Inside Washington: 2010 Academic Seminar Transcript
As Delivered by Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , Washington Center, Washington D.C. Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2010

ADM. MICHAEL MULLEN: Good morning and just doing a little preparation and listening to the president talk about who you are and why you’re here and what you’re looking at over the course of these couple weeks, it’s a pretty exciting, I know, curriculum. 

What I’d like to do is I’ll talk about a few things for maybe 15, 20 minutes and then open it up to questions. I’m particularly excited and delighted to be able to talk to so many of you who are so young because there isn’t a day that goes by in what I’m doing that I don’t think about the challenges that we have just now, but the challenges that are out there for you as you become leaders in our country. And I applaud your being here, I applaud the fact that you are participating and debating and discussing difficult issues. 

I understand this week it’s the presidency and Congress, and next week it’s the presidency and the media, and that encompasses a whole lot of things. And what I’ll try to do in the next few minutes is tell you where the military fits into all of that. 

And just because you are at the age you are, I’ll tell you a little bit about my background because I want you to encourage you to keep doing what you’re doing, in the first place. Secondly, keep your options open because you just never know what life’s going to bring you.

Isn’t there a group from San Diego here? (Pause.) That wasn’t a very big round of applause. (Laughter.) And I know the weather here is not what it is in San Diego. Well, I grew up just north of there. I grew up in Los Angeles. And I actually grew up in the movie business, having nothing to do with the military. And I was the oldest of five kids. 

My dad told me, you want to get an education, go someplace that’s going to pay for it. And so I had a sponsor that kind of headed me towards Annapolis, and I got on a plane in June of 1964 and went to the Naval Academy basically without a clue. We didn’t travel back then to either advanced trips or look at a dozen colleges before you go to college. So it was the first time I’d actually been across the country.

And I tell the story – and this is really a California story – showing up in the end of June where it’s 90 degrees, 95 percent humidity. And I actually as a 17-year-old was scratching my head wondering how people could actually live in that kind of humidity because in California, if you look it up in the dictionary, humidity is actually not in the dictionaries in California. And I met that day – and it’s still very much in my mind – met tremendous people; my classmates from all over the country. And I hadn’t been very broadly exposed at that point. Great people. 

And from that moment on, which was a long time ago, I’ve never looked back. Certainly, with expectations to be able to contribute to this profession and to contribute to the world, and they grew over time. But again, I had no expectations that I would certainly ever be in a job like this. 

And that was a time, tough time, for us as a country. It was Vietnam; an awful lot of social turmoil; growing up in those times was both very educational and instructive, very instructive, to me because in particular in this job – in senior jobs recently and in this job that I have right now – we’re in two wars that you are very much are aware of. 

And that time back then in my own experience in Vietnam, which was the first war I was in, impacted me and influences how I think about things today. And the specifics of that are that was a war where the American people evolved to a point where they didn’t support our men and women in uniform. 

So when these wars started, one of the first things that I alerted on was the need – and to try to have an understanding for the American peoples’ support of the men and women in uniform and their families. And in fact, they, the American people across the full spectrum, support our men and women in uniform. And that has been incredibly important and also satisfying because the military really does carry out the will of the people from the standpoint of what we do. We certainly get our direction from the president and if we don’t have the support of the people, which we didn’t back then – and I remember that as if it were yesterday – it makes it almost impossible. 

So there were many lessons like that, that come from my youth, when I was about your age, a little older maybe, in terms of how it impacts on me today. I got to see the world. It wasn’t as global as we are now. We certainly weren’t connected. Spent my time in countries all over the world, learned a lot, grew, was given responsibility and continued to evolve over time into jobs of increasing responsibility – again, with no expectation. In fact, I was going to leave at 20 years, and then decided to stay on a couple more. And then I was going to leave at 25 and 30 and 25, and so here I am, which just goes to show you, you don’t know what’s going to happen. And doing as much preparation as you’re doing now for life as it comes at you, not burning bridges and keeping your options open is absolutely vital. 

So I really applaud what you’re doing.  And what you’re tied into here in trying to understand our government, in particular, in these enormously challenging times where we are much more global, much more connected, much closer to students your age around the world; not that they would even just necessarily come here – because they do that – but also because of the ties that we have through communications and the Internet and where we’re focused now where we haven’t been in the past. So you live in enormously challenging times and one of the reasons I’ve focused on you is because you will lead this effort in the very near future in ways that I think probably many of you will know.  

So how does the military fit into all this? I came to this job actually a little over 2 years ago, and I laid out sort of three big priorities. We were in the middle of two wars 2 years ago. Actually, when I took over, it was the height of the surge in Iraq, very difficult decisions, very difficult times, and have moved forward from that time to where we are right now, where we’ve really shifted our main effort from Iraq to Afghanistan.

And I looked at sort of three big pieces. The first piece was the broader Middle East; heavily focused on Iraq, Afghanistan. What became – because it was part of my education – the focus on Afghanistan could not be limited to just Afghanistan; it had to include Pakistan. And I think I’ve been Pakistan – I’d been to Pakistan one time before I took this job over, and I just made my 14th trip over the last couple of years.

Just to give you an indication of the need to understand, my view is the need to understand, the need to be there and the need to try to see challenges through other peoples’ eyes and not just take the American view from here in Washington, quite frankly, and Iowa City, Iowa – wherever you might live – and to understand these problems looking at it from another country’s perspective – and a critical country and a critical part of the world. 

Certainly, that focus on the broader Middle East included the focus on the Gulf area, Iran and the challenges that I would describe that sort of go from Tehran to Beirut, and then includes South Asia. And I’ve learned a lot, and I think we all have. Very instructive to me has been the policy debate that we had late last year for almost three months about the strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The president made his decision and spoke in early December last year. 

And now we’re in the execution phase of that. That’s not because that was an easy decision. In fact, I felt it was a courageous decision, and I’m supportive of it. And we have the resources we need now to turn it around in Afghanistan. 

When we got to last summer, quite frankly, it was my view that not a lot of people in America really had focused on Afghanistan, knew much about Afghanistan, because we’d been so heavily focused on Iraq since 2003. And I encouraged the debate and I think we should always have debate on issues of this magnitude in this country. And we did. The president made his decision, as I indicated. 

And so now, certainly over the next couple of years, we’re into executing that strategy, and spending an awful lot of time on that. I’ve put my best people in positions to lead in that. Gen. McChrystal would certainly be the signature individual there but, quite frankly, there are many others that he has and we’ve put in place to execute this strategy. 

And I’ll close my remarks in a minute about leadership, but putting my best people on my number-one priority is an absolute requirement. In the end, so much of what we do boils down to leadership and it boils down to how leaders lead, how they lead in times of change. And you are going to grow up learning leadership as things change. 

When I grew up, we saw a steady state. We wanted to get to a point where it just ran almost by itself. Those days are far behind us. You’re growing up learning leadership in a time of change – constant change – across every spectrum, whether it’s education, the cyber world, the cultural world, the language world. And I would encourage every one of you to figure out how to speak a second language. How many of you do? (Pause.) What languages? (Pause.) Say again? 

MR.     : Albanian, Italian and Spanish.

ADM. MULLEN: And you learned all those in America? (Chuckles.) 

I would just encourage that because it’s not just the language skill; it’s the cultural understanding that comes along with it. And there’s going to be more and more of that requirement, and one of the things I learned very early in my career; that people all over the world appreciate us as Americans – actually anybody but in my case obviously as an American – taking the time to learn a little bit about their language and trying to speak a little bit of their language, even if it’s just yes, no, thank you, nice to see you, good day, good night. They really do appreciate that because they actually move from that to a level of they believe respect that you have for them because you’ve taken the time to do that and the level of – working to try to understand it from their perspective. So I would just encourage that.

So we continue – back to sort of where we fit in right now. A big part of the next couple years obviously is the execution of this Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy. This is not just focused on Afghanistan even though that’s where we have the majority of our troops. And we’re not there alone. There are 42 other countries that have combat troops in Afghanistan. And NATO, which is the alliance which makes up most of those 42 other countries, has added another 7,000 troops in proportion to what they have there right now. 

So there’s a big international and diplomatic and political and developmental and economic plan that’s associated with executing this strategy over the next couple of years, and I really believe that we can turn the insurgency around. And it starts with security. 

And another sort of universal standard for me as I’ve traveled to countries over many, many decades now throughout the world is parents want to raise their kids to a higher standard of living and they’d like to do it in a secure environment. 

And so the basis for all this, quite frankly, is economics. And that is global economics; you know where we are right now, coming out of a very, very difficult financial crisis – not just in our own country but globally, as well. And that’s impacted all of us, including those of us in the military. 

So again, broadly, first big priority when I took this job was this broader Middle East/South Asia focus and it continues. Almost two-and-a-half years later it continues to be at the top of the list.

The second is that we have deployed our forces in ways that we never imagined we could, quite frankly, in 2000. And our Army in particular up until that point was what I call a garrison force. They lived here. They lived on bases. They only went overseas or they only deployed during a time of war. 

And the Army in many ways – our Army – is becoming like our Navy and our Marine Corps in a sense that now we deploy them, we bring them back and we deploy them again, almost like a ship or a group of ships, which we’ve done in the Navy and in the Marine Corps forever. And that’s the evolution of change in our Army. Our Air Force has become much the same, and so we’re a much different force than we were 8 years ago. 

And back to this change, and what does it mean, for our major units, our brigade combat teams, which is roughly 3500, 4,000 soldiers, those teams are now – the ones who went out first in 2003 – they’re about to start their fifth deployment. And those deployments are six months, eight months, 12 months, 15 months, 12 months on that order. 

And one of the ways I tell the story and the challenges that are associated with this is if I were a 10-year-old and my dad was a soldier in 2001, he has gone to war several times, been gone an extraordinary amount of time over those – the time between I was 10 and 18, and I just went to college. 

And the question becomes, how well – you know, do I know my dad? Or, how well does my dad – or mom, because quite frankly, women have deployed at a very, very high pace as well.  And that speaks to the challenges that face us in terms of the overall health of the force. Multiple deployments, stress on individuals, stress on families, a dramatically increased suicide rate across all the services, not just our ground forces, the Marine Corps and the Army, who bear the brunt of these conflicts. And we’ve taken significant steps to address those issues. 

And where families certainly have been a priority for us as long as I’ve been in the military, they have taken on a new and unique and much more fully integrated part of us as a military. We would not be able to be where we are. It’s the best military I’ve seen in the 40-plus years that I’ve been serving. And we could not succeed without unbelievable family support. Even given the strains, they have been extraordinary. 

So we’ve taken significant steps in our organizations to make sure we have better programs, better support, better medical care, increased benefits, education benefits, for example. Those kinds of things. And I think that will have to continue. And as we look forward after these wars, I think the family piece of this will just become more and more important over time. 

So an awful lot of focus in this of my time in this second area because we have put our people through such incredible challenges, and yet, they are resilient. I told you, they’re the best I’ve ever seen. They are resilient as military members, and the families have shown an incredible resilience, as well. 

And then the third thing that I laid out a couple years ago and still focus on is the rest of the world. Yes, these wars certainly focus us in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in Pakistan and in that part of the world, but there are challenges that we face globally, economically, as well as security-wise; whether it’s the entire Pacific Basin, which I think is going to be a sustaining economic engine for the globe, it’s the emergence of challenges in Africa, and Africa is a continent with great riches, great people and enormous challenges, whether it’s famine or disease or incredible poverty. And those are not problems for the United States to solve. I think these are problems for the world community to focus on. 

I mentioned I’m from Southern California. I was raised at a time where, essentially, I was trained to look East and West. And even being from Southern California, I’ve not been heavily engaged with Mexico or with Latin America, quite frankly, and that’s another part of the world I think in our own hemisphere, if you will, that we as Americans are going to have to focus more and more on as partners. There’s another, particularly, with Brazil that’s another economic engine for not just our hemisphere but, quite frankly, for the globe. So there are other places in the world that I think we are all going to have to continue to focus on as well. 

And one of the big questions for me right now that I’m starting to ask is, okay, what’s going to happen after these wars when the operational tempo slows down? What does our military look like? What will our challenges be for the future? Part of my charter is to look out 10 and 20 years to see what we need to do, with my first priority being the missions I’ve got, the second priority, making sure we take care of the people, and then the third really is to look to the future in terms of how does it look, and knowing in the incredibly challenging times in which we exist that the military will be a big part of this. 

Then the last thing I’d say about this because I think it’s really important since you’re studying the Congress and the presidency is the military needs to – is and needs to – sustain its position as an apolitical organization. 

Now, I’ve been chairman at a time where we changed administrations. We went from a Republican administration to a Democratic administration. In that regard as far as the United States military is concerned, it didn’t make any difference. I knew that going in when I took this job, worked very hard to support a smooth transition and it was led by then-President Bush and, now, President Obama, who set the tone, as leaders are supposed to do, for a smooth transition, which we needed in this incredibly difficult time. 

And then I’ll end where I said I would, which is on leadership. Of all the things you’re going to learn, and where I would encourage you to go, is take some risk, put yourself in positions of responsibility, learn how to lead with people, learn how to lead others who will follow you and sustain those very high standards that are so important as we look at teams, challenges and the need to address these challenges. None of us can do it alone; not individually, not one country. 

So how are you going to grow up to be a leader in this marvelously complex world, which I know is challenging but at the same time creates huge opportunities for all of us? And then more than anything else, to try to make it better for those parents I talked about, that they can raise their kids in peace and security and, again, to a higher standard of living. 

So those are some initial thoughts and I’d be happy to take your questions. (Applause.)

 

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