Martin Dempsey was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking U.S. military officer, from 2011 to 2015. In that role, he was the top military adviser to President Barack Obama. His book is Radical Inclusion: What the Post-9/11 World Should Have Taught Us About Leadership.From the transcript of his interview with Fareed Zakaria:
ZAKARIA: You know, what's interesting to me about your book is that you're a military man, and people think of military men, general, you know, it's about hierarchy; it's about commands, and the whole book is actually about the importance of radical inclusion, of almost a kind of flat organization, of consensus, of trying to share both the decision-making and the responsibility.--Marshal Zeringue
Do you think we understand the armed forces wrong, that we don't understand how you actually -- that you actually are persuading a lot more than you're commanding?
DEMPSEY: Absolutely. And think it's because, if you think about how we've -- we as a nation have constructed our national security apparatus, it's through allies and partners, since the '50s. And in fact, we have 53 allies and partners around the globe, 28 of them in Europe in the organization called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and that's how we've built our security.
Well, as a result, military leaders who have come through that system have learned that, to achieve particular outcomes, it's not just about achieving them yourself; if you want them to last, it's about achieving them through allies and partners, which can take longer and can, you know, create frictions, but you're more likely to gain the knowledge you need to find optimal solutions. You're more likely to share the burden so solutions are affordable. And if you find optimal solutions that are affordable, they actually have a chance of enduring.
ZAKARIA: Let me ask you a question about civil military relations...
DEMPSEY: Sure.
ZAKARIA: ... right now. As you know, one of the things that the American military has striven very hard to do is to be independent of the civilian authority but to also be subordinate to it.
DEMPSEY: Absolutely.
ZAKARIA: We now have a situation where you have generals running core parts of the American government. The secretary of defense is a former general; the chief of staff is a former general; and the national security adviser is a sitting in-uniform general.
DEMPSEY: Right.
ZAKARIA: Is that -- is that smart? I mean...[read on]