To help celebrate 125 years as the sea services "premier forum for thoughtful dialogue, " the Naval Institute asked some of its members and readers to answer the question: What does the Naval Institute mean to you as a person and/or to the military profession? Throughout the anniversary year, we will publish some of these testimonials that we have been delighted to receive.
Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
I have been a member of the Naval Institute, with a few lapses, for at least 50 years, maybe more. I first became very conscious of the Proceedings immediately after World War II when I was managing editor of the Marine Corps Gazette. We were in the process of redesigning the Gazette. I found Proceedings to be a marvelously useful exemplar of what a professional military journal could be. I have done much writing and have had many editorial and publications duties since then, but my opinion that the Proceedings is the best of the military journals has not changed. You have stayed in the forefront editorially and technologically.
What is true of the Proceedings is also true of its relatively new nephew, Naval History, and my admiration extends to the other varied activities of the Naval Institute. Your book publishing provides a solid bulwark of volumes relating to naval affairs. Your symposia, involving as they do several concerned populations—the active-duty naval and military hierarchy, the alumni (using the term in the broadest sense), the media, the academic community, and the rank-and-file of Naval Institute membership—also offer models well worth copying.
Taken together, the activities of the Naval Institute provide a true and open forum for naval and maritime affairs, supportive of sea power but not sycophantic. I trust that they will remain so.
General Simmons is the Director Emeritus, Marine Corps History, and author of The United States Marines: A History(1998). His 36 years of active service included combat in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam at every command level from platoon to division.
Dr. Dov Zakheim
Joining the Naval Institute within a few months of my arriving in Washington in 1975 to work in the fledgling Congressional Budget Office was one of the best moves I have made. The Naval Institute and its Proceedings have consistently kept me abreast of the freshest, most original professional military thinking and invariably have been a major source for my research, regardless of the position I held at any given time.
The Naval Institute's leadership has set the standard for encouraging independent thought and discussion among both Navy and Marine Corps personnel and those who keep a close eye on the sea services. Its seminars are invariably intellectually lively and politically stimulating—and are as valuable to the seasoned professional as to the budding policy wonk. I am fortunate to have served the Naval Institute both as a Proceedings author and book reviewer and as a panelist at symposia; it is an affiliation in which I take great pride.
Dr. Zakheim is chief executive officer of SPC International Corporation in Arlington, Virginia, and former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration.