In an unannounced visit yesterday sponsored by the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College, Secretary Mattis spoke to Professor Michael Mastanduno’s Government 54 class (US Foreign and Military Policy), as well as Dartmouth veterans from the college and graduate schools, members of ROTC and the War & Peace Fellows of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding.

In his remarks Secretary Mattis paid tribute to our friend Peter Robinson and spoke about his goals for our defense policy as well as the principles that inform those goals. After speaking for roughly 25 minutes, Secretary Mattis spent the remainder of the class hour taking questions from students. Secretary Mattis’s prepared remarks are intensely interesting and — let me emphasize this — inspiring, as are his responses to the excellent questions posed by the students. He shows off a dry sense of humor and by his presence confers great honor on Dartmouth.

I think it unlikely that you can watch this video without learning something. I certainly did.

Quotable quote: “America today is emerging from a period of strategic atrophy.”

One more: “What I want our adversary to know is please work with our State Department. You really don’t want to work with me. That’s our message.”