Join us as we explore the remarkable career of Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, from his formative years in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and his decision to attend West Point, to his distinguished military and diplomatic service. Eikenberry shares insights from his time as the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and his extensive involvement with China, highlighting the lessons learned about leadership and international relations. The episode also touches on his academic pursuits and contributions to national security, culminating in his admiration for the young leaders at the U.S. Military Academy and his hopes for the future.
Join us as we delve into the remarkable career of Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, beginning with his formative years in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and his decision to attend West Point. Eikenberry shares how a pivotal encounter with Major Tom Griffin, along with the unwavering support of his parents and a dedicated congressman, led him to the United States Military Academy. At West Point, he distinguished himself as a dedicated cadet, excelling in economics and Mandarin Chinese, which played a crucial role in shaping his understanding of international affairs.
Karl Eikenberry is the former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and a retired Lieutenant General of the U.S. Army. He is a faculty member at Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University, and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University. Ambassador Eikenberry also serves on the board of Asia Society Northern California. Previously, he was the Director of the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University and an affiliate with several of Stanford’s research centers. His military career spanned thirty-five years, during which he held various command and staff positions in the U.S., Hawaii, Korea, Italy, and Afghanistan.
Eikenberry’s early military career unfolded during a challenging time for the U.S. Army, transitioning from the Vietnam War era to a volunteer force. He discusses his leadership experiences on the Korean Peninsula and with the 1st Ranger Battalion, highlighting the lessons learned about maintaining high standards and effective leadership. The conversation then shifts to his extensive involvement with China, detailing his early visits and role as an assistant army attaché in Beijing, and emphasizing the evolving dynamics between the U.S. and China.
Finally, we discuss Eikenberry's tenure as the Commander of Combined Forces in Afghanistan and his subsequent appointment as the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan. He reflects on the complexities of leading coalition forces and the transition from military to diplomatic roles. The episode also covers his academic pursuits, contributions to national security through think tanks, and the invaluable role of networking and continuous learning. Eikenberry concludes by sharing his admiration for the young leaders at the U.S. Military Academy, expressing hope for the future through their dedication and enthusiasm.
Key Quote:
“With your time in the academy, if you use this well then what you're doing is you're developing a network of resources of analysts, of people that are the professors, those that have gone back and forth from the world of policy to the academy itself. And these are a group of people that if you try to keep the networks alive, it's really going to be a good investment for you professionally. Too many times that I look back in my life where I was in a very difficult situation, a very difficult problem where I'm reaching out on the phone or by email or texting to a particular professor that I knew several years ago, but I've stayed in touch with. And they're able to come and give me some best advice here.”
-Ambassador Karl Eikenberry
Episode Timestamps:
00:27 Ambassador Eikenberry’s Journey to West Point
03:29 Life as a Cadet
08:37 Formative Military Experiences
13:56 US-China Relations
18:04 Command in Afghanistan
22:12 Transition to Diplomacy
31:15 Academic Contributions and Networking
Learn more about Ambassador Eikenberry
0:00:02.3 Announcer: Welcome to the WPAOG Podcast. We're honored to be joined by Ambassador Karl Eikenberry. Raised in North Carolina, Ambassador Eikenberry's journey to West Point began with a pivotal encounter and strong support from his family. At the United States Military Academy, he excelled in economics and Mandarin, Chinese. Eikenberry's distinguished career spans decades, including command roles in the US, Hawaii, Korea, Italy, and serving as the US Ambassador to Afghanistan. Currently, he's a faculty member at Schwartzman University, and a fellow at Princeton University, contributing to national security through academic and policy roles. In this episode, he discusses his military career, experiences in China, and reflections on leadership and diplomacy. Please enjoy this episode with our host, Jamie Enos.
0:01:01.7 Jamie Enos: Ambassador Eikenberry, thank you for joining us on the AOG podcast today.
0:01:06.4 Karl Eikenberry: Jamie, it's an honor to be here.
0:01:08.3 Jamie Enos: You have an impressive career in the military, as a diplomat, as an academic that are all intertwined, and I hope to get into some of the specifics in all three areas in our short time today together. We really do need days to expand on all of your experiences. So we'll just jump right in and we'll flash back right to the beginning, right into West Point. How did you get to West Point?
0:01:32.2 Karl Eikenberry: So, Jamie, I went to high school in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and Goldsboro Senior High School. And going into my senior year in the summer of my 1968, my parents turned to me and asked where I wanted to apply to a university. And I put in, I still remember it well, it was Dartmouth, Williams, Harvard, and West Point. And my father was quite surprised with the choice of the United States Military Academy, as was my mother. And nevertheless, he had said, "Okay, we'll fly you up to those four locations and give you a chance to look around." In the summer of 1968 then, I came right here to West Point for my West Point look, and it happened that our next door neighbor there in Goldsboro, North Carolina, that our next door neighbor's bother-in-law was Major Tom Griffin, Tactical Officer here at West Point.
0:02:35.2 Karl Eikenberry: We arrived. He told my dad the evening before, "Harry, why don't you leave Karl off at my house here at six o'clock in the morning?" It's in summer during Beast Barracks and during the Camp Buckner training, and said, "I'm gonna take him around. I'm gonna show him the good, the bad, the ugly, so to speak. And why don't you plan to pick him up in the evening?" So we did that. Very, very fortunate to have Major Tom Griffin step into my life by a pure chance at that point. I took a look around and I was seized by it, and after we had dinner at the Griffin's house, walking back out to the car, my dad looked at me and said, "Karl, what are your choices now?" Actually, west Point was the fourth and final stop, and I said, "Dad, first, second, third choices are West Point."
0:03:22.3 Karl Eikenberry: So without Major Tom Griffin, without a set of parents that gave me those kind of choices and got me ready to go and made me curious, I was certainly not be here today. But off I went with the application. I was also blessed that I had a congressman from the 3rd District of North Carolina at that time. David Henderson, US Army Air Corps veteran of World War II, he was a serious congressman. I put in the application, he came and visited me one day after football practice at Goldsboro Senior High School, and he nominated me and here I am today. Very blessed.
0:04:00.4 Jamie Enos: So you get here up at West Point, what kind of cadet were you?
0:04:02.6 Karl Eikenberry: I think that most of my classmates would say I was a pretty intense cadet and working hard academically. Not the best athlete in the class and working hard on the physical fitness side, but probably looked at as a pretty serious young cadet.
0:04:21.4 Jamie Enos: What were your favorite classes and did you have any mentors while you were here at the Academy?
0:04:26.8 Karl Eikenberry: Well, okay, so favorite classes, one was economics, and I went on to be the number one cadet in economics at West Point for the class of '73, something I was proud of. But at that time, Jamie, that was the, those the years that Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman, iconic economists were in Vogue, and so a pretty exciting time to be studying economics. But the other course that really seized me, the other studies was a Mandarin Chinese study. And it was interesting, at the time, the cadets had to study two years of language. I was just with Colonel John Baskerville, who's in charge of the West Point Department of Foreign Language Studies, and he talked about the new and improved language studies program, and it really is improved. I guess now it's one year study. At any rate, I had my two years of study, and you had to begin in your freshman year.
0:05:27.2 Karl Eikenberry: So back to Goldsboro High School, I remember getting a letter from the Department of Foreign Languages saying I would have to study two years of foreign language. I looked over the list and I was studying French in high school, so I saw French as a prospect, and I was in my second year of French and figured I'd already mastered that language. And it got more and more exotic 'cause I went down the list, there was Russian and it was in the Cold War period, so that was real exotic. And then the last choice was Mandarin, Chinese. And my parents, living in Goldsboro, they had taken my sister and I to a restaurant, a Chinese restaurant in Raleigh the year before, and boy, that was so exotic. So Chinese was the choice. And off I went to West Point, two years of Chinese, had some really great instructors, a wonderful civilian instructor, Professor Jason Chong, a Major Wong, who was a uniformed instructor. And I was just captured with the study of Commander in Chinese.
0:06:24.4 Karl Eikenberry: And another somewhat of a lucky choice. When I made that choice, what did I know about China? What did I know about international affairs? And here we are today with China that I couldn't have imagined in 1969 as a freshman cadet at West Point, but here I am still today. So those were the courses. And then the mentors, a lot of mentors but interestingly, so I'm here today in May of 2024 with the honor of, tomorrow, of getting the distinguished graduate award. And two of my mentors were Dan Chrisman, class of '65, went on to be superintendent at that time, Captain Dan Chrisman, teaching me in the Department of Social Sciences about International Relations, and there was Captain Wesley Clark, class of 1966. He will go on to be the SACEUR in Europe. And Wes Clark, Captain Wes Clark is also teaching Cadet Karl Eikenberry in the social science class here at West Point. Both of them will go on to be distinguished graduates themselves.
0:07:36.1 Karl Eikenberry: And a third mentor that I could not go without mentioning, and that was Colonel, he was to retire as Brigadier General Lee Olvey in charge of the social science department, a fantastic economist, Rhode Scholar, Harvard PhD. And he was one that excited my interest in economics. But talk about mentors, I remember graduating, getting ready to graduate from the academy in 1973. I was part of the 5% program, so I had applied to go directly to graduate school in economics and had been accepted at Harvard, in Michigan, and walked in to give Colonel Olvey the good news, and Colonel Olvey said, "Karl, why are you going directly to graduate school?" I said, "Colonel Olvey, that's what you did." And he said, "Karl, I made a mistake. I should have gone first into the Army and got my boots muddy for a couple of years, and I could have gone to graduate school afterwards, so don't do that." And guess what, I didn't do that. And he was a good mentor who didn't just hear whatever I had to say and say, "Great." He took it seriously, and once again, here I am, thanks to some awfully good mentors along the way.
0:08:52.8 Jamie Enos: That is an inspiring list of literally shiny stars that you've had. That's incredible and how it's all connected back into this Distinguished Graduate Award as well. It's pretty amazing. Thanks for sharing that. So, eventually, you go through the ranks in your military career, and I find that very interesting with your experiences. You are a retired Lieutenant General, and I'll just rattle off some of your military background. It's operational, Assistant Army and Defense Attache in Beijing, Office of Military Cooperation, Afghanistan, Commander, Combined Forces Command in Afghanistan, Deputy Chairman of NATO Military Committee. Again, I'm just picking a few. I could pick... We don't have enough time on the podcast, so excuse me for not putting in company commands and those kind of things, which were also important, which got you to the point. But you commissioned from West Point as an infantry officer and had a wide range of command and staff assignments at the tactical operation and theater level, including light, mechanized, airborne, ranger units in the continental United States, Hawaii, Korea, Europe, Afghanistan. It's an incredible resume. What do you regard as your most formative operational assignment?
0:10:11.3 Karl Eikenberry: Yeah, Jamie, I've thought about that a lot. As you go through later in life, you look back on formative experiences before getting more into the political military aspect of my career, which was to come after I went to graduate school at about the six, seven year point in my career. But prior to that, in the formative years out in the field with tactical units, it's really two assignments. You recall in 1970... Well, you won't recall because in 1974 you were probably not born. But I would recall.
0:10:45.2 Jamie Enos: I'm younger than that. You're correct.
[laughter]
0:10:49.3 Karl Eikenberry: In the year 1974, I recall the United States Army was in one of the most difficult stages in its entire history. We'd come out of the Vietnam War very demoralized, making an effort to try to transition from the draft to a volunteer force, and things were not going well. So my first assignment out of West Point, I raised my hand, the Vietnam War was over. I thought the most combat relevant place to be to, to go off to was the Korean Peninsula. And boy, the problems that I faced as a young lieutenant, drug problems, racial problems, ill discipline, readiness problems. And I'd tell you, Jamie, after about a year of that, I was thinking that perhaps I would get to the end of my five year commitment and then move on. And I had a battalion commander who at the time said, "Karl, I understand where your feelings are right now. Before you make any decisions, I'd recommend that you go to what was called the 1st Ranger Battalion that had been started up at Fort Stewart, Georgia."
0:11:52.7 Karl Eikenberry: And it was a battalion that had been established by General Creighton Abrams more to see if we could get one unit that would have extraordinarily high standards in terms of performance, training, readiness, and that would then become a breeding ground for young officers and non-commissioned officers and spread through the rest of this new volunteer force. I said I would be quite interested in that. I did join the 1st Ranger Battalion. It was the toughest two and a half years of my life. Living out of a rucksack, we trained everywhere. But the experience of the officers, they were all Vietnam veterans, I was a young lieutenant. The non-commissioned officers that we had were all a group of combat veterans from Vietnam, decorated. They wanted nothing more than to get our army back to the standards that existed before we went into the Vietnam War and started to lose things rapidly, lose our standards and identity. Anyway, that two and a half years that the Rangers were very formative. It taught me that what can be achieved with the high standards, with the very best of leadership, with determination.
0:13:05.0 Karl Eikenberry: Then I was about to, even with that then, I was about to, at the five year point, thinking hard about time to leave. I had a division commander who called me in and said, "Captain Eikenberry, understand you're getting ready to leave." And I said, "I am." And he said, "Well, I don't want you to leave until you have company command." And I said, "But General, the Chief of Staff of the Army has just got a new rule out there. You got to go to the advanced course." So I would have to leave, go to the advanced course at Fort Benning, get to a unit. I'd have about a year on staff time. And so we're talking about three or four more years. And he said, "If you want a company command, I will find a way that you'll have a company command." I said, "I'd like to give it a try, of course." So four weeks later, I had a company command, and that was the second big formative experience. It taught me what can be accomplished. More than anything else, it gave me confidence in myself that I actually could lead a organization, make a difference. And from that point on, Jamie, I never looked back.
0:14:09.2 Jamie Enos: So impressive. Again, it's just... That command experience, I know that my family went through that as well with thinking about transitioning out and staying in, and it was, here we are 23 years later. So it's that moment. You served in uniform in Beijing during a period when America seemed encouraged by a new era of positive cooperation with China. Since then, China-US relationships have shifted to one of a little bit more intense competition. How do you see that critical relationship developing in the near future?
0:14:43.5 Karl Eikenberry: Yeah, so my first time looking at China was actually 1971, here showing my age, West Point Chinese Language Club, a trip to then the Republic of China. We had no relations with the People's Republic of China. And off I went to Taiwan for one month with three of my amigo friends from the Chinese Language Club. And boy, I look back at that time, no diplomatic relations with Beijing. Looking across from Jinman Island, three miles across to the mainland, cultural revolution has seized the mainland, and we've got a strong Asia Pacific ally in the Republic of China. I go on from that to study inside of China at Nanjing University. I will serve as an assistant army attache in Beijing as a major in the mid '80s. Relationship then, we now have diplomatic relations. Not only that, but we're a quasi ally of China aligned against the Soviet Union. Go forward to Tiananmen rupture of the political relationship. But I'm back working on China in the Office of Secretary of Defense in the mid '90s.
0:15:56.7 Karl Eikenberry: In the late '90s, I'm the defense attache there. A very different relationship. It's the era where China's going to get into the World Trade Organization. The engagement strategy with China. There's gonna be a convergence between the United States and China politically. Not that they're going to adopt a united US kind of democracy, but there'll be more convergence as China becomes a more pluralistic society. Quite wrong. And people that looked at China in the 1990s, most of them got it quite wrong. So what do we have today, we've got an autocratic China, we've got a China that we're competitive with, certainly beginning in the Western Pacific, but increasingly globally.
0:16:35.8 Karl Eikenberry: Now, in terms of how I look at that relationship with China right now, it has to begin with a clear understanding of both sides. How are vital national interests being defined? Make sure you at least know where the red lines of the other side are. Secondly, in terms of the potential for accidents between the People's Liberation Army Forces and our Naval and Air Forces operating every day in the Western Pacific in close proximity to Chinese military forces, add to that the forces of our allies, like the Republic of Philippines, Japan, operating in close proximity to Chinese forces. So the potential, the possibility for an accident to occur out there, which could have very serious consequences given the state of our overall political relationships between Washington and Beijing, are significant.
0:17:34.4 Karl Eikenberry: I think going forward, Jamie, the key is to continue to find ways to ensure the possibility of accident is reduced, but also beyond understanding where each other's red lines are, which over a period of time during the Cold War, we did come to grips within the Soviets with the Soviet Union trying to manage this competition in a very responsible way, but at the same time, understanding that we're in for a long-term competition. And very frankly, in my view, winning that competition starts by looking ourselves in the mirror with that expression, heal thy selves. So look at our own society, look at our economics, look at our politics, how can we make ourselves better? And if we can make ourselves better and realize our potential, which we can, then we don't have to worry about the long term competition. We will win it.
0:18:33.0 Jamie Enos: Later in the military, you were the commander, Combined Forces Command of Afghanistan from May 2005 to February 2007. At that time, there were more than 23,000 American service members in Afghanistan, 26 NATO countries, and 11 other nations that were contributing troops and resources to that front. Would you describe your role during that command for the listeners? I know it was a huge thing. I don't mean to like put you on the spot about that, but just briefly kind of explain and describe some of the responsibilities you had, 'cause I think it's important for us to understand how that transition then happens later for you as an ambassador.
0:19:12.6 Karl Eikenberry: Yeah. So I had two tours of duty in Afghanistan wearing uniform, then a third tour of duty, so to speak, when I went back as the ambassador, then retired general. In the first two tours of duty, both of them were very inherently coalition kind of operations. The first time as a major general where I was working very closely, Jamie, with, first, the United Nations and the special representative of the Secretary General Lakhdar Brahimi, who was leading the UN mission in Afghanistan. And my role there was to help him and help our country do the best we could in trying to get an integrated approach towards the Afghan's comprehensive effort to build a security sector. So not only military and police, but the judicial sector, counter-narcotics, demobilization, and disarmament aspects. At the same time, I was leading a separate coalition effort to help build the Afghan National Army.
0:20:08.3 Karl Eikenberry: My second tour of duty, I was the US Coalition Forces Commander. So full up coalition command, and then the responsibility of working with NATO and the NATO International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, taking American areas of responsibility and sectors of Afghanistan, and then transitioning those to NATO lead. So, like any coalition commander, myself very much included, you've got the challenges that you have at the core, a US mission and a US national interest, but part of serving that interest is making the tent wide, and by bringing in more coalition members, then you add more global legitimacy and indeed legitimacy to the Afghan people by having more than just US flags there. But that balanced against the fact that all coalition members are not created equally. So that I cannot say that at any period of time that I command the Afghanistan, or even as the US ambassadors, I looked at coalition forces on the ground, all of the coalition forces on the ground, brave young men and women, they wanted to go out and do their mission as best they could. But the way they would go about that mission, of course, appropriately, were defined by their civilian leadership in many, many different capitals.
0:21:34.6 Karl Eikenberry: So for a US force, our risk calculus, so to speak, would be quite different from, say, a particular country in Europe. Very different rules of engagement, very different ways of going about the mission. Some countries' primary purpose in putting forces on the ground in Afghanistan were knowing the Americans wanted those forces there, but in terms of whether or not they felt that they were necessarily threatened by Al-Qaeda, which is what took the United States of America there, no. That is the aspect of coalition command of several that I think are most important though. Understanding the reason forces are being sent to join your coalition, trying to balance your US-centric coalition mission with an understanding and empathy towards each contributing nation.
0:22:29.2 Jamie Enos: Yeah, I appreciate that insight for young officers and cadets as they transition in military roles with major international organizations like the UN and NATO, which that coalition piece is, is very important. There you were later, like you had mentioned, you transitioned as a civilian under President Obama as an appointee, as an ambassador to Afghanistan. And at that time, the appointment of a former military officer was quite unusual. So how did you view that challenge?
0:22:57.7 Karl Eikenberry: Yeah, so President Obama as a candidate, Obama, you'll recall in 2008, I think you can recall...
0:23:05.0 Jamie Enos: I do have that one. [laughter]
0:23:06.1 Karl Eikenberry: Yeah. Okay. So you're with me this time.
0:23:07.0 Jamie Enos: I gotcha.
0:23:09.2 Karl Eikenberry: So in 2008, candidate Obama, Senator Obama is on the campaign trail, and he is saying that with Iraq now in the midst of the surge and some really tough fighting in Iraq after five years there, he will say that Iraq was a war of choice and it was a bad choice. Afghanistan was the war of necessity, but it was never properly resourced. So that's going in. And then inauguration in late January of 2009, and everyone knows that President Obama is gonna do more in Afghanistan, but we don't know exactly what that means, except we're going to do more. We don't know what it means in terms of end of states that we're going to try to achieve, exact levels of forces, what the mission of those forces will be. I give that as a background as early on in that process, I get a call as I'm the Deputy Chairman of the NATO Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium, and Jamie, one of these odd stories.
0:24:12.0 Karl Eikenberry: So I'm in our residence in Brussels, and my wife Jing gets, hears the phone ring and picks it up and walks over to me, and looks very, very serious and has the receiver covered and says it's Secretary Clinton, Secretary of State Clinton. And I was saying, no, I'm sure it's our younger daughter pretending to be Secretary of State Clinton. So I took the call, and then my wife tells me that she saw me very quickly come to the position of attention in the kitchen. And it was Secretary Clinton asking if I can consider being the ambassador for President Obama. And I asked for a one day think through of this 'cause at this point in life, you want to... Of course, you got to be talking to your partner. And Jing was all in, provided she could go with me. And so I told Secretary Clinton could do it.
0:25:06.4 Karl Eikenberry: Now, to your question though, why would President Obama have selected me? I think there were several reasons. I did not know President Obama. President Obama had heard about me through people like Secretary Clinton, and I think it had to do, Jamie, with, one, look, we had been in Afghanistan for, at this point, we had been there for about eight years. I had been there on two tours of duty. Even when I was at NATO, a lot of my portfolio was Afghanistan. So I think there was a recognition that my learning curve wouldn't be quite as steep as it might be for others. Secondly, a recognition that I'd served in embassies and maybe have a little bit of sense of political military affairs or diplomacy. Third is, very importantly, President Obama's plan, and we knew it by this point, would be not only a military surge, but it would be a civilian surge. We would very quickly have the largest bilateral development aid budget in the history of the United States, still stands today, and we would build the biggest embassy.
0:26:06.0 Karl Eikenberry: So, normally, your diplomats don't have that kind of experience of building things, taking a big budget and trying to apply it. So that was probably looked at in something else that would be to the benefit. And then the last was that I think that the president had received the word that it might be good to have, in this particular case as a ambassador, somebody that did understand a little bit about military operations and could maybe be conversant or feel comfortable giving advice about the overall campaign. Final point then, with all of that, it was interesting now going in as ambassador, retired, taking over, taking command, so to speak, in charge of a embassy, got 18 different departments and agencies, all kinds of tribes, so to speak, and everyone not sure if when I walk through the door, I'm going to be wearing a camouflage suit and dropping everyone for pushups.
0:27:08.5 Karl Eikenberry: So I made a very concerted effort as the ambassador to talk very little about my military career, talk about it more in self-deprecating ways, if I was to talk about it at all, with probably the turning point of leading that embassy being about four months, five months into my ambassadorship when I was called back for a testimony with the commander at the time, and we were at the House Armed Services Committee and getting a lot of questions with clearly the more easy questions going to my military counterpart, and then the tough questions going to the ambassador so you could show the constituents that you're really being tough on Afghanistan. And it got rather personal about my team. And then I went on the, let's say I defended the team well on on C-SPAN. Nobody watches C-SPAN except the United States Embassy team. All 400 of them gathered in our cafeteria at midnight in Kabul watching live C-SPAN their ambassador testify. I knew none of this. And I pushed back very, very hard, and I would still today in defense of some very good young men and women civilians who were manning that embassy.
0:28:28.3 Karl Eikenberry: When I got back to Kabul a couple of days later, the first State Department officer I saw looked at me and said, "Ambassador, thanks." And then the next person I walked into the embassy, "Ambassador, thanks." And the third one said, "Ambassador, you're more State Department than the State Department." And I go through that at length because if we're talking, if people are interested in this discussion about leadership, even then, I learned something about leadership, is that if you've got a good team and you've respect them, and you stand up for them, they will stand with you. And that turned out to be the best team I've ever had the privilege of leading.
0:29:11.6 Jamie Enos: Incredible. So your wife went to Afghanistan with you?
0:29:15.9 Karl Eikenberry: She did. My wife was... It so interesting there, Jamie. When I was in uniform and I'd go off to places like Afghanistan, of course, she couldn't go. If I went to Iraq, she couldn't go with me. So I said, "Jing, what do you think?" I said, "It's gonna really be hard to say no to the president and the Secretary of State. My inclination is to say yes." And she said, "You must say yes, but there's one requirement we've got here. And that is that I'm gonna go with you." And it was interesting, Jamie, because my thought was that, now I'm thinking military. Well, if she comes with me, then people are gonna say that's an exception. It wasn't an exception. We had a policy in the United States government, the Department of State, a good one, that if you're in a hardship place and there's positions that are open, and there usually are because it's a hardship place, your spouse can come with you, but she has to have a cutout removed from you.
0:30:12.4 Karl Eikenberry: So she was down in the trenches of USAID, but her daytime, that was her daytime job, her nighttime job was, her real job was she became informally the US Women's Ambassador to Afghan women. She got out and about and visited, out of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, she went to 22 of them over a period of time. And under the definition of a combat action badge, if she was in uniform and been in the army, she would have a combat action badge from an attack that she went through with me up in the Nuristan Province in Northeastern Afghanistan. But having her with me in Afghanistan was absolutely vital to my own success. And an opportunity to talk, just mention here what everybody knows, your partnerships... Well, I've read about people that have gone through some really tough times in life without a close partner, but I still haven't met one.
0:31:21.1 Jamie Enos: Very nice to hear. Oh my goodness, I don't even know how to segue out of that. I'm still amazed at your wife just going to Afghanistan and being like, "Yeah, I'll just work for USAID. No problem." And going around in the countryside of Afghanistan during some turbulent times. So, it's quite impressive what a team the two of you are together. So we thank her for that as well. Your experience in academia is equally impressive, as former faculty at Stanford University and currently at Schwartzman College, distinguished senior fellow at Stimson Center, fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. I'm sure there's a billion other acronyms of councils and everything else I could throw out in there, so, again, please excuse me if I forgot something. How does time in the academic, that is the academic research and think tank world, how does that help one be better in communicating and contributing to the national security domain?
0:32:22.2 Karl Eikenberry: One of the many great things about the United States Army and how it develops its officer corps, and then the foundation that West Point provides for some of that officer corps, really does get into the exposure of the officer corps to the academy, so to speak. Here not West Point Academy, the academic academia, that academy. And what do you get out of that? So beginning here at the United States Military Academy with this exposure to so many disciplines and fields, very eclectic education, but then so many of the officers at about that 5, 6, 7 year point, the opportunity to go off to a graduate school. And what does that mean beyond a very important aspect when you're off at graduate school, a chance to take a knee, so to speak, from the day to day of the tough operational life that officers and their families are having to go through.
0:33:28.2 Karl Eikenberry: And first of all, this idea about a complex world that we live in, and that in a world of such complexity, that we're with emerging technologies, with the information aspects of the world that we live in today with complex geopolitics, with complex national politics, with climate change, how can you be a leader in today's world, and as you work your way up towards the more strategic level, unless you have a very eclectic informed view of the world? So getting into that kind of environment then, where I encourage people, if you're off at a research institute or if you're going for that degree, don't just take classes that are narrowly focused on that particular degree you're working on, but get out there. And then when you are back into a staff or a leadership position, just inherently knowing that I've got a complex problem here, and everyone around this table looks about like me right now and talks about like me and has the same kind of intellectual background, then you've got it wrong. So opening up the aperture.
0:34:42.9 Karl Eikenberry: Secondly, I think what you get out of time in the academy, the time with research institutes is that if it's a good one, and you're taking the right courses, and think about this when you sign up for courses, is the idea that you're going to be improving on your communicative skills, speaking skills, your writing skills, where you're taking new challenging topics and you don't just get to throw up five PowerPoint slides in a very conventional stale manner. You're trying to figure out, how do I communicate? How do I convince this audience? The writing skills and the speaking skills I learned in the academy were awfully important to me. And then third and last, as you move forward in life, you begin at the tactical level with a military career. You begin at the tactical level. You go onto the operational, you go onto the strategic level. And with each stage, as you're working your way up, and then there's the Venn diagram. You're overlapping at certain points in your career, and you move from tactical to operational and back, and so it goes.
0:35:54.0 Karl Eikenberry: With your time in the academy, if you use this well then, what you're doing is you're developing a network of resources, of analysts, of people that are the professors, those that have gone back and forth from the world of policy to the academy itself. And these are a group of people that if you try to keep the networks alive, it's really going to be a good investment for you professionally. Just too many times that I look back in my life where I was in a very difficult situation, a very difficult problem, where I'm reaching out on the phone or by email or texting to a particular professor that I knew several years ago, but I've stayed in touch with and they're able to come and give me some best advice here. So, yeah, people I know will look at the academy and say, "Well, that's time away from the unit. That's time away from the force." But in trying to think through a long career where you're going to be able to contribute the most in the national service, I really commend a career in which you can find a way to get that graduate school experience, and then even beyond that, to try to find time to be intersecting with the very best analytical research institutes that we've got.
0:37:21.2 Jamie Enos: I think that's incredible advice on networking and being the node in that network, and especially when the long gray line can be there and be part of it. It's used experienced earlier in your cadet years, and then throughout your military career, and later as a diplomat as well. Ambassador Eikenberry, congratulations on receiving the Distinguished Graduate Award from the West Point Association of Graduates. This award is given to graduates of the United States Military Academy whose character, distinguished service and statute draw wholesome comparison to the qualities for which West Point strives in keeping with its motto, Duty, honor, country, and you embody that description. So congratulations on this award. Do you have any inspiring last thoughts that you have for the corps and young grads out there?
0:38:10.0 Karl Eikenberry: No. Jamie, I had the privilege this morning of intersecting with some of the faculty here at the United States Military Academy to a group of firsties who a week from now are going to be 2nd lieutenants, to some plebes and yearlings and Cows who still have more time here at the academy. I've gotta tell you, Jamie, that my wife and I are going to leave West Point here two days from now, and very, very confident in our United States army. Very, very confident in our armed forces. Very, very confident in our nation. You look at a distance sometimes, or you just read the headlines and you see the superficial aspects of the news, and you can get quite concerned.
0:39:09.3 Karl Eikenberry: But then you come here to the United States Military Academy and you see the competence of these young men and women, you see that their eyes are just filled, the kind of bright fire, they wanna get out there and they wanna serve a country that they believe in. And I believe that as long as we've got what we've got here at the United States Military Academy or down in the Washington DC Way, at the United States Naval Academy, or out west at the Air Force Academy, as long as we've got in the ranks the officer corps that we've got in our armed forces, that there's a heck of a lot of hope for this country. So I'm in great debt to my classmates and to the group that decided that somehow I should have the honor of being a distinguished graduate. But I want to say that I share this award with the entire class of 1973, and beyond that, I share it with all of the graduates of the United States Military Academy. Thank you very much.
0:40:13.8 Jamie Enos: Thank you for your time today, sir.
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