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By Steve Deal
Without an organized and inclusive national security consortium, one that leverages every element of Vermont’s intellectual and intestinal character, the Green Mountain State misses an opportunity to provide an essential, unified voice in crafting the security strategy of the United States.
After 27 years of active-duty service before making our home in Franklin County, I am convinced that policy making is far more attuned to democratic processes than most would imagine. Our security advising classes and policy creation structures absolutely need access to local values of pragmatism, collective reasoning, and plain old grit to get things done.
They need examples of bipartisanship. Maybe it takes a flatlander like me to say: you may not always feel it, but Vermont is one of the best examples of such values and bipartisanship in the nation.
With so many pressing domestic issues exercising the best efforts of reform-minded citizens, the expenditure of energy on foreign policy, or the size, shape, and capabilities of our armed forces, or on our intelligence posture, or our national military and technological industrial capacity might seem distasteful to some, wasteful to others.
Yet harried within the Washington bubble – from where I recently escaped – even our best leaders are less likely to create a conversation with the country about the nature of foreign policy and national defense, and are more apt to reach for whatever philosophies happen to be nearest when strategic surprise inevitably occurs.
Affecting policy in those critical moments requires a preexisting avenue of trusted advice, not merely a predictable corner of protest.
Looking to history, Vermont has played a tremendous role in shaping essential national security reforms. Sen. Redfield Proctor was an essential supporter of late 19th century reforms led by Secretary of War Elihu Root, which made service more equitable and accessible.
Closer to the modern day, Vermont senators publicly and strongly pushed against fateful decisions like the one to invade Iraq in 2003, a decision that continues to exact an interminable price in terms of fiscal stability, lifelong impacts for Veterans and their families, as well as international and domestic trust in American institutions.
In his treatise on “Perpetual Peace,” Immanuel Kant wrote, “The possession of power is inevitably fatal to the exercise of free reason.” The imperative of public service demands that a source of reason exist outside the realms of power to check its own demise.
Those directing the course of national strategy strive to find achievable ends, ways, and means, yet in their deliberations they may lose sight of the opinions and wisdom of those for whom that very defense is established. A Vermont National Security Consortium could help with that, but what would it look like, and what would it do?
First, it would be bipartisan, setting a ready example for a more apolitical national security class.
Next, it would be a private-public partnership, perhaps hosted by one of Vermont’s state colleges. It would host seminars and councils, inviting national leaders to Vermont to engage in a strategic context.
Finally, it would conduct research for Vermont’s Congressional delegation and state executive government leadership. Viable recommendations that go along with tough questions should be developed on behalf of our Congressional delegation and for cabinet-level leaders, amicus briefs written for exceptional court cases, and most of all, creative ideas generated about virtuous American leadership in a rapidly changing world.
America’s security future desperately needs the long view, well past today’s overweening vitriol and constant crisis. It needs voices of purpose and resolve. In short, it needs a little more Vermont. Stepping coherently into national security strategy creation is a natural, and needed, journey for us all.
Steve Deal, Captain, U.S Navy (Ret,) last served as deputy chief of staff to the Secretary of the Navy and commanded various units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He now resides in St. Albans Town.
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Categories: Commentary
The only thing Vermont is a leader of is sick twisted perversion.
Vermont is one of the best examples of such values and bipartisanship in the nation.??????
We are the king of cancel culture, censorship and online vitriol, to such an extent that any conservative knows well, if they fly a Trump flag their car will be keyed.
So yeah, if you are uniparty, then I guess that would be considered bipartisan, bipartisan screwing of the American People, constitution and Vermonters in general.
You sir have no idea how Vermont operates, clearly and clearly you are part of the mindset, so you experience none of the above.
Wake up, Vermont is like a hot mess supermodel, beautiful to look at but hell to live and work with on a daily basis, we’re like the Amber Hurd of governance.
I think you mean Amber Heard, of Johnny Depp fame. Still, Neil, a curious, if not inappropriate, analogy. We do not yet know Captain Deal, beyond his first foray on VDC.
Apparently, Captain Deal, you may have escaped Washington DC physically. But, as with many ‘flatlanders’, you’ve not escaped your learned biases, instead bringing them here to Vermont with you. I suspect, although it is complete conjecture on my part, that you are preparing to do what many transplants to Vermont have done… to run for public office.
First, I thank you for your military and national security service. And thank you for the Immanuel Kant citation. “The possession of power is inevitably fatal to the exercise of free reason.” Returning to ‘the real world’ is, understandably, a slow and sometimes tedious process. Lord only knows the nature of the skeletons in your closet from which you are now escaping.
After all, it’s not that we don’t require a “course of national strategy … to find achievable ends, ways, and means,…”. The issue is more to who it is that determines that ‘course’. Evidently you haven’t read the Vermont State Constitution. Which is not surprising, given that most of our elected representatives haven’t read it either… or they choose to ignore it.
The first constitutional tenant to consider in this regard is Article 9, which includes the admonition that: “…previous to any law being made to raise a tax, the purpose for which it is to be raised ought to appear evident to the Legislature to be of more service to community than the money would be if not collected.”
The second relevant Section is Article 16. “That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the State—and as standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.”
The requisite litmus test for a proposed Vermont National Security Consortium must include the accommodations set forth in Articles 9 & 16.
Keep in mind too, that the euphemistic characterization of “… a private-public partnership, perhaps hosted by one of Vermont’s state colleges [that] would host seminars and councils, inviting national leaders to Vermont to engage in a strategic context”, is precisely the sweet political nectar that has addicted those who came before you. We already have a consortium. It’s right here on VDC, and in those other platforms that allow comment, few and far between as they now are. Consortiums of the exclusive kind are always subject to ‘regulatory capture’. Or, as Kant opined, “…fatal to the exercise of free reason.”
And lastly, beware of false dichotomy. “America’s security future desperately needs the long view, well past today’s overweening vitriol and constant crisis.”
Since when has ‘our’ security, as individuals, as a State, or as a Federal partner, ever not included “…vitriol and constant crisis”? Certainly not in 1776. Not in 1860. Not ever.
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States [and Vermont] where men were free.” R.R.
This battle is inherently personal. Not to be frittered away by the whims of a ‘Consortium’ other than “…of the people, by the people, for the people.”
Welcome to Vermont and the VDC, Captain Deal.
This sounds like an off the wall suggestion for a National level security advisory organization, but at the State level, and probably envisioned to be funded by the State. Needless, costly, and serves no viable purpose in The Green Mountains.
Thank you for your service, Navy, but this ‘Consortium’ wouldn’t float in Vermont.
( LTC, US Army, Retired. 28 years…)
You two could have a GREAT conversation….maybe also with Sen. Larry Hart, USMC and Rep. Woodman Page, USAF ( both Ret.)
Looks like Captain Deal did not study THE PROJECT FOR A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY or he was part of that project.
As a “flatlander” who has lived here for 95 percent of my lifetime, I find this is arguably the most uninformed, irrelevant opinion VDC has published.
The spirits of Ethan Allen and Calvin Coolidge abandoned the State long ago and they took the Green Mountain Boys with them. Waxing nostalgic is what we all do because what we see now is bewildering and beyond comprehension.
Vermont and our nation are in deeper peril than anyone, regardless of their resume, will confess. The unGodly levels of corruption at the top all the way down has rendered us sitting, hapless ducks. National security? Seriously? The barn door was left wide open and our resources pillaged and plundered with impunity.
It appears to me a great number of people forgot their oath or simply ignored it because there are no consequences for treason, sedition and conspiracies to commit fraud. Until the credits role on this Theater of the Absurd, the war against humanity will continue – the globalists/eugenists are thieving it all and filling their bunkers. Defending the Constitution or the Corporation? I think we have a good idea where the most alligience prevails these days.
I recall years ago there were regular events, lectures by Vermont foreign service representatives, relevant speakers on contemporary issues after the model of the Commonwealth Club of California, at Ira Allen Chapel, Dewey Hall or on the radio. Stuff at a higher level than you get from today’s hack politicians.