Former commander of U.S. Forces Korea delivers Class of 2025 Powell Lecture

Retired Gen. Vincent Brooks delivers his remarks during the annual Colin L. Powell Lecture for students of the Command and General Staff Officers Course Class of 2025 in Eisenhower Auditorium in Fort Leavenworth’s Lewis and Clark Center Aug. 29, 2024.

General (Ret.) Vincent K. Brooks presented the annual Colin L. Powell Lecture for students of the CGSC Class of 2025 at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Aug. 29, 2024, in the Eisenhower Auditorium of Fort Leavenworth’s Lewis and Clark Center. Brooks is a former commander of the United Nations Command/Combined Forces Command/United States Forces Korea from 2016-2018.

Brooks thanked the College faculty and the CGSC Foundation for the invitation to deliver the Colin L. Powell Lecture and congratulated the students for their selection and attendance at the course.

“This is a critical point in your career, it is not a ‘check the block’ experience,” he said.

Brooks went on to discuss the value of the international and interagency students in the class and encouraged all of them to learn to communicate with one another. He stressed to the students that the purpose of the Command and General Staff Officers Course (CGSOC) was to teach them how to think and operate on division and higher level staffs, not just prepare them to become battalion and brigade level operations and executive officers. He spoke to them about the world they would enter and how to understand the differences between international competition, crisis events which are localized, and regional conflict (as opposed to all out, global war).

“I want you to think of conflict as more of a regional matter than a global matter,” he said. “How do you move from conflict back toward crisis, or beyond crisis back into competition? – That’s what your effort should be. Always driving back to competition. And competition doesn’t mean necessarily the use of violence…which you all are already trained to do…it’s how you apply the military instrument to create other geopolitical and national outcomes.”

Retired Gen. Vincent Brooks delivers his remarks for the assembled guests during the CGSC Foundation’s Distinguished Speaker Series dinner event in downtown Kansas City Aug. 28, 2024. The CGSC Foundation, through its Simons Center, conducts the Distinguished Speaker Series program to offer extracurricular, educational lectures intended to help enrich the Command and General Staff School curriculum and provide opportunities for outreach to the public. Brooks delivered the annual Colin L. Powell Lecture Series presentation at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College the following day.

Brooks went on to discuss how other countries see thew world, using global maps of the Pacific Rim and the Indian Ocean and how their quests to compete economically must reach across the vastness of the oceans or the heights of the Himalayas.

Key in Brooks discussion was the students’ “next chapter” of their careers. He explained the purpose of the general staff is to turn ideas into actions, encouraging them to think about using decision point tactics versus merely choosing courses of action. He also warned the students that they will feel like Rip van Winkle when they return back to their units.

“When you go back to a brigade…you’re going to have the feeling of Rip Van Winkle,” he said. “While you are here,…time will move on and you’re going to arrive back inside a brigade two or three years from now and first, you’re going to be really old…You don’t think it, but you are and you’ll see that when you look in the faces of those youngsters in there who are in the places you used to be before you came here. You have a lot to offer when you get back, but you first have to come to grips with the fact that you’re a lot older, a lot more senior than they are, and that you look different to them than you think you look to them.”

Brooks also spoke to the students about their careers and stressed to them that at this point, it’s normal for them to wonder if they should continue on or choose a different path.

“What do I really want and where might I find it?” are the two questions he posed to the students as a way to help them think about their career decisions in the coming months and years. He also encouraged them to talk to the younger officers they will encounter and help them think through these questions, because, he stressed again, they’re thinking about these things too.

In closing his formal remarks, Brooks encouraged the students to get to know and learn from their sister service, interagency and international officers while at CGSOC and to always think “joint.” He also pleaded with them to consider command opportunities and to seek them out during their career assignment selections in the future.

After his formal remarks, Brooks broke with normal Eisenhower Auditorium speaker behavior and dismounted the stage, moving out into the audience to get closer to the students during the question and answer period. After the Q&A, CGSC Foundation Chairman Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Chris Hughes, along with Command and General Staff School Director Col. David Norris, presented Brooks with a Colin L. Powell Lecture Series commemorative coin from the Foundation in appreciation for his presentation.

CGSC Foundation President/CEO Lora Morgan presents Gen. (Ret.) Vincent Brooks with a Fort Leavenworth Lamp statuette in appreciation for his time with the Foundation and its guests at the Foundation’s Distinguished Speaker Series dinner event in downtown Kansas City Aug. 28, 2024.

Brooks’ itinerary during his visit to Fort Leavenworth was a full one. The day before the Powell lecture, he hit the ground running, recording a podcast for the School of Advanced Military Studies with SAMS Director Col. Dwight Domengeaux. Later that evening he was the keynote speaker for the CGSC Foundation’s Distinguished Speaker Series dinner event in downtown Kansas City with more than 150 in attendance.

Foundation Chairman Hughes introduced Brooks at the dinner event, calling him “a man of many firsts.” Brooks is well-known as the first black cadet to be named as First Captain, the highest position a cadet can hold at West Point, in his class of 1980, which was also the first class to include women.

Brooks spoke for more than an hour, giving the audience his perspective on the top five strategic concerns for the nation. In reverse order, the fifth threat he described was comprised of national threats from Iran, North Korea, Russia and China and non-national threats like terrorism; the fourth threat he described was extremism in nationalism, protectionism, populism, and isolationism; the third was proliferation of dangerous technologies (missiles, nuclear weapons, etc.) and non-dangerous weapons used in a malign way (drones, cyber, AI, etc.); the second strategic concern was an absence of empathy in U.S. policy and the U.S. body politic; and finally, he spoke about the absence of domestic tranquility as the biggest strategic threat.

“The absence of domestic tranquility, how we speak to one another, how we respect or do not respect institutions of government, how we create, how we support laws, what confidences we have in institutions like the U.S. Army. – These things are exploitable and being exploited disrupts the fabric of America,” he said. “When you disrupt the fabric of America, America has to pay attention to itself and it can not pay attention to the world. To me, the number national security threat to the United States of America is the absence of domestic tranquility. We have to get this right or we’re not going to survive. This is not a political statement. This is about the body politic choosing its direction and what we expect of any and every leader is to secure the domestic tranquility.”

At the conclusion of his remarks Brooks conducted a Q&A period with the audience after which CGSC Foundation President/CEO Lora Morgan presented him with a Fort Leavenworth Lamp statuette in appreciation for his time with the Foundation and its guests.

The next morning Brooks met with CGSC Deputy Commandant Col. Jason H. Rosenstrauch, delivered the Powell Lecture, delivered a second presentation and discussion with students in the SAMS Class of 2025, and then met with members of the Buffalo Soldier Chapter of the ROCKS. His final stop was an office call with Fort Leavenworth/Combined Arms Center Commanding General and CGSC Commandant Gen. Milford H. Beagle, Jr.

General (Retired) Vincent “Vince” K. Brooks served in the U.S. Army for more than 42 years from his entry into the U.S. Military Academy at West Point until his retirement from active duty in January 2019 as a four-star general. Brooks spent his final 17 years of service in the general officer ranks and in nearly all of those years in command of large, complex military organizations in challenging situations.

Brooks’ military service includes tours of duty in Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia, the Western Hemisphere, and the Indo-Pacific Region as well as the American Homeland. In his last assignment he served as commander of United Nations Command/Combined Forces Command/United States Forces Korea from 2016-2018. His other senior command assignments include command of U.S. Army Pacific from 2013-2016 and the 1st Infantry Division from 2009-2011. He is a graduate of the CGSOC Class of 1991 and the SAMS Class of 1992.

In his post-military career, Brooks is a board director for three public companies (Diamondback Energy, Verisk Analytics, Jacobs), one non-profit organization (Gary Sinise Foundation) and is former board chair and president of the Korea Defense Veterans Association. He is a consultant principal with WestExec Advisors, a prominent national security consulting firm. He is also a member of the Defense Advisory Committee on Diversity and Inclusion and also holds an endowed chair at West Point as the Class of 1951 Chair for the Study of Leadership. Brooks is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is also a fellow at three prestigious intellectual centers – Belfer Center at Harvard Kennedy School, Clements Center for National Security at University of Texas, and Strauss Center for International Security and Law at University of Texas.

Brooks holds a Bachelor of Science from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, a Master of Military Art and Science from the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies, an Honorary Doctor of Laws from New England School of Law, and an Honorary Doctor of Humanities from New England Law | Boston.

Sponsored by the CGSC Foundation, the Colin L. Powell Lecture Series was established in 2008 to honor the legacy of General Colin L. Powell at Fort Leavenworth. The Powell Lecture Series provides a forum for the discussion of national security issues by prominent national leaders for the benefit of the students and faculty of the Command and General Staff College and the Fort Leavenworth community. Gen. Powell was the first lecturer in 2008.

Thank you to the sponsors of the Aug. 28 Distinguished Speaker Series event with Gen. (Ret.) Brooks. – See the list of sponsors below.

For more photos see these albums on the CGSC Foundation Flickr site:

Distinguished Speaker Series Dinner Event

CGSOC Class of 2025 Colin L. Powell Lecture

Discussion with SAMS Class of 2025

Discussion with Buffalo Soldier Chapter of the ROCKS

Video on the CGSC Foundation YouTube Channel

Full video of Gen. Brooks’ presentation at the Distinguished Speaker Series Dinner event, Aug. 28

Full video of Gen. Brooks’ Colin L. Powell Lecture Series presentation, Aug. 29

After presenting the Colin L. Powell Lecture to students of the Command and General Staff Officer’s Course, retired Gen. Vincent Brooks led a discussion and took a group photo with the students in the School of Advanced Military Studies Class of 2025 in Marshall Auditorium of Fort Leavenworth’s Lewis and Clark Center Aug. 29, 2024.

Retired Gen. Vincent Brooks spoke with members of the Buffalo Soldier Chapter of the ROCKS and took a group photo with them in Marshall Auditorium of Fort Leavenworth’s Lewis and Clark Center Aug. 29, 2024.

Thank you to the Sponsors of the Distinguished Speaker Series Dinner Event Aug. 28, 2024