The Naval War College, based in Newport, Rhode Island, runs a special 11-month course for foreign Navy officers. On February 3, the Naval War College held a special morning session at the Hoover Institution, where I am a research fellow. I was invited to speak. The best invites, in my experience, are those for which I get to choose the topic. That happened in this case. So the topic I chose was “An Economist’s Case for a Noninterventionist Foreign Policy.”
The four speakers, in order, were Gary Roughead (Admiral-Retired), formerly the Chief of Naval Operations and a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Hoover, me, Bruce Thornton, a professor of classics and humanities from Fresno State University and a research fellow at Hoover, and George P. Shultz, formerly Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan and a Distinguished Fellow at Hoover.
The audience was, I believe, all Navy officers. There were 47 of them, representing 44 countries. I was warmly received by many of them, especially the officer from Bangladesh, and courteously received by the few U.S. military officers in attendance.
Following is a transcript:
Commander Steve Newlund, US Navy: Our next speaker is Professor David Henderson. He’s a research fellow here at Hoover. His full-time job is as an associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. He was born and raised in Canada and has been a United States citizen since 1986
I just want to point that out, sir.
(LAUGHTER)
He earned his PhD in economics from the UCLA. He is the editor of the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, which is translated into six different languages. He’s also author and co-author of numerous books, to include The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey. He’s been published in no less than 30 different periodicals and magazines and he has appeared on countless television shows, to include The O’Reilly Factor – just a small plug for that. Aside from his many awards and decorations, he’s also testified numerous times to both the House and the Senate and the Senate Armed Services Committee.
