An Afternoon (Ok, More Like an Hour) with Gen. David Petraeus

On Friday January 31st, I had the pleasure of attending the World Affairs Council of West Michigan’s 64th Anniversary lunch, where the guest of honor was General David Petraeus. (Here is MLive's recap of the event.) Petraeus, not undeservedly, is filling his financial coffers after concluding a distinguished career in public service last year (no, the reason for the abrupt end to said distinguished career didn't come up) by jet-setting around the globe, consulting and giving talks much like this one. I doubt he was thrilled to trek up to Grand Rapids after a few days spent in sunny Abu Dhabi, but hey, tough stuff. Army Strong, right?

His remarks, formatted as a conversation with Dr. Lori Murray, the Distinguished Chair for National Security at the US Naval Academy and former chair of the World Affairs Councils of America, were free-flowing but centered around six crucial issues facing the national security of the United States today: cybersecurity, energy, education, the US’ economic competitiveness, the Middle East, and, last but not least, dysfunction in Washington.

The most encouraging thing he said during his remarks was that he thinks the world is on the cusp of a sustained period of American excellence, what he termed a 'North American decade'. Thanks to innovations in energy technology, in which the US far outpaces the rest of the world, we are now a net exporter of energy for the first time in decades. Fracking technology, of which he displayed a deep, technical knowledge and deemed 'able to be done safely' (though there are skeptics), has made natural gas once thought unreachable able to be easily extracted. This and increased drilling elsewhere places the US on the precipice of what he calls 'the single biggest development in geopolitics in decades'.

This wouldn't totally insulate the US from market interruptions thanks to Middle East unrest or Venezuelan craziness, but would certainly allow more flexibility and a more hands-off approach to the Middle East. With the basic functioning of our economy not beholden to the whims of, ahem, let's call them 'unstable' regimes, suddenly freed up are a lot of time and resources to be redirected domestically. What a concept. (In the middle of his piece in the latest TIME magazine on the wily Hamid Karzai, Fareed Zakaria points out that, in 2009, the US military was pumping $4 billion per month into Afghanistan. For comparison, the entire GDP of Afghanistan, after taking out foreign aid and the production of opium and subsequent export of heroin, is a paltry $1 billion. Per year. Kudos.)

The lone pause in the conversation came when one intrepid audience member, who we would soon find out was born and bred in West Michigan before attending Calvin College (she informed us, yelling loudly), began heckling Petraeus, calling him ‘a war criminal’ and ‘guilty of slaughtering innocent Iraqis’. He paused long enough for her to be escorted out, and continued as if nothing had happened. Apparently, after a lifetime of dodging IEDs and suicide bombers, a crazed 20-something in the Bible Belt is not so bad.

He was an impressive speaker, with a fluid grasp of an extremely wide array of topics. It will be interesting to see what he does now in civilian life, because from the level of expertise he had retained on what seemed like every relevant topic out there, he won't be on the sidelines for too long.