American Security Council Foundation (ASCF)

country overview

 

ADM. MICHAEL MULLEN: Well, good day. It really is great to be with you. And Gen. Sullivan, thank you for your kind words, mercifully brief introduction but more importantly, for your mentorship and your friendship over many years. 

 

I actually first got to know Gen. Sullivan – and he wouldn’t tell you this, but it was all about ships in the mid-’90s, where he served as an outside voice for what the Navy was looking at for future ships. I’m not sure what he knew about it, except he is from Boston and he likes to sail and he has a view. But what you’ve done, by way of friendship and mentorship, is very special. 

 

There are a lot of really important people here – friends – and it would take me far too long to recognize them. But I would like to single out one and that’s George Casey. George Casey, by all accounts, won’t be at AUSA in his current assignment next year, although you never know what’s going to happen in Washington.

 

But George and Sheila have been great friends and have been at the helm of the Army during an extraordinary time. I think we don’t really appreciate the degree of difficulty of these times. In two wars; trying to, as he said, get the Army back in balance and also prepare for the future. 

 

And in doing that, there’s nothing closer to George and Sheila than taking care of soldiers and their families and it has been a great privilege for Deborah and I to get to know George and Sheila. And George, I just want to say thanks for all your extraordinary leadership and dedication.  

 

As I said, it’s a great honor to be with all of you here today. And as I look around at the outstanding Army leadership in the audience I now understand why I couldn’t get any calls returned this week. I was worried that folks might still be holding a grudge about last year’s Army-Navy game or the one before that or the one before that.

 

The truth is, I root for all of our service academies. And in some ways my wife, Deborah, and I have become closer to the Army than the Navy. As we’ve worked hard to understand our soldiers and the demands placed on them and their families. 

 

In fact, over the last three years, one of the great privileges of being chairman has been getting to know the great women and men of the United States Army. Two years ago I had the opportunity to share, with this very audience, what I had learned from the Army. And today I hope to share a bit more because let’s face it: I’m still learning. 

 

First, let me start with the conclusion from five years ago that remains unchanged.  The Army – and that includes – and the Marine Corps – and on the Army side includes the Guard and the Reserve and their incredible families – is the center of gravity of our military. Yet, back in October 2008, when we last spoke together we had only just begun to see a clearing in the distance in Iraq. 

 

The Army and the Marine Corps had shown enormous adaptability and courage and had become the best counterinsurgency force in the world all in just about 30 months. And our ground-forces services, their sacrifice and their amazing ability to change and transform allowed us to set the stage for success in Iraq and provided us the opportunity and the potential to succeed in Afghanistan. 

 

Today our mission in Iraq is transitioning successfully and we’re seeing progress in Afghanistan. Slow and even progress in places in Afghanistan but progress, none the less. There are, to be sure, real challenges ahead and real difficulties to overcome. And no one is underestimating them. 

 

But I can tell you we have the strategy, we have the right resources in place and we have the right leaders in charge and we are committed to success.   Quite simply, our soldiers have done heroic work and I believe we will meet our operational objectives in both Iraq and Afghanistan. 

 

I stand in awe of what the United States Army has accomplished. And I proudly salute our soldiers and their families for their historic service and achievement. And we will not forget the more than 4,000 soldiers who have given their lives in service to our nation – nor will we forget their families. 

 

But as we honor their achievements and sacrifices I come here with a warning: This decade of persistent conflict has had an impact that we are just beginning to come to terms with – an impact of untold costs and undetermined toll. And I believe that what we can see today is truly just the tip of the iceberg, with consequences for our military and veterans’ health-care system, our national employment rate and even homelessness. 

 

Both generals, Casey and Chiarelli, have spoken eloquently of the impact that a decade of combat has had on our soldiers: the multiple deployments with little rest in between the loss, the toll on families, including children who’ve had their fathers and mothers gone for, literally, half their lives. And now many soldiers and veterans coming home for whom the battle hasn’t ended – for many it’s just the beginning. 

 

They face physical and mental injuries, anxiety and depression, changing family dynamics and the extraordinary challenges of posttraumatic stress. As we consider how we will care for our returning warriors and the impact this will have on America. There are also consequences for our Army’s future in this second decade of the post-9/11 era. Consequences we all need to think about. 

 

First, as the prospects for a smaller presence in Iraq and Afghanistan take form we expect to see more stable dwell times for our troops. This is a very positive trend. But unlike combat, where danger was largely on patrol and outside the wire, the greatest challenges returning soldiers now face are much closer to home: family issues, financial problems, PTS, even the threat of suicide will become more likely to confront soldiers off duty vice on when they are away from the structure and leadership they’ve become so accustomed to. 

 

We are, quite frankly, just beginning to see these problems emerge as dwell time increases. Suicide, in particular, is a challenge that I know our leadership is deeply committed to addressing but I believe we have not yet come close to solving. Maj. Gen. Phil Volpe, who co-chaired the Department of Defense Task Force on Suicide Prevention, has been working this issue very hard and shares some of the challenges he reflected. 

 

And I quote, “We need to attack the stigma. You can be the best warrior in the world but you’re still a human being. And calling in for help is no different than if you call in for help for other reasons” end quote.  Phil’s observations about attacking the stigma apply equally to our efforts to treat PTS among both our soldiers and our veterans. 

 

For we’ve learned that the earlier we treat it, the better the prospects are for those suffering from this conflict’s signature wound. Another thing we’ve learned is that it is critical to start building resilience in our soldiers from day one in basic training. The Army is responding here with a commitment to comprehensive soldier fitness. A program led by Gen. Rhonda Cornum; herself a POW from the first Iraq war. 

 

And Rhonda tells us that we need to teach soldiers psychological fitness skills just as surely as we teach them to march, wear a uniform or shoot. This profound operational shift will also require renewal in engaged, focused and in some cases, very intrusive leadership. Or as some of you in the audience may remember: Good old-fashioned garrison leadership. 

 

Now, I know the chief has talked about this a lot and he also warned me he doesn’t want this pendulum to swing so far over that it’s all we do. But we’ve created a generation of soldiers tested to the extreme, wanting to be tested again. How do we keep their adrenaline running? How do we keep them engaged constructively? How do we sustain excellence as they transition away from combat? 

 

Gen. Casey has been out in front on this issue and we both expect our more seasoned, Army leadership – those who remember when strong leadership in garrison was a way of life – to teach our young leaders that we are all accountable for our soldiers’ well-being whether those young men and women are on duty or not. We also need to be mindful that for our young officers and NCOs who’ve know nothing but the post-9/11 expeditionary army, they haven’t been home enough to experience the different, but no-less persistent leadership demands on the home front. 

 

Ultimately, our E-8s and E-9s, as they have so many times before, will need to lead the way here. Our leaders will also be concentrating on maintaining our Army’s combat edge and creating, again, our full spectrum capability. And given the demands of the last decade, work and training remains for all of us as we refresh old competencies that we have not used as prevalently. 

 

For aside from the human and fiscal cost of this decade’s conflicts there’s been an operational opportunity cost as well. There are tasks we aren’t able to do anymore: missions that we haven’t trained for because we’ve been so heavily engaged. Across our armed forces I worry about young Marines who’ve never deployed on a ship, artillery officers who have not fired a gun in years, fighter pilots who have not honed their air-to-air skills at all. 

 

We can also learn from other nations that are making this transition ahead of us. As the Dutch conclude their combat mission in Afghanistan this August and the Canadians conclude theirs next year we would be wise to watch those countries closely for issues and trends that may impact our young men and women as well. 

 

Both have been forward leaning in their efforts to respond to the emerging needs of their returning warriors as they adjust to what some have called “the post-Afghanistan reality”. All told this effort will be setting standards, accountability, establishing a level of knowledge in a word: leadership. And through this decade of conflict, an incredible group of young combat-hardened leaders has indeed emerged. 

 

But what are we doing to keep our best? How do we know we are keeping them? There’s been much made of a recent article written Renny McPherson, a young Marine Corps officer who served in Anbar province and now attends Harvard Business School. He noted that of his 30 veteran classmates at Harvard only one is returning to active duty. Renny asks, where will we find our next Petraeus? 

 

Now, the Army is one of the most resilient institutions in our nation with a deep bench of talent and leadership. But we would be foolish not to think about how we foster, develop and retain our best. And it’s not just the generals I’m worried about. 

 

It’s really the majors and the captains, the sergeants major and the 1^st sergeants who will be essential to providing the leadership our troops will deeply need over the next decade. Our young leaders will be essential for the care of our soldiers, the future of our Army and ultimately, I believe, the direction of our country. 

 

Finally, let me share a few thoughts on our veterans. They are the most powerful recruiting tool we have. As a society, if we honor their commitment to us with our own, the next generation of young warriors will be sure to follow. Yet, we need to appreciate that their needs are interconnecting and comprehensive for our returning warriors, their families and the families of the fallen need education, health care and they need jobs. 

 

Some veterans are already having a hard time translating their military experience and talents into viable jobs when they transition out of the service. We need to look very carefully at our transition programs to make sure we are making a difference in preparing them. And obviously this situation is made even more difficult because of our struggling economy. 

 

In the Vietnam generation – my generation – similar challenges contributed to far too many veterans falling through the cracks and recent estimates place our homeless-veteran population above 100,000. And experts tell us that there is a five to seven-year latency period from discharge to homelessness. So the clock is already ticking for today’s war veterans. 

 

We simply can’t afford to lose another generation of veterans to homelessness like we did in the Vietnam era. We also can’t kid ourselves. As much as our young men and women appreciate the gestures of kindness we see today in tribute to our military and our veterans – a free ticket to a football or a pat on the back – these will not solve their problems. 

 

So while I deeply thank all of you for the tremendous support you’ve already provided, I call on you wherever possible to hire our returning veterans, including – and especially those who are wounded. Recently, one young veteran looked at me in the eye – he was a homeless veteran, all of 26 years old from OIF – and said, I gave my country 100 percent and that’s all I’m asking in return. 

 

I know that businesses like all of us must marshal our resources wisely; particularly during tough times. But we need to recognize our veterans and their families for what they are: not a burden, but a tremendous opportunity for the future. This is a generation that is; in a way I’ve never seen before, wired to contribute and wired to serve.  And they will benefit their communities, their nation, the world over the next 40, 50, 60 years in ways that no other generation has. 

 

So these are things that I’ve learned and what I’ve seen. And I realize I don’t paint, in some cases, a very sunny picture: growing and needed commitments to supporting our returning warriors, new demands on our Army, all in an environment of increasingly daunting and constrained resources. But despite all of this I remain optimistic. For history tells us that our Army and our nation have dealt with tougher times. 

 

In fact, when AUSA started, the Korean conflict was just beginning. Just five years after World War II, the greatest fighting force the world had ever known, had dissipated. The American people had tired of war and our armed forces struggled during the early phases of a new kind of war: a cold war. 

 

During that conflict, Gen. Omar Bradley served as our very first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Every day, I pass by a corridor in the Pentagon that bears his name and I’m reminded of the long shadow this great leader casts for all of his successors. Blunt, plainspoken but deeply intelligent, Gen. Bradley once remarked, we need to learn to set our course by the stars not by the light of every passing ship. 

 

Now this advice may seem surprisingly nautical, particularly coming from one of the Army’s most storied figures. But six decades later his words are undeniably true and undeniably wise. And despite an extraordinarily tough decade, the Army has kept its course straight and true, remaining the strength of our nation. 

 

And I thank AUSA and all of you here today for supporting and caring for our extraordinary soldiers and families along the way. God bless all of you, God bless our soldiers and their families and God bless the United States Army. Thank you. Thanks. I’ll gladly take a couple of questions.

 

Q: Admiral, thank you very much for your presentation today. Can you go, perhaps, a little bit farther in your allusion to constrained resources, especially, in the framework of what’s already happening in some of our European allied countries regarding the force structure cuts and budget cuts? Can you, sort of, paint us a picture on that please? 

 

ADM. MULLEN: Well, I assume most everybody in the audience knows where we are right now with our budget. I’ve actually, since the early 2000s, have focused on the point in time where our budget would start tipping over. If you go back to 1935 you can run a pretty smooth sine curve from 1935 up to now about the ups and downs of our budget even in times of war. So my expectations have been out there for some time. 

 

And I also believe with the right kind of focus, the focus that both Secretary Gates has put on this, myself and others, that we can meet the demands that we have we just have to do it in a much more efficient and effective way. Not always easy in government and I certainly understand that. But I’ve done enough of it personally to know that it’s doable. 

 

I’ve said more than once that I think, you know, our overall debt is the biggest threat to our national security. And I don’t say that – I’m not trying to say that from a political point of view, I’m trying to say it from a fact: We have 50 percent of the discretionary spending in our government in the Department of Defense. 

 

And so going back to my time in 2002, 2003, when I first started focusing on this; my expectation is one, it would tip and two, we would participate in that as we always have. And I want to applaud Secretary Gates’ efforts to move from tail to tooth to try to continue to grow the tooth part of our budget, which focuses not just on all the stuff that I saw on the exhibition floor but also focuses on our people and focuses on sustaining our force structure because we all think we need to do that. 

 

So that’s why these efforts are so important and leaders now are going to have to make tough decisions. Over the course of the last year we’ve not had to prioritize very often. We’ve not had to make hard decisions. From the budget standpoint we’ve not done the analysis – had to do the analysis to justify our future and I think we’ve got to do that. 

 

But in all this, if you ask me about the future, if we get it right for our people we’ll be just fine. So those comments I made about making sure those who have learned and brought us forward in these two wars so well, our young ones; if we retain the right NCOs and the right junior officers, we’ll be just fine and if we don’t that does not bode well. And so I’m hoping leadership is very focused on that. 

 

Right now we’ve got numbers in all our services. Our retention is exceptionally good. I’m interested inside those numbers – I’m interested in the quality of those numbers, first of all. And I believe the only ones that can tell me if we’ve got the right ones or the wrong ones are the battalion commanders, quite frankly. So focusing on that is key in terms of getting it right for the future as well. 

 

Certainly I watch the U.K., I watch Germany, I watch France – all these other budgets that are being reduced as well. I think that’s just – it’s the same kind of response in terms of trying to figure out how to deal with the fiscal crisis that they’re having, that certainly we’re having globally in a responsible way to get through to the future. 

 

At the same time, a future that is very uncertain, challenges persist. We call this a time of persistent conflict, that I voice and others voice. A steady message on this is what we need to accomplish the missions that we in fact are being given. And at the top of that list right now is, obviously, those who are in harm’s way. And that’s really the top resource requirement as far as I’m concerned. 

 

And I think we’re going to have to figure out how to deal with in, maybe, complementary ways with countries that heretofore have had sort of full-spectrum capabilities, in different ways than we have in the past. 

 

Q: Admiral thanks so much for joining this Army gathering this afternoon. Throughout its history the Joint Forces Command has focused on the joint force and joint operations. There is a major change coming how best is the department focused on the continuation of the development of the joint force in an operational sense?

 

Adm. Mullen: What’s the change? (Laughter)

 

I’m not going to get out and lead on this at this point in time. Obviously it’s a very tough issue. From my position as the chairman, having both been a fleet commander down there and been, basically, a component in Joint Forces Command when I was a 2^nd Fleet commander – having known many who’ve worked there and obviously been very exposed to Joint Forces Command over the last three-plus years that I’ve been in this job. 

 

I’m very supportive of the initiative to close it down or to, certainly – and I’ve looked at the functions. To directly answer your question, I’m very comfortable that from a functions standpoint we’ve got places for each of those functions to move to – very specifically. We’re obviously not through this so I’d just as soon not say anything else at this particular point. Okay, thanks.