Former Joint Chiefs Chairman Speaks at Home Campus

General Henry H. "Hugh" Shelton, former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff for both the Clinton and Bush Sr. administrations, addressed more than 100 of Webster's worldwide extended site directors as they convened at the St. Louis campus Sept. 22. (To view a video excerpt from the presentation, click here.)

Dean Benjamin Akande (l.) welcomes General Shelton to Webster.

Shelton holds four Defense Distinguished Service medals, two Army Distinguished Service medals, The Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star Medal for Valor and the Purple Heart. He has been decorated by 16 foreign governments and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2001.

Shelton spoke to the directors—34 of whom head Webster University campuses on military bases and installations—about a range of foreign policy issues and the importance of choosing the correct approach for any given situation.

"America has a lot of tools in the kit bag—diplomatic, political, economic, informational and military," Shelton said. "The military's the hammer, but not every problem is a nail. Sometimes you've got to use those other tools."

Shelton urged, for example, a cooperative approach with China, which has an emerging economy.

"It's starting to catch fire," he said. "Look at the world steel market, look at the oil supply. They're also starting to increase their defense department expenditures. Unless we want to see another Cold War develop in the Pacific, we are going to have to start paying more attention to China. We've got to work hard to start developing some type of cooperation with them."

Shelton said that Indonesia also should be on the United States' radar screen, given that it is the fourth most populated nation in the world and the largest Muslim nation in the world. Indonesia's fractured geographical presence—17,000 islands, 6,000 of which are occupied—presents serious political problems, he said.

"It's a nation that is on the verge of disintegration—islands want to break away. And you have the potential there of it becoming the next Afghanistan for the terrorists. It's got an ideal situation for that to happen."

Despite his long and illustrious military career, Shelton said that the United States' economic strength is just as important—if not more—than America's military strength in bringing the nations of the world together.

"That's where the world-class corporations of America make a major impact," said Shelton, who is on the board of Anheuser-Busch. "When we get a world-class organization like Anheuser-Busch operating in China and Russia, it starts to pull those economies together. Consequently, it makes political leaders have to stop and think their way through some of the decisions they make and what that may mean in terms of their economy."

Shelton said universities that educate students both from and within other countries can also help significantly in building bridges across cultures.

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