This is a CVSI on the world. I'm John Bachelor with Gordon Chang at

Gordon G Chang, my colleague and co-host and we're very pleased to welcome Professor Jim Holmes of the US Naval War College

writing most recently at the national interest asking this question how can a junior

person a non-decision-maker, inside the U.S. Navy, contribute to changing

the Navy culture in a positive direction, given that there are doubts right now that the Navy is altogether.

Jim, a very good evening to you. You ask that question in the national interest,

so you get to answer your own question. How can a junior person who's worried about performing well and pleasing his or her boss and staying ahead of everyone else? How can they contribute? Good evening to you.

Hey Gordon, John. A pleasure as always.

Yeah, this was actually not a question I formulated myself.

This was actually a question I got from a junior officer while speaking at another command here in Newport a couple of weeks ago.

The gist of my, I guess the gist of my answer is sort of several parts.

First of all, competence matters. I think the youngsters need to understand that what they do matters directly to the to the Navy's ability to deter its adversaries, coerce its adversaries or to to reassure its partners and friends, allies such as

Japan or South Korea or pick your favorite ally, perceptions of competence are huge.

It does not matter how good a weapon system you have if a if a party, an ally, a friend or an adversary believes you are not capable of of wielding that system to good effect.

At that point you're starting to lose your ability to deter course and reassure.

Junior officers have a lot to do with that and also enlisted people as well because they are competence.

They are the ones who keep up our ships, they're the ones who take them to sea and so forth.

So they need to understand that they have a role to play that has a direct impact

on US foreign policy and strategy.

Now I mean as you point out there are obvious limitations to this because newly commissioned or junior officers and enlisted do not have a direct say over and over Navy policy.

However, if they understand that we have a problem, if they understand that the troubles that we've had in recent years actually matter, at that point ultimately they are going to move up the ranks into positions of authority and have that ability to start setting policy and have a direct impact on this.

Until then, they just simply need to act within the scope of their authority, within their divisions or their departments or whatever they're assigned to when they get out to into the fleet or into the shore commands and and go from there.

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