Diplomats Of The United States

"[T]he Israelis were pushing President Obama to take military action against Iran, and were warning that they would do it themselves if he didn't... [H]e wouldn't because he thought the better way to get to the nuclear program... was through... muscular diplomacy, backed up by... strong sanctions that we rallied the world to put in place, and then we got the Iran nuclear agreement. ...[A]fter the on Israel by Hamas, the Israelis were insisting that ...Hezbollah from Lebanon were about to attack, and they wanted to strike preemptively ...and President Biden said ...we'll always be with you in defending Israel ...if you're attacked, we're there, but we're not there if you're going to start something. ...I can't speak to what the dynamic was this time, ...There's been a shifting rationale ...[or] explanation for why this, why now? ...That's why it's so important to have ...laid this out before the American people, and our partners and allies. We might have had less friction with them if there was a compelling case ...and had them on the take-off, not mid-flight or on the landing."

"The international rules-based order that’s critical to maintaining peace and security is being put to the test by Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin’s attacks are inflicting an ever-increasing toll on civilians there. Hundreds if not thousands of Ukrainians have been killed, many more wounded, as have citizens of other countries. More than a million refugees have fled Ukraine to neighboring countries. Millions of people across Ukraine are trapped in increasingly dire conditions as Russia destroys more critical infrastructure. For example, Mariupol’s mayor says that most of the besieged city’s residents are living without water, without electricity, without heat. Bridges to the city have been destroyed. Women, children, growing ranks of wounded civilians cannot get out. Food and medical supplies cannot get in. The mayor wrote today, and I quote, “We are simply being destroyed.” The world has seen Russia use these grisly tactics before in Syria, in Chechnya. Meanwhile, Russia’s reckless operation around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant risked a catastrophe, a nuclear incident. The Kremlin should immediately cease all attacks around Ukrainian nuclear facilities and allow civilian personnel to do their work to ensure the facility’s safety and security, as both the IAEA director general and a resolution adopted yesterday by the agency’s board of governors have called on Russia to do."

"We’ll deepen our support for Ukraine’s brave defenders and for the Ukrainian civilians suffering as a result of the deepening humanitarian crisis. We’ll continue to raise the cost of President Putin and all who carry out and enable his war of choice and the devastation that it’s causing. We’ll continue to strengthen our capacity to defend our collective security and deter further escalation by Russia, including by upholding our Article 5 commitment that an attack on one is an attack on all. NATO is a defensive Alliance. We’ve never sought and will not seek conflict with Russia. But as President Biden has said, we will defend every inch of NATO territory. No one should doubt America’s readiness or our resolve. At the same time, we’ll keep open the door to dialogue and diplomacy while making clear to the Kremlin that unless it changes course, it will continue down the road of increasing isolation and economic pain. And we’ll support Ukraine in its talks with Russia to reach a ceasefire and the unconditional withdrawal of Russian forces, something that Foreign Minister Kuleba and I have been discussing on a daily basis. In the meantime, we are working urgently with the Government of Ukraine, the ICRC, and others to create humanitarian corridors that will allow civilians to get out of Ukraine’s besieged cities and to allow food, medicine, and other vital supplies to get in. Russia’s attack created this humanitarian crisis. Now, all countries have a responsibility to pressure the Kremlin to alleviate at least some of the misery that it has wrought."

"Of all the consequences of Moscow’s unprovoked attack, one of the most unexpected is the spark it has lit in people around the world who have come out to demonstrate for freedom, for the rights of Ukrainians. That includes valiant individuals in places where protesting the Kremlin’s war means risking arrest, beatings, or worse, as thousands of Russians and Belarusians have done. For years, we’ve seen the dangerous tide rolling back democracy and human rights and undercutting the rules-based order, fueled in no small part by Moscow. With this brutal invasion, we, our European allies and partners, and people everywhere are being reminded of just how much is at stake. Now, we see the tide of democracy rising to the moment."

"The more setbacks Russian forces endure on the battlefield, the greater the pain they are inflicting on Ukrainian civilians. Russian attacks on dams, on bridges, on power stations, on hospitals, on other civilian infrastructure are increasing, constituting a brazen violation of international humanitarian law. This week, President Putin said that Russia would not hesitate to use, and I quote, "all weapons systems available," end quote, in response to a threat to its territorial integrity, a threat that is all the more menacing given Russia's intention to annex large swaths of Ukraine in the days ahead. When that's complete, we can expect President Putin will claim any Ukrainian effort to liberate this land as an attack on so-called "Russian territory." This from a country that in January of this year, in this place, joined other permanent members of the Security Council in signing a statement affirming that, and I quote, "nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought." Yet another example of how Russia violates the commitments it's made before this body, and yet another reason why nobody should take Russia at its word today."

"Defending Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity is about much more than standing up for one nation's right to choose its own path, fundamental as that right is. It's also about protecting an international order where no nation can redraw the borders of another by force. If we fail to defend this principle when the Kremlin is so flagrantly violating it, we send a message to aggressors everywhere that they can ignore it, too. We put every country at risk. We open the door to a less secure, a less peaceful world. We see what that world looks like in the parts of Ukraine controlled by Russian forces. Wherever the Russian tide recedes, we discover the horror that's left in its wake."

"As we assemble here, Ukrainian and international investigators continue to exhume bodies outside of Izyum, a city Russian forces controlled for six months before they were driven out by a Ukrainian counteroffensive. One site contains some 440 unmarked graves. A number of the bodies unearthed there so far reportedly show signs of torture, including one victim with broken arms and a rope around his neck. Survivors' accounts are also emerging, including a man who described being tortured by Russian forces for a dozen days, during which his interrogators repeatedly electrocuted him and, in his words, and I quote, "beat me to the point where I didn't feel anything," end quote. These are not the acts of rogue units. They fit a clear pattern across the territory controlled by Russian forces. This is one of the many reasons that we support a range of national and international efforts to collect and examine the mounting evidence of war crimes in Ukraine. We must hold the perpetrators accountable for these crimes. It's also one of the reasons why more than 40 nations have come together to help the Ukrainian people defend themselves, a right that is enshrined in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter."

"Russia's effort to annex more Ukrainian territory is another dangerous escalation, as well as a repudiation of diplomacy. It is even more alarming when coupled with the filtration operation that Russian forces have been carrying out across parts of Ukraine that they control. Now, this is a diabolical strategy, violently uprooting thousands of Ukrainians, bus in Russians to replace them, call a vote, manipulate the results to show near unanimous support for joining the Russian Federation. This is right out of the Crimea playbook. As with Crimea, it's imperative that every member of this council, and for that matter, every member of the United Nations reject the sham referenda and unequivocally declare that all Ukrainian territory is and will remain part of Ukraine, and no Russian claim to annex territory can take away Ukraine's right to defend its own land."

"The story (11/22/20) that informed New York Times readers that Antony Blinken would be named secretary of State didn’t even mention WestExec, the corporate consulting firm he co-founded... in a profile on Blinken (11/22/20), a team of three Times reporters explained that his extensive foreign policy credentials are expected to help calm American diplomats and global leaders alike after four years of the Trump administration’s ricocheting strategies and nationalist swaggering. Lara Jakes, Michael Crowley and David E. Sanger found space to note that Blinken had earned “admirers even among conservative Republicans in Congress,” and that he also has a lighter side that may not be immediately evident when he is seen testifying or meeting foreign diplomats. He plays in a band. He has a tight group of close friends from his days as a student at Harvard and his rise through the Washington foreign policy firmament. Yet nowhere did they reveal his role at WestExec (or mention how progressives feel about his hawkish worldview)."

"President Putin is making his choice. Now it's up to all of our countries to make ours. Tell President Putin to stop the horror that he started. Tell him to stop putting his interests above the interests of the rest of the world, including his own people. Tell him to stop debasing this council and everything it stands for. "We the people of the United Nations determined…" That is how the preamble of the UN Charter starts. Let's not forget that "we the peoples" still get to choose the fate of this institution and our world. The stakes are clear. The choice is ours. Let's make the right choice for the world that we want and that our people so desperately deserve."

"I speak in general. I think that Putin does not understand that criticizing power can help this power. How do we fight corruption in the United States? There are two forces - independent media and powerful opposition party."

"The last thing I would say is to remind people that there are some things that are very different in this era compared to the Cold War. We should just take them as being different and not shoehorn them into some Cold War battle. I think this is particularly true with China, because we are so much more integrated with the Chinese economy, with Chinese society, even with Chinese students — I assume you have as many Chinese students at Yale as we do here at Stanford. Those are dimensions of great power engagement that we didn’t have during the Cold War. Rather than thinking of them always as threats and feeling the need to disengage and untangle our partnerships, I hope that smart leaders — and it’s your generation that will have to do this, not mine — will think of those as potential assets for American power and American society."

"I guess my preliminary take away is that China is running a brilliant foreign policy right now. They have convinced the Russians that they have a strategic relationship when in fact the most important bilateral relationship for them is with us, and that’s smart; that’s good diplomacy. I don’t know what will happen in the long run, but I think that’s a great position to be in. They fully understand that the management and deepening of their relationship with US is way more important than any other bilateral relationship, including with Russia. Just because trade levels, for economic and security reasons, the bilateral relationship is the most important for them. Russia is peripheral in that respect. Having said that, maintaining good relations with many countries is in the Chinese interest, and that’s what they’re doing."

"Today, however, Russia and China are united as autocracies. They do have this ideological connection. Both countries have tense relations with the United States and the liberal democratic world, and that brings them together."

"It’s incumbent upon all people to believe in the facts and to keep pushing it. You can’t constrain free speech, but you can speak more loudly about what is factual."

"We're not good at point predictions. But we are pretty good at some long-term trajectory things, over hundreds of years, right? Over hundreds of years, there's a pretty strong correlation between the more well-to-do a society is, the more educated it is, the more urban it is, the more income GDP per capita, the more likely there is to be demand for democracy."

"I'm 100 percent for lifting sanctions on Russia, provided they change their behavior for why the sanctions were put in place. It’s just that simple."

"We got to get our democracy in order at home, but we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Two wrongs do not make a right."

"In rhetorical terms and broad strokes, in terms of ambition, I think the Biden administration has a fundamentally different approach to Putin than Trump did. I’m using my words very precisely — the Trump administration had a policy towards Russia, but Trump himself had a much more friendly relationship with Putin. There is little gap between President Biden and the Biden administration on that front."

"I hope that from crisis and tragedy comes engagement. Don’t just complain about [an issue], do something about it! Don’t just lament about the current state of affairs, vote!"

"If both China and Russia were liberal democracies, I don’t think we would be having conversations about great power competition. So I believe that regime type does matter, and the ideological dimension that comes with that regime type also plays a role in great power competition."

"There is a big academic literature on under what conditions sanctions work and don’t work, on when they can change the behavior of targeted countries. And most times, they don’t work. That’s what the literature says."

"Correlation is not causation, as we like to say here at Stanford, and the fact that I arrived in the middle of that had to do with our long confirmation process in America. Nothing to do with Russian politics. But in Russia, that was not the way it was portrayed. In Russia, it was portrayed that I was sent deliberately by President Obama to lead the revolution. And given my background as an academic, I've written about the political transitions and democratization, that was a very easy story."

"The people working at the White House at the time are friends of mine, and they're friends of mine to this day. I don’t want to trivialize how difficult their decisions were. They did not have good choices."

"During the Cold War, you could trot out communism or anti-imperialism as alternatives, but today few people will believe your obviously corrupt system is better than the rule of law and democracy championed by the West. So you appeal to cynicism rather than idealism. You say that the so-called democracies of the world are just as craven and corrupt as anyone, but less honest about it; that every country kills its enemies; that all media is propaganda; that morality is just a weapon some countries use to beat up others; that in this contest, there is no objective truth, just subjective opinion, no right or wrong, just winners and losers."

"I've never met anyone who told me they were angry at China or France or Russia for failing to help them. Where people are desperate, it is still America they count on, whether they love or scorn it, and America they blame when aid does not come. They know that the United States is the one country with both the power and predilection to stand up for them."

"Some people say there are two policies in the executive branch … one is mine and the other is the president's, which is marginally so. Some of the things I've said are different from what the president has said, but all the things I have said have been approved by the president."

"The direction of NSC-68 focused on the need for dramatic increases in US defense spending and on American willingness to intervene globally. It encouraged economic and psychological warfare as well as covert operations to target the Soviet enemy and its allies. It wanted a dramatic increase in US intelligence-gathering capabilities and in money spent on internal security and civil defense. It was even foolhardy enough to suggest that tax increases and cuts in domestic programs would be necessary to pay for these expenses. The purpose was to put the United States on war footing in a conflict that could last for a very long time. Still, the most striking aspect of NSC-68 was not its practical suggestions but the view of the enemy that it represented. “The defeat of Germany and Japan and the decline of the British and French Empires have interacted with the development of the United States and the Soviet Union in such a way that power increasingly gravitated to these two centers,” Nitze and his colleagues explained."

"Truman’s second-term foreign policy was marked by increasing tension with the Soviets, the collapse of a US-supported government in China, and the outbreak of the Korean War. This was the time when the Cold War was militarized, both from a Soviet and American perspective. Truman’s administration struggled to put together a comprehensive and global strategy for fighting what everyone hoped would remain a shadow war with the Soviets. There was never much doubt in the president’s mind that the struggle was both against the Soviet Union and Communism globally. And he had little time for those among his own advisers—such as George Kennan—who warned against a global militarization of the conflict. Kennan was replaced as director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff in 1949, and his successor, the more hawkish Paul Nitze, put together a document that attempted to set out a US Cold War strategy. Later known as NSC-68, the paper was radical in its recommendations and would probably not have come to reflect the Administration’s policies if it had not been for the outbreak of the Korean War three months after it was first presented."

"Why would someone who spent so many years negotiating with the Soviet Union about the size of our nuclear arsenal now say we no longer need it? I know that the simplest and most direct answer to the problem of nuclear weapons has always been their complete elimination. My walk in the woods in 1982 with the Soviet arms negotiator Yuli Kvitsinsky at least addressed this possibility on a bilateral basis. Destruction of the arms did not prove feasible then, but there is no good reason why it should not be carried out now. … It is the presence of nuclear weapons that threatens our existence."

"As for the so-called rogue states that are not inhibited in their actions by the consensus of world opinion, the United States would be wise to eliminate their nuclear capabilities with the preemptive use of our conventional weapons — when necessary, and when we have unambiguous indication of these countries' intent to use their nuclear capability for purposes of aggrandizement. The same principle should apply to any threat emanating from unstable states with nuclear arsenals. By simply having our intelligence services read their mail, we can tell if there is compelling reason to take preemptive action."

"From the beginning of the nuclear age, whether in government or out, Mr. Nitze urged successive American presidents to take measures against what he saw as the Soviet drive to overwhelm the United States through the force of arms. Yet he may be best remembered for his conciliatory role in efforts to achieve two major arms agreements with the Soviet Union. … A man of intimidating intellect, Mr. Nitze could be warm and affectionate or cerebral and brittle. He was a formidable bureaucrat with a brilliant mind and a persuasive pen. Out of government — as he was during the Carter administration — he was an equally effective critic, as he showed in the late 1970's as the mastermind of the opposition to the second strategic arms limitation agreement. He used complicated charts and computer printouts to warn that the treaty would lock the United States into permanent strategic inferiority. Despite this vigorous opposition, once Mr. Nitze was back in government, he urged President Reagan to comply with the terms of the treaty even though it was never ratified. … He always seemed too conservative for the liberal administrations and too liberal for the conservative ones."

"In our view, all-out war promises the least success in achieving the objectives we have outlined. First, it would not necessarily discourage other potential aggressors. Defeating Saddam Hussein promptly in an all-out war would send an unequivocal signal that this aggression had not been tolerated. But if casualties were high, U.S. sentiment probably would be driven toward a more isolationist posture. Many Americans would be dismayed by the carnage and resentful that our allies were not paying a similar price. (The seeds of such resentment already exist.) They could be expected to oppose any comparable U.S. role in the future. The message would be that the United States had neither the inclination to work in concert with other nations nor the stomach to repeat the anti-Iraq action. Many of our current collaborators, who are ambivalent at best about the war option, might also lose interest in future cooperation with us. A world of growing brutality and chaos would become a likely prospect."

"Our main goal should be to establish a precedent for a new post-Cold War era, in which the community of nations, working through the United Nations and other organizations, can insure that would-be aggressors do not profit from invasion, coercion and force."

"For the past generation, Americans have regretted that in Vietnam, we let the passions of the moment and a lack of healthy skepticism toward presidential claims obscure a clear-headed assessment of our national interests. The result was that we were driven into a costly, divisive, and ultimately counterproductive expansion of a war that lacked adequate public support. Let's not spend the next generation wondering how we came to repeat that mistake."

"There have been, from time to time, changes in the degree of destructiveness of weapons and of war. These changes, until recent decades, generally have been considered not to have invalidated the precepts of Western civilization and its antecedent cultures of the moral obligation to defend its freedoms, diversity, and cultural growth from tyranny, reaction, and cultural stagnation or death. But with the advent of the nuclear age, we are faced with a change in degree that threatens to become one of kind. The destructive nature of nuclear war dictates that we no longer regard war as merely the continuation of policy by other means. The deterrence of nuclear war, until such time as technology provides a more reliable and stable method, must, for the United States, be based upon the capability to prevail if deterrence should fail. But this must be combined with an effort to join with other nations in the creation of a just international order."

"Human will can be effective only at the margin of events. Freedom is not absolute either for individuals or for nations and much is determined by forces beyond their control, by events of the past, by accident, or by chance. At any given moment in time the margin of freedom left them may seem so small as to make it hardly worthwhile to exercise their will one way or the other. But the narrow margin of today becomes the foundation of the broader possibility for tomorrow. Over time the margin of freedom — the impact of will upon the possible — expands geometrically. The decision of today makes possible, or forecloses, ten decisions of tomorrow. The accumulated wisdom and experience of the past do not always give unambiguous precedents for decisions and actions at the relevant margin of freedom of the present. A new integration of general purpose with the concrete possibilities of the present may then become necessary. The most difficult issues of foreign policy and ethics arise when changes in degree, at some point, move so far as to become changes in kind, and dictate fundamental departures from past policy and direction."

"One of the most dangerous forms of human error is forgetting what one is trying to achieve. In the gulf crisis, it is crucial that we look beyond our anger at Saddam and remind ourselves of precisely what U.S. interests are in the crisis and what we seek to accomplish."

"The fact is, I see no compelling reason why we should not unilaterally get rid of our nuclear weapons. To maintain them is costly and adds nothing to our security. I can think of no circumstances under which it would be wise for the United States to use nuclear weapons, even in retaliation for their prior use against us. What, for example, would our targets be? It is impossible to conceive of a target that could be hit without large-scale destruction of many innocent people. The technology of our conventional weapons is such that we can achieve accuracies of less than three feet from the expected point of impact. The modern equivalent of a stick of dynamite exploded within three feet of an object on or near the earth's surface is more than enough to destroy the target."

"Early in life, as a witness to the limitless tragedy of World War I, I felt grow in me a determination to act, to work with others to influence the course of history and not supinely to accept what, in the absence of will and action, might be the world's fate. I came to Washington in the summer of 1940 with Jim Forrestal. I have been here, with short exceptions, ever since. For almost five decades I have played some role in the affairs of state, working with others to bend what otherwise might have been called the "inevitable trends of history." Some of the outcomes were wholly satisfactory, some marginally successful, and some were failures-but, on the whole, they were better, I think, than would otherwise have come about. On balance, we were fortunate in the opportunities for significant action the fortune of history opened up for us. It cannot be the good fortune of all mankind to live in Athens under the leadership of a Pericles, in Florence under the Medici, in the United States under a Washington or a Lincoln. Nor is it the usual fate of mankind to live under a Cleon, a Nero, a Stalin or a Hitler and thus have an unambiguous case for withdrawal from government or opposition to it. The usual case is a mixed one in which the task of the man of general wisdom and with a taste for politics is to manage, to deal with, to nudge the existing situation toward the best that is within the realm of the politically possible, to find such scope as he can for his courage, his fortitude, and his willingness to view facts with an open mind. When given half a chance, the combination of courage and an open mind can do wonders."

"Those who know me moderately well will say that I am an assertive, hard-nosed pragmatist. I guess that judgment comes from the fact that I have a firm belief that the world can turn out to be better than it otherwise would be depending upon what individuals, particularly those who have luck on their side, do about it. What is more, I believe Americans, to quite a disproportionate degree, have luck on their side. It is my view that belief is the underlying and basic element of policy and action. First one must sort out matters of belief: who one is, in what relationship to whom, and what general direction in the realm of values is up and what direction is down. Then clear and rigorous logic, based upon a cold and unemotional assessment of the objective evidence concerning the relevant facts, and a careful analysis of the probable outcomes and probable material and moral costs of alternative courses of action, can help to get one from where one is to where one wants, and should want, to be."

"The problems and opportunities facing the present and coming generations are no less, perhaps greater, than those we faced. I hope that some of our experiences may provide insights useful to them. In any case I am grateful to have had the good luck to participate in the history of a fateful era."

"If there is little or no middle ground in the struggle for peace with justice, what resources of will and of national sacrifice are we entitled, or ethically called upon, to put into the effort to cause a system compatible with superior values to prevail? What risks are we entitled to take with the awful hazard of a nuclear war? What guidelines emerge from a comprehensive analysis of the full range of pertinent considerations? The concept of an ethical framework that has objective validity, over and beyond the values of the individual or societal groups and to which man can aspire to have some degree of understanding, seemed to me to be necessary for there to be a well-founded sense of direction to a foreign policy."

"In view of the fact that we can achieve our objectives with conventional weapons, there is no purpose to be gained through the use of our nuclear arsenal. To use it would merely guarantee the annihilation of hundreds of thousands of people, none of whom would have been responsible for the decision invoked in bringing about the weapons' use, not to mention incalculable damage to our natural environment."

"We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there"

"Spruance received his written orders in the evening of 27 May, the night before he got underway. They comprised ten succinct pages. All operation orders in the early stages of the war were terse, reflecting the command philosophy of King, Nimitz, and the better admirals. That philosophy was to tell the subordinate commander what you wanted done, give him the necessary resources, provide as much information as you could about the enemy, and then let him alone so he could accomplish his mission. King would upbraid any commander for the sin of oversupervising his subordinates with complex, overly detailed directives. The intent was to encourage the on-scene commander to use his initiative and not to inhibit his freedom of action. Spruance's personal belief was that the commander responsible for accomplishing the mission should develop the necessary plans; the proper role of the next highest command echelon was to establish the objective and to suggest how the objective might be achieved."

"On the forenoon of June 19th began the Battle of the Philippine Sea. The Japanese carriers launched their attacks from outside the range of our planes, with the apparent intention of having them land on their airfields on Guam and Rota, in the vicinity of Saipan. This day, June 19th, will be remembered by Navy men everywhere as the "Marianas' Turkey Shoot." The result of the day's action was 408 enemy planes destroyed out of 545 sighted, as against 32 American planes lost and negligible damage to 4 ships. There was nothing else like it in the whole of World War II."

"The Congress during World War II created a limited number of five-star ranks for the Army and the Navy, designated General of the Army and Fleet Admiral. The Navy by law was authorized four Fleet Admirals. Three were easily chosen: Ernest J. King, Chester W. Nimitz, and William S. Leahy, chief of staff to President Roosevelt. The choice for the fourth was between Halsey and Spruance. Secretary of the Navy Forrestal told King that he would have to decide between the two. It was a difficult task, because Halsey and Spruance both had influential supporters in Washington. The most powerful was Representative Carl Vinson, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who had publicly endorsed Halsey. The Navy did not like to oppose Vinson on anything. King put off the decision for several months, then sent a memorandum to Forrestal summarizing the pros and cons of each candidate. There were many things in Halsey's favor. He was the senior admiral, he had been at sea since 1938, his performance in the South Pacific in the dark days of 1942-1943 had been brilliant, and his raids against the Japanese empire in late 1944 had been spectacular and devastating. Against him, wrote King, were his errors in judgment in not evading two typhoons that severely damaged his fleet in the latter part of the war. King said very little about Halsey's questionable decisions at the Battle of Leyte Gulf. King then turned to Spruance, whom he would have endorsed for CNO had it not been for Spruance's mandatory retirement age. "As to brains," wrote King, "the best man in every way." His record in the Pacific was self-evient. The only argument against Spruance was that he had held relatively subordinate commands during the early part of the war."

"Decades later, when Spruance's military and diplomatic career had become history, Spruance was generally regarded as a man endowed with extraordinary intelligence and proven wisdom. Whether he was an intellectual is debatable. Intellectuals are commonly associated with the pursuit of the liberal arts and the physical sciences, with advanced academic degrees, and with learned writing and speaking. As a distinguished author recently observed, "In common parlance an intellectual is a man soaked in the advanced critical ideas of the liberal-academic establishment; and even an opponent of these ideas... has them all at his fingertips." Using these standards alone, Spruance would not be regarded as an intellectual. His formal education ended at the Naval Academy, and he read few, if any, of the classic works in science, literature, and philosophy. He disliked writing, and what little he wrote was not for publication. He also disliked public speaking, and what few speeches he did make were soon forgotten. Nevertheless, Spruance was an intellectual in the purest sense of the word. He was a person with superior mental power. He was deeply interested in fields of knowledge outside the technicalities of the naval profession. He once told some university students, "I think it is most desirable for you to retain and to stimulate your intellectual curiosity in other fields where you may have a natural interest." He explained that those with a liberal education in art, literature, and music had an advantage over people- such as himself- with only a technical education. "A knowledge and appreciation of these subjects enriches their lives," he said, "and makes them more interesting individuals to their friends and acquaintances." Finally, Spruance was a classic intellectual in the sense that he was extremely rational and relied upon his intellect rather than his emotions or feelings. He later regarded the war against Japan as an intellectual exercise that posed a complex yet interesting series of problems that challenged and stimulated his mind. These problems had to be solved using logic and reason that was unaffected by the violent passions of war."

"Vice Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, victor of Midway13 and subsequently Admiral Nimitz's chief of staff, became Commander Fifth Fleet on 5 August 1943 and so also of the Gilbert Islands expeditonary force. 13 Admiral Spruance, in commenting on the first draft of this volume, requested that I delete "victor of" and substitute "who commanded a carrier task force at"; but, for reasons which readers of Vol. IV will appreciate, I have let it stand."