By Ann Roosevelt
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.–In the battleground of ideas in the world today, it’s vital to launch new ideas to ensure the nation is as strong in the 21st century as it was at its founding, the commander of U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said.
“We have to do a better job of launching ideas,” Adm. James Stavridis told attendees of the Joint Warfighting Conference 2008, co-sponsored by the Armed Forces Communications Electronic International and the U.S. Naval Institute, in coordination with U.S. Joint Forces here June 17.
Everyone, active duty, retired military, contractors and civilians “need to be in the business of thinking, reading, writing and publishing,” Stavridis said in the keynote luncheon address as a slide with a Tomahawk missile launch contrail forming the “e” in “Ideas” showed beside him.
SOUTHCOM reaches out to friends and partners as well as those who are not so friendly–as in the 1980s when Nicaragua’s leader Daniel Ortega greeted two Army aviators delivering humanitarian relief, despite his diplomatic problems with the United States. Reaching out makes it clear that the United States can stand for compassion and humanitarian effort in the world, he said, a way to change perceptions in the rest of the world.
John Adams, the second president, “coined the phrase we must dare to read to think and to write…I would argue that that proposition is at least as import as the technology that drives us today,” he said.
Concern has been expressed during this war on terror that the U.S. is losing the effort to counter the ideology–the ideas of its adversaries.
Stavridis said one must ask who publishes, who’s generating the ideas that essentially drive the nation–driving innovation, policy and the perceptions of those outside the United States.
For example, Stavridis ran through an admittedly short list of those all who published articles as young officers in the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings magazine– former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State, Colin Powell, current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, former Naval aviator, current U.S. Senator John McCain who will be the Republican presidential candidate, World War II Chief of Naval Forces Adm. Ernest King, f,ormer Navy Secretary and current Senator James Webb (D-Va.), Medal of Honor winner Vice Adm. James Stockdale, and former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Elmo Zumwalt.
There’s great value in reaching out to young officers, young contractors, and young people “to capture that energy and get it into public eye,” he said.
There are plenty of magazines to publish in from AFCEA’s Signal Magazine to Proceedings, to Joint Forces Quarterly, and NATO Review, to name just a few.
Published ideas can bring change, he said. A 1920 article by Ernest King on instruction and training for line officers led to setting up career paths for officers. A 1953 article on strategy was the precursor to the Navy’s “From The Sea” strategy in the 1980s and the more recent “Cooperative Maritime Strategy.”
Ideas don’t need to always address grand strategy. For example, in 1999, Proceedings published “One Special Ship 1999,” by Lt. Cmdr. Bryan McGrath about the USS Thomas S. Gates (CG-51), on life on the ship and why it is special.
“Widen the Lens for JHSV,” by Cmdr. Robert Morrison, and Lt. Cdr. Phillip Pournelle in the June 2008 issue of Proceedings talks about how the ship, considered as a sea- based connector, can do so much more, from humanitarian relief to diplomacy.
“Everyone ought to be in writing,” Stavridis said. Even though it’s hard work to produce a professional article, the value is there. Ideas generate discussion and can generate change or something new.
At the same time, a budding author shouldn’t be like the Greek Tantalus, yearning for food and water just out of reach–where the word tantalize comes from. No one should wait until the “elusive, perfect article” arrives. The author has to get it out and take the criticism and comment. “Don’t wait,” Stavridis says. It can be tough, something akin to Sisyphus punished by ceaselessly having to roll a boulder up hill every night, which came right back down.
Advice to budding authors from one who has published throughout his career is to get started by reading the literature about a region or a problem.
“If you’re going to write, read first,” he said. “Then you think. Then you write. Then you publish.”
Ideas take root, he said. The value of reading, thinking and writing is that your ideas marry up with other ideas. “No one of us is as smart as all of us together.”
Writers don’t need to restrict their ideas to paper. Publishing can include authoring a blog, he said. The speed at which ideas get out and around is remarkable.
Stavridis disagrees with perhaps the greatest of strategists, Alfred Thayer Mahan, who said writing books is not the business of a naval officer.
“No one should wait for brilliant inspiration,” he said. Writers need to get the article written and sent out.
“Take it for test drive,” he said. It’s fine to start small, publish in comment and discussion areas, do a short piece, or in a forum. You never know, it could lead to a book.
Patience is a key requirement, he said, showing a slide of his dog with a biscuit treat balanced on his nose.
To make the larger point, Stavridis showed a slide of a semi-submersible outside SOUTHCOM headquarters. Drug cartels use such vehicles and the command is concerned about it.
That’s why the most important thing to do is to read, think, write and publish. “People who want to do this country harm are doing so,” he said.
These thinking adversaries are taking planes into the World Trade Center, thinking about submersibles, building them in the jungle to a size where they can carry five tons of cocaine.
“Someone out there is reading, thinking, and writing and that goes to innovation,” he said.
“At end of the day, this country will continue to be the country it has always been…[and] we will do it the old fashioned way, we will outthink them [adversaries],” he said. “I ask you: read, think, write.”