with all authors on in depth, we ask with some of the favorite pixar, but they are currently reading. Admiral stavridis sent us two pages worth, but they are going to shove a couple of those and that includes Margaret Atwoods postcode the handmaids tale, the guns of august, a brief history of seven killings underground railroad by colson whitehead. Host the handmaids tal tale . Guest with an imagination. Im going to guess many people have seen the series on cable television, which i think is okay. The book is so chilling. Fullstop your heart. Its about a patriarchy that dominates women. Its about the ultimate authoritarian state. Its deeply moving, beautifully written. Every year when the nobel prize for literature is announced, id wake up hoping that its going to be Margaret Atwood because of the scope ofof her imagination. Shes won the booker prize twice, and i think it is among the greatest of living writers. Shes canadian by the way. The handmaids tale is the ultimate cautionary tale for the time about the endgame of an authoritarian state. Its a beautiful book. Host currently reading the splendid and the file, but look at Winston Churchills leadership during the london blitz, the class hotel they can only saint john and fred dressed in black and white by Elliott Ackerman who is the coauthor of his upcoming new novel 2034. Charles in fayetteville north carolina, we have one and a half minutes. Caller good morning to you or good afternoon to you gentlemen and thank you very much for taking k my call. After all, i also am a u. S. Navy veteran, having served aboard the u. S. Going mccormick as the vietnam war was winding down. I have one very important question for you, i think, and that is what are your thoughts regarding a person who has not always lived their life sailing true north, but wants to end their years here on earth in that direction, that is to say making the necessary course changes in their life cost of their life may exemplify sailing trim the north. Thank you very much for your service, sir. Guest thank you for yours as well, should ship mate. Those guided missile destroyers were the most powerful small ships they ever put to the sea so well done to you for sailing in a real destroyer. Your question is a perfect way to end the conversation today. I couldnt have scripted it better if id written the last question myself. And again i want to go back to john mccain, whose portrait is above me here. John mccain would be the first to admit that his life wasnt always sailing true north and any of us that are honest would say all of our lives are a series of rights standard runner may be backing down a little from t time to time, but the moe you sale at sea the more you understand you can recover the course and come back from a bad turn. You can reverse completely if youve gone off the rails. There are so many instances of that in literature, life, and i think that we need to celebrate those that have that capability above all. Some people are lucky and sale true north. My wife is like that. She has the purest heart of anybody i know. Very few people are like that. The vast majority of us had to find our way on that compass rose to sale true north. I can only encourage everybody to do three things. Think about it in the quiet hours of t the night. Ask yourself how am i doing. Number two, look for examples and wife of people who are doing the, whove come back from deeply challenging situations. Thats what sailing true north is often about come in my book. And number three, read, read, read. Find those stories and celebrate them with others. Thank you for a great question and for your service in the navy. Host as admiral stavridis writes in his most recent book, sailing true north, the outlines of success are not always apparent in early exploits. Admiral stavridis, thank you for being on the tv for the past two hours. We appreciate it. Guest best two hours of television. Thanks a lot, peter. Good morning and welcome to this Commonwealth Club online program. I am correa, president and ceo of the Commonwealth Club and i was honored to serve as the Deputy Assistant secretary of defense in the 1990s. There are many issues today surrounding National Defense and