WILLIAMSBURG — The Greater Williamsburg Chamber of Commerce kicked off the second year of its Commonwealth Conversations speaker series with retired Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force Gen. John Jumper in conversation with Colonial Williamsburg Foundation President Cliff Fleet Wednesday at Williamsburg Lodge.
This year’s series features three discussions with prominent figures led by Fleet.
Gen. Jumper spoke from the experience of his 39-year military career, including serving as the 17th Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, on issues ranging from leadership to national security.
As a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he provided military advice directly to the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Council. He also served as a wartime commander during conflicts in Iraq, Serbia and Kosovo.
The VMI graduate joined the private sector in September 2005 and now serves on several boards, and was recently appointed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin to the State Council of Higher Education.
In a conversation that covered threats posed by China, Russia, and North Korea, and the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, Gen. Jumper said the role the U.S. can play is limited.
“The degree of hatred in the world that exists today, we (Americans) have no way to comprehend,” he said, relating an experience at a refugee camp during the war in Kosovo. “We went up to the school area, and here’s some kids jumping rope. And they’re 6,7, 8 years old, jumping rope, and I asked the translator … what’s the little song they’re singing? And the translator didn’t want to tell me, because the song that they were singing was a song about the duty of the 6-,7- or 8-year-old to come back when they grow up and kill Serbs. When you go in their tent and look at their ‘Dick and Jane’ books they have in kindergarten, it’s the same story with pictures.”
“I don’t care where we grew up in the United States of America, there is no existence that we have in this nation that exposes us to that degree of hatred, and we cannot be as ruthless in the military as they are to each other in order to win a military conflict on their terms. That’s why we have to win it on our terms,” he explained.
He said that is why our military technology is so important, as it gives us the ability, and the edge, to do that.
He cautioned that the same hatred is what is driving the conflict in the Middle East, and morally, our options as a nation are few.
“In the Middle East … these things we going we see going on right now in the abstract, you can understand it,” he said. “Throughout the history of the Middle East crisis, the only productive role that we’ve been able to take in the United States is to make sure that they always are sitting down at the table talking to one another. We facilitate talks. We make them sit down. We use our leverage to make them sit down and talk to one another.”
“So, there is a degree of ruthlessness that’s based on hatred … that we cannot understand, and we can’t condone it either,” he said. “We can’t condone it on either side, but there’s not much we can do about it except put on the economic leverage. Use economic leverage to try to get people to tone it all down on both sides, get back to the table and start talking again.”
Most importantly, he cautioned the U.S. cannot retreat from the world stage.
“What I know for sure is that if the United States of America is not participating in this somehow … and trying to lead the way to a moral high ground, that things just fall apart and unravel, and we will be caught up in things without any choice because we have lost our ability to influence throughout the world,” he said.
And he also voiced a warning about our preparedness for the next conflict.
“We could not do Desert Storm again today. We don’t have the force to do it. We do not have the technological advantage that we used to have,” he said. “And the thing that we’ve always had is the people advantage, and that is, we have great training. All of the services always had great training. We were able to take our technology and leverage it and put it to work for us because of the great people that we have. It’s hard to get those people today.”
At the same time, other powers have improved their technology, leveling the playing field, and studying how we fight, he explained, and politics plays a role, as well, with the military often forced to keep unneeded bases open and obsolete technology in operation. But, for the General, it always comes back to people. Today’s military-aged population often have background issues that keep them from serving, he said. Meanwhile, funding for training the people the military does have has gone down.
“It’s not that people don’t realize it, but the political polarization is so bad right now, it’s hard to get anybody’s attention on these things because they’re so intent on arguing with one another,” he explained, adding the celebration around America’s 250th anniversary is a great opportunity to reset the conversation about who we are as a nation.
“This is the time for us to be talking to one another, and our children, about the anniversary of this nation and the importance of the duties of all of us to be good citizens, and teaching our children that right now,” he said.
“Everybody’s afraid to teach history, I get it,” he added, noting it often comes up in his role as chairman of the board of the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV), “And I get it all the time. When you say, ‘Listen, we really need to get back to teaching our children civics and history — how the nation is supposed to run — and what really did happen. And the answer I get is, ‘Well, whose history are you going to teach?’ My answer is: Our history. The history.”
To that end, the 250th provides an opportunity to engage in who we are and where we come from.
“The 250th is time for us to put a narrative out about our nation and how it was designed to work, so that we understand it when we start demanding changes … we understand what that means. We understand our Constitution, we understand our duty as civilians,” he said. “We understand how it’s supposed to work, or how it was meant to work by people who dedicated their lives to writing these magical documents that have become the gold standard for governance around the globe.”
Noting the nation has been through worse times, he said his “glass was half full” because it is in our power to recognize our good fortune to live in this nation, to regain our sense of cooperation and to realize that citizenship is something bigger than ourselves.
“There is no place like this nation for individual freedoms … for the liberties that we enjoy every day and for our ability to control our own fate, there is no place on earth like where we live today,” he said. “So, my optimism is that over almost 250 years now, the main virtue of our form of government is it’s always been self-correcting.”
“What is that thing that makes you feel part of something bigger than yourself?” he asked. “For all of us … it’s got to be, ‘we’re Americans and we support one another.'”
The next installment of the Commonwealth Conversations series is slated for Jan. 21, when the guest will be Professor Larry J. Sabato, founder and director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics and Editor in Chief of Sabato’s Crystal Ball newsletter, who will talk about the political climate in the wake of November’s election.
