Forging Alliances in an Age of Complacency

>> General Jim Mattis: Democracy is not a spectator sport. It's all hands on deck. Every one of you is the custodian of our republic. And the degree to which you take full authority over that has a lot to do with whether or not our republic will continue to stand. A government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

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>> General Jim Mattis: Well, thank you, ladies and gentlemen, it's good to be here. You can see the title that we've been assigned, Allies and Enemies. Fortunately, we have both, but there's some challenges that you young people are going to inherit. I will tell you that my background is a marine infantry officer.

And most infantry, they're called infant soldier, infant marine for a reason. They're very, very young. They're in the age group of about 18 to 22. How many of you are in age group 18 to 22? So I'm very comfortable around folks like you. It's hard sometimes to explain the fondness that Professor Stephen and I feel when we get to our color hair for you young folks.

And we do want to pass on what worked for us and what didn't work, frankly, give you a little framework, because democracy is not a spectator sport. It's all hands on deck. Every one of you is the custodian of our republic. And the degree to which you take full authority over that has a lot to do with whether or not our republic will continue to stand a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

But since we want to drill down right away to the topic and, of course, get time for Q and A, I saw the number of hands still going up as our boss, Doctor Rice, had to leave the stage to keep us on track. We're gonna talk for a short time and get to the Q&A, and that's gonna be really weird if you're looking at us and we're looking at you, and no one's saying anything.

So think up some good challenges for us here, and we'll enjoy it. You can all see the storm clouds gathering around the world. You are coming of age, frankly, in a dishonest decade in terms of our own domestic politics and all. And so for you to be questioning what's going on in the world, what's going on at home, is probably the healthiest possible thing you can do.

Certainly, before you embrace any certain ideas, we're going to try and talk about the framing ideas that would allow you to make sense of the world a little bit. And I'm going to start with, basically, because we face probably the most complex security challenges at least in my lifetime, probably since World War Two, and our nation is divided at home.

I'm gonna give a little bit of a historical background and some of the framing principles you might consider. We have faced worse in our country's history. Not often, and sometimes they were real peril. To whether or not this great big experiment that you and I call America was going to survive was certainly a question.

But as you look at Russia versus Ukraine, right now, Ukraine is acting as the shield of Europe. Basically, Ukraine is fighting the war NATO never wanted to fight with the Russians. I was in Munich here in January a couple months back. I've never seen Europe more sober.

You see Sweden and Finland joining NATO. Think of that, two nations that never joined the military alliance during the Cold War. In fact, Sweden never joined a military alliance since Napoleon's time. And they realize today neutrality next door to a guy like Putin will not allow them to keep their sovereignty.

So they have joined the most productive, most successful military alliance in history. 75 years old, never a defection. Works through every problem one way or another, and they're up against a guy. Some of us were talking just before, during the break, Putin, a creature straight out of Dostoevsky.

For those of you who study Russian literature, you'd say, my gosh, that sounds like Putin. Well, guess what? Culture plays a role, as one of your questions in the last session brought to light. In the Mideast, you see Iran and its surrogates, its partners versus the Arab states and Israel.

You see, in Hamas, you actually see Shia Iran bridging the gap to the Sunni terrorist group Hamas. And all down in Yemen, you see the Houthis. In Lebanon, you have Lebanese Hezbollah that Iran right now may or may not be egging on to widen the war against Israel.

And of course, in Iraq and Syria, you see Iran's militias. Everywhere you look for trouble in the Middle east, you will find Iran. China, led by President Xi, is bullying and violating international rules with its neighbors, Vietnam, Philippines, certainly Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Australia, and others. Even further afield, Lithuania, Czech Republic, because they won't kowtow to the Chinese, are being punished either economically or via cyber.

So bottom line is Russia and China have linked those two theaters, the Pacific Asia theater, to the Atlantic European theater with their partnership without limits that they declared and followed three weeks later by Russia's attack on Ukraine, second invasion of Ukraine. If you want to see what foreign relations look like in a world where, governed by the international guidelines, unlike the Americans, the ones the Chinese want, just look at Ukraine and you can see foreign policy, international relations with Chinese characteristics.

North Korea, of course, linked to Russia and to China with nukes that can now reach us right here in California. By the way, as you sit here, there are us soldiers on full alert in California and Alaska, ready to launch interceptor missiles if this unaccountable leader was to unleash any of them.

Thank goodness for our allies, Japan and Korea, where we have early warning radars that would alert us to have our other assets looking at certain places in the sky, specific places to pick up those threats. And then, of course, you've got the nexus of these working together. In other words, they are now working together.

You'll find people say, well, they don't really have a lot in common. They won't stay together. Well, guess what? They're working together. January 2nd of this year, Russia launches Russian and North Korean missiles against Ukraine. They do it with Chinese technology in them and Iranian, 170 Iranian drones.

Just two weeks ago, Russian and Chinese nuclear capable bombers were off the Alaska coast. It is now a reality. We have to face it. It's unfortunate it got to this point, but you cannot deny that reality. We are not. Russia is on a war footing. China is building quickly.

The United States is not on a war footing. There is a relentlessly subversive effort by Russia and China to weaken us. The one thing that probably more than any other guides the leader in Moscow and the leader in Beijing is the west in general. The democracies, I would call it, not just western Europe, but the west in general, including Japan, Australia, Korea, NATO, certainly, and the US.

Canada is on irreversible decline, and specifically the Americans are. They took great joy in what happened on January 6. The founding fathers clearly thought that survival was important. The only advanced reading I asked them to include in your perspectives for coming here was the US Constitution and specifically Article One, which is about, of course, the legislative branch and Congress's specific requirement, a constitutional requirement to make certain that we sustain a navy and we raise armies as necessary.

Our founding fathers knew that this big experiment could be lost. Remember Ben Franklin walking out of the Constitutional Convention and being asked by a lady, so what is it gonna be, Dr Franklin, a republic or a monarchy? And his response starts something that's held very close for the first hundred and some odd years of our republic.

He said, a republic, madam, if we can keep it, because it goes on. Francis Scott Key, some three decades later, held hostage on a Royal Navy warship as the most powerful fleet in the world pounds Fort McHenry writes a poem. We know it as our national anthem. When it was put to music.

And he asked, does the Star Spangled Banner still wave? He's talking about more than just the flag as he watches the fort fighting back. Abe Lincoln, first recorded speech. Interesting. 25 years before this, as a young man, before he becomes the president, he writes a speech and he said, could all the armies of Asia, Europe and Africa, combined with all the money in the world except ours, cross the Atlantic, cross the Blue Ridge Mountains and take a gulp of water out of the Ohio river?

Never. Free men and women? We'd stop them. Bottom line, if this experiment's going to die, it will die by suicide. And 25 years later at Gettysburg, he's dedicating a cemetery, the Union dead who had stopped the army in northern Virginia. And he asked the question right there, we're engaged in a struggle to determine if this government of the people, by the people, for the people, can it long stand or will it perish?

So the bottom line is our founding fathers, and through the first 100, even 150 years, you see this worry that we could lose the whole thing. Are we complacent today? I don't want you to answer that. Just think about this. Are we complacent? Do we really realize the danger?

And how do we deal with that danger? We've grown so complacent, we take our freedom for granted, as if we have a divine right to our democracy, that bad guys can't win. Obviously, the greatest generation didn't think that because they came perilously close to the Nazis and the warring powers of the Axis powers to basically crumbling Great Britain, at which time our economic future would have been very much in peril in our country, too.

And so how do we deal with this situation? The answer's up on the board, three words, allies, allies, allies. I will tell you, there's an altruism in history. There's not many always truisms. Nations with allies thrive. Nations without allies wither, it's that simple. I spent 45 years as a marine infantryman, and I would just tell you that I don't know how to defend this country without allies and have the kind of.

The kind of opportunities and the kind of prosperity that you have grown up with here in this country. And alliances are built on trust. As George Shultz, our former secretary of state here at Hoover, used to say, trust is the coin of the realm. I will tell you, when I landed in Afghanistan, I was a one star in a war we did not anticipate.

We knew we'd let the country down when they got through and killed 3,000 innocent people, murdered them. Innocent people. Citizens of 91 countries, by the way, died that day on 911. As I looked around the war fighting troops that I commanded there that were entrusted to us, it was anything Australia, New Zealand, Turkey and Jordan, Canada and Germany, Norwegian and British.

In other words, I looked around and they were there for one reason. An attack on one is an attack on all. NATO said that NATO and other countries joined NATO to support us, eventually growing to 49 countries. So my point to you is the greatest generation came home and created this world.

We've not been paying enough attention to it. We actually have some people who question if we should be part of the world. Well, guess what? Every astronaut will tell you we're stuck with each other as they look back at Earth from outer space. We'd better figure it out.

We have faced worse before, so we're going to get through this. But we're gonna need you young people to come in and be some of our leaders. Let me pass it over. Professor Stephen, to you.