Read the full transcript of The Hoover Institution’s Summer Policy Boot Camp (HISPBC)’s discussion titled “Diplomacy, Deterrence, and the Defense of Democracy”… Sep 24, 2024.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Opening Question on American Foreign Policy
AUDIENCE QUESTION (J.B. Lilly, University of Cambridge): Hello, I’m J.B. Lilly. I’m an undergraduate student at the University of Cambridge. My question is for General Mathis. In terms of thinking about the next administration, over the past couple of administrations, we’ve seen capricious foreign policy decisions. You know, Trump’s decision to pull out of Syria, the Afghanistan debacle, escalation around the world during the Biden administration. And my concern is that sound foreign policy just really isn’t on the ballot. I just ask you, how do you see the future of American foreign policy when both parties are increasingly giving into isolationist narratives? There’s increasing skepticism of free trade. Trump pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Biden has not rejoined it.
GEN. JIM MATTIS: Yeah, well, and I’m no better at forecasting the future than any of you. But I would tell you, there was a British Prime Minister who put it pretty bluntly, you know, the continent has fallen, France has fallen, Denmark has fallen, it’s 1940, 1941. London’s being pulverized by bombs. And the Americans are saying, not our problem. You know, we don’t want to get involved.
We’ve always been a reluctant sheriff on the world scene, believe it or not. And Churchill’s response to his dispirited people is, just be patient. Once the Americans exhaust all the alternatives, they’ll do the right thing. Because of our background, the culture cannot be changed by any one person. We are who we are, as the Professor Stephen just put it. We are who we are.
There has always been somewhat of an isolationist strain in America. But the isolationist strain, even among our founding fathers, was, we don’t want to get into entangling alliances. We don’t want to get into Europe’s wars. But even they, in the Federalist Papers, in private discussions amongst themselves, it’s, we don’t want to get involved until it affects us. And then you can see what happened. Hitler had less confidence in us than Churchill did and saw what happened when America rose up and said, that’s it. Because America does eventually know what it stands for and does eventually know what it will not stand for.
So my point would be, for all of you here, is to breed the kind of culture that uses the strengths that were just enumerated very clearly about who we are and what we are to make certain we don’t forget our past. And here I would tell you, no matter what your major field of study is, mathematics or artificial intelligence, cyber, whatever it is, make certain that you study enough history that you can apply history. Whether it be Sunny Anna who said, you know, you’re doomed to repeat history or the guy who said history rhymes.
I will tell you that if I had it to do over again, knowing what I would face in this world as I grew up, and I was once your age, believe it or not. It was in the last millennium, admittedly. I would have studied, I would have majored in history. Because once you know how other men and women have dealt with a similar situation, either successfully or unsuccessfully, you learn from both, then you can better guide yourself. And if you do not do this, if you cannot do applied history, then you’re always going to be, it’s like you went to the florist and bought some cut flowers, then stuck them in your yard and say, now grow. They’ve got no roots. They’re going to die. Your policies will die if you cannot apply history.
I think history tells us how we get through this, whether it be post-Napoleonic Europe or post-World War II. And there’s a way to do this where the Americans return to who they are. Great question, by the way, to kick it off.
Question on Russia-China Relations
AUDIENCE QUESTION (Eli Tenenbaum, Tufts University): Hi, my name is Eli Tenenbaum. I’m a student at Tufts University. First of all, I want to thank you all for speaking today. It’s really informative. I had more of a kind of question for both of you guys. Secretary Rice spoke about how we’re supposed to kind of eventually divorce China, Iran, and North Korea from each other, as well as Russia. Is there a way that using this kind of deterrence in diplomacy that we can essentially divorce specifically Russia and China at first because, I mean, they have the whole saying in Russian of китайцы и русские друзья на век, or Russians and Chinese friends for a century. How exactly can, you know, if they’re reunited and it feels so good, how can we get them apart?
PROFESSOR STEPHEN KOTKIN: Good question, Eli. Okay. Eli, I know from my office at Princeton University, which he visited when he was a high school student. I taught at another institution, as you heard, for 33 years waiting for the Stanford offer.
Authoritarian regimes have trouble building alliances and alliances that work because they don’t have any trust. Trust is the coin of the realm, as Secretary Mattis said. They generally speaking don’t trust even their own elites, their own insiders, their own regimes, let alone trusting outsiders.
And so where we have alliances, and we have very strong alliances, Secretary Mattis could tell you how much we disagree inside our alliances, how much we fight inside our alliances, but at the end of the day, we’re in it together and we understand that alliances may fight, they may disagree, alliance partners, but at the end of the day, we’re in it together. We trust each other and we do the right thing.
Authoritarian regimes have difficulty getting to that point. I won’t give you all the applied history that Secretary Mattis says you do need to know, and I agree with that, except to say that, as you know from World War II, the Axis powers were a formal alliance, but did not coordinate, fight together, and as a result of which, they went down separately because they weren’t really that much together.
In the case of Russia-China, there are a couple of pieces.
One is defense industrial complex. There’s a merger of the China-Russia defense industrial complex that’s deeply troubling. We’re going to live to see China putting some of its factories in Russia, treating it as a deep interior. This hasn’t happened yet, but it’s going to happen for sure. You’re going to see this.
This is pretty remarkable, except that we’re the West, and nobody can beat us when we’re at the top of our game, and so if their defense industrial complex has merged, how about ours? Maybe ours can merge better than they are now, and maybe we can beat them at this game because we have superior universities, superior innovation ecosystem, superior entrepreneurial class. Look at the Swedes. It’s just astonishing what they were able to achieve as a small country in terms of their defense industrial complex and their innovation ecosystem, and you multiply all that power together on our side, and I have to say, I would take our side over theirs any day, not just because it’s larger, more dynamic, and more entrepreneurial in terms of GDP, but also because there’s trust there, and so there won’t necessarily be a falling out no matter how many fights and arguments the Secretary himself participated in, right?
So that’s one thing. In other words, yes, it’s definitely worrisome, but hey, we know the answer of what needs to be done to counter it. One final point, the North Korea piece. Some of what North Korea and Russia are doing together is because both of them are afraid of excessive dependency on China. North Korea is looking for some other dependency, some way to break the complete and total dependency on China, and Russia is moving in the same direction.
So the Russia-North Korea rapprochement that you’ve lived to see is in some ways against China, even though both of them are completely dependent on China at this point. They’re looking for a little room to breathe in the tight squeeze that they have with China.
So that’s an opportunity for us as well. lot of vulnerabilities that are our opportunities if we’re not wussies, if we’re not afraid. We understand who we are. We understand why we’re successful. We understand our allies, friends, and partners. And we rediscover our strengths, our institutions, our constitution. And we go up against them, not to fight a war, because fighting a war is not something we want to do. And the secretary can be much more eloquent than I am on that. We want to prevent. We want to deter. We want to negotiate. We want to negotiate on favorable terms.
It can be done. The answer to Russia, China, North Korea is we get better at who we are. We rediscover who we are. We rediscover what made us successful.
GEN. JIM MATTIS: Here, here. I’m from the Naval Service, Navy and the Marines. And there’s a question we give young midshipmen your age. And we say, what would you do if you’re caught with your sailing ship between an onshore gale and a rocky coast? And they go to work, throw out the sea anchor, drop all sails. There’s all these ideas of, how do you get out of this jam? Those of you who sail will right away know what I’m driving at. You know what the right answer is? Don’t put your ship there in the first place, fool.
How did we ever get to a point, Eli, where what you’ve done is you’ve seen these two countries get together? I mean, from 1973 or 1974 onwards, we had a listening post in northwestern China where we sucked in all of the Russian secrets. When we went into Afghanistan to defeat the 40th Army, the Soviet 40th Army, those AK-47s we were given to the people killing Russians, all that ammunition, guess who was building it? China. Believe me, we have a lot of history with China, which goes all the way back to 1848, where we talked about we want China to be a vibrant country. We want them to be like this.
So the question is, how did we get into this position where Russia and China are together? And this is where studying history and applying strategy is critical. We have come through a strategy-free time. Actually, while we have a good strategy now written by the Trump administration and embraced, basically, a great power competition, you’ve heard the words, by the current administration. Even though it wanted to distance itself from the Trump time, it was written with both Democrat and Republican ideas.
The imperative, when we put that strategy in, was to do nothing back in 2017 that would draw Russia and China together. And what is strategy? Strategy is an appetite suppressant on some things. You don’t go running off doing crazy things. Another thing it is, it’s setting priorities. And the priority should have been, don’t do anything dealing with Iran, NATO, anybody that would draw China and Russia together. And both the Trump administration, even though we had the strategy, and the Biden administration have not acted strategically.
So first of all, learn from this. This is what happens when you don’t act strategically. And we have been through enough of a strategy-free era. And then you apply exactly what Professor Stephen just said. You apply that approach.
Because my job as Secretary of Defense, just to put a fine point on what he was saying, was how do you keep the peace? I’m thinking, I’m a deter here. And I want our diplomats to speak with authority. How do we keep the peace one more year, one more month, one more week, one more day, while the diplomats, remember him saying, deterrence plus diplomacy? And by the way, we did nothing on preparation for this. This is what an understanding of history and taking personal responsibility for your study will lend to you, that I can sit on a stage alongside him and tell you my personal assignment to myself when I became Secretary of Defense was keep the peace and make sure our diplomats are respected. You really want to deal with the Department of State. You don’t want to screw with my side. OK? Back over to you for the next one.
Question on NATO Expansion
AUDIENCE QUESTION (Mika, University of Chicago): Hi, my name is Mika. I’m from University of Chicago. I understand that in 2008, there was the NATO summit in Bucharest, where President Bush proposed inviting Ukraine and Georgia into membership. However, several European allies and NATO members, like Germany and France, were opposed to it. France kind of waste their fear of how this would happen. So I’m wondering how did the U.S. kind of navigate these premonitions and fears with European allies in order to pursue this policy?
GEN. JIM MATTIS: Yeah, let me talk to this one. It’s a very good question. Thank you. I was a NATO Supreme Allied Commander at the time, American four-star. And I was sitting there when President Bush brought this up. It was very clear from body language, from public statements that France and Germany and others, Spain, Italy, were not going to support it. And one thing about allies, we treat each other with respect and it had to be a consensus opinion.
So everyone knew that Georgia, Ukraine were not going to come into NATO. That was not going to be permitted. It probably wouldn’t have had one-third of the NATO countries voting for it. That said, at the same time we had what was called the Russia-NATO Council. And that is President Putin would come once a year and for an hour, two hours, he would be present in the Council. On my staff as a Supreme Allied Commander, I had Russian officers. If I went to the NATO lunchroom in Brussels, I would be sitting at one table and that close next to me would be some Russian officers sitting there having lunch. We didn’t do that because they were part of the alliance. We did that to prove to them we are not a threat.
However, remember what the professor said in his opening remarks, by our very existence, by you breathing right now, you are a threat to an autocrat. Every one of you young gals and guys, by your very existence, you’re a threat because you show you don’t have to give all allegiance to a guy or a single party.
And as a result, the Russians saw us as a threat, not a military threat. It was never seen that way and I can prove it. You know all those pictures you can see on Google Earth now of the Russian defenses in eastern Ukraine where they’ve occupied and you see rows of minefields, dug-in trenches, barbed wire, artillery positions. Go all along the NATO boundary with Russia and there’s nothing but a little barbed wire fence there.
Why is that? Because Russia, number one, knows we’re not an offensive threat. Their officers are not that stupid. They appear to be based on how they’ve attacked in Ukraine but they’re really not. I’ve met them. They’re not that stupid. They knew it was never a threat. In fact, what was a threat were free countries on the periphery and they needed to have the same thing President Xi wants, the same thing the rag-head mullahs in Tehran want and that is they want a veto authority over countries nearby and their diplomatic, their economic, and their security decisions.
Follow-up on Ukraine and NATO
AUDIENCE QUESTION: And what was it that causes 2014? Why did Putin go in then and seize Ukraine?
GEN. JIM MATTIS: Because the European Union had offered an economic link which was possible to Ukraine. In 2012, Ukraine knew it had corruption problems. By bringing in the European Union, they helped to reduce the corruption. They will reduce it because of the processes that are required to be part of the European Union.
And it was the potential they could join the European Union, never NATO, that caused Russia to grab Ukraine and then do what it’s doing now to gain a veto authority over the Ukrainian people.
Does that give you some background on that, young lady? And if we don’t answer your question, you make sure you come back at us now. We owe you good answers, full answers.
Question on Nuclear Deterrence
AUDIENCE QUESTION (Mark Tang, U.S. Air Force Academy): Good morning, gentlemen. My name is Mark Tang. I’m a second-class cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and I’m very touched by your words about expanding the industrial-military complex. The 2023 Strategic Posture Review recommends that the United States expands and invests in its nuclear arsenal, particularly through the nuclear security enterprise, to reach nuclear parity with a combined Russian and Chinese arsenal. To what extent do you believe that the United States needs to invest and actually resume nuclear weapons production to match a two-near-peer nuclear adversary threat?
GEN. JIM MATTIS: Well, let me build on something the professor just said, then pass it over if you have things on it. Right now, deterrence is production. Production is deterrence.
We have got to produce enough to keep the Ukrainians, the shield of Europe, in the fight and able to keep their country from being subjugated. Because if you want to send the strongest message to Beijing, don’t send it to Marshall, a demarche, okay? Send a vibrant Ukraine that still exists as a sovereign state and a member of the United Nations, one of the original signatories, by the way, for those who doubt that Ukraine is a country.
And we have got to keep them up. Now, if you go to the nuclear enterprise, that’s simply part of the larger National Defense Industrial Base. And in that regard, I would just tell you that the problem that I gave myself to solve, when you take over a big organization, you’ve got to figure out what is your fundamental job here.
And you all know I was supposed to, you know, basically run the military stuff. Well, and I came up with, my mission was how do I do that, keep the peace for one more year, one more month. And the problem I had to solve to do it was how do we maintain a safe and credible nuclear deterrent so those weapons are never used with a conventional force that is compelling but can also fight irregular warfare.
Now, under the Nuclear Posture Review, which we wrote with, again, with help of Democrats and Republicans and all the nations, allied nations, that wanted to give me input. I didn’t put everything in that every congressman or senator or other nation wanted, but I’d go back to explain why it wasn’t in there.
And we had total agreement, including from countries in Germany at that time with green governments, Green Party governments, that understood we were going to have to upgrade the nuclear deterrent to keep it credible and safe. Radiation decays things. Okay, you all know that. You should know it.
And so those weapons have got to be cleaned up. We’ve got to make certain the pits, nuclear pits, are kept current and that sort of thing. It’s simply part of making sure, as the French bishops lectured the American Catholic bishops during the nuclear freeze movement, for those of you who have not seen stormtroopers parading down the streets of your capital, you may think it’s somehow morally nice to say only bad guys have nuclear weapons.
You’ve seen the stormtroopers. We want the good guys to have nuclear weapons, too. That was the Catholic bishops’ response to the American bishops’ nuclear freeze movement.
So the bottom line is we’ve got to do it. Back over to you, Stephen.
PROFESSOR STEPHEN KOTKIN: Yeah. You don’t need me to say anything. You heard it.
Question on Taiwan’s Defense
AUDIENCE QUESTION (Josh Broust, Palantir Technologies): Hi, gentlemen. Thank you for being here. My name is Josh Broust. I work at Palantir Technologies. I was formerly at the Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense. And I have a question for you two about Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities.
So despite meaningful reform over the past eight years that was meaningful, though insufficient and stagnating under the Tsai Ing-wen government, and given the consensus that there is no Ukraine model for a meaningful U.S. military defense of Taiwan, how should we weigh the necessary sacrifice and strategic value of defending Taiwan against its failure to prepare for war in a meaningful way?
GEN. JIM MATTIS: First of all, every country has its own culture. And I read a lot about what Taiwan is prepared for, what it is not prepared for. But there is some reason why President Xi hasn’t gone after Taiwan yet. And I’d suggest it may be that he wouldn’t be able to pull it off right now.
So as much as you may think that Taiwan isn’t doing anything, something is setting off the arrival of D-Day from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army attacking.
But a second point would be you’ve got to build on the reality of what you deal with. And Palantir has a reputation for being able to collect a lot of data and put it into understandable form and actionable form.
So the first thing I would say is you want to expand the competitive space. Let me put this in who are some of you guys were talking about geography a few minutes ago. Yeah, all right. Basically, China imports somewhere around 80%, maybe a little higher than that on its energy.
How much Chinese Navy is in the Indian Ocean and could stand up to the combined Indian Navy, NATO Navy elements that are there, the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, and all that.
And what would stop us from simply turning at the opening of hostilities in the Taiwan Straits, which has not happened yet for a reason, and stop us from boarding every ship carrying oil from the Mideast through the Pacific? the Malacca Straits, the choke point, through the South China Sea up, but stop them out in the Indian Ocean, board them, seize them, put a prize crew on board, which is nothing more than one Navy lieutenant and a half dozen petty officers, plus a squad of Marines to keep order, and turn them all into neutral ports until the war is over.
And the lights start going out in China in 30 days. In other words, expand the competitive space first. Don’t let the enemy dictate what space you’re going to be in.
That’s why we need you all to read history. That’s why we need some of you who are PhDs in history, and some of you who are master’s degrees in business, and some of you who study international commerce. We need all of you to integrate the strengths of a nation like ours with allies all around the world to expand the competitive space.
And I would tell you that we don’t have to let the enemy dictate what the playing court is. That’s the most important thing to remember. Don’t narrow your focus. We need you broadly educated. We need you understanding human nature and knowing history, but also knowing business flows and this sort of thing.
So I would expand. And by the way, that’s only one. Expand it diplomatically. Expand it cyber-wide. Just keep expanding it. And what are you really doing? If you do it right through your diplomats, and the deterrent capability is simply something that becomes part of the environment, they don’t say, well, they’re getting stronger. Let’s go today.
You keep pushing off the decision, don’t get brave. Don’t get brave. Something else might go wrong. I’ve sailed through the Formosa Straits.
And the current ocean current, those of you who study oceanography, you’ll know what I’m saying here. It sweeps right down up along our coast here, by the way. And it goes sweeping around up there by the Aleutians, comes down out of Japan, and gets squeezed between that huge island of Formosa and the mainland. It is 110 miles of what, in the naval service, you would call bad water.
So it’s not that easy to go there. What kind of weapon can we encourage them to get between remotes and drones and perhaps submarines that turn that into a killing ground? All you want to do is keep questioning in their mind.
PROFESSOR STEPHEN KOTKIN: Expand the competitive space with the short answer. Nobody’s ready for war, no matter how ready you are for war. It’s full of surprises. It’s full of things you should have thought about, you should have prepared for that you didn’t.
But you fight where you’re strong. You fight in the places where they’re weak. The Taiwan theater is the size of the Mediterranean. It’s big. It’s not simple. And crossing the water is the hardest military operation imaginable. All military operations are hard.
But there’s nothing harder than crossing a big body of water that’s as volatile against an adversary, against someone who’s going to deny you the ability to cross.
But you’ve got tools everywhere on the map. And so if you focus solely on the theater, you’re losing. Expanding the theater to the other theaters where you have strengths and they have vulnerabilities and weaknesses, that’s war 101. Again, there’ll be surprises. There’ll be a lot of surprises, too many surprises, no matter how ready you are.
But strategy is figuring out how to perceive and seize opportunities in the space as it evolves. That’s what Von Moltke, the elder, that’s how he defined strategy. You don’t necessarily create the situation. Someone else may create it for you. It may look bad.
But you can perceive and seize advantages in that landscape. That’s a risk. That’s what’s stress.
So you plan like crazy. And then you get punched in the mouth, as Mike Tyson once said. And then your ability to perceive and seize opportunities, to react, to be nimble, to be flexible, to problem solve, to figure out, oh, jeez, my landing craft isn’t as strong as I thought. Maybe I need to make stronger landing craft.
My armored vehicles are susceptible to improvised explosive devices. Well, I need to fix that problem. I should have thought of it before. But now I can fix it because I have the ingenuity, the problem solvers, the strategic minds that the people up here on the stage.
Question on Venezuela
AUDIENCE QUESTION (J.P. Willis-Mill, Georgetown): Hi, I’m J.P. Willis-Mill. I’m studying security studies at Georgetown, and I’m also a research fellow for Latin America, Think Tank, Center for Security Free Society. And my question is about Latin America, of course. Venezuela.
So when we talk about the axis of evil, I think sometimes we forget about Venezuela. Venezuela has the largest Hezbollah presence in the Western Hemisphere, the largest military base by the Russians, much larger than anything that we had during the Cold War, in our Chile island. They have $2 trillion worth of critical minerals.
And right now it seems like Iran is very focused on their hemisphere. Russia is very focused on their hemisphere. And Venezuela is in a very crucial moment. I’m a very prudent guy, but at least now it seems like the perfect moment for much more pressure and even intervention, although, again, I’m prudent.
My question is, why aren’t we doing more in regards to Venezuela? It seems pretty clear-cut to me. Now’s the moment or in the near future.
GEN. JIM MATTIS: Let me do something here. Let me show you, the military should always be able to talk. I was never elected by anyone, but I insisted on being heard, because unlike the old days when there were many more veterans in the high offices and the executive branch and the chairman committees on Capitol Hill, there aren’t as many people with an understanding of the military today.
But what we need to do when the military tries to educate people about this peculiar thing we call war, is first of all, we listen to a policy person.
So I am going to actually ask Professor Stephen to just give some thoughts about what he just said, and then you’re going to watch me in action, okay?
PROFESSOR STEPHEN KOTKIN: This is our neighborhood, and we have as much at stake here as any other place in the world. Mexico and Canada are closest neighbors, part of North America, but also South America. This is where we live, and we need to pay attention and take care of our neighborhood. The people of Venezuela have an amazing display of courage and ingenuity in going out to vote and then after the fraud, the fraudulent declaration of the wrong winner of the election, of standing up and standing strong.
What should we be doing about that? That’s your question. Since it’s our neighborhood, since the Venezuelan people are showing that courage and ingenuity, it’s a different question from Ukraine, it’s a different question from Taiwan, it’s a different question from Israel, but ultimately it’s the same question.
In other words, the question is, are we for freedom and prosperity? Are we for the values that we profess? And the answer is, we either are or we’re not worthy of those generations that came before us and made those sacrifices.
So how can you be in favor of that but smartly? That was the nuance of your question. In other words, you’ve got to be for your values, you’ve got to stand tall, you’ve got to understand the inheritance, the people who sacrificed before you and therefore what your responsibilities and duties are.
So the smart way is the first part of that, allies, friends, partners. You need to galvanize everybody in the region and you need to peel off those people who’ve been supporting Venezuela or Nicaragua or whatever it might be.
You show up in Brazil and you say, is this what you want? Is this Maduro, is this Chavismo, is this what you stand for? Lula is now the elected leader of Brazil. And if it’s not what you stand for, we want to hear that publicly. And so you go to those people who may be sympathetic to a leftist authoritarianism and you peel them off.
And then you go to those people who are unsympathetic to it and want you to stand up and you say, we’ll stand with you. Let’s you take an initiative, let’s you propose an initiative and America is with you shoulder to shoulder. So it’s not just on America to, again, fix while everybody waits for American power. together, but first you’ve got to divide off, salami off, separate off anybody so that Venezuela is left with Iran, the Mullahs, Russia, China, that’s it, that’s who’s standing on their side.
PROFESSOR STEPHEN KOTKIN (continued): You’ve got the UN, you’ve got the Organization of American States, you’ve got a lot of forms that are potentially usable by you, full frontal assault, but on the diplomatic side with the allies and partners, peeling off any support they might have that’s soft, right? Again, this is Diplomacy 101. Diplomacy 101, and you have to remember that because it’s not what we’ve been practicing recently. We have humiliated allies, and not just the Trump administration, we have not shown confidence, we’ve not stood by them when the chips are down, and that’s when it really counts.
GEN. JIM MATTIS: Loyalty counts most when there’s a hundred reasons to question it in the Marines. About allies, we have this saying, if you’re going to a gun fight, bring all your friends with guns.
So, if you’re going to a diplomatic fight, bring all your friends with diplomats, and peel away as many as you can of these others.
But remember what he said earlier about autocrats are weak. Right now, Maduro has got his Guardia Nacional, and they’re going to try to stop all these protests, because he doesn’t count votes, he beats people up, okay? That’s the way he does things. And guess what, the Guardia Nacional is not going to be good enough. Those guys and gals aren’t going to stand for it, so he’s going to have to use his army for it.
So right away, what we want to do first is contain the bleeding, okay? And that means you don’t let it go outside Venezuela, and then you keep working so that the internal friction rots him from the inside out. And there’s other things we can do with the CIA and all, but I’d be careful in Central America and South America, because we’ve got a tough history.
Closing Remarks: America’s Enduring Values
Let me just give you two things here very quickly from Walter Lippmann, because you now face, our president said in front of Congress at the State of the Union address in January, basically he gave a 1940s moment kind of speech, we’re in trouble.
And here is what Walter Lippmann said to, it’s 1940, and he’s talking to his graduating class at Harvard of 1910, so it’s their 30th reunion. And he says, “For every right that you cherish, you have a duty which you must fulfill. For every hope that you entertain, you have a task you must perform. For every good that you wish to preserve, you will have to sacrifice your comfort and your ease. There is nothing for nothing any longer.” He was trying to break out the complacency from his classmates as he saw what was happening. And you can see what is happening on the far horizons and some not so far away, Venezuela.
And let me tell you, the strength of America, it was brought home, I loved my Sailors and Marines. The only reason I stuck around that low-paying outfit, I was a draft dodger, okay? I was 18, I was going to teach physics and history in high school and coach football. I had my whole life planned, having a whale of a good time in college, and I lost my draft deferment.
And my Army buddies say, you were the dumbest draft dodger we ever met, you joined the Marine Infantry to get out of the Army, okay? And I was your age, all right, I was 18 years old when this happened, and you had to go, you had no choice.
And then I stuck around because I loved those guys and gals, they were wonderful, so unselfish and rambunctious in the worst of times.
But as much as I know we need a military and a CIA in an imperfect world, and enemies once taught me something about America, I learned a lot about America from foreigners. This guy was trying to kill us, I was out on the western edges of Iraq trying to check it on the picket line, these were little groups of Marines, 40 Sailors and Marines holding a little outpost under a Lieutenant, 18 months out of his undergrad days, and then 10 miles away there’s another Marine Lieutenant doing the same thing, and if these guys get through, they get through to Baghdad from Syria, they’re going to kill U.S. Soldiers and innocent Iraqis. Important job.
So we get out there, I got 29 Sailors and Marines who moved me all over the battlefield in five vehicles. And 17 of those 29 lads were killed or wounded around me in four months, it was a terrible time. I’m losing guys every day, and I’m a General, I wasn’t in the tough fighting.
And we get to this one outpost about midnight because we had to fight our way there, I had fewer troops than North Carolina has police officers over an area the same size, but a lot more enemy in it. And the Lieutenant comes over to brief me and he says, by the way we caught a guy, he’s talking about where he’s at, intercept an enemy, how many troops he’s lost, how many enemies, kill the usual stuff.
And he said, we caught a guy laying an IED on the road you came in on last night. I said, oh, that’s kind of personal. And he said, yep, he spent two years in London at engineering school, speaks good English. You want to talk to him?
I said, sure. Lieutenant got done briefing him pretty soon, walking over as a Marine with a rifle muzzle on the back of a guy, his hands are plastic cuffed together, motioned to sit down in the dirt next to me.
And I could tell I’d spent enough time in the Mideast. I said, you’re Sunni, we’re the Marines, we’re the only friends you’ve got in this frickin’ country, why are you trying to kill us? He goes after me. He said, oh, you Jews, you Americans, you’re here to steal the oil. I said, no, actually we’re not. We don’t even want to be in your frickin’ country. And I pull my wallet out every time I pump gas in my car.
But I said, you’re an educated man, just go away. I’m not going to waste my time listening to this crap. And the Marine reached down to grab him by the scruff of the neck and pull him back to me and he says, can I sit here for a minute?
So I motioned the Marine back and had him cut his handcuffs off, little plastic cuffs off, got him a cup of coffee, shaken like a leaf. You know, it wasn’t a good night for him. He’d been digging his hole, had his two artillery rounds, had a rudimentary IED, and he looks up and there’s five guys pointing automatic weapons at him. He knows his 401K was in deep trouble, okay?
And finally he says, I just don’t like foreign troops in my country. Man to man, I respect that. I wouldn’t want them in my country. I asked him about his family, forced out of Baghdad by the civil war we’d unleashed with our invasion. He was, his wife and two daughters, they were renting a house over on the Euphrates River about 15 kilometers away.
And he asked, am I going to jail? And I said, oh yeah. You’re lucky you’re not frickin’ dead. But I said, you’ll be wearing an orange jumpsuit for a long time there in Abu Ghraib. And I’m getting up, it’s time for me to be moving on, another 123 degree day with 90% humidity in the Euphrates area. Drives you nuts.
He says, can I ask you one last question? I said, sure. I love my Marines, but he taught me there’s another great source of American power, and that’s its power of inspiration that we have in America.
And he said, do you think, General, if I’m a model prisoner in Abu Ghraib, do you think someday my family and I could immigrate to America? You stop and think about that on the day when your beloved country is driving you nuts and shaking your faith and politicians are acting like 10-year-olds and insulting each other with things that your mother would wash your mouth out with soap for saying. You just remember on our worst day, that guy would give anything to be living in Palo Alto and his two girls going to school right out here in town.
So you keep the faith, you bring the country back together, you learn to respect each other even when you have different views and really respect each other, which means when the election’s over, roll up your sleeves, work together, and yeah, you can have fun in the next election, but let’s just get over the hatred of each other and rediscover the affection and respect and love for one another that these democracies give us and keep it alive for one more generation.
That’s all, the best you can do is just each generation.
