Name: 歴史との対話-ジョン・アビゼイド将軍 (Conversations With History - General John Abizaid)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T04:47:58.000Z
Duration: 53 min 7 s
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Welcome to a “Conversation With History.” I’m Harry Kreisler of the Institute

of International Studies. Our guest today is John Abizaid who is a retired U.S. Army General

and former Commander of the Central Command. He is the first Annenberg Visiting Fellow at

the Hoover Institution and this year’s 2008 Admiral Chester Nimitz lecturer at UC Berkeley.

John Abizaid: Thanks, Harry. Thanks for having me here.

Well, I was born in Redwood City, California, and I lived there for about twelve years of so,

spent some time on and off in San Francisco, but for the most part it was Redwood City, and

then when I got ready to go to high school we moved up into the Sierra Nevada mountains, in

Mono County, Coleville, California, and I graduated from high school there, and after that was

Looking back, how do you think your parents shaped your thinking about the world?

Well, my dad in particular really shaped my thinking about the world. He was a World War

II Navy vet. He had served in the Solomons and in the Pacific. He had seen a lot of action on a

small ship in the middle of the Pacific. He’d traveled all over the world as a result of that Navy

service, and it was clear to me that that service, to him, was really one of the most important

things in his life, and as we were growing up – my mother died when I was rather young and he

continued to raise my sister and I, and I have great admiration for having grown up with this man

who talked about service, loved service, and advocated it.

And you said you joined your Army. Where did you get your education before going into

Well, before going into the Army I graduated from Coleville High School, total school

population of about 105 students, certainly one of the smaller schools in the State of California.

No, there wasn’t an ROTC. There wasn’t a lot of things going on at Coleville, but there

were many things going on at Coleville, at the same time. For example, I wanted to study

German and in order to study German I had to take a correspondence course and they allowed

me to do that. So, it was good experience growing up in a rural county, in a small area, small

school. We had excellent instructors and I think they prepared me about as well as could be

And you did go to West Point. Talk about your education there. Did it prepare you for all

the changes that the military was going to have to confront throughout your career?

Well, West Point prepares you for life in a very interesting way. It gives you discipline, it

gives you focus, it gives you a way of approaching problem solving. West Point’s not the type

of place to go if you’re not committed to being an officer in the United States Army. I knew I

wanted to be a soldier and I was committed to doing that, and I thought that West Point would

give me a good opportunity to do that. I initially found the academic rigor there pretty tough, not

to mention the military rigor but I was expecting that. The academic rigor was very tough,

especially with regards to mathematics and engineering. But over time I learned how to work

my way through the system and I enjoyed being there.

And your career is really one of moving between the university and actually study – I

mean, in the sense that you got a Master’s, at some point, at Harvard, and you were an Olmsted

fellow to Jordan. Talk a little about that. In what ways did that enhance your education and

prepare you for the world you had to confront as a general?

It’s very interesting that the military invests very heavily in officer education. Sometimes

it’s within military schools, every now and then you can outside of military schools. West Point,

for example, provides a record number of Rhodes and Truman Scholars, it’s quite a good

institution, but I graduated from West Point, I had been interested in the Olmsted Scholar

program, and the Olmsted Scholar program provided an officer with the opportunity essentially

to get away from the Army for two years, go to a foreign university, learn a foreign language,

and then come back and go to an American university to finish up the Master’s degree work. So,

I selected the University of Jordan as a place that I’d like to go to. I learned how to speak

Arabic. A lot of people think because of my last name I learned how to speak Arabic at home,

but really, it was the Army that taught me how. And I went to the University of Jordan and had

that opportunity, then on to Harvard, and I really regarded that training at both Harvard and

Jordan as very, very important to being able to – to allow me to move through my career in a

way that was understanding of different cultures, different problems, and certainly the last five

years of my life, in the middle of the Middle East…

What led you to choose Jordan, and what year was that? Because that was very early in

Yeah, I started out in the program somewhere around 1978, or so, and I was in the Middle

East from ’78 to ’80, and then Harvard ’80 to ’81. I think that’s about right, during that time

The reason I point this out is because the Middle East was going to change. So, you were

there, in a way, at the beginning of the changes that would really affect this whole period of your

Well, it’s interesting you say that, Harry. The Middle East is always changing and the

Middle East is never changing. [laughs] I mean, the Middle East is a very, very interesting

place, but what was so interesting about going to Jordan during that time period – it was also the

time period of the Iranian revolution, and it sent, really, what I would call a religious shock wave

through the region in a way that was absolutely noticeable. And there was always a lot of

turmoil at Middle Eastern universities, the University of Jordan no less so than other places, and

when the University would close down because of the inevitable riot I’d end going out and train

with the Jordanian special forces in the army because I was a military officer. So, it was a good

opportunity to learn not only about the civil society in Jordan but also about the military society

in Jordan, and of course, in the Arab world in particular militaries play very, very different roles

in the societies than here in the States.

And at Harvard, I think I read somewhere that you wrote a paper that the prof said was the

outstanding paper that he had read. What was that paper on, for your Master’s?

Well, the paper was on Saudi Arabian defense concepts, and my professor, really a very,

very distinguished Middle Eastern historian and political scientist, Nadav Safran, just a

remarkable man – he steered me towards trying to understand better what the Saudis based their

decision making on with regard to how they spent their money for defense, what their priorities

were, what their problems were, how much of it was related to internal versus external politics,

etc. And so, having an opportunity to do that research, and also having been in Saudi Arabia

when I was Jordan – one thing about being in Jordan, I had the chance to travel all over the

Middle East and I literally traveled all over the Arab world and had a chance to see how things

were done in many countries in different ways.

Help us understand now what are the skills required for being an effective soldier these

days. The criterion have changed in the course of your career, and it’s very complicated now,

Well, it gets more complicated as you go up the rank ladder, but early on, the single most

important thing, and throughout your career the single most important thing, is to be able to lead

people. It’s so vital that you understand people, that you’re able to convince them to do tough

and difficult things, and of course, in combat American soldiers don’t take the hill because

they’re afraid of you. They take the hill because they respect their comrades and because they

respect their leaders, and they know that they’ve got to take the hill in order to get the job done.

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歴史との対話-ジョン・アビゼイド将軍 (Conversations With History - General John Abizaid)

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understand

country