MARCH 2021 NEWS & COMMENTARY

Very few Americans could find tiny Montenegro on a map. Fewer still could offer a cogent description of the differences between Slovenia and Slovakia.

Most can’t name the three Baltic countries. Yet thanks to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s charter, which was signed 70 years ago in Washington, every American is bound by law to defend with blood and treasure each of those nations, and 22 others to boot.

While India and Pakistan seem to have stopped bombing one another, the causes behind the cross-border tensions aren’t going away any time soon. The two nations are nuclear-armed; have large conventional armed forces; have had four serious wars since they became independent in 1947; and have enormous cultural and religious antipathy. This is a prescription for a disaster, and yet the confrontation is flying below the international radar – well below North Korea, Brexit, China-U.S. trade confrontations, Iran and even the “yellow vests” of France. A full-blown war in the valleys and mountains of Kashmir is a very real possibility.

I spent much of my early adult life on American warships around the world defending democracy against one of its great 20th century enemies: global communism. The Cold War represented a rare kind of conflict in the span of human civilization, one not between states or princes, but between ideologies. On one side was centralized authoritarian control; on the other, democratic government of, by and for the people.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts on leadership. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. What is something about you that would surprise people?

Adm. Stavridis: I am a very good cook, because I grew up around terrific cooks.  My grandfather came here from Greece as a refugee in the early part of the 20th century and – like many Greek-Americans, immortalized in My Big Fat Greek Wedding – opened a restaurant, the Downtown Diner in Allentown, Pennsylvania.  So cooking is in my blood and I love make big Mediterranean dinners – risotto, cassoulet, tagine, paella, roast lamb, anything from the Mediterranean and the Levant.