Jimmy Carter Paradox Part 3: Fundamentalism

Review by Bill Doughty––

In a bipolar and increasingly monochrome America, Jimmy Carter paints colorful bridges to attempt to bring people together, including people of different religious beliefs.

Carter is the most devout life-long religious person elected to the presidency in modern U.S. history. His father was a deacon at his Plains Baptist Church in Georgia, and Carter has attended or led weekly Sunday school Bible lessons his whole life.

He led Bible study at Annapolis, for example, while he was a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy during World War II.

Paradoxically…

• Carter studies both the Old and New Testaments as a former missionary and self-described “evangelical Christian and a Baptist.” Yet, he decries the rise of religious fundamentalism and is strongly in favor of the wall of separation between State and Church.
• Despite his reliance on the comfort of his faith and daily prayer, he is not in favor of mandatory prayer in school, government displays of the Ten Commandments, or legislative decisions based on interpretations of the Bible over the Constitution.

This is the third in a series of reviews of “Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis” (Simon & Schuster, 2005).

Carter sat down to write the book several years after fundamentalist Islamist extremists attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. It was published in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq ordered by President George W. Bush twenty years ago. This book is still relevant and timely –– explaining why the United States has become so fractured and why fundamentalism is so dangerous.

“The most important factor is that fundamentalists have become increasingly influential in both religion and government, and have managed to change the nuances and subtleties of history debate into black-and-white rigidities and the personal derogation of those who dare to disagree. At the same time, these religious and political conservatives have melded their efforts, bridging the formerly respected separation of church and state. This has empowered a group of influential ‘neoconservatives,’ who have been able to implement their long-frustrated philosophy in both domestic and foreign policy.”

Carter notes, “Narrowly defined theological beliefs have been adopted as the rigid agenda of a political party.” He adds,”The irresolvable differences of opinion on abortion, homosexuality, and other sensitive social issues have been exacerbated by the insistence of intensely committed hardliners on imposing their minority views on a more moderate majority.”

 

Compared to his time in the White House in the mid-to-late 70s, Carter concludes, “Stronger and sharper partisan differences have evolved among Americans in recent years.”

As president, he was able to work with both Republicans and Democrats who put country and people above party and personal interests. What was still growing in 2005, when this book was published, has metastasized in 2023. Here's how Carter saw it nearly twenty years ago:

“Nowadays, the Washington scene is completely different, with almost every issue decided on a strictly partisan basis. Probing public debate on key legislative decision is almost a thing of the past. Basic agreements are made between lobbyists and legislative leaders, often within closed party caucuses where rigid discipline is paramount. Even personal courtesies, which had been especially cherished in the U.S. Senate, are no longer considered to be sacrosanct. This deterioration in harmony, cooperation, and collegiality in the Congress is, at least in part, a result of the rise of fundamentalist tendencies and their religious and political impact.”

Carter blames not only the rise of fundamentalism but also the impact of dark money in politics thanks to some large corporations and billionaires. One could argue that the differences have only grown even sharper and stronger in 2023, with help from social media algorithms, right wing media caught telling lies, and a more partisan judiciary.

Early in “Our Endangered Values” Carter identifies “prevailing characteristics” of intense fundamentalism. These characteristics can apply to Middle East ayatollahs or to homegrown “prophets” like Waco’s David Koresh:

1. Almost always, they are groups led by authoritarian males who want to subjugate women.
2. They believe the past is better than the present. [And they try to whitewash history.]
3. Self-righteousness: “Fundamentalists draw clear distinctions between themselves, as true believers, and others, convinced that they are right and that anyone who contradicts them is ignorant and possibly evil."
4. Anger: They are quick to threaten or even initiate physical attacks on others who don’t share their beliefs.
5. Fundamentalists define themselves in an “increasingly narrow and restricted” way.

The bottom line, according to Carter, is that fundamentalists [including Islamists, Christian nationalists, white supremacists, Opus Dei, etc.] believe in an ideology that is based on rigidity, domination, and exclusion. They abandon the rule of order, social justice, and environmental stewardship in favor of selfishness, greed, power, and control of others.

While reading and ruminating about “Our Endangered Values” over the past several weeks I also finished reading Daniel Byman’s “Spreading Hate: The Global Rise of White Supremacist Terrorism” (Oxford University Press, 2022). It’s a terrific companion that overlaps nicely with Carter’s observations.

Byman presents a history of extremism, militancy, and terrorism by white supremacists, antigovernment activists, Christian nationalists, and authoritarian anarchists. Like other authors and historians, such as Michelle Goldberg and Kathleen Belew (who is cited several times), Byman shows how often military veterans –– such as Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who was also associated with the Christian Identity movement –– have been involved in anti-government violence.

More than ten percent of the people arrested for participating in the insurrection of the Capitol on January 6, 2001, are military veterans. It’s no wonder DOD is trying to root out domestic extremists in its ranks.

But it's not all doom and gloom.

In “Spreading Hate” Byman gives a hopeful view of curbing White Power power. The FBI demolished the Ku Klux Klan. Informants regularly turn on violence-prone militia extremists. The federal government learned lessons from Waco (thirty years ago today) and Ruby Ridge, so does not respond with overwhelming violence when provoked. Perhaps most importantly, public sentiment turns against mass shooters and other terrorists who try to bring about anarchy and civil war.

Charlottesville rally, August 2017.

I doubt even Jimmy Carter back in 2005 could have imagined the white supremacy rally in Charlottesville in 2017, the J6 Capitol insurrection in 2021, or the continuing rise of influential Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, from his own state of Georgia.

Speaking of civil war –– Antithetical to Carter, Greene calls for a “national divorce” of red and blue states. Greene has also come out against support for the defense of Ukraine against the Russian invasion, which is supported by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Greene recently expressed support for the Air Force national guardsman who leaked top secret Pentagon documents. (The documents came to light because of their appearance on a pro-Russian site helmed by former Navy petty officer Sarah Bils, according to USNI News.)

Greene tweeted: "Jake Teixeira is white, male, christian, and antiwar. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime.”

Paradoxically, Biden, like Jimmy Carter, is a deeply religious president who sees the world through moderate, and some would now say progressive, eyes. In 1976 Biden was the first senator to endorse Carter for the presidency.

As for Carter, he is genuinely and deeply religious, and his interpretation of Christian values is based on caring for and about others, not alienating them. As a farmer, teacher, and builder, he tries to create bridges between people and away from blind fundamentalism.

Carters and Reagans at the Carter Center opening in 1986.

“There is obviously a widespread, carefully planned, and unapologetic crusade under way from both sides to merge fundamentalist Christians with the right wing of the Republican Party,” Carter writes. “Although considered to be desirable by some Americans, this melding of church and state is of deep concern to those who have always relished their separation as one of our moral values.”

Carter reflects, “Despite what I consider to be a constitutional and biblical requirement for the separation of church and state, I must acknowledge that my own religious beliefs have been inextricably entwined with the political principles I have adopted.” Much is left up to interpretation and selective understanding of religious texts, he says.

Carter’s nuanced views in “Our Endangered Values” includes further discussion of the treatment of women, the rights of homosexuals, and stewardship of the environment, among other controversial issues.

He also explores issues of gun control and abortion –– parts 1 and 2 of this series.

His commitment to compassion and his consideration of the views of others is welcome and especially relevant in a divided America in 2023. Today, his Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta, which includes the Carter Presidential Library and Museum, welcomes people from all over the world who want to learn, live in peace, and work together in support of human rights.

The Carter Presidential Library and Museum

Blue Age II: China, Russia, Mahan & Law

Review by Bill Doughty––

In Part I of our review of Gregg Easterbrook’s “The Blue Age: How the US Navy Created Global Prosperity –– and Why We’re in Danger of Losing It” we explored his thesis that the United States Navy is a force for good, keeping peace and stability on the seas, promoting prosperity, and reducing worldwide poverty.

Easterbrook says, “The United States would do well to recognize how many of its advantages are gifts of the sea.” Keeping sea lanes open the global commons from other nations’ ill intent and also from piracy means “open highways without trolls or tolls.”

Then-CNO Adm. Gary Roughead visits PLAN hospital ship Daishandao in Qindao, China in 2009,

Former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead is quoted twice in “The Blue Age.” Roughead says, “Land and air forces can win disputes, but it is the Navy that keeps disputes far from our shores.” Easterbrook quips, “Keeping disputes far from our shores looks better all the time.

”In Part I of our review of “The Blue Age,” we also presented Easterbrook’s conclusion that thinker-strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan was fundamentally wrong in some of his beliefs that, in fact, may have led to two world wars –– and may be influencing China today in the PRC’s expansionist policies, which parrot some of Mahan’s own views.

We also touched on Easterbrook’s conclusion that a continued era of peace and prosperity requires nations' commitment to following international laws, which will lead to more international cooperation. That’s especially important for the world’s two biggest powers.

“The question of whether the blue age will continue comes down to this: whether the United States and China, the two most important nations of history, can get along,” Easterbrook writes. Can maritime cooperation be achieved on the “outlaw ocean” through empathy and mutual respect?

“Walking in another’s shoes is the essence of human understanding,” Easterbrook contends. 

So, what is it like in China’s shoes?

Lights of Beijing and Tianjin, captured by the International Space Station orbiting 264 miles above, May 1, 2021. (NASA)

Evidence of China's rapid rise within one generation can be seen from space. But the affluence comes with effluence. "China must control its greenhouse emissions, the worst in the world." Easterbrook says, “Life is stressful in China, corruption permeates government, elections are rigged, and there is no freedom of speech or religion. These said, China’s living-standards, improvements and poverty reduction from 1995 to 2020 rank high in any accounting of the human family’s great accomplishments.”

In a deceptively easy style but with academic rigor, Easterbrook explains some of China’s feelings of victimization, its previous isolation, and its lack of enlightenment about human rights. He looks at the history of East/West interaction over centuries in or affecting China. And he shows some of the hypocrisy in dealing with the Middle Kingdom, including in recent history.

For example, President Trump’s second Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, lectured Chinese leaders about their lack of democracy, then –– in an attack on our own democracy –– “told the world from the podium of the Department of State that the [U.S.] election outcome would be ignored and Trump would remain president.” Then there's the January 6, 2021 insurrection, seen by the world.

“Walking in China’s shoes does not mean excusing failings, including oppression of the Uighurs and Tibetans, betrayal of Hong Kong, stifling of free speech, ‘labor camps’ that are actually prisons, no constitutional rights, corruption top to bottom. In China there is plenty of disgrace to go around. 

“Above all these, 1.4 billion human beings are living close together in a place that’s polluted and depleting its aquifers at an alarming rate. Modern China may not remain stable. Unstable societies may lash out. If China lashes out, the sea is the most likely setting.”

Easterbrook reminds his readers, “Capital C Communism has not failed some of the time; it has failed all of the time.” In large part, because the individual has a need to live free, not as vassals of an authoritarian state.

“The Western view of the world –– unbraced by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, and increasingly by Japan and South Korea –– is the Enlightenment conclusion that the individual is more important than the state. The view is morally correct, is self-evident under natural law, is true in a metaphysical sense that exists independent of the empirical. The individual is more important than the state. That’s five hundred years of Western thought in one sentence.”

And individuals, once recognized as such, have rights, including the right to own property.

“The right to property is deceptively important, as it has been contested by many social systems, including fascist, autocratic, and communist. If at root your property is yours, just as your thoughts are yours, you have an incentive to build, create, and trade, profiting while helping others. If at root your property belongs to the commissar, prince, or Gauleiters, why work hard? That far-left and far-right nations are economically sluggish compared with the for-profit nations is explained in this way.”

Easterbrook warns against “fear of outsiders and assumption that change is automatically bad. Whatever might be true in a perfect world, in the actual world, opposition to change is a formula for being left behind.”

Ukraine President V. Zelensky meets Cmrs. John D. John, CO of USS Ross (DDG 71) during Exercise Sea Breeze 2021, Odessa, Ukraine. (MC2 Grosvenor)

Enlightened change is needed in strengthening international codes and conventions governing the world’s oceans. For example, there is a need for enforcing laws, including “against naval assaults, such as the one Russia staged in 2014 at Crimea.”

And what about Russia?

Then-Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Adm. James Stavridis holds a press conference with Russia Chief of Defense, Nov. 1, 2010. (Sebastian Kelm)

“Blue Age” evaluates the threat posed by Putin’s Russia as it also tries to build a modernized fleet as it rattles its scimitar at its neighbors, especially now against Ukraine.

“Since Russia about a decade ago gave up its hope of European Union membership, turning cold to the West, the Kremlin has resumed longing for the kind of maritime power that great nations possess. Russia’s moves against Crimea and Ukraine were seen in the West as owing to Putin’s ego. To the Kremlin, they were an attempt to fulfill centuries of Slavic desire for year-round access to warm waters.”

But intrusions into another nation is just one issue.

“A true global governance system for the blue water would eliminate flag-of-convenience loopholes, protect workers in fishing and shipping, impose strict antipollution rules, and create clear agreements about the mining of minerals on the seafloor. Prototype vessels that vacuum up nodules from the seabed discharge effluent that can pollute the towering deepwater columns essential to marine life, including the marine plants that release oxygen. If sea mining is to become common, a much better system, with close supervision, is required.”

Hope for better oversight rests in a document that is already in front of the international community, the “Law of the Sea.”

“No matter what, we need America to ratify the Convention on the Law of the Sea,” Easterbrook pleads. “The US position on this treaty is irrational. Irrational has been doing quite well in Washington, D.C., lately. But there must be international consensus on how to govern the seas. The sooner the world acts on this, the better.” International agreement and enforcement would protect fishing grounds and habitats, energy resources, and internet communication cables.

Easterbrook notes, “Since 1994 nearly every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the leadership committee for the US military, has expressed support for the Law of the Sea.”

As for nuclear arms control:

“When he was president, Jimmy Carter, a former navy officer who had been the XO of a submarine, joined the Soviet Union in signing the treaty called SALT II, which aimed to reduce strategic nuclear weapons. SALT II begat an arms control regime now called NEW START. At the end of the Carter presidency, the United States and Soviet Union possessed about 54,000 nuclear bombs, according to the Federation of American Scientists; today the total is down to about 9,900. In 2009, Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for advocating elimination of nuclear explosives.”

After Trump took the United States out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2018, the Russian Federation also withdrew. China was not a signatory.

Easterbrook says, “Full elimination of nuclear arms might backfire by allowing great-power fighting to resume –– but the smaller the inventory the better.”

Regarding submarines armed with such weapons, he writes, “Having them underwater and constantly changing position tells any leader that a nuclear first strike will fail. At least, any rational leader.”

“For now, nuclear deterrence clearly discourages war.”

Mahan (September 27, 1840 – December 1, 1914) died decades before nuclear weapons were developed. He was an extremely devout orthodox Christian who believed humans were preordained toward violence and war, as shown by Susanne Geissler, author of “God and Sea Power: The Influence of Religion on Alfred Thayer Mahan” (Naval Institute Press, 2015).

Geissler writes, “It is important to grasp that because of his theological views, Mahan did not view human nature as constantly improving … Therefore, he thought war never could or would be eliminated.” Geissler’s biography is indispensable in helping understand Mahan’s linear thinking and inability to consider a world at peace.

Alfred Thayer Mahan attended the First Hague Conference in 1899.

Mahan was against international “universal arbitration,” even after attending the First Hague Conference in the summer of 1899 as a member of President McKinley’s U.S. delegation. “The idea was that if international disputes could be arbitrated, war could be avoided,” Geissler writes. “In Mahan’s view, arbitration was even worse than war in that it coerces the conscience and binds it ahead of time to unforeseen situations.”

[Of note, the League of Nations created the not-so-permanent “Permanent Court of International Law,” known as the "World Court,” in 1920; the court held its first session exactly one hundred years ago today, January 30, 1922 at the Hague, Netherlands. The United States never joined the World Court, and the court disbanded one year after WWII ended.]

Mahan’s beliefs were anchored in his interpretation of the Bible, sticking with Genesis but also solidly in the New Testament. “Based on his belief in original sin and the innate depravity of humankind, he believed that war was intrinsic to the human condition.”

Captain Mahan, front row, fifth from left, was CO of USS Chicago, circa 1893-95. (NHHC)

Among other revelations from Geissler, Mahan was against women’s rights to vote or hold political office, based on his belief in scripture. He supported annexation of Hawaii near the turn of the century but “also expressed concern about the ‘great number of Chinese’ who lived in Hawaii and whether the islands would become ‘an outpost of European civilization or of the comparative barbarism of China,’” in his words.

Geissler’s “God and Sea Power” is a compelling read, especially helpful in further explaining Easterbrook’s critique of Mahan in “The Blue Age.”

Easterbrook has his own list of related and recommended books. And there are a number we’ve featured here on the Navy Reads blog, including Robert Kaplan’s “Monsoon,” James Stavridis’s “Seapower,” Eri Hotta’s “Japan 1941,” Evan Thomas’s “Sea of Thunder,” and Hampton Sides’s “In the Kingdom of Ice.”

Like Steven Pinker, author of "The Better Angels of Our Nature," Easterbrook is an optimist. After all, he is the author of "The Progress Paradox" and "It's Better Than It Looks." He notes how the United States has a vast array of strong allies, while Russia and China have only a handful of friends; in Russia's case: Iran, Syria, and Venezuela. Easterbrook lauds the fact that at least until 2016 China had been previously invited to the Rim of the Pacific exercise at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and PLA(N) ships were welcomed with a spirit of aloha.

U.S. and Chinese leaders watch as Keiki Hula dancers perform during an arrival ceremony for three People's Liberation Army-Navy ships, Luhu-class destroyer Qingdao (DDG 113), Jiangkai-class frigate Linyi (FFG 547) and a Fuqing-class fleet oiler as they arrive in Hawaii for a scheduled port visit, Sept. 6, 2013. Over the weekend, Chinese and U.S. leaders conducted dialogues to build confidence and mutual understanding between the two nations. The port visit was part of the U.S. Navy's ongoing effort to maximize opportunities for developing relationships with foreign navies to build trust, encourage multilateral cooperation, enhance transparency, and avoid miscalculation in the Pacific. (MC2 Nardel Gervacio)

Easterbrook is hopeful for a true win-win in the future, where cooperation can be achieved and conflict can be prevented, thanks to a strong U.S. Navy and "gifts of the sea."

Stavridis’s 50: ‘The Sailor’s Bookshelf’

Review by Bill Doughty––

The FedEx van pulled up in front of my home as I backed into my driveway. It’s a special feeling when a wished-for book arrives. I carefully sliced through the padded mailer and there it was: “The Sailor’s Bookshelf: Fifty Books to Know the Sea” by Admiral James Stavridis, arriving just days before Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. This year’s commemoration comes on the 80th anniversary of the attack on Oahu of Dec. 7, 1941.

Stavridis gives a very personal reflection of some of the favorite books on his bookshelf, and some relate to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the Pacific, which he calls “the mother of all oceans.” Others center on Europe and his favorite ocean, the Atlantic. Still others offer a diverse window into the art of reading, the lure of history –– and the terrible yet tempting beauty of the sea.

Some of the books in his collection go back to Stavridis's childhood. Many were influential in his choosing to apply to the U.S. Naval Academy or were part of his life throughout his distinguished careers both in and after the Navy.

Retired Adm. James Stavridis, former supreme allied commander, Europe, gives the keynote speech during the Armed Forces Communication and Electronics Association-U.S. Naval Institute (AFCEA/USNI) West 2016 conference. (MC2 Liam Kennedy)

His midshipman cruise in 1972 was to Pearl Harbor.

So was his first cruise as an ensign and anti-submarine warfare officer aboard USS Hewitt (DD-996), in which Stavridis sailed first to Hawaii and then westward across the Pacific in some of the same waters once explored by Capt. James Cook. 

Cook’s voyages come to life in one of Stavridis’s recommendations, “Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before.” The book follows Cook’s “three epic cruises in the mid-1700s” when only about a third of the world globe was known and mapped for navigation.

The flag flies at half mast while Marines of 3rd Marine Regiment "man the rails" of the USS Arizona Memorial in 2011. (Maj. Alan Crouch)

In the Explorers section of his book, Stavridis also features James P. Delgado’s “Across the Top of the World: The Quest for the Northwest Passage.” Delgado is a maritime archeologist and veteran diver who has explored hundreds of shipwrecks, including USS Arizona (BB-39) and USS Nevada (BB-36), both hit in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Delgado goes far, far north to present a history and heritage of exploration of the Arctic region. Sir John Franklin’s perilous journey in 1845 is at the heart of the story.

Rear Adm. Fiske (NHHC)

Another intrepid explorer of a sort is a “consummate seaman” and commander who invented technology in the late 1800s and turn of the century to help sailors on steam vessels and promote sea control and sea power. Admiral Bradley A. Fiske is author of “The Navy as a Fighting Machine.” Like Alfred Thayer Mahan, who is also featured in this collection, Fiske lobbied for and helped establish the position of Chief of Naval Operations. 

He was a champion for readiness as “a persuasive and thoughtful operational maritime thinker and writer.”

Exactly one hundred years ago, Fiske was president of USNI.

Stavridis writes:

“He was also a prescient strategic analyst. He served as president of the U.S. Naval Institute, the intellectual heart of the naval profession, for eleven years, 1912-1923, thinking, writing, and publishing constantly. As late as 1924 he was commenting on international affairs, correctly predicting the inevitability of a U.S.-Japanese war. He lived to see that dire proclamation come to pass with the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor in his eighty-seventh year but sadly not quite long enough to see the pivotal battle of Midway in the early summer of 1942 turn the tide in the Pacific.”

Speaking of heroes and Pearl Harbor, Stavridis features a book in the “Oceans” section co-authored by Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, along with Professor E.B. Potter, titled “Sea Power: A Naval History.” Nimitz, of course, commanded the Pacific Fleet from Pearl Harbor and led the effort to defeat Imperial Japan in less than four years. In this classic 932-page book, first published in 1960, Potter and Nimitz provide a history of the American and world navies and how naval warfare has evolved to become a fundamental part of national power.

 

Stavridis, who was a student of Potter’s at the Naval Academy, wrote his own book with the same name but “different in tone and style” and in homage to his former professor. Adm. Stavridis’s “Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans” is one of many of his works I’ve featured on Navy Reads over the past decade. 

Stavridis acknowledges he could have chosen to showcase many other books about the War in the Pacific in addition to the Potter-Nimitz “Sea Power.” He considered Samuel Eliot Morison’s multi-volume “History of Naval Operations in World War II” and Craig L. Symonds’s single-volume “World War II at Sea: A Global History."

Lt. Cmdr. Ernest E. Evans, at commissioning ceremonies of USS Johnston (DD-557), Seattle, WA, 27 October 1943. He was Johnston's commanding officer from then until she was sunk in the Battle off Samar, 25 October 1944, and was lost with the ship. (U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command)

The “cornerstone book about the naval war in the Pacific during World War II” he chooses, however, is the captivating “Sea of Thunder: Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign, 1941-1945.” The book centers on the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944 and, as the subtitle says, four commanders:

“Admiral William ‘Bull’ Halsey, a swaggering (and deeply racist) commander of the American fleet for much of the combat; the elegant Japanese admiral Takeo Kurita, a battleship force commander who launched a near-suicidal attack on the American forces poised to retake the Philippine Islands; another Japanese admiral, Matome Ugaki, who saw himself as the purest of samurai and led the kamikaze forces at the end of the war; and –– the most appealing of the four –– the relatively junior Navy commander Ernest Evans, captain of USS Johnston (DD-557), a small destroyer that undertook a deeply heroic attack on a far larger Japanese force … In the course of telling the story of the battle, Thomas takes the reader through the vast U.S. maritime strategy to reconquer to Pacific Ocean and its hundreds of atolls, islands, barrier reefs, and littoral nations after the Japanese offensive wave of conquest had swept over much of it in the early days of the war” [in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor]

Pearl Harbor is just one of the many themes touched on in this wonderful collection that also includes diverse works by Rachel L. Carson, Simon Winchester, Thomas J. Cutler, Caroline Alexander, Nathan Philbrick, Herman Wouk, Patrick O’Brian, Sebastian Junger, and Joan Druett.

Throughout the collection, Stavridis shares personal joys and discoveries through reading. He expresses his deep love for the sea, starting in childhood. “What fascinated me then, and still does so many decades later, was the unpredictability of the ocean. It could change color, smell, wave pattern, surface condition, and a dozen other variables in an hour. It was a chameleon…”

The admiral’s curiosity also drives unpredictability in his selection of books in this collection, which features a book of poetry (“Moods of the Sea: Masterworks of Sea Poetry” by George C. Solley and Eric Steinbaugh), a book about art (“Turner & the Sea” by Christine Riding and Richard Johns, about artist J. M. W. Turner, who painted "The Battle of Trafalgar" and "The Fighting termeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up," pictured above), and a book of magical fiction (“Life of Pi” by Yann Martel), requiring the reader to suspend the constraints of science.

“I have always loved magical realism in the world of literature. This is a strain of fiction writing in which things exist in a novel or short story (or even a poem) that cannot quite be squared with the real world. The most famous writer of magical realism, who is especially prominent in the literature of Latin America, is the Nobel Prize-winner Gabriel García Márquez. His extraordinary novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” is widely regarded as the classic example of magical realism. Some other authors who deal in this style of writing include Toni Morrison (“Beloved”), Salman Rushdie (“Midnight’s Children”), Haruki Murakami (“IQ84”), Günter Grass (“The Tin Drum”), and Neil Gaiman (“The Ocean at the End of the Lane”). In such novels there are often ghostly visitations, dreamlike sequences, mythological gods, talking animals, imagined events, and unreliable narrators.”

Stavridis is a most-reliable narrator and navigator as he takes us on his voyage to “The Sailor’s Bookshelf” and a journey of self discovery. “I’ve always believed that reading allows an individual to essentially expand their life every time they open a book,” he writes in the book’s preface.

U.S. Navy Airman Benjamin Adams, from Panama City, Fla., reads a book on the fantail of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68), July 5, 2017, in the South China Sea. Nimitz was on deployment in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations. The U.S. Navy has patrolled the Indo-Asia Pacific routinely for more than 70 years promoting regional peace and security. (MC3 Ian Kinkead)

While he provides ample inclusion of fiction titles, most of the selections in “The Sailor’s Bookshelf” are nonfiction and history. Based on his recommendation, I added this title to my to-read list: “Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World,” a book about the Battle of Lepanto, and a book that had special meaning to Stavridis when he was the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.

“For a sailor to read ‘Empires of the Sea’ is to almost feel the ships under way and hear the sails snapping in the breeze. You can smell the gunpowder and hear the crack of cannons over the waves and wind. Crowley focuses on the geopolitics as backdrop, but the great strength of this book is a realistic focus on war at sea. It includes descriptions of the sea battles and sieges against the islands of Cyprus and Malta as well as the more or less constant activities of pirates. The centerpiece, of course, is Lepanto, and there is not a better description written. The entire book is truly an engrossing read, and one that keeps the reader’s sensibility under way with every page.”

The subtitle of “The Sailor’s Bookshelf” says “50 books,” but the author can’t help himself. Readers will find hundreds of titles of great books tucked inside “bonus” suggestions, lists, and notes as well as the fifty essays themselves.

                                                                                                                                         (PO2 Patrick Kelly)

Among the recommended reads are titles of books that were read by Pearl Harbor Survivors and other World War II veterans. I’ve had the honor to meet and interview many Pearl Harbor Survivors, most of whom are gone. Before and after and sometimes even during the war they read Jules Verne, Herman Melville, and Ernest Hemingway, all featured in this collection. Stavridis’s “The Sailor’s Bookshelf” is a labor of love.

It is dedicated “To my parents who taught me to love reading, To my teachers who taught me to love writing, To my shipmates who taught me to love the sea, and To my wife and daughters who taught me to love life.”

I will revisit this collection for a future Navy Reads “Bookshelf Part II.”

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RIP Senator Robert J. Dole

American statesman Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas died yesterday, Dec. 5, 2021, after a long bout with lung cancer. Like another of his colleagues, late Sen. Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, Dole wanted to become a doctor prior to the attack on Oahu and the start of American involvement in World War II. And like Inouye, Dole joined the Army shortly after Pearl Harbor and was severely, nearly mortally, wounded but recovered and dedicated his life to continued public service.

Senator Bob Dole and President Gerald Ford, Oval Office, 1976. (Bob and Elizabeth Dole Archives, KU)

While in Congress, Dole helped bring about the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. He helped save Social Security when it came under threat in 1983, and he was a lifelong strong supporter of national defense.

Dole, known for his dry-wit sense of humor, support for the Constitution, and general grace in defeat, was vice presidential running mate to Navy/WWII Veteran President Gerald Ford in the 1976 U.S. campaign; Dole became the Republican nominee for president in 1996. President Bill Clinton presented Dole with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1997 (pictured below).

Flags are flying at half-staff to honor both Dole and Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day on the 80th anniversary of the attack.