Good morning, everyone.  Let me start by offering both a hearty “Welcome!” and a hearty “Congratulations!” to the Class of 2023 from the Graduate Department of Defense and Strategic Studies.  Bravo Zulu, folks!  Well done.

And thank you, Professor Rose, for the kind introduction.  It is such a pleasure to be here, and to see all of you completing your studies with us – all of you getting a certificate, a Masters degree, or a Doctoral degree here today – and bringing what you have learned here with you back out into the world.

Make no mistake: this is no ordinary program.  As you probably know – or if you don’t, you should! – this program was the brainchild of Professor Bill van Cleave at the University of Southern California, who built it to provide graduate level education and training for students planning careers in national and international security affairs, policymaking, and research and teaching.  It moved to Missouri State in 1987, and to our campus in Fairfax less than 20 years ago.

But Bill van Cleave wasn’t just an academic.  He was also a practitioner with deep experience in national security affairs, serving in a variety of advisory positions with the Department of Defense, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, as well as in a number of think tanks and research institutions.  His vision for this program was that it would train and equip folks with the same kind of breadth of interest, depth of knowledge, and thirst for public service that he himself had.  And clearly, he succeeded.

Nor do I say that idly.  When I first served in the Executive Branch as a political appointee, as a Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State more than 20 years ago, I was flabbergasted – and impressed, it must be said – by the way in which it seemed like “those van Cleave graduates” were popping up everywhere in the national security bureaucracy.  For a small program with modest resources, it had a tremendously outsized representation in government in those years, and that meant also an outsize impact upon U.S. policy. 

From the outset, this program has always taken the “practitioner’s perspective” with the utmost seriousness, and the program has been rewarded by punching well above its weight in producing public servants in national security for a long time now.  I never met Bill, alas, but I heard a lot about him, and he certainly seems to have known what he was doing.

So I’m standing here right now, looking at the next generation that will carry this legacy forward. And it truly is an honor to speak to you.

In my own career, I’ve been in and around the Washington national security and foreign policy community since the mid-1990s, in a variety of interesting roles – which on one level probably sounds pretty cool, but might just mean that I’m getting old.

But one of the constants that I have seen throughout my years in this business is the importance – no, let me rephrase that: the critical importance – of having good people in policymaking.

And I mean that in every sense of that term. 

To be sure, there are a lot of factors that go into the policy mix.  Yes, the political scientist and the international relations theorist in me wants to look for deeper structural dynamics and constraints, or institutional agendas, bureaucratic processes, and historical path-dependencies.  At the same time, the lawyer in me wants to look for statutory and constitutional authorities, legal precedents, and regulatory frameworks. 

And, in fairness, one would be quite wrong to dismiss the importance of such factors.  They can be very important indeed in the complicated process of sausage-making that occurs in the policy arena in our complex world.

But the real-world policy practitioner in me – the guy who’s “been around the block” at least a little bit in this crazy town – also knows that, so much of the time, the most important, even decisive, variable is people. 

Who is it that is, or isn’t, there in the room when some decision is made?  Who reaches what conclusions about the situation they face and what it demands?  Who argues for which policy alternative, and who convinces whom to do something?  Whose values, knowledge base, and perspectives help determine what is “on the table” for consideration?  Who is well informed, or ill-informed? 

Is a decision-maker enriched and empowered by some compelling historical analogy or comparison, or trapped within one?  In command of the facts, or unmoored from them?  Who is calm, collected, persuasive, and inspiring in a crisis – or, alternatively, confused, rattled, or paralyzed by events? 

Who knows how to listen to input from others, and who doesn’t?  Who shows judgment and rises to the occasion – and who falls down?  So very much can depend upon these things.

By stressing the importance of ensuring that “good people” continue to go into the defense and security business, I’m focusing on whether and the degree to which policy community leaders are well informed, historically literate, ethical, analytically rigorous, and intellectually responsible.  And I want each of you to be that kind of leader in the years ahead.

That is precisely why we have a program like this in the first place.  This Missouri State program is heavily focused upon the practitioner.  It is for those who want to begin, or grow within, a career in defense and strategic studies.   These courses are not just preparing you to understand the world better or to theorize more elegantly about it – though I hope that you can do both of those things better than before.  (If you can’t, well, maybe you’d better have a quick word with Professor Rose before we get to the next portion of the program, where we give you degrees!  But I know you can!) 

In addition to helping you grow in intellectual power and raw depth of knowledge, this program aims, as a classicist might put it, to marry up theoria and praxis – that is, theory and practice.  It aims to prepare you to be better at acting in the global security environment, better able to help shape that environment wisely, and equipped to help build a safer future for all of us. 

I sometimes imagine that attending a professional degree program like this is, if you’ll forgive me, a little bit like sidling up to the bar at a kind of intellectual speakeasy, behind which stands a trained mixologist.  Or maybe – sorry, Professor Rose! – that may not be the most wholesome and uplifting analogy.  So let’s make it a high-end juice bar, behind which stands a sports nutritionist ….

Anyway, from the perspective of a professional degree program, the hope from those of us who stand behind the bar – the juice bar! – is that between us we can get just the right vitamin-filled beverage into your hands that will help get you off at high speed on your professional way. 

So you take a shot, as it were, of global situational awareness, throw in a splash of political theory, a drizzle of behavioral science, a dram of historical context, and perhaps a dash of the sausage-making often involved in outcomes bargained among diverse stakeholders.  Then you take that mixture, and stir in the security challenge of your choice, and shake vigorously over cubes of research method and analytical integrity.  The resulting cocktail, I hope, is the perfect pick-me-up to give you energy and nourishment for the next few years of your career.

We are here today at your commencement ceremony, so you have clearly all imbibed a good many of the matcha-infused kombucha dragon fruit protein lemongrass whatchamacallit energy drinks that we have tried to help prepare for you as budding national security professionals.  These figurative drinks have a lot of ingredients for a reason.  Whether you wish to be an academic or a practitioner, I really do think it is so important to have a foothold both in the world of theory and in that of practice. 

I know the two communities sometimes like to poke fun at each other.  I’m sure you’ve heard, for example, the old saw about “[t]hose who can, do; while those who can’t, teach.”  And that may well be how at least some practitioners see things – though you’ll notice, of course, that your professors here are folks who have “done” and also teach. 

And it’s surely true nobody should really want to be the policymaker equivalent of Thales of Miletus, the pre-Socratic philosopher in ancient Greece who – the story goes – was so preoccupied with contemplating the Heavens that he walked right into a well!  Not for nothing did Aristotle and so many of the ancients prize phronesis: practical wisdom and prudence in government and public affairs.

Nevertheless, by the same token, we’d be very wrong to neglect or dismiss theory.  The Oxford philosopher Gilbert Ryle once noted that “[m]any people can talk sense with concepts, but cannot talk sense about them.  They know their way about their own [neighborhood], but they cannot construct or read a map of it.”  And policymakers, I’d say, do need maps of the intellectual, political, and policy terrain on which their policymaking occurs.  Otherwise they might just end up walking in circles, or worse.

So I – and, I dare say, we – want you to have a foot in both of these worlds, in theory and in practice.  I hope your education here has helped make you more fluent in both “languages,” for that is surpassingly important. 

If you are a practitioner, familiarity with theory will make you a better practitioner.  And if you are an academic, familiarity with the nuances and complications of actual practice will make you a better academic.  I hope we’ve been able to give you some of that grounding in both realms.

But this is just the start.  All of this nourishment – these complicated energy drinks, if you will – that we have been trying to provide just gets you up to the starting line of the course you will run over the rest of your professional career.  After we all leave here today, it will be up to you where, how fast, and how well you run. 

Accordingly, we aren’t here just to congratulate you on your success in this program, though of course we do congratulate you!  You have worked hard, and you have done well – often while also juggling demanding full-time jobs, in many cases already serving this country in our armed services, in the Department of Defense, or in our Intelligence Community.  You should be enormously proud of yourselves.

Nevertheless, we are also here to wish you tremendous success in the careers you have ahead of you in national and international security, in defense and strategic policy, or in foreign affairs.  And, truth be told, that is not just because we like you and think well of you (though we do!). 

Don’t take this wrong, but our well-wishes for all of you in your careers in defense and security are in some sense actually quite selfish. 

If you’ll let me speak as a middle-aged guy who has spent most of his life in the policy community working on just these sorts of issues, I will confess to you a secret.  Don’t spread this around too much, but my generation has not solved all the world’s problems.  (I know, I know.  You’re shocked!  Well, you heard it here first.)

The world is a messy, complicated, and challenging place – with no shortage of complex, cross-cutting problems and with no shortage of bad actors who wish us ill and who want us to fail.  And that big ugly world is out there waiting for you to struggle with it.  And I won’t mince words: I very much want you to do better in fixing it than we all have to date.

Remember, my friends, you are practitioners, not just observers or theoreticians.  And you have been studying defense and strategic studies, not 15^th Century Byzantine literature, the morphology of paleolithic axe-heads, or the larval development of the wingless fairy wasp. 

I’ve got nothing against such academic specialties, mind you, but you have been studying security and geopolitics.  And your goal is thus not merely to acquire knowledge per se, but rather to build that phronesis that I mentioned a moment ago.  Phronesis is an active virtue, consisting of the practical intelligence necessary for wise action in particular circumstances.

How well the leaders of tomorrow handle your issues – in defense and strategic studies – will affect the degree to which entire governments, countries, peoples, or even civilizations rise or fall.  It will affect the degree to which peace does (or does not) prevail in a complicated world of bewildering interdependencies and of weapons more powerful and pervasive in their impact than any that humanity has hitherto known. 

So I don’t think there is any way that I could possibly overestimate how important it is that you succeed in the careers you have ahead of you. 

If we professors have mixed you some nice protein and energy drinks to get you out of the starting blocks at speed in your career, it is because we badly need those vitamins to hit your mental bloodstream so that you can bring the knowledge, the insight, the creativity, the wisdom, and the forethought to future national security policymaking that it will most assuredly require. 

That may sound daunting, or perhaps even intimidating.  And that’s fair.  But I hope you also find it exciting, and I hope that you feel you are much more prepared for those challenges than you were when you began your time with us.

So please bear all this in mind: not just our congratulations on your success and your hard work in these programs, but also our deep hope for your success in tackling the defense and strategic studies challenges we face, both today and tomorrow. 

And so, we congratulate you, but we also need you.  And we thank you, in advance, for your contributions to our national and to international security, and to making the world a better and a safer place. 

So go out there into that challenging world.  Meet the threats it presents, reduce risks, mitigate harm, build security and prosperity, and advance liberty and human flourishing.  And while you’re at it, enjoy how rewarding it is to make public service in this field your life’s calling.

Godspeed, to all of you.   Don’t let us down!

Thanks. 

-- Christopher Ford