An interview with the former head of NATO: defense policy for students

The following is an edited transcript of part of an interview conducted by Thomas Krasnican and Nick Paraiso, first-year students at the Harris School of Public Policy for their UC3P original podcast series, Thank You For Your Service. The full interview can be found here or at their iTunes page.

Krasnican and Paraiso spoke with retired Admiral James Stavridis to discuss his naval career, policymaking at NATO, retired flag officers in politics, and international peace-building and security. Admiral Stavridis is best known for serving as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO from 2009 to 2013. In that position, he oversaw all NATO military operations. During that time, he served concurrently as commander of U.S. European Command, in charge of all U.S. military operations in Europe. After retiring from the navy, he became Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and is now a consultant, news commentator and chairman of the U.S. Naval Institute in Annapolis, Md. Admiral Stavridis is a prolific author and his most recent book discusses the importance of sea power.

UC3P: We have a lot of classmates here at the Harris School of Public Policy who will probably go into careers that have nothing to do with national security or defense policy, but they still might be influential someday, either at the federal level or the state level or the municipal level. What is the most important thing for them to know about the military?

Admiral Stavridis: I’ll tell you three things I think are important for them to know about the military. One you just touched on — that we are not like the Jack Nicholson character in A Few Good Men, frothing at the mouth, at Guantanamo Bay screaming, “you can’t handle the truth!” I think it’s important to know that we are a profession who will fight the nation’s battles. But we also want to think our way through them.

Number two, I would tell any civilian that the military works very hard to live up to courage, honor, commitment, truthfulness. Sometimes we fail. But when we do fail, we are accountable. And we’re an organization that has core values.

And then number three, I think I would say to your classmates that the military exists in the world, in the international world, and therefore represents the country in so many different ways. It is important for them to understand that the military is not just a war-fighting machine, but also has a broad role as a representative of the United States supporting our diplomats, supporting our development leaders. And that we are practitioners and not only have those hard power skills that they associate with us, but also supporters of the broadest sense of who our country is in the world. I think all three of those things are important.

UC3P: When voters and citizens evaluate the success of the military, what kinds of things do you think they should be looking at?

Admiral Stavridis: They should first and foremost ask themselves about technical competence. Do we fly our planes safely? Do we operate our ships well? Are our ground forces capably operated in the field and when something goes wrong, as it did two summers ago for the U.S. Navy with two terrible collisions, is there harsh, immediate and effective accountability imposed on those who have failed? And do we make the effort to correct ourselves moving forward?

Let’s take those two collisions. The Navy went out afterwards and fired the four-star, fired the three-star, fired the two-star, fired the commodore, fired both ship captains, both ships’ executive officers, and the senior enlisted on both ships. I would defy any big corporation or bank in America to show me an instance where they have failed badly and have therefore imposed that kind of accountability. I think civilians ought to continue to expect us to have high technical competence and the accountability that goes with it.

Secondly, they should evaluate us on our effects. Are we capable of changing the course of events in a way that’s positive for the United States? Let’s face it, like any human endeavor, we do very well at some and sometimes it doesn’t go that well. I think we did a very good job in the Balkans helping bring peace to that region — I think a very good job in Colombia defeating the insurgency. I think that Iraq is more of a mixed picture, but I could make the argument, and I often do, that had we not invaded Iraq, Saddam Hussein would be running the country now. And I don’t think he would be any friend to the United States. How the story of Iraq comes out, we still don’t know. Afghanistan is an even dimmer picture, but I think there’s still a chance we can pull something out of that. So, I think the public should judge us on our output.

And then third, and finally, they should a judge us on our own values. Different than our technical competence, different than our operational effect. They should judge us on our values.

UC3P: Admiral Stavridis, thank you so much for taking the time. We really appreciate you coming on the show.