Welcome to this special event. I'm Frank Galey, Executive
Vice President and Provost here at Utah State University. I'm very excited to welcome you
to this remarkable event hosted by Utah State University's
Center for Anticipatory Intelligence. If you haven't heard of this
center, don't be surprised-- it is brand new. It's a groundbreaking effort
launched just a year ago to establish what really is a
first-of-its-kind nationwide program to educate and train
in anticipatory intelligence, a field that combines
science and STEM-- engineers, data
scientists, biologists-- with social science
students who study geopolitics, national
security, and social trends. These students fuse
their expertise in problem-solving
teams in order to better anticipate and
design resilient strategies against security
threats that are a result of the 21st century's
emerging technologies. If it sounds exciting,
it really is. Utah State University is on
the front edge of this effort. The Center for Anticipatory
Intelligence leadership team, represented here
in the first row, would like to thank
President Noel Coquette for her ongoing
support for the program, including funding for this visit
by our honored guest today. We would also like to salute
the College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Dean Joe Ward for his leadership which
helped to pioneer this center, a center which now
encompasses multiple colleges and more than 30 majors. We're excited to see so many
members of our community here. I'd like to call out especially
our outstanding high school teachers, who've made a
special effort to bring their students here to
share in this event, as well as key leadership and many
members of our impressive Utah National Guard. We welcome all of
you and look forward to a wonderful hour spent with
our special guest, Secretary Jim Mattis. I'm now very pleased to welcome
the director for the Center for Anticipatory Intelligence,
Associate Professor Jeannie Johnson. And when Jeannie
gives some credit to Joe Ward for
having some vision, you have to realize that
a lot of that vision comes from her as well. She has tremendous experience
in national security advising and the CIA. So with that, Associate
Professor Johnson will be here to introduce
our special guest Jim Mattis. Jeannie. [APPLAUSE] Thanks for making
room, everyone. I really, really
appreciate that. I couldn't get our
wonderful officers to let more of my beloved
students in that door until we were all sitting down. So thank you. Thank you for doing that. Today, I have the
honor of introducing a national treasure, an American
hero, and a deeply good man. He is a dear friend of
mine, and some of you know him as the Patron Saint
of Chaos, the Warrior Monk-- [CHEERS] I know, I know. The Warrior Monk. I would like to add another
title to that list that may not sound terribly
glamorous on the outset, but may be the most
important thing he has done for our country across
the last few years, and that is bridge-builder. And I know it sounds
like mundane work-- it is the essential
work of a great nation. So in his post as
Secretary of Defense, I watched as he welcomed foreign
defense ministers from all around the world and
built bridges with them, day in and day out. He traveled to them. And in one particularly
memorable case, Indonesian special forces bit snakes
in half just to impress him. So he was widely admired
around the world, widely loved, deeply trusted. And it's trust that a
great and powerful nation must establish with
others in order for it to maintain its station. And for many of
you, maybe you, like I, pack around his resignation
letter in your briefcase. I consider it a national
artifact all of its own, but I'd like to remind you
of one line in that letter that says, one core
belief I have always held is that our strength as-- and I will add the
indispensable nation-- is inextricably
linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive
systems of alliances and partnerships. Building those bridges,
maintaining the health of those ties was his
primary occupation during two years as
Secretary of Defense. He carried the mantle of
US power, which is immense, with dignity, with good humor,
with respect for our allies, and with an open mind. And as he did so, one of the
phrases that he would often use and that I have
adopted along the way is, not all good ideas come
from the country with the most aircraft carriers. So be a listener. One of the things that
he told my students was, listening
isn't just hearing the words of another person. Listening is listening with
a mind open and willing to be changed. That's a very
different thing, and it seems to be an art
form that we have lost in this current
era of our country. The fact that he
hasn't lost it is part of why he remains
one of my heroes. It's been a privilege to serve
this country alongside him, to serve on a Pentagon
team supporting him, and now to have the immense
privilege of introducing him to the Aggies that I so love. So please welcome,
Mr. Jim Mattis. [APPLAUSE] Thank you very much,
ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for the warm welcome. Thank you, Professor Johnson. [INAUDIBLE SHOUTING] But it's great to be back. After some of my
public remarks, I don't often get invited back
to certain friendly audiences at times. And I consider all
of it friendly, even if at times they want
to enthusiastically endorse something I said or did,
or quite the opposite, unendorse it. That's what America's great-- that we can do that. I love the idea that we could
do it right here in the Cache Valley, because I
guarantee you tonight in Hong Kong, those
young kids over there fighting for their freedom and
waving American flags don't have the right to do that. And so we should
all be very proud that we heard that here today. Very proud. [APPLAUSE] Also, I saw a number of veterans
when I walked the line when you were all being
held outside, and I wanted to see if anybody
was going to show up today. And I saw veterans-- I just want to say right up
front that I have an enduring respect for the veterans. I never forget my
debt to the veterans. They got me out of every
jam I got them into-- [LAUGHTER] Which was not often
pleasant time for them. But remember, we had a military
before we had a country. General George Washington's
revolutionary army turned out veterans
before we even had that Constitution
that we were swearing to uphold and defend. And there's no monument in the
country sufficient to represent all that you did. I remember one night
before an attack on a city, I went out and talked
to the assault troops. And as I was falling
back from them, the enemy made some problems
so I stopped for a little while until things calmed down
along the line of the troops. And after the troops
that I had moved on, I heard one of the
young Marines ask his older corporal, who was
probably all of 21 years old, do you think Fallujah
is going to be tough in the morning, corporal? And because we have
our ladies present, I'm not going to quite
quote the corporal. But he said, basically,
hush and get some rest. We took Iwo Jima,
Fallujah won't be nothing. And why do I bring it up,
is because that long line of veterans coming down
provides more of a confidence and a trust in our young lads
on the front lines, young gals on the front lines
tonight than any speeches by a secretary of
defense or general. That's not false modesty. The reality is those young
Marines getting ready-- and sailors-- getting ready to
assault Fallujah knew they could not face
anything worse than Shiloh or Iwo Jima. And they drew strength
from that example. And it shows how you
can apply history to keep this great big
experiment you and I call America alive, how you apply it. You don't just read about
dates and what happened, but you really understand
human beings put themselves on the line in our revolution,
writing our Constitution, fighting for civil
rights, never accepting that we were complete
or an experiment-- just a great, big experiment. We have no divine
right to survive. Bottom line is we've all
got to roll up our sleeves and help make this experiment
a success by never accepting where we're at-- always trying
to be a better country, a more just country, a more
responsive country. My personal debts especially
run high, ladies and gentlemen, to the Vietnam veterans. I know there are at least
two here in the audience I saw in the line. But to all the Vietnam veterans
here and watching on the video, I owe a special debt
to you because when I came into the Marines,
you were the veterans who raised me in the Marine Corps
and taught me the grim skills that you knew that I
would need one day. So that's one special group
of veterans in my lifetime that I always like
to single out. And you can't come to a group
of citizens like this as a US Marine-- not a marine, but a
US Marine-- we belong to you, we're accountable to you-- but also without saying the
enduring, unending respect for the gold star
families that are here. We never forget their
enduring sacrifice. They will live with that
for their entire lives, what they sacrificed
for our freedom. So my respects paid to the
veterans and the gold star family members. They're all part of that
same line of men and women who have given us these
freedoms in Cache, Valley this beautiful
corner of America that we're in right now. I'm talking for
just a little while. And, Professor
Johnson, I've learned it's a lot easier in this world
just to go along with whatever she orders me to do. She's a very pushy woman. [LAUGHTER] But then she's going to join me. She's somehow collected
up a number of questions from students. And then we'll go
through these here as she uses the
ambush technique on me to see if I'm ready for them. I grew up in the
Pacific Northwest. I'm a Westerner. I come here, and I look at
your beautiful mountains, I'm reminded that for Americans,
that marked the horizons for us somewhere up in the sky. We have so much freedom. And here in this part-- I would say it
is, no matter what Jim Bridger said about it-- this is the prettiest valley
in the Rocky Mountains that you live in. And it's great to be back. [APPLAUSE] I had my whole life planned. I was going to come
out of college. I'd just gone to college. I didn't know you had
to actually go to class to keep your draft
deferment, which I lost. But I was going
to go to college. I was going to come back and
teach physics and history in my school, maybe
get to coach football-- I had my whole life planned. And as the Yiddish saying
goes, you make your plans, and God laughs. He got a real
chuckle out of mine. At the time when the draft was
ongoing, I knew I'd have to go. Most of us figured we'd go. And we never thought
the draft-dodgers would be brought back as
heroes a few years later. So rather than miss our
parents' anniversaries, our sisters' weddings,
whatever, we decided to do our patriotic chore. I went off into the Marines,
and after a few years, it wasn't that I
liked the jobs-- I grew to hate mine fields
at a very young age. I grew to just love
the kind of Marines who would bite their lip and
crawl their way into mine fields probing for something
they didn't want to find. And just based on the absolute
delight, the absolute joy of serving alongside those
young sailors and Marines, I stayed in year-on-year. And one thing I learned there
was the coequal commitment. There was no difference
between an 18-year-old private and a 60-year-old
general's commitment to carrying out the mission. They all had their
own roles to play, but they looked at
each other as coequal-- coequal in every way. And I love that kind of
meritocracy, where that's what was basically your
measure was whether or not you'd step forward
when there was danger. It was also an organization that
had no institutional confusion about its role. It was to fight
and to fight well. But it also was completely
satisfied with us if we gave 100%, and it was
completely dissatisfied with us if we did 99%. You veterans remember
those dramatic moments in our early days in what
we call boot camp when, on one occasion, we were running
through an obstacle course, and I was first in my platoon
to go against another platoon. And I was obviously out in
front of him, and I thought, this is going to be easy. I took my time,
got all the way up, climbed the rope, touched
the knot, dropped down, and there was a
man bending over me who was convinced immediately
that I was a communist sent in to destroy the Marine Corps. [LAUGHTER] He said, you didn't give 100%. You decided just dog it. And he says, you're
going to hate me for the rest of your life
when I get done with you. And I don't hate him
for the rest of my life, but I could understand
at the moments I went through for about
the next 10 minutes why he thought he might gain
my hatred as he basically said, I'm not here to help you
through your midlife crisis. You're going to learn to
deliver for this country 100% of what you've got. And I bring this up
because how do you unleash initiative and creativity? How do you unleash
initiative and aggressiveness in the military? It has a lot to do with
why the Marine Corps is feared by its enemies and very
much admired by our partners. Why do our partners like
serving alongside our soldiers, sailors, airmen,
Marines, guardsmen? In the Marines'
case, it's oftentimes those two qualities-- the
initiative and aggressiveness. And one thing that
Jeannie brought up when she introduced
me was about trust. And, ladies and gentlemen,
in terms of leadership-- and we have a lot of high
school students here, college students here-- you're going to be
leaders someday. And if you cannot create trust,
you cannot create harmony. And if you can't
put that together, whether it be in an orchestra,
around a football field, or in a business, or in a
diocese, or in a military unit, then you may be proclaimed
president of the company, or the captain of the
outfit, or the team captain. But the people who
determine if you're a leader are the subordinates. And you've got to be able
to create that trust. What do you do with
it once you have it? Well, you try to get as many
people inside the tent as possible. You get people inside the tent
so they help solve the problem. And then you unleash
that initiative, and you do it in a way that you
just kind of take their hands off the steering
wheel once they're certain they know
what you want to do, and they carry it out ethically,
and morally, and very capably. And how you get
there is all built on that foundation of trust. So let me fast forward
now from 40 years before when I was a second
lieutenant in the infantry and talk about being the
Secretary of Defense. And I walk in, and we're looking
at a lack of strategy right then. And it went back for 10 years. This was not a condemnation of
the previous administration-- more than one administration
had contributed. And so what we did, we
sat down immediately and began writing the strategy. And I wanted some guiding
principles for the strategy. And I figured we'd better
have no more than a couple-- two or three. Because if you can't say in a
couple of two or three things how you're going to
guide the largest corporation in the world, which
is the US Department of Defense with 3 million people,
with people spread all around the world
doing combat, and building things, and maintaining
things, and training-- then you're probably going
to add more to confusion than you are to cohesion,
to collaboration. And what I did was I
came up with these three. One, we are going to make
the military more lethal. Number two, we were
going to make certain that we broadened and
deepened our number of allies. And number three, we were
going to reform the business practices so I could look all
of you in the eye and say, we're not wasting your money. Number one, the lethality
piece would be-- because I read
too much history-- and how I wished I'd majored in
history when I lived my life. I didn't know what was coming,
so I didn't major in history, I ended up having to read a lot. Many militaries
throughout history have forgotten what
they existed for. And as I thought about
the American military as ambassadors of the American
values and the American system around the world, of
them defending it, of them being sentinels of
our system, of our people, of our defense, and
all-- it seemed to me that the way this would
be put into practice was that the military was
to ensure that they were so lethal that our diplomats
would always be listened to from a position of strength. That was why we wanted
a strong military. It was to deter war, to try
to keep the peace for one more year, one more month,
one more week, one more day, one more hour while the
diplomats worked their magic. Then second line of effort-- I'll go into in a
minute about allied-- but the third line of
effort, the business reform-- I knew from the
briefings they gave me as I prepared for my nomination
hearings in front of the Senate that the military
had been underfunded. And at times, it was underfunded
in a very strange way. It was underfunded not by the
number of dollars given it, but it was being given the
dollars late in the year. It would be like we
went to you and said, you have to go through the
next year of your family, and we're not going to tell
you how much money you're going to make until September. But you're going to have
to continue to spend it the same way as last year. Say now, wait a
minute, last year I had enough money
for a vacation. I don't care. You still have to take
vacation, and you still have to do everything else. But in September, you
might get less money. And now what do you do? It was just crazy the
way it was running. So we put together the
strategy, and for the first time in 70 years-- believe it or
not, the Department of Defense had never been audited. Now, many of you have
business backgrounds. It had never been
audited in 70 years. In other words, some reasons
that some people would say were valid, but in my
role as the new secretary, my role was not to
have stress, my role was to create stress, OK? [LAUGHTER] We were going to
audit the books. And I told Congress, we're going
to find every mistake we're making, we're going to
come up and tell you, and we're going to fix it. So that was the way we went
about it with that attitude. And in fact, we did get
through the first two audits now of the
Department of Defense in the last couple of years. And we are finding mistakes,
and we're finding places to save money, and
we're a lot more capable of going to the Congress. And if you look at the budgets
the Department of Defense has had, just know
three years in a row, they are record-breaking
budgets supported bipartisan by Republican and Democrat. So for those who will
tell you at times, and you'll see it in the news
all the time, where nothing works in Washington, DC, we came
up with a very strong strategy. I talked to senators
and congressmen, I talked to allies-- it took me a year to write
the thing with some very sharp young gals and guys. And when we got done
with it, we were able to then hang
the budget on it. And for example, in
December of 2018, the second year I was there, the
budget I received at that time had 87% of the House
and Senate Republicans and Democrat voting for it. So keep the faith
with our system. I know it's got a lot
of challenges right now, but Americans, given a
good strong argument, given a logical argument
can pull together. 87% is doing pretty
good in any ballgame. Let me talk about
allies for a minute, the second line of effort. That one took 80% of my time. 80% of my time was spent
talking to foreign leaders, foreign militaries,
working with them, trying to pull teams together. I'd had the good
fortune, because I'd been in the military for a long
time, the privilege of fighting many times for our country. On not one occasion did I fight
in an all-American formation. It was always with allies. And you have to look at
where these allies came from. When we came back
from World War II, there was such a sense
of dismay over what had happened in the world that
the greatest generation coming home said, it's a crummy
world, but we're part of it whether we like it or not. Whether we like it or not, we're
going to have to deal with it. And so they put together
this international system-- you and I know it as the
United Nations, an imperfect organization, never designed
to solve all problems, where people would
get together and talk. We put together
at Bretton Woods, 44 nations wrote up the rules
of the road about finance. And you and I know
what grew out of that is the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund. And these would be
lenders of last resort. So if people were hurting
in a worldwide depression or a countrywide depression
and they were losing hope, they wouldn't have to turn
to a fascist named Mussolini, they could turn to a
lender of last resort and get some money into
the system, start building business, and this
sort of thing-- put the money back
into the system to help the next country. And we're trying to keep from
having another depression that drove people into the
arms of the fascists. The greatest generation,
as Harry Truman put it, was the greatest generation
not just because they whipped the fascists, but because
they then opened their arms and welcomed the
Japanese, and the German, and the Italian people back
into the community of nations only less than a
handful of years after the war was over-- that
bitter, disastrous war was over. And then one day I
was in the backyard of the Australian ambassador's
house in Washington, DC-- and America also in that period
made the single most self sacrificial pledge
in world history. And I thought I knew something
about American history, but it took a foreigner
to teach me this. And I learned a lot more over
these years from foreigners about our country at times. And I said, you
mean the Marshall Plan where we helped them out
and everything with loans? He said, no, no, no. He said, that was very generous. He says, unbelievably
generous conquering nations don't generally help the beaten
nations get back on their feet. He said, no, he said
after World War II, you could have looked
at Europe and said that's twice in 25
years you've drawn us into these wars that cost us
hundreds of thousands dead. And we're through with
it, you're on your own, you protect yourself
against the Soviet army. We're going to work
with Africa and Asia. We're going to work with Latin
America and the Middle East for markets. We're not being part
of this anymore. He said it wasn't necessarily
just your interest, it was your value
system that you were going to protect
democracy in Western Europe, even at the risk of 100
million dead Americans and a nuclear war. I had to be taught that
by a foreigner who was not even a European who
could look at it dispassionately from
down in the Pacific and watch what the
Americans were doing. And eventually, that
NATO that we built, that nuclear-armed NATO, held
the line, and held the line, and held the line until the
internal rot of the Soviet Union took it down from the
inside with the added push of the Eastern European nations
that wanted to be free once more-- the ones we couldn't protect
because they were already occupied by the
Soviet Army by 1945. And I bring this up because
that international organization, NATO, that we set up to protect
Europe never goes to war. It keeps the peace year
after year after year. And then the United States
is attacked on 9/11, and NATO goes to war. NATO goes to war-- all of
their countries send troops into Afghanistan with ours--
three of those countries, by the way, have lost more boys
per capita than we have lost-- we Americans have
lost, although it was America that was attacked. So if you ever wanted to
see the penetrating wisdom of the greatest generation,
how they set up this network and why I say that our security
to this day, and certainly in the future, is
inextricably linked to allies, and why put so much effort into
the alliance part of my job, that's the example
of it right there. Actually, because 29 NATO
nations went to war with us in Afghanistan, it has
a total of 49 nations, as 20 other nations
from Australia, New Zealand, other nations
joined up and sent troops in with us. Because with NATO there, it was
an international organization fighting against terrorism. And we all recognize this is
not something any one nation can handle, not even one nation with
most of the aircraft carriers, as Jeannie mentioned. So that's why I
put so much effort into that effort of the second
line of effort on our strategy. Recognize that
Russia and China are two nations that can
change our way of life-- we had to recognize that. It didn't mean that we're
going to war with them. Matter of fact, the
whole point of deterrence is not to have great
power deterrence or even great power competition, it's
to have great power peace. And that's what we're out
to do with the strategy that we adopted at that time. It's not perfect. We're in the midst of a very
raucous time in our democracy, and other nations that
are disappointed in us. And we have the way. We have a self-correcting
mechanism in America that we've always adopted, and
it's called elections every two years for every member of
the House of Representatives, and one-third of our Senate,
and certainly every four years for the White House. But I don't think right
now that this nation, for whatever problems it's
had and whatever problems it will have in
the future, it can be looked on as other than a
generous nation that's always striving to be better,
never satisfied with itself, never complacent, always
respectful of various points of view-- at times, you lose
some of the civility of it, especially around election time. But when elections are over, we
all have to roll up our sleeves and go to work. And a final word on
that as far as my role in the administration. Ladies and gentlemen,
I had never met Mr. Trump before I got the
phone call to be interviewed. I went back and
interviewed with him, and promptly, he and I had a
very forthright conversation. I disagreed with him three
times on the three questions he asked me. [LAUGHTER] And I would just tell you that
we walked out on the steps, and I thought, well,
that takes care of that-- back to Stanford. [LAUGHTER] And we got on the steps, and
President-elect Trump said, hey, I like this guy. And he hired me. And I was very upfront with
him all the way through-- had a good relationship. And we disagreed on some things. Near the end, it was time,
obviously, for me to leave-- I left with no rancor. But I would tell you that
we have a country here that is worth keeping faith in. We have a country that
is worth protecting. As a World War II
Marine put it once, he said the country didn't
have to be perfect to be worth fighting for. And I bring that up because
at times when I was young, I wanted perfection. And if something
wasn't perfect, I'd sink my teeth into it
like a dog with a bone and keep shaking it around. I'd ignore everything else. And as I got older,
I didn't get smarter, but I became more aware that
sometimes you'll look at things and you'll focus on
the imperfection, and that's good so you
work to correct it. But don't lose sight
of the larger hole and just what you
have at stake there. I think that as you
read more history, if we can study our
history, and recognize how imperfect this
country has been, and how it continues to
get better every year, and sure there's
been ups and downs, but the overall
trajectory has always been one toward a more just,
more responsive society. And one of the reasons I spend
most of my time now talking with young people
on various campuses is to talk to you about
why I have that faith. It's not some la
la land faith, it's based on the rigors
of our Constitution. It's based on faith in
the American electorate. And it certainly is not
dismayed by challenges. I've seen a lot of
challenges overcome on the battlefield when
someone might have said, you know, this is going
to be really hard. And this is where I think
that the study of history can really help us. I can't emphasize too
strongly that we've got to get back to teaching
the good, and the bad, and the ugly about America,
not just certain things, and have a narrow,
parochial view of America-- an honest view of America
puts all of it out there so that our young people have
the image and the vision that the Australian
ambassador had of America, as well as what we all
share here-- perhaps here in this valley where back in
1863 in the Shoshoni Massacre, we saw where we didn't live
up to our higher standards. So we recognize it. We work on it. We make amends. We get better. And if we keep in mind from the
good things to the tough things that we're always
trying to do better, if we try to lead our country
the way George Washington led his army that humbled
the redcoats who would defeat Napoleon a few years later-- and it was very simple-- he would listen to
his free men who didn't want to obey orders from
somebody from another state, he would learn from
them what they thought-- sort of really listen to
him, really learn from them. Then he would help them. He'd help them understand. He'd help them get rations. He'd help them get
uniforms or whatever-- and then he would lead them. I think we're
forgetting too often right now to listen
and to learn, to build bridges to each other. I was the Secretary of Defense. I had to look at terrorism. And, yes, it's bad,
and we're going to have to deal with it,
ladies and gentlemen, for a good many years to come. And I had to look
at what China was doing in the theft of
intellectual property, and espionage, and
that sort of thing, and what Russia was
threatening to do with nukes. I looked at North Korea's nukes
and missiles and Iran's and all that-- and I knew that it wouldn't be
beautiful if we had to fight, but I knew we could
protect America. And we've got to
work hard to keep that edge so that none of the
authoritarians ever get brave and think now's the
time to test us. Let's hang on to the peace. Let's stay so strong that our
diplomats are always respected. But what worries me
more than anything is the way we're treating
one another in this country-- the contempt we
show for one another just because we sometimes
disagree with each other. I think it's very,
very important that we learn to listen-- to really listen-- to
each other and understand each other's position as well as
they understand their position. So we start from a position
of dispassionate discussion, even on passionate subjects. I think it's
absolutely essential. And oftentimes, history will
tell you how people in the past dealt with similar situations
and dealt with them successfully or unsuccessfully. It's not that the history
lessons gave me all the answers as I kept reading over the years
where the Marine Corps requires you at each rank,
you get promoted, you get a new reading list. It's not that it
gives you the answer, but it will give you
many of the questions. For example, in the
middle of one fight, I remember wanting to do
something to trap a terrorist. And the idea I had came from
the US Army's Geronimo campaign back in the late 1880s. And we use computers
now to look at where to put the outposts and all, but
history really does help you. But more than that,
it humbles you. It shows you that if
Martin Luther King, with the celebration
we had yesterday, if he can go to Jamaica
and write an article when he was in, I think, his 20s,
and it said, chaos or community? Now, since my call
sign is Chaos, I thought that might
have been directed to me. But in fact, it was chaos
in its truest sense-- and basically talking
about how are we going to come together, and
work together, and create a community of shared interest? Or are we going to have chaos? He saw brilliantly and with
clarity what the choice that we have on some
of these things. And to have a country
that's given that choice, the boys and girls in Hong Kong
tonight don't have a choice. They're trying to carve
one out, and they're not doing well at it right
now, even if they wave American
flags in the street to show what values
they stand for. So let me stop there,
ladies and gentlemen, because Jeannie's
already crossing her legs on me, which means
she's getting ready to come up. But here we go-- we're
going to see now how I do-- as she waterboards me--
no, I didn't say that. [LAUGHTER] So we gathered in questions from
a lot of our different Aggie students. And some of these are
composites, some of these are verbatim. But we wanted students
to have a chance to ask some questions of
our guest while he's here. So the first one
is, how do you think average Americans can
be convinced to pay more attention to foreign policy? Yeah. Well, average Americans--
god bless you. I would like to think
I'm as high as average. [LAUGHTER] I say that because I think that
most Americans are modestly about themselves, but they
look much more broadly at their neighbors. They help each other. I've been in countries, very
sophisticated countries-- ones many of our
traditions grew out of-- they don't have nearly
the level of charity work and the level of
neighborly concern that I see in many of the towns
across Utah, a state I admire. I'm not from here, I
just admire it greatly. And when you have Americans who
care about each other almost as-- I don't know if it's
the pioneer spirit or whatever it is, maybe just
a sense of being Americans-- the most important
thing for them is they have to admire and
trust whoever's talking to them. If you don't trust someone,
then how do you get to a point where you're going
to believe in them? And I think if we could get our
leadership in Washington, DC to be rewarded for
virtuous behavior, to be rewarded for working
collaboratively across party lines and solving
problems, then you would have people
listening to them when they say why we need allies. Why do we need to have
a military this big? Or we don't. I think what we have to do is
have a message that's clear. You've heard my
message on allies. We could vote in here
tonight-- how many agree, how many disagree. But I think you have to have
people come out of government and talk to groups like
this and make the pitch. And then you have
to vote, and you have to work to support
the values that you think are right. So it's mostly based on
trust and a clear message. And I think we can do that
on most of what we're doing in America-- not everything. We don't do everything right. We're the good guys, we're
not the perfect guys. When preparing to make a
decision or give an opinion, what part of your
decision-making process do you spend the most time on
or put the most effort into? That's easy. What I found was Einstein--
he was a smart guy who lived a while ago-- he was asked, if you
had to save the world, how would you compose
your thoughts? And he said something
along the lines of, I'd spend 55 minutes defining
the problem, citing the problem in its own unique
circumstance, and then save the world in five minutes. So I think what we need
to do more and more-- I don't care whether it's
health care, or gun issues, or immigration-- we need to break the problem
down into bit-sized pieces and make sure that we're
defining the problem, we all agree on the problem. Because if you don't
agree on the problem, then there's no chance to
a solution is rolled out you're going to say, oh, that's
a good idea, because you never agreed on the problem
in the first place. So we call it problem-setting
in the military. You set the problem in
its unique circumstance before you start
problem-solving. And we haven't
always done it well, and that's one of those
lessons right there that was written in
blood, by the way. But I'd spend a lot of
time gaining concurrence on what is the problem
you're trying to solve. What's your favorite
position you've ever held? Oh, that's easy. Second Lieutenant in
the Marine infantry. [LAUGHTER] At that point-- [APPLAUSE] You're right down
there, you're laying in the same mud with
your sailors and Marines, you have the same comfort
level, which is zero. But you learn you'd rather
suffer in good company than be in the company
of delicate men, you know what I mean? [LAUGHTER] It's a wonderful place. It's a place where
you see guys-- I was talking to some guys once
at an outpost in Afghanistan, and then I walked
off down a trail to go catch up with
my radio operators who decided to leave me
there because they were tired of waiting on me. And as I was walking along, a
soaking wet sailor and Marine were walking toward me. They'd just gone down to a
filthy dirty irrigation ditch and cleaned up, OK? So they're walking
back soaking wet, and normally I'd just say,
how are you doing, young man? And the Marine said,
living the dream, sir. Living the dream. And the sailor said, no
Maserati, no problem, you know? There's such a sense
of rustic living. There's just kind of a
happy-go-lucky carefree spirit in those lads that
you drew from it every day. I'd like to tell you I got the
same kind of energy when I was living and working
in Washington, DC, but I cannot tell a lie. OK? [LAUGHTER] Well, interestingly, that
leads to our next question. What was most
difficult about serving as Secretary of Defense? Well, let me back off-- civilian control of
the military means that every ship that
deploys, every aircraft that goes overseas, every army
infantry company that goes out, every time they go, a Secretary
of Defense, a civilian, signs the deployment order. That's civilian control
of the military. In other words, the
joint staff that works for the Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs would say that over
in Afghanistan, they need two infantry
companies, a special force detachment, and by
the way, we need an aircraft carrier to replace
the one that's out there now. And this book would
come in twice a week, would have anywhere from
10 to 30 deployment orders. And the first day, I'm
standing at this stand-up, desk and I see this come in. I'd been the Executive Secretary
for two Secretaries of Defense. There was no mystery to the job. I knew they worked
every weekend. I knew they worked on holidays. I knew what it was like to
send letters to next of kin. And that caused me to pause as
I looked at that thick book, realizing that it was
going to be up to me to determine not just
how to carry it out, but should they go. So I hand wrote out
a card and taped it-- and I didn't want it typed
up, I wanted to remind myself I'd written this with
a question-- it said, does this deployment contribute
sufficiently to the well-being of the American people that it
justifies the death of these troops-- not going in harm's way, not
possibly getting injured-- could I justify the
death of those troops? And I hope every time I
read a deployment order for a submarine here,
an airplane there, an infantry unit over there-- I hoped that I would be able to
answer that question in a way that I can live with. So that was the
tough part-- when you're sending them
off overseas to defend this great big experiment and
you're not going yourself. It was easier-- and
many of you in this room who are veterans know
what I mean-- it's easier to go yourself than to put your
family in the waiting role, to put others in harm's way. It's actually easier
to go yourself. That was the hardest part. [APPLAUSE] Well, here's an easy one. What course of action will lead
to peace in the Middle East? [LAUGHTER] Yeah. OK. Here's the thing-- it's been
the source of a lot of problems. And if you go back
into the history and you look at the
religious crosscurrents and the political crosscurrents,
colonialism's impact, terrorism, radicalization-- you
see all of it in this caldron. And I think what we have to look
at there is bringing in people who know the history
sufficiently well to recognize there are
no grand bargains here. You're not going to
make one great big peace treaty and suddenly
everyone's going to sign up. So what we have to do again is
break the problem down into, what do we do about the
situation in Lebanon as an international community? What can the UN do? What can the Arab League do? What do we do about
the situation having to do with minority religions
or minority political groups in the region? And we're going to have to work
on little steps-- baby steps. How do you make
something better? Because if we keep trying
to go for big solutions-- and god bless Bill
Clinton, he almost pulled it off
there at Camp David when Yasser Arafat pulled out-- but I just don't believe
the big, grand bargains are possible anymore. And I've served out in that
region, ladies and gentlemen, since 1979. And some of the people
out there, when they say, girls don't go to school,
and when they say that you've got to pray a certain way-- don't patronize them. They really believe this. And until education,
economic opportunity, and a change in some of the
practices of the nations or the religions
there can occur, we're going to have
to hold the line and try to make baby steps as
we take each of these issues forward within the
realm of the possible. So I would break
the problems down into those bite-sized
pieces, and then find the communities of
interest that would work. And there's a lot
of good people who are willing to roll up their
sleeves and work on them. But if you make it
too big, it'd be like trying to swallow an
elephant in one bite, you know? It's going to choke you. So that's the way
I'd go about it. [APPLAUSE] How do we restore the
confidence of allies? Well, I think we follow George
Washington's dictum of you listen, and you learn, and
you help, and you lead. Remember that we
need those allies. It's not a one-way street. Now, the allies too-- I was a Supreme Allied
Commander at NATO for years, and I would be in the
room when presidents of different American parties
went and said to Europe, you've got to pay more. For example, it's how
you go about trying to get them to carry more of
their share of the burden. When I came into the job,
one of my first meetings I had to make a trip
to Korea and Japan because of the urgency
of that challenge. My next trip, I
believe, was to NATO. Now, I'd sat in that big
room with 29 other nations-- there's two Supreme
Allied Commanders who sit at the table with
the political leaders, and I'd been one. So I knew many
people in the room. They knew me. They knew one of the
major issues that brought President Trump's
administration in to Washington was allies not paying
their fair share. And so, of course, being
it's the United States, you speak first when you
get into the group there-- by common consent, I might add. And I said, you know,
ladies and gentlemen, I've sat in this very room as
various secretaries of defense for Republicans and
Democrats who have said, you've got to pay more. And it's now manifested
politically in America. And here's my message to you-- you cannot expect me to go home
to America and look Americans in the eye and say, you
have to pay more taxes, and you have to care more
about the freedom for European children in the future than
European parents are willing to care and sacrifice. You need to come through now. You've got to raise
the money that we're putting into NATO's defense. And they'd already
started because of the Russian invasion of
Ukraine a year and a half before. But it was a way
during the break, all the ministers came
over to shake my hand. I thought I was going to
lose some rapport, because I was very blunt about it. I didn't lose rapport, so
it's how you do things. I remember Condoleezza
Rice when she was the Secretary of State
telling a bunch of us young generals and admirals-- they would bring various
government officials in to talk to us, to teach
us how to be generals and admirals-- and she looked like she had
a finger about 27 inches long as she waved it at us. And she said, and you remember,
admirals and generals, around here, we do things
with our allies, not to them. So remember-- most
of us, like me, we got over enjoying public
humiliation by second grade. So let's not publicly
humiliate our allies. Work with them. Recognize they have
parliaments too, they have to vote
taxes too, they've got schools they
want to build too. Show respect for what
they're going through, but at the same time
advocate strongly and persuasively that
these values that grew out of the Reformation
and the Enlightenment are worth defending, and we're
going to have to defend them. You look at what's happened
in President Xi's China, in North Korea, in Iran,
you look at Hong Kong right now, you look at Russia
and what Putin has just done, basically saying he's going
to stay in power as long as he chooses-- our values have
got to be defended. And I think we can make a
very strong argument for it if we follow Condoleezza
Rice's point-- we do things with our allies, not to them. [APPLAUSE] This last question is from one
of our high school students, so I appreciate
your participation. He says, I start out my
morning in a US history class where we learn about the
slaughter of Native Americans, then move to my AP
government class where we learn about our
current toxic politics, and next to my
finance class where we study our insurmountable
national debt. Can you please tell me something
positive about this country that I can believe in? That's a great question. And it's a great
question, because we have to have the honesty to look
at what we're doing right now. And I am very concerned that
people with my color hair do not want to tax
themselves sufficiently to pay for all the
government services, and we just keep
raising that debt-- we just keep raising
it and to me, it is intergenerational
theft that we're then going to turn to young people
and say, thank you very much, you pay the interest on this. To show you how much damage it
can do, ladies and gentlemen, that debt is owned by
countries overseas. And not all of those
countries are our allies. If we go back to traditional
interest rates, by this year, we could be paying more
money servicing our debt-- paying interest on our debt-- than we pay for the
Department of Defense. That is not a healthy thing. No country has maintained
its military power and thus maintained its
freedom if it didn't maintain its fiscal house in order, if
it didn't maintain its solvency. So why do I start with that? Because I think
it's time for all of us to get together and start
talking about generations-- about climate change, about
debt, about education. And we can do that. We actually have a
society that is set up to do that if we'll simply
take the time to do it. Why do I feel so
positive about this? Again, I was in the infantry--
named for infant soldier, young soldier. You cannot go there and see
the level of sacrifice-- how about seeing young
lads 18, 19 years old day after day taking
a loose tourniquet and wrapping it around
their upper legs, and wrapping it just tight
enough that it won't fall off. And that way if their leg
gets blown off on patrol, they're going to snap
the tourniquet shut so they don't bleed to death. And they don't do at one time,
they do that day after day after day. 18, 19 years old, they believe
in this country so much they're willing to do that. And every step, you
know what can happen. And so I would suggest
to you that something that carries that much optimism
from people who are literally putting their lives on the line,
people who are signing a blank check every one of us in
this room with their lives-- payable with their lives-- there is something
in there worthwhile. Dig through the history,
you'll find the good, the bad, and the ugly. But the bottom line is there's
a lot more good in this country, even if we don't talk
about it right now. I have absolute faith
in the American people. I know the military
will hold the line as we come back to
fundamental friendliness, respect for one another. As long as we can have talks
where we listen to each other, where we have protesters
in-- at least for a minute-- poor guy, I'll try and
find him later on-- but at least so
long as we can have the kind of open
discussions that allow us to work
on these problems, I know we can solve them. We're the greatest experiment
in the history of the world. And let me just close with
something here, because it does relate to this high
school student's question. Walter Lippmann was
a graduate of Yale. And in 1940, you'll remember
the bombs are raining down on London, Paris has fallen
to the Nazi stormtroopers. And he talked to
Yale graduates-- and he's an alum-- and sometimes
people in colleges can talk to fellow students, colleagues,
something about the atmosphere, the shared, formative experience
allows you to say things that are uncomfortable in
other circumstances-- one of the reasons I
love coming to colleges. But here's what
Walter Lippmann said-- you took the good
things for granted, now you must earn them again. For every right you
cherish, you have a duty which you must fulfill. For every hope
you entertain, you have a task you must perform. For every good you
wish to preserve, you will have to sacrifice
your comfort and your ease. There is nothing for
nothing any longer. I bring this up because America
was sitting on the sidelines as the fascists
were on the march. England was holding out alone. France was overcome. The Japanese were on the attack. The Italians were
deep into Africa. Everything was going wrong,
and we came out of that, and look at the country the
greatest generation built. I know I was part of
the luckiest generation, because I was one of
the ones they raised. I'm not sure my
generation is doing as good for that
high school student as my parents'
generation did for me. And it's time we recover that
and remember Walter Lippmann's words. Thank you very much
ladies and gentlemen. It's an honor to be back here. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
