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.
General Charles C. Krulak, U.S. Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps has long been noted for its ability to innovate and adapt. New ideas and concepts, welcomed and encouraged, have kept us in front of an evolving world and evolving threats. For the past 125 years, the United States Naval Institute has been a critical ally in our innovation. The pages of Proceedings and Naval History have been the mill for the grist of new ideas to challenge old paradigms.
The Naval Institute is an invaluable adjunct to our national defense. As a nation, we can buy weapons and technology, and as a service, we can train and teach young men and women to be Marines. But original ideas cannot be bought or trained; they require fertile ground in which to grow and develop. The Naval Institute has long been, as it is today, fertile ground.
General Krulak, a 1964 graduate of the Naval Academy, became the 31st Commandant of the Marine Corps in June 1995.
Commander Jan M. van Tol, U.S. Navy
Robust, uninhibited, intellectual debate and deep commitment to evidentiary processes are the best defense any organization has against profound error.
Perhaps paradoxically, that defense is most needed when it is hardest to maintain, i.e., when an organization finds itself under great stress but is unwilling to engage in healthy self-criticism.
Arguably the Navy today finds itself in such circumstances. The strategic context in which it functioned for two generations is no more; tomorrow's is highly uncertain. Simultaneously, the Navy is being buffeted heavily by controversial sociological and technological changes at a time of growing budgetary constraints. In itself, this is nothing new. What is new and potentially dangerous is the apparent willingness of many seniors to acquiesce to de facto squelching of debate on many important issues.
It is critical that the Naval Institute continue to publish controversial pieces and discussion, free from fear of retribution and pressure from senior naval leadership to conform to a party line. Open discussion and the willingness to follow evidence wherever it might lead are the only correctives in today's intellectually and morally corrosive environment. The Naval Institute could not play a more important role in the Navy's future.
Commander van Tol is the commanding officer of the USS O’Brien (DD-975).