Provider. [applause] thank you, ladies and gentlemen, meese be seated. It is my distinct honor to introduce a special guest and a good friend, this is the second of our jack brennan distinguished Leadership Series. The first member of that series was general james mattis who was here two months. Jack brennan was the first president of president nixon, Lieutenant Colonel in the marine corps, retired from the marines rather than leave nixons side and when he had a gift of the library we thought we would name the series for and we had a distinguished we remind people that jack brennan served and continued to serve and could glad youre here. I youre a veteran or member of active duty. Would you stand and allow to us thank you. [applause] now, our guest is admiral james stavridis. From the United StatesNaval Academy in 1976. He went on a 37 year career and some extraordinary duty stations along the way, including, as the combat Southern Command from 2006 to 2009, and of course, nato allied supreme commander. He earned his ph. D as well in masters arts and law from the Fletcher School of law and diplomacy, which he subsequently renton lead his dean after retirement from the navy. The art miller is the author of ten books and also an operating executive with the Carlisle Group which most americans know as the preeminent Venture Capitalist Fund in the United States. Chairedded boards of the counselors at the mcchartty associates, among the more treasured guests have on my radio show and im leading personal lay campaign to get admiral stavridis on the board of at least one or at least three Big Tech Companies so google, facebook, and amazon bring to their perspective and discussions a view to the National Security of the United States from someone knowledgeable about all these things. So, for his 37 years [applause] i 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 admiral james stavridis. [applause] what re are going to do is a little different for our audience here and on cspan ill ask the admiral a few questions and then hell do a presentation and i want to make broader. He thank you author of ten books. The first question is, i titles matter. Never why did you that i accidental admiral. Anybody who follows the navy knows the place you want to end up in the navy as four star is the pacific. You want to be out there where nimitz was and hasey hallsey and all the great naval admirals and i wanted to track to go to the pacific and then the secretary of defense bob gates called me up and said, we need you to go to europe and work at nato, and i said, mr. Secretary, i dont really know much about nato or europe. Said im a pacific guy. And 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 the title of the book that emphasized that you can have a brilliant plan for your life, but there will be intervening moments, and the accident admiral. Ive often said the eight most important words in the english language are, have you ever considered, and i know a guy. Who is that guy and i know a guy that made your career. 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, he is 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 him in the navy detailer. He was my detailer and broke me out of a kind of a standard seagoing career and said, 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 police to do a ph. D a position to do a ph. D. 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. A very strong advocate. The point i want to make is he was a mentor who followed up. So often people talk but being mentors but they dent have that followup. They dont truly engage again and again. Admiral mike mullen was there for me after every step. The first bike got to know you, in the leaders bookshelves and our friends who are listening and 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. I found to it be invaluable. Which you explain to people why you wrote this and what it does. Its really extraordinary. The title tells it, the leaders bookshelf and its 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, what is in here is a synopsis of each of these 50 books, and the leadership lessons that come from them, and its not a bunch of boring leadership books. Its actually novels, like to kill a mockingbird, connecticut yankee in king arthurs court. Its autobiography issue lime the memoirs of general grant. Biography of nimitz. Like it as a gift because you can hand it to somebody and they can either do the People Magazine version and read through it or say, wow, that one really catches my interest. Im going to actually sit down and read in love and war by vice admiral James Stockdale and his wife, sybil. What is remarkable our two jack brennan distinguished Leadership Series is general mattis has appendix of 63 poocks and you both urge, exore tate, adamant that young officers and old be reading. Can you expand on that. I can and i had a chance to have dinner with a handful of the nrotc junior cadets who aring here this evening and they asked me what ick do to prepare myself for military service . And i are important, physical fitness, knowledge of ship handling, tactics, 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, novel, for example, lets take dates of fire about the battle you can put yourself in that moment. Its a simulator, chance to test yourself against the highest standards. I think reading is powerful and experiment its a force multiplier in our life. The next book is sea sea sea power and i taught me all i needed to know but Global Climate change bus the ice isnt there writ was when you first started so its whether or not youre a scientist, youre going to plays in he arctic you never went before, but its named for a book that is got a fairly good pedigree and a good friend of minimum, commander cook, an aviator in vietnam said im not going to read a book called sea power but he converted. Explain to the audience was sea power was intended to do and the legacy it carries. S sea power, the history and geopolitics of the world residents ocean. Instead of writing a book about people, i decided to write a book where the characters are the worlds oceans. Chapter on the atlantic, the pacific, the mediterranean, arctic, South China Sea and theres power in that because in each chapter i talk but the history of that region of the world, and tie to the importance of the seas, and that is the connection to the admiring youre thinking of, alfred theyre mahan who great the nave. The reason we have of powerful marine corps and navy is because of the ocean. 75 of the planet is cover bid water, 59 parse of all trade moves on the ocean. 70 of the oxygen youre broguing tonight comes from photo synthesis in the sea. The oceans matter. Thats the genesis of the book and the theories is we ought to have a strategy for deals with those oceans as surely as Alfred Thayer mahan ash tick rated the strategy 120 years ago. My last two questions have to do with two of the chapters in this wonderful new book, sailing true north, buy graph biographical sketches of ten admirals and i pick tease two chester nimitz commanded nixon. One of the millions of sailors on thousands of ships under nimitz command and one ill ask you but is zumwalt. Would chester nimitzs, 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 midshipman, he was often known to go, would would say, over the wall ununauthorized liberty, good out of town and buy beer for his classmates and bring it back, and theres a wonderful vignette about nimitz, this even as a midshipman i picture him as stately, tall, great executive hair, the whole package, in this beer shop and seize what he thinks is a civilian over there and buys his beer and moves on. The next day, it turns out that civilian is one of the officers at the Naval Academy. And so nimitz is like, my career is over. But he gets a second chance. And i think theres power in that idea, hugh, that to get those chester nimitzs you have to give people a second chance. Certainly get many Second Chances in he course of my career. Theres power in that lesson. I read if great interest the zumwalt chapter because at the Nixon Library were cure youve about and researching researchie relationship between the president and the pentagon. There was a very controversial scandal at that time. Can you expand on what that was and whether or not bud zumwalt knew that was going on. There was this sort of i dont want could use the word cabal of the intelligence gathering on civilian officials by the military and that sounds terrible, it and is. It was probably more benign than that. Probable livermore in the category of probably more in the category of this person in the white house thinks this one and this one thinks this way but the appearance of gathering intelligence in order to move a military agenda was pretty damning. The record is unclear whether zumwalt was fully witness witting or that or flow. Give bill the ben it of the doubt. I think he was an individual of High Integrity and ill talk about him in a moment or two. But the lesson here for all of us is be careful of the optics, be careful 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, zumwalt was, quote, deep sleektive. Nixon did a lot of deep selecting as president. He reached for academy patrick moynihan. Pulled kissinger from harvard and kissinger never mitt never met him. Doesed the navy need to do more deep select. Id say more and at you know, we just deep selected the current chief of nave operations, admiral michael gillday, and mill gillday, a couple of months ago was threestar thinking about well maybe if the stars align i might get a fourth star and the secretary of the navy, richard spencer, faces 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 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 arley burk was elevated as a threestar. So, the advantage of doing it is you really 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 turbulent 21st 21st century, we would be wellserve to do at lower deep sleek. Gives me the perfect transition to a clean break. Now my pleasure to turn the stage over to admiral stavridis to give you a presentation. Hope your clicker there is. It is. Thank you very much. Well, first and for most i want to say thank you to hugh and to the Nixon Library, and i want to also just sort of spend a moment while the furniture is moved which it is so thank you above all, hugh, betsy, greet have you oh, are hugh lazy lovely wife, navy mom, nave ya daughter, a lot of navy in the house tonight. That was a wonderful introduction, and normally when people hear that introduction, supreme allied he commander and all that, then they actually see me and typically have reactions. One is, wow, i thought youll be taller. And the other reaction is, they say, well, you know, stavridis, if youre really that cool why were you not a Navy Fighter Pilot. To be honest, i desperately wanted to be a Navy Fighter Pilot bud but i had a traumatic experience at an airport that made aviation really difficult for me. So heres what we are going to do and ill do this in 25 minutes so 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 talk about leadership. Not here to talk but leadership. Im here to talk but character. Leadership is whats we do to influence others. Its a big door. And it swings out there, influencing millions of people as it did for me when is a nato commander. 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, which allows it to swing. So i set out to write a book but 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, that is character. And write about what you know about. I decided to write using a framework of ten admirals so well 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 themistocles. The athens empire is then i about persians the iranians of today. Theyre but to cancer athens, his city state. He has be power of persuasion convinces his captains to go and fight a battle in which they are outnumbered five, perhaps ten to one in. That the rowing captains of that day launched. Heres the advantage them 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 you family. Tomorrow you must row for your city. Tomorrow you must row for freedom. And they destroyed that persian fleet. Its an extraordinary story of accomplishment and charisma, but within three years, after that victorious battle, his arrogance overtakes him, and he ended up alienating his countrymen, hes banished from greece, and he ends husband life in the court of 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 egg be and your arrogance ego and arrogance toover take them you will metaphorically end up in the court of the persian king. Lets go to a different part of the world. Go to china. Where were now in the year 1400, 1405. The chinese emperor invests in this admiral, zheng he. He was a fleet construct ode wood which explores the South China Sea, the indian ocean, and to give you a point of comparison about europeans and chinese, look at the shipses in the upper right. See that massive wooden number one thats the scale of zheng hes flagship 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, 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 chinas strategy today, one belt, one road. Theres a lot to learn from zheng he but his ability to organize, his ability to fulfill what his boss wants. Lets chump to the time of the spanish armada, soar francis drake, saves inland, leaded the british fleet that defeats the spanish armada but in the caribbean he is 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 am patriot, 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, fights another battle. Defeats napoleons fleet in 1805 in the bat of trafalgar off the coast oversman. I like admiralling in the a lot but a he was about 55, tall, man of normal height. But he was fearless in combat. He lost an arm, his right arm in one battle. Loss an eye in another battle. And he was beloved by his sailors, he took care of his sailors, and his captains who work for him adored him. He was a team builder. Wins a battle beloved by sailors, beloved by his captainsful was he perfect . Not so much. This is emma hamilton, beautiful, young, actress, we think of her today. He has adulteress affair with her over a number of years, fathers a child out of wedlock, the guy would never get through Senate Confirmation today. You see that picture of him . Manfully looking at the signal because in those days you looked at signal flags to know where to sail your ship. Looks good. He was difficult subordinate and i putting the telescope to this bind eye because he doesnt like the order from thed a hill and saying to this flag captain, i dont see any signal there go ahead and come could starboard. This where is 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 talk but our friend, Alfred Thayer mahan, arguably the most intellectually brilliant officer the navy has produced enemy 1880s,1890s he produces a global strategy for america, not just for the navy but why America Needs the owings. It was said an intellectual is a man with spend