You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy

defense and foreign affairs. My name is Ryan Evans. I'm the CEO of War in the

rocks. In this episode I sat down with General Martini Dempsey, the former

chairman of the joint Chiefs of Staff.

We spoke about his book, No Time for Spectators, The Lessons That Matters Most from West Point

to the West Wing.

Really is a great read.

When you stop being the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, one of the most powerful positions in the

world,

what made you decide that you wanted to become a writer?

Well I'm not sure, you know, that's an interesting way to put it.

I'm not sure I consider myself a writer. You know in the Irish tradition and I'm the

grandson of four Irish immigrants I I more or less consider myself a storyteller and

so what I try to do in my writing is mostly tell stories and hope and what I hope to do is not have to bludgeon a reader with what I'm trying to you know

illuminate but rather have them kind of discovered vicariously through my experiences.

And you but you were an English major of course at West Point so you had the bug a bit ever since you were young.

Yeah in those days back, you know, when the earth was warm,

there wasn't, there weren't majors at West Point. So I got my bachelor's degree in engineering.

But then I went to grad school at Duke in English literature and

I did sort of catch the bug of trying to be as articulate as I could both in writing and speaking.

In this book, I knew it would be interesting, but I really like the sort of structure of this.

It's called No Time for Spectators.

...