The following is a transcribed excerpt of an interview with retired U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis for the Thank You For Your Service podcast, an academic exploration of civil-military relations hosted by Ensigns Nick Paraiso and Thomas Krasnican as part of their graduate studies at the University of Chicago. The goal of the podcast is to help their civilian policy school classmates learn more about the military.
This interview with Admiral Stavridis also covered NATO, retired officers in politics, and what civilians should know about the military. You can find the full episode on Tuesday 30 April at their iTunes site or any other podcast platform. This transcript has been slightly edited for clarity.
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A few weeks ago you wrote an op-ed in TIME magazine about how there hasn’t been a Pentagon press briefing in over 300 days. We were wondering if you could talk a little bit about why that’s an important issue to you right now.
I am concerned anytime our government does not interact deeply and broadly with the American press. And it’s always fashionable to kind of bash the press, and bash the media. I would say that if you’re in the media, you know you’re doing a good job when the Obama administration is dissatisfied with you, then the Trump administration is dissatisfied with you. That’s just the norm of the media. But the media serve a vital function in any democracy, and I think particularly here in the United States. And so, I am concerned when I see any organ of government backing away from engagement with the media—but I’m particularly concerned when I see our military do it. And the reason is because of the gravity and the weight of the missions that our military accomplished—both life and death, literally, in an operational context.
But there’s also the strategic importance of our engagement. And I think therefore the Department of Defense really is surrendering a very powerful tool on three levels: One is to set an example. We like to think of ourselves in the military as the keepers of integrity and honesty and truth and courage and honor and commitment to give the Navy core values. When you refuse to interact with the media, you’re not setting a good example in my view of standing up to those values of truth and integrity.
Secondly, we surrender a channel from which we can provide input and examples of what we are doing to our partners, allies, and friends. Believe me: all around the world, people watch those press conferences and they want to know what the United States is doing in a military and in other contexts. So if we’re not doing that kind of engagement with media, our allies, partners and friends don’t have a chance to, in a very fulsome way, see what we’re doing.
And then thirdly, and maybe most importantly, if we’re not engaging with it, with the media… our adversaries are not able to see the power and the scope and the capabilities of the U.S. military. That has a very profound deterrent effect . . . I’m not just talking about press conferences in the Pentagon, I mean embedding reporters, bringing observers out to sea on our carriers and our submarines, sending them into the field with our ground units, flying them in our planes—that is a very powerful deterrent effect. So I think it’s a real miss on all of those levels for us not to be interacting early and often with the media.
Did you see the follow-up to your op-ed published on the Modern War Institute?
I did not.
It was written by an Army PAO and his argument is essentially, how can we as the military feel comfortable giving press conferences when we can’t trust the media to report honestly? His basic argument was that not doing press briefings is a way to keep the military out of politics. And if there were press briefings, there would probably be political questions, and the answers would be politicized as a pro- or anti-Trump sort of thing. I was wondering if you have any response thoughts to that argument.
I’m surprised to hear a PAO take that position. And I interact frequently with PAOs at all levels, and I’ve never heard a single one take a position along those lines. I think that’s a mistake and a misunderstanding of “PAO 101.” Any public affairs professional will tell you—the media gets to pick the question, but here’s a news flash: you get to pick the answer. And if you don’t want to dive into the morass of politics, you can quite easily in a press conference say, I want to refer that question to the Department of Defense, or refer it to the White House, or refer it to State Department, or simply decline to answer it. Anytime you are saying that you don’t want to take advantage of the 90 percent of good things because you’re scared of the 10 percent that might go wrong, you’re really missing the mission on public affairs. So I’m surprised to hear that. What was the rank of the officer who purported to have that view?
I’m not actually sure, sir, I can’t remember. I think he may have been an O-3 or an O-4. It was just an op-ed that was published on the MWI website. and there was already a fierce backlash to it on the Internet from a lot of scholars and retired PAOs. So it seems like it’s been addressed a lot, but we just wanted to get your take on it.
Thank you.
So you’ve written this op-ed [about press briefings], you’ve also written many books and many publications. You did a PhD in the middle of your career, so you’ve really established yourself within the military as having a reputation as a scholar and an academic—whereas I think most people view military officers as mostly technical people, right? You just have to be proficient at your job, fly your plane, drive your ship, fire your weapons. Why did you think it was important to spend so much time on intellectual pursuits during your military career?
Well, there’s certainly a personal component to that. I have always enjoyed reading, thinking, writing, and I think that those are core skills for any military officer. Certainly, all of our military leaders need to master the skills and the trade, and I would put my ship handling abilities or my tactical war fighting skills up alongside anybody’s. But I would say those are necessary, but they’re not sufficient in my view for a military officer. Again, if you really look at the history of the military, so many of our military leaders are thinkers and writers as well as warriors. And I think you have to be able to do both if you’re going to have a long-term career in the military.
You can do very well, I would say, up to the O-5 command level on a kind of purely tactical capability level. But I think beyond that, if you’re going to add value to the organization, you’ve got to be able to operate on a wider plane. So that is what attracted me to it. Both a personal interest in books and reading and writing. (In another life, I would have been a writer or been a media person. I think there’s a whole different alternative Jim Stavridis out there.) But my own view of the profession of arms is that it requires the more senior you get, the more you have to read, think, write and have the courage to publish your ideas.
