Admiral Stavridis on NATO and the World of 2084: The Future is a Warning

ADMIRAL JAMES STAVRIDIS:

If you think back to Orwell's 1984, it is a stark warning. Alongside it, of course, this Brave New World by Huxley, those two books were fundamentally in my mind as we wrote this trilogy. The hope of all three of these books is that by understanding the challenges of the 21st century, we still have time to correct coerce and avoid a collision.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Welcome to Good Citizen, a podcast from the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. I'm Ted Roosevelt. My guest today is James Stavridis, a retired four-star admiral and the co-author of a new novel, 2084. Admiral Stavridis spent 37 years in the Navy and served as the supreme allied commander of NATO. He's published 16 books on leadership, the ocean's maritime affairs, and Latin America. But he's found nothing seems to connect with an audience quite like fiction, which is why he's co-written a trilogy with former Marine, Elliot Ackerman, concluding with his most recent novel 2084. In it, they imagine our world 60 years from now. It is in the tradition of Brave New World and Dr. Strangelove. It's a story that re-imagines a catastrophe in the hopes that society will act to prevent it. But before we talk about the world of 2084, we talk about the world we're living in now.

Given that our nation is currently at war with Iran and that the president has even threatened to leave NATO, it feels right to start with the alliance itself, what it is, why it was built, and why it still matters. There are few people better positioned to answer those questions. Here's Admiral James Stavridis.

ADMIRAL JAMES STAVRIDIS:

The fundamental idea of NATO in a phrase is an attack on one is an attack on all. Those are powerful words. They're real words. The alliance has been around for decades, came out of World War II, obviously, and the original premise of NATO could be summarized as keep the Russians out, keep the Americans in. And at the end of the day, the idea here is to bind together this extraordinary group of 32 nations.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

And when you look at what those 32 nations actually represent, the numbers are staggering.

ADMIRAL JAMES STAVRIDIS:

Those 32 nations represent 62% of the world's gross domestic product, well over half of all goods and services produced in the world. Secondly, the collective defense budget is somewhere north of 1.3, 1.4 trillion. So enormous defense spending, about three million men and women, almost all volunteers under arms, 800 capital ships, warships, 28,000 combat aircraft. You get the idea. It's a vast capabilities.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

NATO is at its core, as you describe it, it's about deterrence as much as anything else. How do you explain that to Americans that didn't live through World War II, that don't see the threat of Russia as something that really affects Americans because it's so far away?

ADMIRAL JAMES STAVRIDIS:

So Russia is not a theoretical threat. Russia has attacked, invaded Ukraine. They've attacked and invaded Georgia. Putin talks constantly about attacking Europe. He wants to break the transatlantic bridge so Russia can dominate Europe because right now Europe is our top trading partner, our top military ally. And for Putin to simply conquer Europe would be highly detrimental to the United States. I think Americans can see that. And you're correct, not a lot of Americans are deep into the history of the early to mid 20th century, but there are profound lessons there. Let's go back a hundred years ago. We come out of the Great War. We get out of Europe. We pull all our troops home. We move to isolationism. We build huge tariff barriers, the Holly Smoot tariffs, because we know we don't need to engage with the world. Well, how did that all work out?

You can drop a plumb line to the rise of fascism, the Second World War, the attack on Pearl Harbor, US engagement in a massive, massive world war. Let's avoid that while we can. I think NATO is a big part of that and I think Americans get that and understand it. And I'll close with this. The approval ratings for NATO among the American population are still around 65%. The Congress approval rating is around 8%. The President of the United States is around 36%. Hello. NATO's doing pretty well out there.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

The parallels between the post World War II or Great War era that you just described and today seem quite stark. I mean, history is certainly, if not repeating itself, rhyming in the old Mark Twain quote. What can we do or what is necessary to make sure that we don't repeat that plumb line that you describe in this moment in our history?

ADMIRAL JAMES STAVRIDIS:

Number one, we've been talking about it already and that's alliances by having not only NATO across the Atlantic, but think of our alliances in the Pacific, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines. These are treaty allies of the United States. We are bound to them and they are bound to us in the same way that we are with all our NATO partners. So alliances are important. So all of that international capability is very important. I'll give you a second thing. And that is here in the United States we need to improve our inner agency cooperation, bringing the different pieces and parts of this massive US government together in alignment, getting the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, Department of Defense, putting them together and working together is crucial and important. And I think those are two things we can do pretty easily. The hard one that I'm sure you're thinking and every listener is thinking, I think the biggest thing we can do is try and bring the country together.

At the moment, what we have is deep divisions, polarizations. A lot of this on speed dial on all of the cable news networks. We need to respect policy differences, but try to draw ourselves closer together. I think we can do that and I think that may be the most important thing of all, Ted.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Alliances and friendships are only as good as the participants in those two things. I'm curious if you feel like they are deteriorating in a way that is important and or reaching breaking points where the world doesn't feel like we're going to uphold our side of the bargain, therefore they're not going to uphold their side of the bargain.

ADMIRAL JAMES STAVRIDIS:

I think we are trending in that direction, but no, I don't feel we're about to crack the NATO alliance. We have certainly had many moments in the world of international relations where US behavior has caused stresses and strains. A pretty good example is going back about 25 years ago in 2003, 2004 when the United States invaded Iraq. We had, to everybody's understanding, we had invaded Afghanistan. That's where the nine eleven attacks came from. But Iraq appeared to be a bridge too far. Many of our European partners were quite chuffed as the British would say at that. Many of our allies around the world disagreed with the invasion of Iraq, but we were able to overcome those stresses and strains. I think we'll be able to continue to do that even in this moment. Certainly, should we worry when a US administration leans in on taking possession of Greenland or some of the talking points that the president uses about NATO won't be there for us.

Yes, there's going to be tension, stress, and strain, but I think by and large, we're going to work through those challenges.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

And I want to come back to this idea of declining norms domestically. As Americans lose faith in their own democratic institutions, which you see consistently concerns around the validity of elections, does that weaken NATO's moral authority abroad?

ADMIRAL JAMES STAVRIDIS:

I think it is difficult to fully connect those two things, but you're right to raise it because NATO is a values-based alliance. And when those values come under pressure here in the United States, sure, it can have that impact overseas, but none of that ought to make us feel like we're at the moment of collapse of this alliance system. I would argue that as we go through the current crisis, for example, the war in Iran, we launched into that alongside Israel. Pretty credible reports that the Saudis and the Emiratis also participated with strikes. Now the crisis is opening the straightformus. I think you're going to see European ships engaged in that. I think that's coming. It's an example of, yep, there'll be moments when people are arguing and pushing back and in dispute, but ultimately I for one believe we're going to find those values sustain us.

And here's the value we haven't mentioned, but it's an important one. It's freedom of the high seas. So if you stop and think about what Iran is doing, they're claiming an international body of water as their sovereign territorial seas. That is antithical to centuries of US policy. We went to war with the barbery pirates 220 years ago in order to maintain freedom of the high seas. We're going to have to open that straight and keep it open. That means Navies are going to have to do it together. And I think it ultimately would be a global effort.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

It's interesting that you point to values as the thing that binds these alliances together. The role of politics is increasingly playing a role of political ideologies, increasingly playing a role in how people see these alliances see NATO. That's not something, at least from my perspective, that was true in the '90s and the '80s and the early aughts in terms of how Americans viewed these alliances. They seemed to be apolitical. Everybody understood the value that they brought. Do you have concerns that the sort of political ideologies may overwhelm the value connective tissue?

ADMIRAL JAMES STAVRIDIS:

Certainly I have concerns. On the other hand, again, I look back on our history and we are a fractious people in this country. We declare independence. We're about to celebrate 250 years of independence. Terrific. 1776, we declare independence. When did we get a Constitution? We argued for the next 13 years until we got a Constitution. Then we finally have a Constitution. We immediately have Shays' Revolt, the Whiskey Rebellion. And then we culminate everything in a massive civil war. Just let that sink in for a minute where we kill, I don't know, a fourth of the adult male population of the country. We're a fractious people. And I am old enough to remember in my lifetime, go back to the 1960s and look at drafts and conscription and race riots. Our cities were literally on fire. We were in an unbelievably unpopular war. 500,000 Americans deployed, 55,000 killed in the war in Vietnam.

So when you put the current moment in perspective, yes, it's concerning, but we've seen worse. We're going to overcome it. If you'll allow me to be controversial for a moment [Ted^Please.] I'll say this. I think a real problem is in the two political party system that we have. We act as though somewhere in the Constitution, mysterious article XX, it says, "There shall be two political parties. They shall be Republican and Democrat." I have a newsflash that's not in the Constitution. We need to examine whether these two parties, which in many ways represent the extremes on both sides, are still representative of the American people. I think we need a new political party in the country, at least one that represents the center.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

You spent your career in military uniform under presidents of both parties. It was reported in 2016, Hillary Clinton vetted you for vice president. Later, Donald Trump discussed the cabinet position with you. How important is it to you to maintain this — I don't know if you think of it as bipartisan or nonpartisan support?

ADMIRAL JAMES STAVRIDIS:

It's very important for all of us, my view, to listen to both sides. So I was certainly willing to go and listen to Secretary Clinton about potentially being on her ticket. I was willing to go and listen to President Trump on the subject of being part of his cabinet. Ultimately, neither of those futures came true, but the fact that I as a senior former military officer, and by the way, I'm a registered independent, always have been. I've never made a political contribution. I've never formally endorsed a political candidate. I am a moderate, a centrist, and a registered independent. And I'm very comfortable speaking to both sides. I hope that more people will follow a model that says, "Look, I don't agree with AOC on the left or I don't agree with Ken Paxton on the right, but I'll listen to them. I'll hear them out, whatever their ideas are, but let's get the politics out of the personal attack zone and move more toward a centrist message, debate the issues fiercely but love each other as Americans."

TED ROOSEVELT V:

You've written a fictional trilogy and I want to pivot to that. There's not a clear line in your career that would make me go, oh, he's about to write a fictional trilogy. The most recent book is out 2084. It sets 60 years in the future. Climate change has ravaged the planet. Large swaths of the planet have become uninhabitable. The nations that have suffered the most are pointing their weapons at the ones that hold the others responsible, which is mainly the United States and China. Why did you turn to fiction? I mean, was it a personal drive or was it you felt it was the best way to get a message across? Where did that impulse come from?

ADMIRAL JAMES STAVRIDIS:

Both. And so let's begin with the trology. The idea is 2034, like the year 2034, the problem is great power war. It's US and China go to war 2034. 2054, the second book Second Century is about what we were just discussing. It's a moment where the two political parties have changed, but now there's internal domestic strife because of artificial intelligence, the rise of artificial intelligence. And now the new book, 2084, and that year picks up some of those threads, but really is about climate and the deteriorating climate and how that causes tension in a global war. So the arc of all three of these books together is to present problems, challenges in this 21st century while there's still time to reverse engineer the problem and avoid it. So why fiction? Because people often say, "Oh, Admiral, why didn't you just write a policy book about China or about AI or about climate?" Well, the answer is nobody reads policy books, but people sure read novels.

So it's a chance to get the message, as you said, to a much broader audience. It's fun to write fiction. You get to get a blank canvas and really splash some paint around. People want a story.

Yeah, climate, it's bad. How about an Indonesian admiral whose family is killed in a superstorm who then leads his nation to attack the independent Republic of Florida in order to get reparations and ends up wait for it, ends up in Greenland planting grapes on a vineyard. That's a story and it's a lot better than reading a policy book about carbon dating.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

So this is the end of the trilogy. It ends in 2084. It certainly seems like it has an echo to Orwell's 1984. Was that intentional from the get- go when you started with 2034?

ADMIRAL JAMES STAVRIDIS:

Yes, absolutely. If you think back to Orwell's 1984, it is a stark warning to the world to avoid totalitarianism, to essentially avoid dictators everywhere. That's what Orwell was talking about alongside it, of course, this Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. And those two books were fundamentally in my mind as we wrote this trilogy because you can warn people, you can impact policy. You can tell stories that change how people feel about a given crisis. The hope of all three of these books is that by understanding the challenges of the 21st century, we still have time to correct course and avoid a collision.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

So when we think about that arc towards these moments, what are the specific present day choices or failures that you feel are the most decisive? Maybe they haven't happened yet, but you feel like are inflection points that we need to be very mindful of going forward.

ADMIRAL JAMES STAVRIDIS:

Number one, we'll do them in chronological order. So we'll start with 2034. With China, both sides need to recognize that we want to bend the relationship on the points of disagreement, meaning we need to convince China it would be a really bad idea to attack Taiwan. It would be a really bad idea to try and claim the entire South China Sea. Similarly, China needs to bend the United States such that we are not interfering internally in China, that we are mindful of China's place in the global economy. So US, China, we need to quite clearly find those paths of communication. Next one, 2054, artificial intelligence. Gee, do you think that's a debate right now? Yes, we absolutely need to get control on these AI agents and we better do it pretty damn fast because they're getting really smart, really fast, long conversation. But here it's technology and what the US government's role is in ensuring that these technologies don't go crazy.

And a subset of that is back to US, China. I think working together with China would be a really good idea on controlling artificial intelligence. And now finally, 2084, quite clearly we need to break the cycle of global warming. It's the warming of the planet that's causing superstorms that are going to grow and grow. It's causing the melting of the Arctic ice. Look, I'm not a climatologist or a scientist. I'm not Joe Nye, the science guy, but I'm a mariner. I've sailed the waters of the Arctic and Antarctic. Here's a newsflash. They're melting. All that's real. And here we are in 2026. If we can address that now by breaking the cycle of global warming, it's renewables, it's solar. Technology can save us and we simply need to put policy and technology together to address the global warming challenge. So yeah, we can address all three of those problems.

I think we will. I'm cautiously optimistic, but I'll tell you if we don't address them, when we get to 2034, 54 and 2084, it's going to be too late. That's the whole idea of the books.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

And you've said in the past that the only thing you can really bet on is change. Each one of your novels, things look very different than they do today, although you can very much see the line to them. But the one thing that is consistent through all three books is the brutality of war. I presume that's intentional and I wonder why you felt that was important to sort of highlight throughout the trilogy.

ADMIRAL JAMES STAVRIDIS:

You said a moment ago that the only certainty is change actually in addition to the certainty of change, I would add the certainty of war. That's been the history of our species since the earliest forms of humans picked up rocks and started bashing each other and then discovered, "Oh, I can throw this and use it as a projectile." And you can pick up the storyline from there. So the history of our species has been change and war. And so it is entirely central to any novel that purports to talk about the future to address those two issues. What I've tried to do in all three of those books, and I think the arc of them together is such that it is optimistic, cautiously optimistic. In other words, the world doesn't end in any of these books. I don't think that's a spoiler alert. Let's say you pick up 2084 and it's about a global war and there's a lot of combat, but there's deep interpersonal relationships.

People fall in love. They fall out of love. Carl Sandburg, the poet was asked once having written all these extraordinary poems about life and every aspect of it, he was asked, "Well, sum it up for us. What is life all about? " And he said, "It goes on. It goes on." That's a pretty powerful three words. And I think if I could grab a theme for all three of the books, it goes on.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Admiral, thank you so much for joining us today. I have one final question and it involves your time in uniform. What is a lesson from your military career that you think every citizen should understand? Something that you came to know through experience that people outside the military often don't have?

ADMIRAL JAMES STAVRIDIS:

I can, and I'll give you two words, serve others. Serve others. And what I mean by that is we all in the military appreciate it when people say to a veteran, "Thank you for your service." Here's my view. There are so many ways to serve this country, certainly our uniformed military. How about our police, our firefighters, our school teachers? You know what a public school teacher makes starting salary in my home state of Florida teaching a packed classroom in the panhandle — $39,000 a year. You think she's serving the country? Boy, I do. How about Teach for America, Volunteer for America? How about the Peace Corps? These young men and women who give of themselves to serve others, the Jesuits, I'm not Catholic, I'm Greek Orthodox as you would expect with my name, but the Jesuits say to be men and women for others. That's a pretty powerful thought.

And I'll close with this, Ted. Why I believe in that, serve others because service is nonpartisan. It's bipartisan if you will. It's a way that all of us could serve others and hopefully through that come through this time of fractious argument and personal attack, serve others. It's a profoundly simple idea that can help us find a path out of this dark forest of acrimony into which we have wondered.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Admiral, thank you very much for those words and thank you very much for doing this. I very much appreciate it. I want to be extremely mindful of your time here, so appreciate it. My pleasure. Listeners, 2084 by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis is out now and I highly recommend this riveting and important read. Admiral, thank you for a conversation marked by clarity, experience, and a remarkable ability to engage the big questions of our time. I truly appreciate the work that you do and of course your service to this country. It was an honor to speak with you. Good Citizen is produced by the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in collaboration with the Future of StoryTelling and Charts & Leisure. You can learn more about TR's upcoming presidential library at trlibrary.com.