Retired four-star admiral and former supreme allied commander of NATO James Stavridis is being vetted as Hillary Clinton’s running mate, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
Stavridis, currently the dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University, has experience overseeing operations in Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya leading up to the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi. The Times wrote that some people close to Clinton said she was “always likely” to have a military leader on her VP short list.
Also the onetime Commander, U.S. Southern Command, Stavridis has been an advocate of “smart power”. One his favored lines is, “We are excellent at launching Tomahawk missiles; we need to get better at launching ideas.”
Part of that worldview is reflected in his recently published five-pronged plan for defeating ISIS, which included a modest troop increase in Iraq (to 10,000) and a special forces campaign in Syria, but also political and cultural approaches:
Read the Times story here.

