This is the second of our jack brennan distinguished leadership series. The first, with general james mattis, the first friend of president nixon, Lieutenant Colonel marine corps vietnam veteran living in the white house, retired from the marines rather than leave his side. We had a gift to the library and thought we would name it for jack, we headed sting worst professional of arms here, we would remind you jack served and continues to serve. We are glad so many of you are here. If you are a veteran or member of activeduty, allow us to thank you. [applause] [applause] our guest is admiral James Stavridis who graduated the United StatesNaval Academy in 1976. A 37 year career in extraordinary tv stations along the way including as Combatant Commander of Us Central Command from 20062009 and nato allied supreme commander. He earned his phd in masters of arts and law from Fletcher School of law and diplomacy and cynically went on to retirement from the navy. James stavridis is the author of 10 books but is on operating executive with the Carlyle Group which most americans know as the preeminent Venture Capitalist Fund in the United States, shares awards of the council that the mccarty associates, among the most treasured guests i have on my radio show and im leading a campaign to get James Stavridis on the board of at least one of the Big Tech Companies so that facebook and amazon from their perspective and discussions, a view to the National Security of the United States from someone knowledgeable about all these things. For his 37 years. [applause] i like to point out he spent 11 of those years out of sight of land. Thats quite a recommendation. Please join me in welcoming admiral James Stavridis. [applause] what we are going to do tonight is a little different for the audience watching on cspan. I will ask the admiral a few questions and do a presentation and i want to make a little broader. I dont have a copy of his memoir but my first question, titles matter. Why did you call it the accidental admiral . Anyone who follows the navy knows that the place you want to end up in the navy as a four star is the pacific. You want to be out there where nimitz was and halsey and all the great naval admirals. I was trying to track to the pacific and then secretary of defense bob gates called me up and said we need you to go to europe and work at nato. I said i dont know much about nato oh or europe. I am a pacific guy. That did not win him over. I felt this was kind of an accident. Secondly, because all of our lives are accidents. All of our lives, the big turns, we can never predict them. And so i wanted a title of the book that emphasized you can have a brilliant plan for your life but there may be intervening moments. The most important words in the english language are have you ever considered, and i know a guy. I know a guy who made your career. Who was that guy . Admiral mike mullen. And at the end of his career. And it is a perfect distance for a mentor in the military. The head of human resources, he was my detailer. Broke me out of a standard seagoing career. The future of law and diplomacy, to do a phd, that is very unconventional. At the far end when i was getting ready to become a four star officer. The point i would make is he was a mentor who followed up. So often people talk about being mentors but dont have a followup, dont truly engage again and again. The first book i got to know you in, the readers bookshelf, people are watching on cspan. It will be invaluable to them. I found it to be invaluable. What does it do . It is really extraordinary. The leaders bookshelf, the idea is, the idea is to identify 50 books to make you a better leader. Because nobody has time to read 50 books, what is in here, each of these 50 books, it is not a bunch of boring leadership books, like to kill a mockingbird, connecticut yankee in king arthurs court, biography of nimitz we will talk about later. I like it is a gift, for People Magazine version and read through it. Is that one catching my interest, i will sit down and read in love and war by James Stockdale and his wife. What is remarkable about our distant was leaders series, general mattis has an appendix of 63 books to his memoir and you urge you are adamant, i would rather have dinner with the junior cadets who are here this evening. What can i do to prepare myself for military service . A lot of things are important, physical fitness, tactics, all of that. The day you graduate from the university is the day that you own your education. At the end of your life you will be the sum of what you invest in that education, read, read, read. Only through picking up a book, a novel, lets take gates of fire about the battle of thermopylae i, you can put yourself in that moment. It is a simulator, a chance to test yourself against the highest standards. I think reading is powerful and important and force multiplier in your life. I live this book because it taught me about climate change. As you point out the ice is and where it was, whether you are a scientist, you are going places in the arctic you never went before. It is a fairly good pedigree, im not sure im going to read a book called seapower class of 63 but he converted. The legacy that it carries. The title of the book is seapower, instead of writing a book about people, where the characters are the worlds oceans, the pacific, the mediterranean, the South China Sea and i think there is power in that. Each of the chapters, i talk about the history of that region of the world and tie it to the importance of the sea, that is connected to admiral alfred mahan, the greatest strategists the navy ever produced who created the idea of global navy. We have a powerful seagoing navy, powerful marine corps because of these vast ocean. 70 of this planet is covered by water. 95 of all trade moves on the oceans. And from photosynthesis in the sea, the oceans matter. That is the genesis of the book and the theory is we have a strategy of dealing with those oceans and as surely as admiral mahan articulated 120 years ago. The last question before i yield the state has to do with two of the chapters in this wonderful book sailing true north 10 admirals and the voyage of character biographical sketches of 10 admirals in the voyage of leadership, take me through chester nimitz who commanded richard nixon. One of the millions of sailors on thousands of ships under nimitzs command and Logistics Supply option. It was under nixons command. There is an asymmetry. The first question about nimitz, portrayed in the new movie midway sailing north, make it in the navy of today. Would he have made it out of the Naval Academy of today. When he was a midshipman he was often known to go over the wall, go out of town for his classmates and bring it back. There is a wonderful vignette about nimitz as a midshipman, a stately, executive fair, in a beer shop and a civilian over there, he buys his beer and moves on. The next day turns out that civilian is one of the officers at the Naval Academy, nimitz is like my career is over. There is power in that idea. You have to give people a Second Chance from time to time. I got many Second Chances in the course of my career. There is power in that lesson. I read the chapter at the Nixon Library, curious and constantly researching the relationship between the president and the pentagon and there was it that time a controversial scandal. Can you expand on what that was and how he knew that was going on. I dont want to use the word cabal but i will use it, intelligence gathering on civilian officials by the military and that sounds terrible and it is. It was more benign but more in the category of how this person in the white house thinks this way and this person thinks this way but the appearance of gathering intelligence and moving a military agenda. The record is unclear, whether was fully witting of that, i knew him and i think he was an individual of high integrity. I will talk about that in a moment or two but the lesson for all of us is be careful of the optics. It can drag you down if you are not careful to maintain your self at the highest levels of what happens. He was deep selective, nixon did a lot of deep selecting, he reached for Daniel Patrick moynihan. Kissinger had never met him. Does the navy need to do deep selecting . The audience does not know, we just deep selective the current chief of naval operations, admiral michael killed a. A couple months ago he was a 3star kind of thinking about that, might get a four star yesterday and Richard Spencer faced a crisis, the original candidate, admiral bill moran had to step aside. Instead of going to the 4star bench, the secretary of the navy, Richard Spencer reached down relatively speaking to a 3star officer and elevated him. It happened before, admiral burke was elevated as a three star. The advantage of doing is you get a fresh set of eyes and no one who is elevated has any baggage to pay off. You get a clean break. That can be very advantageous and i would argue as the navy goes into this turbulent 21st century, we would be well served to do some deep selecting. A perfect selection to a clean break. I will turn the stage over to James Stavridis. I hope your clicker is there. I will be here at the end. First and foremost, thank you to the Nixon Library and i want to spend a moment while the furniture is moved which it is. It is great to have you here, navy, mom, navy daughter. Got a lot of navy going on in the house tonight. People here that introduction, supreme allied commander and all that they actually see me and they have two reactions, one is i thought he would be taller. Or you know, if you were really that cool, why were you not a Navy Fighter Pilot . I was a destroyer, i rode ships around. To be really honest, i wanted to be a Navy Fighter Pilot as a young boy. I was at an airport that made aviation, it was difficult for me. Heres what we are going to do. I will do this in 25 minutes. We will sail fast. I want to talk about the oceans but i worry really want to talk about his character. I want you to understand the leadership. Im not here to talk about leadership. Im here to talk about character. Leadership is what we do to influence others. It is a big door and it swings out there influencing millions of people as it did for me as a native. That big door of leadership swings on a small hinge which is human character. You cannot swing the door of leadership unless your character allows it to swing. I set out to write a book about character. We are awash in books about leadership. I wanted to write a book about that inner voyage, how we need ourselves, that is character, i wanted to write about it using a framework of ten admirals. We are going to pull it up to the present and talk about ten very dynamic admirals. There has to be a great american, a greek in this thing. Athens faces an excess essential threat. Athens is threatened by the persian empire. They are about to conquer athens, the city state. Convinces his captains to go to a battle where they are outnumbered 5, 101 in these try reams the rowing captains of that day launched. Here is the advantage they had. All of the rovers in his try reams were free men, not slaves. The persian fleet 5 times the size was road by slaves, said to his captains tomorrow you must roe for your family. Tomorrow you must roe for your city. Tomorrow you must roe for freedom. They destroyed that persian fleet. It is an extraordinary story of accomplishment and charisma, but within three years after that victorious battle, arrogance overtakes him and he ends up alienating his countrymen, he is banished from greece and ends his life in the court of the persian emperor. It is a greek tragedy. It is a story of how you can be given incredible gifts. If you allow your ego and arrogance to overtake you will metaphorically end up, lets go to a different part of the world. We are now in the year 14001405. The chinese emperor invests, entrusted with an enormous treasurer fleet constructed of wood which explores the South China Sea, indian ocean and to give you a comparison about europeans and chinese, look at those ships in the upper right. See the massive wooden one . That is the scale of zhengs flagship which is 500 feet long and has a crew of 600. You see the toy boat next to it . That is the flagship of Christopher Christopher colorless, the santa maria which 100 years later in 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue, that is what europeans were sailing to explore the world. The chinese were sailing massive ships. By the way, that treasurer fleet, that economic juggernaut of the 1400s looks a lot like chinas strategy today. There is a lot to learn from zheng about his ability to organize, his ability to fulfill what his boss wanted to. Lets jump forward to the time of the spanish armada. Sir Francis Drake saves england, leads the british fleet that defeats the spanish armada but in the caribbean is known as a pirate, a rapist, murderer, head slaves, burned cities, killed indiscriminately. He is perhaps the darkest character of these admirals. He is a patriot and also a pirate. How many of you have been to disney world on the ride parent that is pirates of the caribbean, like everybody based on sir Francis Drake . He was my favorite british admiral, vice admiral lord nelson. He fights another x essential battle, defeats napoleons fleet in 1805 at the battle of trafalgar off the coast of spain. I liked admiral nelson a lot because he was 5 foot 5 inches tall, a man of normal height, but he was fearless in combat. He lost an arm in one battle, he lost an eye in another battle and he was beloved by his sailors, took care of his sailors and his captives adored him. Wins in excess essential battle, beloved by his sailors, by his captains. Was he perfect . Not so much. This is emma hamilton, beautiful young actress we would think of her today. He has an adulterous affair with her. Every number of years, a child out of wedlock, this guy would never get through Senate Confirmation today. You see that picture of him . In those days you looked at signal flags to know where to sail your ship. That is good. He was a difficult subordinate. Hes putting the telescope through his blind eye. To his flag captain and go to starboard. This the expression to turn a blind eye to something comes from. A great hero of his country, a very difficult subordinate. Complex character. We talked about our friend alfred mahan, the most intellectually brilliant officer the navy has produced, he produces a global strategy for america, not just the navy but why America Needs the oceans. Dostoevsky says an intellectual is a man with spectacles in his nose and winter in his heart. Hes not a loving giving person. His life balance is not good. What he does is think and write and pursue the truth, he creates the naval war college, arguably the most important of all colleges and military educational institutions. Not a warm sunny figure. He is a miserable commander at sea. He command a ship badly once but is he smart. The mixture that is character. Here is one not many people know. This is a british admiral named Jackie Fisher, a british admiral at the turn of the last century. What i like about Jackie Fisher as he comes into the british navy when there are sailing ships in cannons. By the time he commands the british navy as both the lord it has gone from wooden ships, muzzle loaded canon to steal holes, moved on to all your, fire control platforms, huge cannons, submarines coming in, an extraordinary contemporary of winston churchill. He is hugely egotistical. He has to show you how smart he or she is the minute the door opens. The massive ego, tied to this brilliance in the case for innovation. Lets go to the best admiral in american history, fleet admiral chester nimitz. Comes out of fredericksburg, texas, landlocked, goes to annapolis, a steadily growing force within the navy commands, the bureau of personnel, he has a good steady career going on. 7 the summer 1941 happens. The Pacific Fleet is destroyed. The navy and the nation turn to chester nimitz, pack a bag, take amanda the Pacific Fleet. The problem is the Pacific Fleet is sunk. The carriers were out, there are a few submarines there, he takes command not on one of those gorgeous battleships. He takes command in a set of khakis with the smell of cordite in the air watching bodies being pulled out of the smoking hole, that is resilience. He squares his shoulder, nimitz and macarthur and methodically slowly takes apart the japanese empire. Two ships upper left, the arizona, folks. If youve not been to pearl harbor and gone to the temple, go. See the arizona. That is the start of world war ii. Bottom right. That was the ship on which the surrender document of the japanese emperor was what happened in the middle . Chester nimitz happened in the middle. It is a great story of resilience, he never raises his voice, he builds teams. This is the kind of admiral you want. Lets wrap it up with a few more admirals. I like admiral somewhat. He had a big personality, huge eyebrows. He was chief of naval operations. But not of technology. He didnt come up with the new devices. The innovation was reengineering the navy as faced attention in race in the navy. The ways that help to bring us together. He was value driven every day of his life. He woke up saying what is the right thing to do . T