 Good evening shipmates, friends, guests, students, it's great to be back in Newport. It is a little surreal for me. This is my first time on the stage and I think by my own count this is about the eighth time that I've been up here on the stage to speak in this auditorium and of course I spent about ten months in those seats back from in 1989, 1990. So it does feel a little strange being back here in civilian clothes. No compliments necessary. My wife picks out all my clothes. That's probably the toughest part of retirement. But I didn't get to retire very long because Secretary Kerry put me back to work and we'll talk about that in just a moment. But I'd like to thank Admiral Howe for his very kind introduction, first of all. And Aaron, thanks to both of you for your hospitality and your graciousness in having a reception at the President's quarters. In all the years I've been up here, this is my first time in the President's quarter so it was a very special treat for tonight. So thank you. And to the Naval War College Foundation, thank you so much for sponsoring this event. Once again, I feel tremendously honored. I felt honored every time I've had the opportunity to come up and speak here but most especially tonight to come back for an evening lecture. I want to thank all the students for volunteering to be here this evening. I know what it's like. But hopefully I'll have a chance to talk a little about, connect to what you're doing here at the War College and inform you and raise awareness on some of the things that are going on in the Arctic. I want to recognize just a couple of people. I could spend all night going through an entire list of people here in the audience, especially my Coast Guard shipmates that are here. But I will mention two very special people. One who is on staff, Captain Ivan Luke, who is the 23rd commanding officer of EGLE, followed me aboard EGLE, and then a hero to both of us, Captain Ernie Cummings, who served in EGLE a couple of years before us. And as I said, I don't want to get started on all my Coast Guard shipmates here, but I do want to mention one person who's very special to me. That's Lieutenant Commander Sean Lansing, who was in the junior course here. He served with me in a number of capacities, including work at Coast Guard Atlantic Area, serving a number of months as my military aide at Coast Guard Atlantic Area, transitioning to be my first military aide as commandant and then protocol officer. And I'm just very proud of him and his wife, Kerry, and their two children, Ryan and Olivia. He's a great Coast Guard officer. They're a great Coast Guard family, so it's wonderful to have them here in the audience tonight. And I hope those of you who have been in seminar with him have had an opportunity to share his very strange sense of humor. I appreciate it, but anyway, great to have them here. Another great friend, Admiral Guillermo Barrera, who is the former chief of the Colombian Navy, a great friend to the United States Coast Guard and a great friend to the United States of America in helping us to conduct our challenges in fighting transnational criminals and stopping drugs and other things. He's been a great partner and it's always great to see him when I have the opportunity to come up here. Admiral Howe was very gracious in mentioning that I was the 2010 distinguished graduate. Every time somebody says that, I'm sure that the dean of academics from the Coast Guard Academy during my time rolls over in his grave. Every time that I've been given a special honor, I have something that humbles me, or brings me back to reality. So I remember it was the day before I went to the dinner. The dinner was held in Washington, DC to present the Distinguished Graduate Award, and it was the week before I assumed command of the Coast Guard as a commandant. And in the mail, I received a card from the former head of the mathematics department at the United States Coast Guard Academy, Captain Jimmy Woods. And it was very nice of him to send that, and in the card is very simple. He said, congratulations. It is an honor well-deserved. Well, that's very nice, except I think he said the exact same thing to me when he gave me an F in calculus back in 1971. So what I would say every time, I can't pass up the opportunity to say a little bit about leadership, particularly when we have all the students here. What I would say is I have a much longer lecture that I give from time to time. In fact, I gave it part of it last Monday. I had a chance. This has been a good week for me. I spoke at Quantico at the Marine Corps War College last Monday. And then I spoke to a group of students from Le Col de Guerre, the French War College, last Wednesday, and now Newport. So this really tops it off. But in this lecture that I give, I talk about inflection points in a career. And for me, probably the most important inflection point was attending the Naval War College. I had spent about 13 or 14 years involved at the tactical level. I served before coming here. I served in four ships, commanded two of them, pretty much focused on operations. And as a Lieutenant Commander leaving my second command, I said, what am I going to do with the rest of my career? I spoke to a couple of mentors who recommended that I might apply for the Naval War College. I was very honored to be accepted here. And it really changed me. It changed my career. It brought me from the tactical level up to the strategic level and really set a tone for the remainder of my career. In fact, the way that I'm going to address the Arctic tonight really has some semblances to strategy and policy. Looking at history and putting things in context to understand where we've come from, what we're experiencing now, and what we might look forward to in the future. So the Naval War College was instrumental in my career in helping me to start thinking more like a senior leader to think strategically and also gave me some exposure to history, which helps us to put things into context. One of the other two other inflection points I'll talk about, probably, and my wife would correct me. She would say, the most important inflection point was asking me to marry you. And I admit, in fact, I told the Marines down in Quantico that that was the most she attended with me down there. So we talked a little bit about that. But the second inflection point followed almost immediately after us getting engaged and really plays into me being here tonight. And that was my selection of my first assignment in the Coast Guard. Because I thought, as I left the Coast Guard Academy, I was going to a Coast Guard cutter in either Boston or New York. My fiance was very happy with that because she was from East Lime, Connecticut, Midway in between, and she thought that would be great that she could get from either location she could get home on a regular basis to see her parents. But on the evening that we selected our assignments, by chance, a classmate of mine came out of the room and said, hey, Pap, there's one assignment left in Alaska. And I said, wow, Alaska, the last frontier. That might be interesting. So I went in, and up on the board was the Coast Guard cutter ironwood home ported in Adak, Alaska. I looked at that, and I said, well, I'm not exactly sure where Adak is. But it's Alaska. It'll be exciting. It'll be entertaining. It'll be interesting. So I selected that particular billet and then went back to my room and opened up the Atlas to find out where Adak, Alaska is. Now, I challenge all of you, if you go and you pick up an Atlas of the United States, you turn to the Alaska page. There will be a full page which is encompassed by mainland Alaska and a little bit of a nub of the Alaskan Peninsula. And then there'll be another insert which shows the remainder of the Alaska Peninsula up to about Unimak Pass. And then there's another insert that starts the Aleutian Islands. Then there's another insert that completes the Aleutian Islands. And Adak is about halfway through the third insert, 800 miles out on the Aleutian chain. When I went home and told my wife we were going to Adak, Alaska, no, I didn't even get that much of a response. It was silence on the line. But fortunately she went there and she will tell you that Adak was an inflection point for her as well because it took her away from home. It taught her self-reliance, self-confidence. She confronted problems and challenges that she wouldn't have faced if she was close to home during our first assignment. And we only saw each other three months out of those two years because I was deployed most of the time and that was an inflection point for me because I wanted to be a sailor in the United States Coast Guard and I will tell you that if you sail in the Bering Sea, the Gulf of Alaska and the Arctic Ocean, it will either convince you that you don't want to be a sailor or it will make you a sailor for life. It made me a sailor for life but it also taught me something about weather, operating in areas that don't have charts or soundings and relying upon your crew and never in my career over the rest of my 14 years are going to sea, did I ever experience sustained bad weather like I saw in the Bering Sea? And it also gave me exposure to the Arctic at a very early stage. I saw what the ice conditions were 40 years ago. In fact, the first time I went above the Arctic Circle was July 7th, 1976. We got stuck in the Bering Strait in July in the ice and that was normal conditions. I went back to the same location 36 years later when I became commandant and flew in to observe in a Gulf Stream coming in from thousands of feet and I could see no ice from the shoreline out as far as I could see in the Chuck G.C. And that's the new normal in the Arctic. That's the challenge that we're confronting. There was a new ocean above us and what are we gonna do about it? What are we gonna do about the increase in human activity? What are the strategic implications and are we prepared for it? So that's a little bit about what I wanna talk about tonight. I also wanna talk about two terms before we get into the rest of the lecture here. The first is national security and I'm sure that I don't have to talk about this with this group because you understand. But when you mention national security to the average civilian, they're thinking about all of you. They're thinking defense. They think about that first bullet. For most people, national security means the first bullet. I was reminded during a trip to Canada a couple of years ago when I attended to speak about the Arctic at the Joint Defense Board, Lieutenant General Seminoff, who was head of the Canadian Forces at the time, spoke at length about the fact that national security is much more than national defense and encompasses all those issues and all those issues are at play in the Arctic. So the Arctic is really the broader definition of national security, economic security, environmental security, energy security, and all those other things. They all come into play. The other term that I wanna talk about is something that I derived from reading about Alexander Hamilton. This institution instilled in me that you need to study history to understand where you came from and why you are what you are. And most of the culture of the Coast Guard was derived from Alexander Hamilton. I don't know how many of you have read the Federalist Papers. We consider Alexander Hamilton to be the father of the United States Coast Guard. And there is reason for that if you read through the Federalist Papers. I also listened to a professor from the Naval War College once say that Alexander Hamilton is the father of the United States Navy. And there's some legitimacy to that as well. Hamilton fought on the battlefield at Yorktown, Virginia. He understood that the reason we won the battle at Yorktown was because the French fleet under the Comp de Gras blockaded the Virginia Capes and prevented the British fleet from resupplying Cornwallis at Yorktown. He understood sea power. So in Federalist number 11, which was written in 1787, he talked about the need for commerce and a Navy. He understood that our country, our prosperity, remember that word prosperity, because that's what drove Hamilton. He wanted us to be prosperous. And the Navy was a means to provide prosperity because he understood that we would rely upon the seas for lines of trade and communication and that we would need a Navy to defend that, to provide for our security. But he also came to the conclusion in Federalist number 11 that we couldn't afford a Navy. We were in debt. So how do you raise the money to pay off the debt and eventually buy a Navy? Well, that was Federalist number 12. And in there, he devised or recommended that we support the central government by collecting tariffs instead of taxes. Those goods that we would bring in from Europe, the manufactured goods would be taxed in order to support the federal government. And in fact, that was implemented in 1789 and the Tariff Act of 1789 once we formed the government under the Constitution. And tariffs supported our government almost all the way up through the First World War. We didn't have a personal income tax until the First World War. So it was a sound principle, but you have to enforce it as well. And within Federalist number 12, he talked about creating a maritime constabulary force which was translated in the Tariff Act of 1790 into a purchase of 10 cutters which formed the original Coast Guard for the United States, a security force in the maritime environment to provide for safety and security. And just to demonstrate that he understood as well, he sent an act to Congress in 1789, the Lighthouse Act, with consolidated aids to navigation within the federal government as well. So to provide for the safety and security of maritime transport. One of my favorite statements is I believe that one measure of a nation's greatness is the resources it provides for mariners to safely and securely approach its shores. That's maritime governance. And it's critical to our national security. It's my favorite statement because I said it. But it was really based upon Hamilton. It was my readings of Hamilton and during my tenure as commandant in order to justify, validate why we needed to build new ships, new aircraft, et cetera. It was because we had this concept of maritime governance. It's much more than national defense. It encompasses the entire maritime world and other countries around the world get this too. Maritime governance leads to prosperity. Maritime governance is providing safety and security and I would add environmental stewardship for our waters as well. So two challenges that are illustrated by this slide. The first is the projection that's used, a Mercator projection of the world, which is what we're all accustomed to and comfortable with. What a Mercator projection does is distorts the North and the South. In fact, on most Mercator projections they cut it off at about latitude 80 or so and you don't see the Arctic and you don't see the Antarctic and it's the way we've been accustomed to looking at the world. So it's not surprising that we're unfamiliar with the Arctic. And when we look at the world in this projection it's mostly land, land is what you focus on. Second problem that this particular slide illustrates is the changes that's occurring in the Arctic. The Arctic is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the world. It's real, I think you all understand that and I think most people in Washington now have at least come to the conclusion that yes, climate change is real. Now we're into the argument whether it's man-made, whether man can do anything about it. I can leave that for Q and A and give you my opinions about it. But that's the challenge. It's heating up twice as fast as the rest of the world. The ice cap is receding and it's creating an entirely new ocean at the top of our world. This is how I look at the world. That's a projection looking down on the North Pole and when you look at the world that way, what is that? That's a maritime environment. It's an ocean surrounded by land with access through strategic points. And here to four we haven't worried too much about it particularly in the United States, particularly in North America for Canada and the United States because the Northwest Passage and that end of the, I'm looking for a laser pointer here. There we go. This particular portion of the Arctic has remained fairly well frozen in as the area above Russia, the Northern Sea Route has opened up and a couple of other areas. This area above Norway has always been open because of the Gulf Stream sending warm waters over there so it's understandable that there has been development here. Development is starting here but we've been a little bit behind in terms of us reacting and our development. So I wanna go back in history a little bit here and it started with a visit to Malta back a number of years ago. I went there to speak at the University of Malta and I was given a tour of the city and I met one of the remaining Knights of Malta and one of their historians took me on a tour of the city and described to me how they survived the siege of Malta by the Ottomans back in 1567. And he recommended a book, Empires of the Sea by Roger Crowley. I read the book and I was amazed. I mean it's just a tremendous book, well documented but it also in there it started talking about the fleet of Venice and the Knights of Malta were a little upset because the fleet from Venice did not come down and provide them relief. Eventually Sicily came down and provided relief but Venice did not. But the book also continues to the battle of Lepinato when the Christian fleet primarily Venice defeated the Ottoman fleet. And here to for I had not read much about Venice. So I started reading about Venice and I found out that Roger Crowley also had another book which documents the rise and fall of Venice and it covers pretty much the 14th century to the 16th century and it's just fascinating. And I was fascinated that Venice could have become the predominant maritime power in what was called at the time the center of the world, the Mediterranean. And I'm gonna connect a few things through history here as we go forward. I'm gonna talk about Venice but I'm also gonna talk about some other maritime powers as well, including Venice, Portugal, Great Britain, Singapore and Iceland. And I'll make the connection as we go along here but the constants that I saw when I started studying these various countries included first and foremost like the United States in the beginning a desire for prosperity, a desire for security, maintaining geostrategic strategies and alliances, searching for greater efficiencies whether they're technology, shorter trade routes, et cetera. They all seem to come into common with these countries that I just mentioned. Venice is fascinating because it's a small island nation, a small vulnerable island nation that was able to build a fleet which at its height was 3,000 ships. The Arsola and Venice, which I've had a chance to visit could produce one galley per day. They were so efficient at doing it. And one of the other technologies or innovations that they did was most of the galleys in the Mediterranean were rode by slaves. The Venetian galleys were rode by free men who had a cut in the profit and also could serve as soldiers or sailors and help fight in battle as well. So it made the Venetian fleet very, very efficient. And the other fascinating thing was they could maintain relations with Christian Europe, the Byzantine Empire, and the Ottoman Empire all at once. The sea routes only covered the Mediterranean and then into various outposts in the Black Sea, but then trade had to go to the Far East across land and maintain those trade routes. But these were critical because they were competing with, as I said, three different regions of the world. The Ottomans trying to take over more and more of this world. And at the same time, Venice was able to maintain those geostrategic relationships to be able to compete and trade and remain prosperous. Their downfall was when they had to choose sides. First of all, the Byzantine Empire was defeated by the Ottoman Empire. And then they took sides with Christian Europe in the Crusades, in the battles against the Ottoman fleet and other activities, and started losing their trading posts. I said I would also talk about Portugal. The next country, now Portugal is not an island nation, but if you think about Portugal in those days, it was surrounded by Castile. It was a poor, almost island sitting there on the Iberian Peninsula. They wanted to be prosperous. They wanted security. They did not have the geostrategic relationships. So they started exploring out into the Atlantic. And they also improved technology. They developed sailing ships, caravals that could sail closer to the wind that could explore down the coast of Africa and work their way around. And when they couldn't sail into the wind anymore as they came around the curve of Africa, they found by studying the currents of the South Atlantic that they could sail well to the west. And that's how they discovered Brazil and then tack back and make it around the Cape of Good Hope and into the Indian Ocean. They did that over a period about 90 years in the 16th century before getting to India and starting to establish the trade routes as we know them today. I called up Roger Crowley after I had read his first two books and after I came up with this theory about Portugal. And he says you're gonna be very happy because after Christmas I'm putting out a book about Portugal and how they organized the first global empire. I have the book now, I'm reading it and it pretty much confirms what I come to myself. But like anything else, there's usually people that are smarter than me. They get out there and he's making money off this while I'm coming to the Naval War College and talking about my theories. But three great books. He has some other ones out there as well but it puts things into perspective for the world. So the Portuguese worked their way down around Africa and established trade routes with India and to China. The Spanish worked across the Atlantic into the Indies and the British were working at the same time, the Dutch were working this way and over time we established these trade routes as we understand them today on this Mercator projection which is the view of the world that we understand. The only improvements over time was of course the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal but pretty much for a couple hundred years these were the established trade routes. This is the way everybody went. When we went to the Arctic Council Ministerial in a canada this last spring to take the chairmanship of the Arctic Council, I did a little studying about a Calawit and I found that its original name was Frobisher and it still sits on Frobisher Bay. Martin Frobisher was a British ship captain who was sent by the King to look for the Northwest Passage in 1569. 1569 at the same time that the Venetians were trying to maintain their chokehold on commerce in the Mediterranean which was the known world at the time and the Portuguese were working their way around Africa. Great Britain was sending Frobisher out here to try and discover a passage around North America. Why? Because Great Britain wanted security. Great Britain wanted prosperity. Great Britain was looking to improve technology, build better sailing ships and Great Britain was looking for better routes to conduct trade, shorter routes to conduct trade around the world. After the ministerial in a Calawit and I went to Anchorage, Alaska for a conference and in the Anchorage Museum there was an exhibit on tour honoring this guy. Who knows who that is? James Cook, absolutely. 200 years after Frobisher, Great Britain was still looking for that Northwest Passage because they had become the dominant maritime power. They were dominating trade around the world and in spite of being in the number one position they were still looking for a more efficient trade route to get from Great Britain to the Far East to conduct trade. Now, some of the legacy we know that after World War II Britain started its decline, colonies, nations broke up, new nations arose but the legacy of Great Britain is in places like Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore, former British colonies that have become because of their strategic locations. The same reason why Great Britain maintained them for so many years, they were located in strategic positions for trade and they remain. In fact, I met with Minister Tan from Singapore just a couple of weeks ago in Norway. They have lost their number one position in terms of trade volume in containers around the world. They were here to for the number one transshipment point in the Far East for container traffic because they take it from large ships and break it down into smaller ships and they take smaller ships from around Asia, put it in larger ships and conduct trade around the world because they are in a very strategic location. Shanghai has overtaken them in terms of volume. The Singaporeans will tell you they still have better profit margin but China is able to reroute some of their traffic in order to give them the prestige of having the number one container port but nonetheless China and Singapore are competing for strategic locations and trade which means prosperity. Singapore, going back to my talk about Venice is a small, vulnerable island nation but they maintain great geostrategic relationships around the world. They are at peace with everybody and they compete against everybody but they are very good at what they do. They continue to embrace technology. I've visited their container ports. They have vehicles without human beings that go around and pick up containers and bring them to the right ships and they are in the process of doing away with that particular container port and building a brand new one because they wanna continue to be number one. I've not been to Hong Kong or Shanghai but I understand they have similar technologies and they work very hard as well. So, back a couple of years ago I visited Singapore. I was very impressed with my visit and then two years ago when I went to my first international Arctic Conference in Reykjavik, Iceland, I noticed that the two largest delegations in attendance was Singapore and China. Much bigger than the US delegation and I'm thinking why are they there? Well, I thought about it the first morning when I attended, I gave the plenary speech that morning and then a scientist came on to talk about the future trade routes in the Arctic. Once again going back to that projection that I like that looks down on the North Pole and he started talking about the Northern Sea route above Russia and how that's opening up and it will only be a couple more years for perhaps you can get six, eight, maybe 10 months out of the year in passage and you can save anywhere between four to six days in transit time between Europe and the Far East. The Northwest Passage is going to take a while to open up but if it opens up you're going to see a savings in time there as well. The real money maker is mid-century and maybe sooner but most scientists say mid-century the multi-year ice in the Arctic Ocean is going to be gone and when you can do a trans-polar route across the Arctic you can save up to 10 days in transit time. When you think about the numbers of ships that transit from the Barents Sea to China carrying natural gas and the savings that you can accrue over the course of a year saving all those personnel and fuel costs this is the money maker right here. In fact China is already increasing its number of transits on the northern sea route but this is where the money maker is going to be and much has been made about the Chinese ice baker Shui Long being in the Arctic over the last few years and people were speculating that they're after minerals or energy or whatever it might be or trying to make a land grab. My personal opinion is no. I think they're up there studying the patterns, studying the sea routes because they know that this is going to make a difference not only in saving some money but it's also going to change the strategic location of those transshipment ports as well. So as I looked at, as I sat there in that lecture I start looking at all the vectors and where they're coming in and I'm sitting right there and I see a lot of vectors pointing toward Iceland. So the next morning I had breakfast with the Singapore delegation and I said, why are you guys here? And Minister Tan said, well, we're a small, vulnerable island nation. We're worried about climate change. We're worried about the oceans rising, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I looked at him, I said, no, you're not. You're worried about Iceland becoming the next Singapore and he smiled at me and he shook his head and I've had subsequent conversations with him over time as well. So I said to him, okay, so you're here in Reykjavik why are you here and what are you doing about it? He says, well, we recognize the fact that we could lose our strategic location as a transshipment port and we think that Reykjavik or somewhere in Iceland is it going to be the new strategic location and we're here to establish relationships, to talk about the possibilities of providing our expertise, our technology to Iceland, to help them become the next number one strategic transshipment port. And if we can work out those agreements, we will go home, we will retool our industries, we will make plans for 10, 20, 30 and 40 years from now, we'll change our curriculums in our schools in order for us to remain prosperous into the latter part of the century. And that's when the light went on for me. I said, wow, that's exactly what we ought to be doing in the United States. Unfortunately, in Washington DC, we can hardly think past the next 12 months of the budget cycle, much less 10 years or 20 years or 30 years or 40 years. But I think the Asian culture is a little bit different. They have the long view. They study history. They look ahead in the future. They apply the lessons of history to what they're doing now in order to be prepared for the future. China's doing the same things if they're not as communicative. The Singaporeans will sit down and talk. I've had meetings with the Chinese but they generally read from a script and they always put a mention in there about being a near Arctic nation. But I think their intentions are the same. So right after I attended that conference, I went to Trump's in Norway for Arctic Frontiers Conference and I spent some quality time with their foreign minister, Borga Brenda. And we were having a bilateral meeting in his office and I mentioned to him, I tested my theory about Singapore and Iceland. And he said, yeah, Admiral Pepp, you have good insight but you're wrong on one point. I said, Mr. Minister, what am I wrong about? And he said, well, it's not going to be Reykjavik as the transshipment port. It's gonna be Tromso as the transshipment point. And sure enough, the Singapore delegation was there in Tromso as well and the China delegation as well. They're all thinking about it. So I've talked about this a number of times and the connection is all these countries have realized that maritime trade is important for their prosperity, for their safety, their security. And they are all working, trying to improve technology, maintain geostrategic relationships. And I'm wondering where we have forgotten that because Hamilton certainly understood it. And in the early days of our country, we understood the need for maritime governance and keeping us prosperous by keeping a lead in technology and geostrategic relationships, et cetera. So I tended to focus on this and I gave the lecture as I developed it a couple of times and one day I was giving it and I can't remember exactly where but a gentleman came up to me afterwards and he said, oh, Pat, you're really missing out on something. And I said, what have I missed? He said, well, look up at the top of that chart. He said, the vectors sort of come in at various locations down at the bottom but all the vectors converge in the Bering Strait. The United States has responsibilities. What are you doing about it? So therein lies the challenge. We are behind. Anything that we do in the Arctic is a new start. Icebreakers being probably the most prominent, most visible thing. But any new start is very tough in the federal budget. Anything that's new displaces something that's being done already. And do we have the political will, the determination to prepare ourselves for our maritime governance responsibilities in the Arctic? So the Arctic Council is our chance to raise awareness in the United States in the Arctic. I like to tell people, let's see, Washington, D.C. is 3,500 miles from Barrow, Alaska, our northernmost city. We're probably somewhere in that vicinity but in that 3,500 miles to Barrow, Alaska, there's an awful lot of Canada in between. So we are literally and figuratively disconnected from the American Arctic and that remains a challenge. There's about 60,000 people in Alaska above the Arctic Circle that understand it very well. Most of the rest of Alaskans understand it pretty good. But for the lower 48, it's just not a high priority issue, although it's starting to become one and I'm grateful for that. I started my level of interest as commentator of the Coast Guard because I knew that maritime governance depends upon the Coast Guard in the United States waters and the United States Coast Guard was not fully prepared to take on our new responsibilities in the Arctic. So I started campaigning for budget authority in order to do things but we weren't making much progress. So when Secretary Kerry called me on the night of my retirement and asked me to come to the State Department to serve as the special representative for the Arctic and lead our efforts in preparation for the chairmanship of the Arctic Council, it didn't take me long at all to agree for a number of reasons. First and foremost, my dad as a marine always taught me that when your country asks you to do something, you do it. But I also had that special interest in the Arctic as well and we really needed to raise awareness. We're doing it through our chairmanship of the Arctic Council. The Arctic Council is 20 years old. It started in the early 90s. Finland started the effort with a focus on environmental protection of the Arctic. In 1996, it was codified in the Ottawa agreement which brought the eight countries of the Arctic together to focus on sustainable development and protection of the environment. The eight countries by the way are the United States, Canada, Denmark because of Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. They are the only countries that have sovereign territory in the Arctic and then if you break it down even further in the Arctic Ocean, you have the Arctic Five, United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway and Russia and that causes a little bit of a problem from time to time but in general, we've got pretty good relationships and we're making progress. The chairmanship of the Arctic Council rotates every two years so this is the second time the United States has had the chairmanship. The Arctic Council structure is very interesting. As I said, we've got the eight Arctic States, the states with sovereign responsibilities in the Arctic in the center but we also bring in the indigenous people in the North in these groups that we call the six permanent participants which represent the various indigenous groups that go around the Arctic. We also have observer states. In the early days of the Arctic Council, you had to pay people to be observers. It was that much of a challenge but in the last decade, the interest has risen significantly. We currently have 32 observers, 12 of those are countries and then a combination of non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations and we have right now as I speak, we've got 18 groups and countries waiting to come on as observers and we're trying to work our way through that because it's becoming a little unwieldy but we've committed during our chairmanship to resolve the issue. In terms of structure within the United States, Secretary Kerry is the chairman of the Arctic Council but the Secretary of State of the United States usually has a few things on his or her plate, things like Syria, Iran, Ebola and other things happening around the globe. So I run the day-to-day business within the State Department. I serve as the State Department's representative to the interagency and supervise Ambassador Dave Bolton who is the chair of the senior Arctic officials and our senior Arctic official, Julia Gorley and I work across the various regional and functional bureaus in the State Department and as I said, across the interagency in Washington. Well, I'll get to what we're doing in the interagency in just a moment. We came up with a really ambitious program for the Arctic Council. I've always been a believer that leadership requires you to set the bar high and we have come up with what all the other countries agree is the most ambitious program to date. In fact, we had so many projects, we divided them up into three areas, the first being Arctic Ocean Safety, Security and Stewardship or the former Commandant's particular area of interest. Improving economic and living conditions and then addressing the impacts of climate change. And we divided those up, we have about a half dozen different projects within each one of those areas. And as I went to the other seven countries to discuss this with them and to sell our program because everything within the Arctic Council is done on the basis of consensus. One country can break consensus and then you don't follow through. So as I went and made my presentations in each one of the capitals, I got what I would call the six common comments. The first being, that's a very balanced program. In fact, even within the country, our country, I have found that whether you're talking to a security group and environmental group or something in between industry, they all see something for them within this program which is I wanted buy in across the board. So I think we achieved that. The second comment is wow, that's a very ambitious program. And I get that from everybody except one person, John Kerry. He always wants to know if we can be doing more. So I think we probably struck a good balance there. The third most heard comment at the beginning was what about Russia? And we might wanna dive into that a little bit more during Q and A. But at the time, the sanctions were still new and the other six countries in addition to us were very concerned that in order to make progress, we had to keep Russia on board. Fortunately, Secretary Kerry believed that we need to keep Russia on board as well because he needs to talk to Minister Lavrov on a number of issues around the world. So while we hold their feet to the fire over their indiscretions in Crimea and Ukraine, we still depend upon relationship with Russia and one of the best places to do this is within the auspices of the Arctic Council. The fourth most often heard comment was we are really excited about United States leadership because most countries in the world understand that when the United States turns its attention to something, usually something gets done. But then they followed that with the fifth most often heard comment which is we are skeptical about United States leadership because we're not sure that once you finish the chairmanship that you will continue on and there will be continuity. So we're trying to dispel that as well. And then the sixth most often heard comment was well, it's just all about climate change. And at the time there were still some skeptics about climate change. There may well be skeptics in this room. Fortunately, I think most people now are resolved and understand that there is in fact climate change. We're now into the argument whether it's caused by humans or whether it's natural and whether we can do something about it or whether we just ought to let it go. We can talk more about that in Q&A if you choose as well. But climate change is what our president has chosen as one of his legacy issues. So if we can use climate change to draw attention to the Arctic, then I said that is a great idea for us and it actually brought him to Alaska. Last August, we created the Glacier Conference We were able to bring the president not only to speak at the Glacier Conference in Anchorage, Alaska, but he spent three days in the Arctic. The first sitting president to set foot in the Arctic and he spent three days up there, as I said. He visited the glaciers, he spoke to people. He went out to see the villages that are being consumed by the ocean as the permafrost thaws. And it resulted in concrete commitments starting with those ice breakers which of course I've been campaigning for, but also some other things that we need. And a lot of it focused on this maritime governance issue that I've talked about because going back to my initial statement, this is a maritime environment. If we want to provide for prosperity, security, safety, we need to invest in this area and I'm very pleased to see that we've started. Some people have complained that it's not enough and it's too late, but it's more than we had last year and we're making some progress. So I'm grateful to the president and the administration. The challenge will be we got to this president in the eighth year of his time in office. And this time next year we're gonna be dealing with a new president, new secretary of state and a new administration and I'm hopeful that we can maintain some continuity and hopefully maintain some momentum on these projects as well. All right, so I think I've been giving you my stream of consciousness now for probably close to 45 minutes or more and I wanna make sure that I have time for questions and I wanna reserve just a few minutes at the end to wrap up if I can. So let me turn it over to you and if you have any questions, comments, gripes or opinions on the subject. I always told my coasties that the bravest person in the room was the first person to raise their hand to ask a question. All right, there we go. Okay, I don't know if you can hear this. If you go back to the 9th century, 10th century, I studied the history of the Vikings. It was climate change at that time because those seas were open. They were going through Iceland, going to Norway, going up along Hudson Bay and down to Finland and Nova Scotia. So this is nothing new to a certain extent in that we've had this happen before in the past. Yes, but they didn't make it very far. I mean, if you look at the extent of the Vikings, I mean, there are some indications. They made it here to Newport. But they didn't find a Northwest Passage, nor did they advance much beyond the Viking longboat. They're sailing, they could sail with the wind. They had to row against it. They didn't embrace technology. And then they became kind of lazy and they just started trying to take over Europe and plunder and pillage and I'm generalizing a little bit. But yes, I mean, you can go back further. In fact, part of the reason Portugal, it said, and I'm reading this now, part of the reason Portugal had this theory about being able to go around Africa was because findings from the Chinese had made its way across the Silk Road to Europe because it was the Ming dynasty. They were exploring the Indian Ocean, sending out great fleets until they decided to get rid of all the ships, build walls and contain themselves and destroy a lot of the records. But some of that information got to Europe. The Portuguese understood that and that's why they were searching down around Africa because they understood that you could get around and into the Indian Ocean. Yeah, but part of my point was at that time those seas were open up there, much more than they are now. And then with a little ice age, they closed up really tight. Yeah, but I think there's always, yes, there's been receding, reforming, but I'm not sure that you could get through the Northwest Passage. I'll go back and I'll do a little bit more studying, but I think the Northwest Passage and we've always had the ice cap, the multi-year ice up there, at least going back through our recorded history. Yes. Hello, Admiral. My name is Charles Bloor from the US Department of Energy. Question. So with oil prices and commodities prices down now, how has the withdrawal of industry from the region, Shells had difficulties dealing with technologies up there as well as other challenges, how has that changed the diplomacy in this area? Yeah, there's been two limits on exploration. The first started with the sanctions. The Norwegians were under contract with the Russians to develop their offshore capabilities. The Russians do not have the technology at this point to really exploit the deeper water offshore resources that they have. The Norwegians have the technology to do that, but they broke the contracts under the sanctions. So the Russians are continuing to pump out oil as much as they can, trying to keep their production rates up because even at the lower rate, they have to have some revenue. So I think you all have probably studied and see what's going on in Russia. Their economy is in shambles. In fact, a lot of the construction, what has been termed as remilitarization of the Northern Sea Route, et cetera, there's been a lot of rhetoric about it, but I have not seen a lot of reality to the build up along the Northern Sea Route because they just can't afford it for one reason. So they're continuing to pump out as much as they can. And I think that probably they have a break in terms of further exploitation because with the lower prices, not many people are venturing out there. If I had a chance to talk to Shell, and you get mixed messages when you talk to Shell Oil on why they're not going back to the Chuck G.C., I think the reality is, and I usually get a couple of head shakes from Shell people when they're in the room, is that the price of oil is just too low and it's very costly to be drilling up in the Chuck G.C. And the supply is high right now. I mean, we're becoming a mass exporter of energy and there's just no need to be drilling up in the Arctic. That's satisfying to the environmental groups because there are a lot of groups that think we ought to leave what's ever is under the Arctic Ocean that we ought to leave it there. There are people that say we should not explore for any more fossil fuels and turn over to renewable resources. I think there's probably a balance. I think this administration has actually followed a balanced program of allowing further exploration for oil, but also investing in renewable resources. We've got to make a change. We've got to start working on other sources of energy and hopefully we'll make some progress there. But I don't expect to see probably within the next decade or so people returning to full scale exploitation of the resources in the Arctic just because it's so challenging, it's expensive and the supplies are abundant right now. Everybody's keeping up their production and pushing it out there. I mean, it's nice when I go up to fill out the car. It's, I haven't seen it like this. We haven't seen it like this in a number of years. I don't know, does that answer for you? That answers to Russia specifically, but perhaps not to the other countries. So it's more curious if Norway, if Singapore, if you're seeing changes in their behavior. If what changes? If you're seeing changes in the other countries besides Russia. Russia's a rather obvious case because they're so reliant on the oil. Yeah. Norway has, Norway was already established in terms of exploiting its resources in the Barents Sea and continues to send energy to China and other locations around the world. In spite, they didn't have a market in Russia because Russia produces its own oil. So Norway is doing okay, except they're a little concerned about the low oil prices, but they've had a commensurate increase in salmon prices. So on balance, Norway is doing okay. Norway is the only other really major producer in the Arctic and as I said, they continue on right now. So I haven't seen a change there. Yes. Brian from Denmark. Can you tell us a little bit how your view is about the militarization of the Arctic and why do you need icebreakers? When you say we, you mean the United States or we collectively need icebreakers? Well, the United States needs icebreakers because as a maritime nation, we need to be able to provide assured access to all our maritime areas year-round. So there used to be a day when we thought, when it froze in, you didn't have to worry about it. But it was demonstrated, second year, my tenure as commandant, Norton Sound in Alaska froze in early and the fuel shipments to Noam, Alaska did not arrive and could not get in and they ran the risk of running out of fuel over the winter time. So we had to take our single icebreaker that was operational at the time, the cutter Healy, that had already been deployed for six months, turn it around and send it back to break a 300 mile path into Noam, Alaska to escort a Russian icecapel tanker because the United States didn't have one to resupply Noam. Those things can happen again. And the United States, once again, responsibilities under maritime governance should have the capabilities, at least some level of capability to respond to challenges within its maritime and in this case, the Arctic. But the United States also has responsibilities in Antarctica, we're a bipolar nation. We have responsibilities at both end and the break in in McMurdo is particularly challenging and the fact that the United States has to send an icebreaker across the entire expanse of the Pacific Ocean to get to McMurdo gives us special requirements that you don't find just in any old icebreaker. So it's very important that we build icebreakers to the specifications that we need for the Coast Guard to carry out its responsibilities because in spite of the multi-year ice melting, it almost makes it more challenging because there's gonna be more and more traffic and we have to have, as I said, a short access and also the capability to rescue, to cut paths through, et cetera. And we don't have that right now. Now, one of the theories I've expounded on is that the reason we need icebreakers is because we look at these things unilaterally. There are probably enough icebreakers in the world that are built already. The problem is Russia owns most of them. Finland owns a lot of them and the United States doesn't. And unless they're gonna share those icebreakers with us, we need to build our own so that we can take care of our responsibilities. But I have this theory which works out very well on the Great Lakes between the United States and Canada. Neither one of us has enough icebreakers to keep commerce going all the time on the Great Lakes. So the Canadian Coast Guard and the United States Coast Guard set up annually a joint command center in Sarnia and control the icebreakers out there and on any given day, a Canadian icebreaker might be breaking a path into Duluth, Minnesota while a U.S. icebreaker breaks ice into Thunder Bay. So what if we could do that under the auspices of the Arctic Council perhaps? If we could come up with this, putting multinational crews on icebreakers and perhaps sharing the resources and sharing the support of them, I think we'd all be much better off. Somebody asked me about that in Canada once and I started talking about Star Trek and the fact that you have multinational crews on the Enterprise and became a very embarrassing story in the paper, but having said that, what's bad about having multinational cooperation? So perhaps we could do that, but in the short term we need to build some icebreakers and President Obama has committed to that, not just icebreaker, but icebreaker's plural, I'm not sure what that ends up being in the end, but I would say we need at least two heavy-duty polar icebreakers and then you could probably fill in around the edges with contracted service for the excess capacity. Yes, sir? Yeah, it's challenging and we have the same issue in the State Department as well. I mean, when I was in the Coast Guard and I was sitting with the Joint Chiefs and going to the combatant commanders conferences, we got into these discussions all the time, but it's done very similarly in the State Department. You have the, we call it the EUR Bureau, the Europe and Eurasian Affairs, which has six of the Arctic countries within it and then you have Western Hem, which has, of course, us and Canada. And you get, that's part of my job as a referee because one bureau thinks they own the Arctic, another one thinks they own it and so we try to gain cooperation across it. It's a similar issue and I think it's because the combatant commands got formed very similarly along with the bureaus within the State Department as well and there are just turf battles that go on all the time trying to get agreement on who should have what and it varies. I think there would be value in somehow coming up with some unified way of looking at it but I'm just not sure what that solution is but you bring up a very good point. Yes, up there and then down here. Good evening Admiral, thank you very much for coming to speak to us this evening. I'm Lieutenant Commander Ed McClellan, maybe else. So you spoke in pretty eloquently about the requirements for governance in this maritime space and so I'm wondering, have you found your efforts hampered to a certain extent by the fact that we have failed to ratify the unclassed agreement? You find your diplomatic or your practical engagement undermined by that. Thank you. I thought I was gonna break my record of having someone ask about the law of the sea treaty, it's been an unbroken stream starting when I was coming out of the Coast Guard and through this job as well. But it's a very germane and important issue and I don't see it being resolved first and foremost. This administration certainly is not gonna take it up. If we had any chance it would be when John Kerry, John Kerry tried to carry the water in the Senate and he would have liked to as Secretary of State but there's no way that this administration in its last year is gonna attempt to do that so we'll have to wait and see if we can bring it up with the next administration and the next Senate but I don't hold up high hopes. As a practical matter, not acceding to the law of the sea treaty does not really hurt us at least right now as a practical matter because everything within it is customary international law and we abide by it. The challenge that we face from time to time is when we chide China about its activities in the South China Sea, they tell us that we have no standing and that we haven't signed on to the treaty so who are we to speak up so what do we end up doing? We end up using the military option of doing a freedom of navigation exercise with an aircraft carrier which ends up being provocative. One thing that I've learned and I'm a military guy but there is value in diplomacy. There is value in talking things through and trying to resolve things peacefully and I know when I went the last time I went before the Senate to testify on trying to get them to accede to the treaty one of the senators said we don't need to sign up to the stinking treaty. We got the best Navy in the world which may very well be the case. It is the case and we have the best Coast Guard in the world as well but is that the way you wanna resolve all your problems? I think not. The rule of law, the United States has always been committed to the rule of law and I think it's embarrassing that a treaty that we invested in that we spent a great deal of time getting the wording right has become a political issue in the United States and therefore we just can't get it resolved. So under most circumstances we comply with everything that's in the treaty and we get along but China's not the only one. We have a dispute with Russia. They have declared the Northern Sea Route to be internal waters and but our best friend Canada we have the same problem as well. They have declared the Northwest Passage as internal waters and we have to march to them. We have to march to the Russians but we always get the response that we have no standing. So who are we to speak? We can't even settle there's a little high shaped segment of the Beaufort Sea between Yukon Territory and the state of Alaska which we are in disagreement with with our best friend Canada and we can't resolve that either but those things you can live with. The one challenge not being a signatory to the Law of the Sea Treaty is that we cannot get confirmation of an extended continental shelf claim. So while all the other countries are going through the process and Russia is doing it as well that's been portrayed as a land grab by Russia. I say quite the contrary. Russia has about half of the shoreline within the Arctic Ocean. It's understandable they're gonna have a rather significant extended continental shelf claim but they have abided by the 1990 treaty between the United States and then the Soviet Union. They respect that boundary. They are not going to make an extended continental shelf claim over that. They are going to claim the North Pole but so has Denmark and so will Canada as well. And that'll all be resolved by the commission on the extended continental shelf under the auspices of the Law of the Sea Treaty. So what's the practical impact there? Nothing right now really for the United States because we're not even drilling. We were drilling, Shell was drilling on the, within the exclusive economic zone within the 200 mile limit. And most of the petroleum resources that we think are down there are within those 200 miles. There's probably some that go out 600 miles but we haven't even exploited the ones in the EEZ yet. So I think we cannot perfect a claim so companies are not going to drill any further than the exclusive economic zone but they're not drilling anyway right now. So I think at least for the foreseeable future that we're not gonna get it resolved and it's not having a major impact on our country. Yes sir. I'm a very great talk and my name is John Richmond. I'm a foundation life member here. Our late, our past late Senator Pell would be very concerned about the Law of the Sea and see if you guys could get it passed someday. My concern is the Arctic is one of the last pristine areas in our planet. It hasn't been polluted yet like many of our other oceans. What steps can the nations do other than possibly double holes on all ships going through there to preserve the environment, to get the indigenous people involved that live along the shores of the environment and protected from obviously the oil companies that want to get up there and oil does not evaporate very well in harder climates. So what can you guys do to protect it? You can make it very difficult, maybe difficult is the wrong word. You can put very stringent requirements on the companies that are going up there which is what happened to Shell. Part of the challenge that Shell faced in the Chuck G.C. is that it was done in the aftermath of the Macondo well blowout, the Deepwater Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico which two different scenarios in reality because up in the Chuck G.C. you're drilling in a couple of hundred feet of water, low pressure wells and it's not likely that you'd have a similar blowout as you had down in the Gulf of Mexico with Deepwater Horizon. Having said that, any spill is bad. There's no spill that is good. But we learned a lot from Deepwater Horizon. We placed a lot of significant challenges like having a cap for the well which we never required in the past but not only did we learn from the Deepwater Horizon so they not only had to have a stacking cap for the well, they had to have a spare, they had to have another drill rig. Became very, very expensive and that's besides the lowering prices for oil, it was becoming very expensive to take care of the safety precautions up there. They had to bring almost 30 ships up there last summer when they were doing the drilling operation. That costs a lot of money. So what you can do is you can make very tight requirements permitting and safety as well and you also have to be prepared for it. Two of the things that have been sort of the flagship achievements of the Arctic Council is the 2011 search and rescue agreement which divided up the Arctic and signed responsibilities and then the 2013 Arctic oil spill preparedness and response agreement. The challenge as an operator, once again, okay, the Naval War College taught me to be strategic but I'm still an operator so when I came into this job I said, okay, you got these agreements. When's the last time you exercised them? So part of our chairmanship program has to been first, we conducted a tabletop search and rescue exercise in Anchorage last fall and we're gonna do a full blown operational exercise in the Chuck G.C. this summer with all eight coast guards working together. We've started a tabletop oil spill response as well because you just don't know. You can have the agreement but until you get out there and you exercise it you just don't know what your shortfalls are, what requirements you have and that will in turn feed the budgetary process and the policy process as well. So I thought it was very important to get us out there and exercising immediately, gaining experience in the Arctic because inevitably something's gonna happen and I don't think the biggest risk is oil exploitation. I think the biggest risk is that, yeah, the ships that 50 mile past there and the bearing from the Arctic Ocean into the Bering Sea, the Bering Strait. Yes, and we've had an example of that not up there but in the Aleutian Islands with the Selang Dang IU a number of years ago. That was carrying soybeans but it also had a couple hundred thousand barrels or gallons of oil in there as well. Not a large oil spill but as I said earlier any oil spill is bad. The other thing is progress under the International Maritime Organization, the IMO which is a UN body which has now developed a polar code which puts very specific requirements for training, ship construction and other things. It was one of those things like any other multinational process that comes through a body like the United Nations. It's not everything we wanted but it was a start and we'll continue to work and make it more stringent as we go forward. So those are the things we have in the works. Another, yes. Hi, thank you, great talk. Taylor, you know I'm a student at Salve Regina. As I understand it, the Arctic Council has a certain limit to the amount of military concern that it can have in the Arctic Circle. So my question is with your focus on strategic positioning within the Arctic, how can the Arctic Council have any kind of relation with, in regards to strategic positioning without any concern for the military? Because you wouldn't, it's, this is not a body that was formed under a treaty. It is a voluntary international form which brings together the eight countries and it was started under the Cold War and it was recognized that we needed to have Russia on board in order because they own so much of the Arctic and they have such an impact on the Arctic. So it was impossible to come up with something that would be effective and would make progress unless you could keep Russia in there. Military activities were specifically excluded from the construct of the Arctic Council because Russia would not participate and we need Russia on board in order to make progress and there are enough other, whether it's the Arctic chiefs of defense, NATO organizations and others, there are enough people focused on national defense that I think that's well taken care of and I think it would hurt the progress that we try to make within the Arctic Council on a full range of other issues, those other broader national security issues. If we were to lose Russia, if we were to lose consensus, we just wouldn't be able to carry it out. So I think on balance, this is a very wise construct for the Arctic Council. Having seen no other hands and I'm almost used up all the time that I was allotted, I just wanted to wrap up. There was an article that was written back 100 days into our chairmanship of the Arctic Council and it actually was very complimentary on what I had been doing. I was very humbled and gratified by the Arctic article and they were making a report on the US chairmanship. But the author said the only problem with Admiral Papp is that he likes to tell sea stories, talk about maritime history and use quotes from John F. Kennedy. And I said, guilty is charged. But I haven't, I've told sea stories, I've given you a little maritime history. I haven't given you a Kennedy quote and some of my coasties have probably heard this one before but I was thinking about it before coming up here because I'm back on Newport again. The reason I like Kennedy quotes is because he was my president. And I know you're all saying he was your president too but I mean he was my president. I was born under Truman, I was a little boy under Eisenhower. Kennedy is the first president I remember being elected. I saw the election, I saw the debates with Nixon, I saw the inauguration, I listened to his inauguration speech and I listened intently. Every time he did a news conference or gave a speech and I've used many quotes from his speeches because they always seemed to me to exude optimism and belief in the character of American people and that if we keep our heads high and we set the bar high, you know, we choose to go to the moon speech. I mean, who would have thought? Yeah, sure, go to the moon. We got to the moon within the decade as he predicted. So over the years, people have asked me, well, why do you like Kennedy and why do you think he was like that? And I came to the conclusion that because he was a sailor and there's truth to it. I mean, I was speculating a little bit but you know, I saw him as a kid, the newsreel footage of him out on off Hyannis with the family in the sailboats. Obviously he was a Navy man during World War II. I saw the PT 109, the movie when it came out when I was a little kid. And so I had all the evidence or at least by observation that he was a sailor and I'm a big believer that sailors tend to be optimistic and problem solvers and everything. So I used that for a number of years. But then about three years ago, I received a book from a friend and as I was thumbing through it, I ran across a page and it caught my eye immediately because it was a picture of John F. Kennedy that I had seen before in May of 1963. And he had visited the Coast Guard sailing ship Eagle when it was in Washington DC and it shows him walking down the brow back to the pier. And beside it was a letter on White House Stationery. The letter was signed May 10th, 1963. And Kennedy had written this letter to support the first operation sail which was to occur in 1964 in New York City coinciding with the 1964 World's Fair. And in fact, I went to New York as a little kid and saw the tall ships come in. One of my cousins from Denmark was in the United States studying and we went down to see the Danmark. We saw Eagle and it was believed that that would be the last big rendezvous of sailing ships of the world and ended up exploding. There were more tall ships today than there were back then because it has become so popular as a training device. But Kennedy recognized that and that's why he was a supporter of operation sail. And when I read this letter, there was my proof that he gained his sense of optimism because of his experience as a sailor. So I just wanted to share this with you because it's also germane because we're so close to the waters where Kennedy sailed both as a young man and as the president. So once again, May 10th, 1963. From my first race on Nantucket Sound many years ago to my most recent outing as a weekend sailor, sailing has given me some of the most pleasant and exciting moments of my life. It's also taught me something of the courage, resourcefulness, and strength required of men who sail the seas and ships. Thus I'm looking forward eagerly to operation sail. The sight of so many ships gathered from the distant corners of the world should remind us all that strong, disciplined, and venturesome men can still find their way safely across uncertain and stormy seas. That one paragraph summarizes it all. And for those of you in the audience that were a little disturbed by the fact he says men, I'm sure if Kennedy was writing this today. In fact, I talked to Caroline Kennedy, I met her. What a treat. And she had never seen this letter before. I shared it, I gave her a copy of it. And I said, I bet your dad would write men and women if he was to do that today. And she said, yes, I can assure you he would have. But uncertain and stormy seas, that metaphor is one that I love and I've used it many times, I've used it in speeches and I always attribute it to Kennedy. But uncertain and stormy seas, it is a metaphor. It's literal and figurative. And Kennedy knew that those uncertain and stormy seas, those problems that we confront in life are never going to go away. But he also understood that those characteristics of courage, resourcefulness, discipline, those things would see us through. And all of you in this room, if you don't understand it, you at least represent it. We are so grateful as citizens that all of you have put on the uniform, whether it's an actual uniform or the uniform of the work that you do, for those who have served in the past, those who continue to serve and those who will serve in the future, Kennedy got it right. We will be prepared for those uncertain and stormy seas. So I thank you for all that you do. It's been an honor to be here back at the Naval War College and thank you for allowing me to share a little bit about a topic that you may not be entirely familiar with. Thank you very much.