By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
The nation’s former top military official said Thursday the country needs to stay engaged in the world to influence outcomes, particularly in the Middle East.
Retired Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff between 2007 and 2011, told a lecture audience at Princeton University the last thing America needs is another war in that part of the globe.
”The trends in that regard are obviously worrisome,” said Mr. Mullen, a visiting professor at the university’s Woodrow Wilson School.
He said Iran is “clearly” on the road toward developing nuclear weapons, an effort that, if successful, would start a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Even though sanctions have been imposed against the country, Mr. Mullen said he did not know if they “will have the ultimate effect that would bring the Iranians to the table to the point where they would in fact disengage” from that path.
Mr. Mullen, speaking without notes, gave a wide-ranging view of the world, also touching on domestic concerns and his support for repealing “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” the ban on gays serving openly in the military.
During a 43-year career in the service, he was the top military adviser to former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama when the nation was fighting two wars simultaneously in the Middle East.
He spent most of his lecture on that region, part of “a different world than the one we led in over the last 30,40, 50 years.”
”We have moved from a time of control, which is what the Cold War was, to I think a time of influence,” he said. He called for patience with emerging democracies in the region to “generate their own future.”
Of Pakistan, he said that country is a nuclear power that has a struggling economy but where “Islamic extremism continues to grow.”
He said “there are great dangers there. So even as we look to bring our combat troops home here in 2014 out of Afghanistan, that’s not a part of the world that’s going to go away.”
Discussing the recent killings at the U.S. embassy in Lybia, he said there is a fine line between the need to represent the country and protecting foreign service workers.
”I don’t think fortress America in embassy A, B, C or D is the right answer,” he said. “We’ve been though some pretty difficult times in the last 20, 30 years, so I understand the need for security. But I believe from the standpoint of how I see the United States, there’s an expectation that we will lead.”
Looking to the Asia-Pacific region, he said the “most important bilateral relationship” in the world is between the U.S. and China, the globe’s biggest economies. Yet, when he spoke of the U.S.’s “great allies” in that region, he neglected to mention Taiwan.
At home, he said the country’s education system is its “biggest long-term vulnerability” and a “national crisis.” He expressed concern about the “political paralysis” in Washington.
He praised the work of the military, and noted that veterans of the two wars are returning to a work force during a tough economy. He encouraged big and small companies “to look hard at hiring a vet.”
”They’re not looking for a sympathy card here. They’re not looking for a hand up. They’re looking for an opportunity,” he said.
During a question and answer session, Mr. Mullen touched on his decision in 2010 to speak in favor of ending the ban on gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military.
”From my point of view, it was pretty easy, because I grew up in an institution that valued integrity,” he said. “And for the life of me then and now, I could not reconcile the conflict in the institution that values integrity and then asks people to come in every day to lie about who they were.”
Mr. Mullen, 66, joked how growing up as teenager in Los Angles, he had a “hankering” to attend Princeton “before I understood the grades required to do that.”

