You can't kill your way to success in a counter insurgency effort. You have to protect the people, get the civil military balance right, train the locals, and practice effective strategic communications.
James G. Stavridis
As a 4-star admiral, I visited over a hundred U.S. embassies all around the world, and I never failed to see lines of locals seeking visas to our nation.
The NATO treaty is crystal clear on this one: An attack on one nation shall be regarded as an attack on all of them.
In the 21st century, we can't create security by building walls.
I've never been in a 'Twitter fight,' though I've witnessed my fair share. I do enjoy vigorous and informed debate, but the benefit is lost when the exchange becomes a series of petty ad hominem attacks. I don't see much value in it.
Sleep is a key part of the requirements for resilience and good decision-making.
In the 20th century, we built a lot of walls - we endlessly tried to build walls between us and people we perceived, correctly or incorrect, as our enemies. In the 21st century, because of the advent of networks, the free movement of goods and people across the globe, we need to build security by building bridges instead of building walls.
It seems Russians hacked into emails from both the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee and then chose to release only the DNC emails. These attacks destabilize and undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral process, and they must be addressed in a serious and proportional way - just as we would for a non-cyberattack.
As a geographic location, Greece offers the best bases in the NATO Alliance from which to operate in the trouble spots of the Middle East and the Mediterranean.
Getting enough sleep makes us better family members, friends, lovers, drivers, writers, cooks, and pretty much everything else that is of importance in our lives.
During the early 1990s, Mexico's domestic political sensitivities meant that it rarely extradited people who had committed crimes in the U.S. After NAFTA, extradition numbers began to increase until they surpassed 100 a year in the late 2000s.
Some have called Afghanistan 'the graveyard of empires,' and it probably is the graveyard of empires.
The most important thing I learned was the value of personal friendships and working cooperatively with your peers - the Academy has a saying, 'cooperate to graduate,' and that remains a very important central core in my thinking today.
I don't think anyone would look at Colombia today and say that it is failing. This positive outcome is an example of the effective application of smart power - it is succeeding.
I spent much of my life - almost 40 years - as a military officer. My specialty was in the part of the Navy that operates ocean-going ships, and as a result, I was at sea for many months at a time.
It is an ambitious agenda, but the approach to Russia should be, 'Confront where we must, but cooperate where we can.'
In any insurgency there will be people who are irreconcilable and who pose a clear and present threat to the U.S. and our allies.
Thinklogical's systems play a key role in the delivery and visualization of mission critical data used every day by military and intelligence communities worldwide.
I would not be surprised to see Syria break apart entirely.
When I get up, the first thing I do is open up Gmail and check my personal email.
I am a huge consumer of social networks, and I utilize Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I'm interested and am learning more about Tumblr and other visually dominant sites.
I tend to gravitate toward reporters who cover all aspects of the story: from personal aspects to the big picture that answer the 'so what' of a story.
What's the third largest nation in the world after China and India? It's the Facebook nation - 430 million people on Facebook.
Eighty-five percent cannot read when they enter the security forces of Afghanistan. Why? Because the Taliban withheld education during the period of time in which these men and women would have learned to read.
Wikipedia, every day, is tens of thousands of people inputting information, and every day millions of people withdrawing that information. It's a perfect image for the fundamental point that no one of us is as smart as all of us thinking together.
It's probably worth noting that although I'm ethnically Greek, my grandfather was actually born in Turkey and came through Greece on his way to the United States.
All of my relatives on both sides of my family are from Allentown.
I knew early I wanted to follow my father into the military. He did a full 30-year career and retired as a full colonel in the Marines after graduating from Allentown H.S. and later from Cornell University.
After 37 years in the Navy, there were no further jobs in uniform, and it was my time to transition. But I wanted to continue to mentor and educate young people, which is, of course, a big part of being a senior officer in the military.
We are excellent at launching Tomahawk missiles; we need to get better at launching ideas.
Front-line officials, including DEA agents, border patrol and other homeland-security professionals, should remind Mr. Trump how important Mexico's assistance is in achieving his national-security goals.
Controlling President Trump seems incredibly difficult.
Rested commanders are the best commanders.
All of the military services - land, sea, and air - spend a great deal of time awake. This is a direct result of the high tempo of operations we conduct while forward deployed well outside our national borders.
Internal fights between various agencies, i.e. between the CIA and FBI, are highly counterproductive.
As cyberweapons and cyberattacks increase in scale and intensity, it will be difficult to defend against them all.
If we discover through a thorough and unbiased investigation that Russia has indeed attacked our electoral process directly with the intent to influencing the process, our response needs to be robust, rapid, and proportional. This will shape our relationship with Russia profoundly.
Russian strategy seems to center on maintaining Putin's popularity at home; building a strong military capacity in special forces, nuclear weapons, and advanced submarines; pressuring nearby nations to join various defense and customs pacts dominated by Russia; and pushing back on the U.S. wherever convenient.
I grew up as a baseball player, and given my modest size, it was always clear that I would end up playing in the infield.
Building a stable, peaceful, and coherent Europe must include Russia.
