 Good afternoon. Welcome all. Let me first thank Mr. John Kennedy and Dr. John Hatendorf who let me come in today to present to you a topic that's been near and dear to me since 2008 entitled Global Arms. Now, I'm going to talk about global security cooperation and its long-term implications, its deliverables on the exporting of international training on a macro level. And while I'm giving you this presentation, the slide presentation is going to illustrate the exporting of international naval sea power and naval officer leadership connected with the Naval War College right here at Newport through their Naval Command College and the Naval Staff College presentations. And that will give you a sense of the third volume, what will be a five-volume collective series when it's all said and done that being Global Arms of Sea Power, the Newport Experience. Now, the Global Arms series basically connects with international military officer exchange programs that began in 2008. March of 2008, I was getting ready to launch another story at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas because we were living in Lawrence, Kansas at the time. And my plan was to write another history on the founding of Fort Leavenworth, okay? And as I was gearing up, preparing in that research, I got to talking with some of the post-historians connected with the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. And they heard about what I wanted to do and they came to me and said, no, you've got to stop the presses there. Enough has been written on the founding of Fort Leavenworth. Somebody needs to step in and write on the international officer programs that go on at the Command and General Staff College from a personal perspective, from a one-on-one interview format from an outside perspective. So I said, sure, I'll give it my best shot. I'm not germane to the international program, so I'm a lot more germane today than I was in 2008, but I said that I would give it a shot. My first book, Global Arms of Collegiality, captured interviews from international officers attending the Fort Leavenworth program. Volume 1, published in 2010, with a second edition published in 2013 in Jakarta, Indonesia. The reason that second edition came out was because one of the interviewees in the book was former President Cecilio Bambang Yudiyuno, or coined SBY of Indonesia. He was in the CGSE class of 1991. He invited me to Jakarta to present, to interview with him personally one-on-one. That got twisted about at the time because this was August of 2009. We had the two hotel bombings that took place in Jakarta. So he wanted me to visit him in his home for an entire day to do a one-on-one interview with him. He wanted me to interview him at the airport on the way out of Jakarta. So the second volume in the five-part series is Global Arms of Strategic Balance, and this speaks to the international senior alumni fellows who attend the National Defense University out of Washington, D.C. at Fort McNair, and as well as the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks. The third volume, Global Arms of Sea Power, the Newport Connection speaks directly to the international programs here at the Naval War College. Volume four will capture Global Arms of Air Power, and volume five that's going to wrap up the series will capture Global Arms of the Americas, strategic strategies across the Americas. So, the Global Arms book series comprised three parts. One part, institution history. The second part, faculty and leadership perspectives. And the third part is a collection or a hodgepodge of international officer alumni oral histories and personal accounts via a battery of questions that I ask them because I go around the world and I track down alumni who've attended one of our staff and war colleges. And I arrange an interview with them. So, I will ask them a series of cues related to what experience that you take out of your class seminars. What are your thoughts on American culture? How you might plan on exporting your lessons learned at this particular staff in war college and a host of other things as well. So, with that, I'm happy to announce that thus far, I have 90 international military officers interviewed in the Global Arms series in the first three volumes thus far. And I'm also happy to report that not one of these officers has asked me to withdraw their story. And that's very important, you know. And for the most part, these interviews are conducted without the politics involved and that's also very important because you don't get the glossed over thought processes in their interviews. You get what they really, really think about what's going on in their country, how they perceive the United States and what's going on around the world. Now, I want to put a quote from Richard M. Nixon in your head while I proceed. Richard Nixon was invited to the White House just six months before he passed, actually. He was invited there to address a group of political scholars and he was talking about leadership. And in this quote, he was specifically talking about that of Boris Yeltsin. And he said, listen, it's important that we understand we know the man and woman from the heart and the mind so we can better understand how he or she is going to lead their nation. Okay, and that's very important. With that, at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, there was a student in 1964 by the name of Major Zia Wouhak of Pakistan. How many all remember that name? Does that ring a bell to you? Okay. Well, you know, we would not become a four-star general. He would not become president of Pakistan. But while he was at Leavenworth, not only was he a very astute, intelligent young officer, but he embraced the American culture left, right and center literally. He loved everything about America. He loved his sponsors, Ed and Dolly Gordon, who he often visited in their home on the weekends. He enjoyed going to the only McDonald's in 1964 in Kansas City, which is about 40 miles from the post, okay? He loved all things America. And through second and third persons, according to, he quipped on the way out of Leavenworth upon graduation. He said, you know, if I'm ever in a position of power to transform my nation to that of a democracy such as what we have in the U.S., I'm going to do it. But of course he didn't. Those of us who know Zia's history, he actually went the other way. But an interesting question is, even if he wanted to transform his nation into a democracy such as ours, would he have been successful in doing so? I would say probably not. So there you have it. So this work, the series in its collection, is an insight to the international military education and training dimensions of the United States military student fellow programs. The backdrop to these works is the United States Security Cooperation Assistance through International Military Training programs. Now, security assistance refers to a wide range of training courses in U.S. government programs through which the U.S. aids other nations to defend and preserve their own national security in support of U.S. foreign policy objectives. I'm at programs are part of many building blocks of American military multilateralism in foreign professional military education at U.S. elite military schools. Now, in 2000, or FY 2013, Security Assistance Education and Training sales to foreign countries totaled about $447 million. You know, that represents about 1% of the total State Department's budget. That's not a bad investment. That's a pretty cheap way, I think, to bridge international security and cooperation. It's a good way, a cheap way to bring on friends and partners from all over the world to ally with us. So these educational exchanges could often be thought as an experience in the life of a young college student spending an entire semester abroad. But the most influential and affecting global security and public policy are the international exchange programs that happen at these schools. Because these exchange programs are structured to befriend, build trust, and gain intercultural understanding with a shared frame of defense reference. So the result of these exchange connections is a worldwide epistemic community of educated military officers. Okay? These oral biographical sketches reflect a family of nations to subsets of personal accounts of the student's experience through their own lens, and again, it's usually without the politics. They reflect on experience in the U.S., in the classrooms, their dialogue in the seminar groups that they often meet with, out on the field trips of their new acquired friends and partnerships, and how they might export U.S. defense education models around the world. So these international portraits reflect an education in culture, linguistics, and geography, but most extraordinary from these exchanges is that we learn that cultures are indeed a product of institutions, and these cultural windows capture a piece of our own mosaic of humanity in how one thinks, in our shaped by our life's experiences. They literally bring in the old and the new world with them, with all that's good and bad. But in spite of their differences, they all lead to the same global commonalities of which we all rely globally, global security and the right to navigate one's own destiny. International officer participation at U.S. elite military schools is pinnacle to global defense understanding and also important for a conduit in influencing the art of soft and smart power around the world with other means of diplomacy in lieu of aggressive hard power. And the statistics that come out of these schools are quite impressive in their own right. Currently, over 14,600 former and current heads of state, several hundred ministers, ambassadors, and representatives, and several hundred chiefs of staffs of their own armed forces, or of a humanitarian United Nations service have come out of these programs. About 45 to 50% of these graduates are promoted to flag rank or higher, and for some nations, senior military leaders, attendance to one of these elite military schools is a requirement for advanced promotion. Now, the international military officers and fellows learn the American way of life through a series of field studies programs, you know, outside the classroom. They learn about American human rights, to mark democratic norms of society, U.S. government institutions, the political process, the judicial system, the free market system, the media, education, health and human services, diversity in American society, civil and military society, but more important than that, these international students see the warts and all. They see everything about America. They see the poor communities, the penal institutions, the homeless shelters, nursing homes, VA hospitals, and these field trips are a way to correct any misperceptions that we may have accumulated over a lifetime, and it's a way for folks to ask questions about our society. Back in the 1990s, an international officer while touring some penal institutions turned to his instructor and said, why is it that so many of the inmates in these jails made up of color? African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and that's a tough one to answer, isn't it? Another international officer while touring Indian reservations really thought in his mind that the American Indian was still held captive to their reservations. He didn't know that the American Indian is as free as you and I. So these are some of the misconceptions that we can clear up, and it's a way of gaining an understanding of who we are and why and how we do. Excuse me, we do the things we do. Another important element to these international exchanges is the sponsor programs. Very essential, military and civilian sponsors provide the professional and social cover for these students to make them feel at home while away from home. Organizations like Operation International, Lansing-11 were a chamber of commerce at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, started in 1952. We have a chapter of People to People International out of Kansas City. This program was developed by Dwight David Eisenhower during his early years as president because he said there's got to be a better way to bring people together opposed to going through another hellacious war, such as World War II. And right here at Newport, we depend on a robust community of civilian sponsors that come from all over Newport and beyond. And these social interactions nurture a positive perspective of the United States that fosters a shared experience across national boundaries. And some of the stories, the backstories to these sponsor programs are quite interesting. And I'll share one that's rather humorous. I think back in the 1970s at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, this sponsor who typically had African officers invited into her home from Central Africa, and this one up-coming officer he would be invited to her house two or three times a week. They would have dinner together, and he would sit on the living room floor and watch TV together. But while he was sitting on the living room floor, he was in a habit of taking notes. He never knew what note-taking he was doing. He was always writing things down, okay? Some years later, he became a position of power and he was part of a coup d'etat in his nation. And then she later quipped, well, that officer probably planned that coup right here in my living room. So, you know, a little bit of humor that goes behind some of these things. Now, some would argue that the difficult measure of IMET success in a positive yield is hard to collect. But the intangibles from these programs are subtle in the lasting impressions of a common human interest that we all share. And there have been members of Congress, you know, who haven't been for the program, international military assistance, and there have been many members who are for the IMET program. My friend representative, late representative Joe Mowkley once argued, you know, I think we need to be out of the business of these international military exchanges. You can't force democracy at the end of a bayonet, okay? Counter to that, we had Congresspersons like that of Congressman Ike Skelton out of Missouri, who often said, and he told me on a one-on-one interview with him several years ago in writing the first volume, he said, you know, we have to have these programs. We turn out far many more winners of friendships and cooperation around the world than we do the few bad apples who might decide to turn tyrant. So, so how do we, how can we not put a positive yield to these international exchange programs when you have former combatants from Egypt and Israel sharing the same class at Fort Leavenworth in the 1970s and just a few years before they were warring against each other. The first six months they sat across each other in their seminars. They wouldn't even so much at look at one another until the instructor got so fed up one day, he said, look, I want officer A from Israel and officer B from Egypt to get up and explain their wartime strategies together, and they did. And that night they were seen having a drink together. They became the best of friends. Their families became the best of friends. When they advanced the flag rank grade, they sat down at the same table and negotiated peace together, okay? They resolved some of their nation's differences together. Or when officers from France and Rwanda come together in the 19, the class of 1991 at Fort Leavenworth, Major Eric Stabenwald at the time from France and Major Paul Kagama, who was president today of Rwanda. They were classmates in 91. They became good friends. Fast forward in 1994, then Lieutenant Colonel Eric Stabenwald is tasked to lead a United Nations peacekeeping force in and around Rwanda, and he was tasked with ensuring the safe haven of thousands and thousands of refugees fleeing the war-torn country. At the same time, he was faced with Paul Kagama's troops shooting at him. Now, who's he going to call? He's going to give Paul a call and say, listen, I need you to get your troops out of my way so I can get these refugees to a safe haven. Had he not known Paul Kagama on a personal level, would that have happened as easy? Probably not. Or when two classmates right here from the Naval Command College in the class of 2008, Captain Carl Gilles of Belgium and Lieutenant Colonel Lufti Al Barate from Yemen meet in the Gulf of Aden to work together to repatriate their surviving undocumented crew of a capsized fishing vessel. Okay? And I do need to mention, and I failed to mention this to you early on, my slide presentation is going to hone in on the third volume, Global Arms of Seek Power, the Newport Connection in its own right and how it affects the Naval War College. As I'm speaking, you see the slide presentation and you should be able to butt the two together. Now, it's important that I now mention, that said, I need to enter two extraordinary naval officers in the mid-20th century. The first starting with Admiral R. L. I. Burke who actuated the Naval Command College in 1955. Admiral Burke contemplated future plans to bring former enemies together on a co-equal terms for a greater understanding. He made this happen in 1955 so that world navies could collaborate and learn more on the commonality and value of the oceans. He understood the strategic dividends to international naval cooperation with links to Newport's NCC course. In 1949, he met with British Lord Mountbatten to share with him his idea and Lord Mountbatten looked at him and said, Jolly idea, Arleigh, sign me up for three or four slots. And then Arleigh looked at him and said, not so fast sir, one family at a time. One per class. And then he later encountered former Japanese and German enemies and approached him with the same idea and they were just flabbergasted. You mean you're going to invite me to Newport and a joint ventures such as a place like Newport when we were just fighting amongst each other just a few years earlier? And he said, that's exactly right. That's exactly what I want you to do. Okay? So his idea was to create a program so that international naval officers and their families could spend an entire year together to learn who we are as a team. The second gentleman I want to introduce to you is Admiral Richard Colbert introduced a broader who introduced a broader international vision to internationalism. He was called Mr. International actually, Mr. International Naval, a Navy. So as the president of the Navy War College in 1971 he actually penned the Naval Staff College program, a program for the lower ranking officers to learn administration and things like that. He was responsible for initiating the International Sea Power Symposium and bridging Allied Navies in a cohesive partnership across oceans. He was the pioneer in integrating international naval thought and collaboration. And you notice up here in the slide presentation the International Naval Sea Power Symposium that happens here at Newport every other year. We have another former student officer, Colonel, I'm sorry, Admiral Jan Donkvist from Sweden. As of today I believe he is still Chief of Naval Forces in Sweden, class of 2005. In 2006 and 2007 he organized a joint steering group with NCC classmates from the Baltic nations to improve the region's joint naval literal operations for detecting, disposing of undersea ordinance from World Wars I and II still lingering out in the Baltics and the North Sea. So had he not attended the class NCC class of 2005 would that process have been just as easy for him? Maybe yes, maybe no. Again Captain Carl Gillis from the class of 2008 and this is the real value of naval collaboration. In 2010 while commanding a frigate in the Gulf of Aden 70 nautical miles south of Yemen Captain Gillis comes upon a capsized fishing vessel with 11 of its 15 surviving crews sitting on its hull signaling distress. The survivors were of different nationalities but they were not documented and most didn't have documentation. So Carl called upon his former classmate from Yemen to help him repatriate some of these fishermen to their place of origin. And now with this effort otherwise would have taken many days to resolve had he not had a contact right there in Yemen to help him along with this process. In 2010 the US Navy reaches out to Vietnam and actually in 2009 reached out to the Vietnamese People's Army leadership to re-engage military cooperation between the United States and the Vietnamese military the first time since 1975. And this outreach came with an invite for two of their best naval officers to attend the naval staff course class in the class of 2012. His name was Major Hai, he's the one that I interviewed in the book. He is today the assistant to the director for the Vietnam's Vietnamese Defense Institute for International Relations and he promotes defense cooperation and organizes military delegation exchanges. But he got to spend an entire year here at Newport and who knows, I mean the treasure trove that he took back with him to share with his fellow colleagues and his nation could very well have been remarkable. Hai shared his country's passion, his country's history. He also shared his country's passion for Ho Chi Minh who is in many parts of Vietnam still revered as a great hero in the hearts and minds of over two-thirds of the population. So this kind of tells us how indeed history catches up to us all over time. Rear Admiral Emeril Efftimoff from Bulgaria and then the NCC class of 2005 as well. He was born of an earlier generation of east block strategic thinking with no western standard of military thought before attending Newport. In 1992 he did graduate from the senior staff college of St. Petersburg, Russia. But his prior Soviet military training was in war mission techniques and tactics and that's very different from the decision making models he learned here at the Naval War College. So let me go through now with some of the post-global transformations that take place from all of these staff in war college. International officers graduate with a wider perspective of global military capabilities and they better understand the world and its cultural differences. We learn new dimensions on how to think versus what to think in a joint military strategic and operational design resulting in a more cohesive interoperability. These officers gain a vast network of collegiality for consulting and partnering as a global team for many years after graduation. U.S. military institutions expand on a wider arm of networking with the International Alumni with a broader sense of awareness from a human and cultural perspective. We come to better understand nations, its people who are different from us and appreciate the long-term strategic value in international security cooperation. So it goes without saying that the United States is really the butter of internationalism. That this nation has a global responsibility albeit deliberate or by default or as some may point out it's what we get for being an indispensable dependent upon superpower. There's no one else around the world that can do what we do. NATO can do it. NATO doesn't want to do it quite frankly, okay? We're the only ones with the assets. We're the ones with the allies, Atea. Russia and China would love both to have the number of allies and partnerships we have around the world as we do, but they don't. We've got the allies. So this IMED policy to admit foreign military officers to the U.S. military institution is not only a means to enhance our own national security, but also a means of creating links of defense cooperation around the world. This cooperation helps to build new and sustained old relationships that can influence a softer and smarter approach in a globalized, complex world. But with all of IMED's good intention and spent treasure, there are still no guarantees. Okay, at least not in the short term. The risks are there, but the rewards for a more secure world are many. So may these international exchange programs long reign in the future. With that, I'll open it up to questions.