During his long military career, General Martin Dempsey noticed time and again that achieving goals required the hope and trust of those he led.
“There is a very definite relationship between hope and trust. In the military — and I think in most walks of life actually — the success of leadership is in building trust among those entrusted to our care,” said Dempsey, the retired 18th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on October 10 at Notre Dame.
“In the military, we ask those young men and women to do some pretty incredible things. They will only do them if they have trust in the leaders who are giving the instructions and the policies that they’re asked to uphold, and trust with their fellow citizens that their service will be valued. So hope and trust in terms of leadership are inseparable,” he said.
Dempsey joined Notre Dame President Rev. Robert A. Dowd, CSC, ’87 in conversation as part of the 2025-26 Notre Dame Forum. The theme of this year’s forum is “Cultivating Hope.”
The two men discussed global stability and the role of the United States in an era of complex foreign and domestic challenges. The general offered his views on the current global security environment, the role of the United States in the world and the importance of keeping the military out of partisan politics.
Dempsey served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2011 until his retirement in 2015. Prior to that role, he served as the U.S. Army’s 37th chief of staff. A West Point graduate, he was a career Army officer who served at spots around the world during times of both war and peace.
Dempsey received an honorary degree and served as principal commencement speaker at Notre Dame’s 2016 Commencement. He is the grandson of four Irish immigrants.
The following are selections from the conversation.
About political polarization and his view that the U.S. military must be kept strictly separate from partisan politics:
The American people trust us. They don’t look at us as Democrat or Republican, red state, blue state. They just don’t look at us like that. They look at us as representing America, until we prove otherwise.
Were we to embrace a particular political ideology or be seen to be embracing it, what's the other side of it? When the power shifts, what are they going to do? You cannot maintain the trust of the American people with a politicized military.
Dempsey was asked to describe a moment of grace he encountered in a challenging time. He recounted a 1975 experience when an American Catholic nun appeared at the gate of the Army camp he was leading in Germany and asked to pray with some of his men. She led a prayer among some of the less reliable soldiers in the unit, which Dempsey had resisted. Afterwards, the sister asked Demspey why he hadn’t wanted her to meet those particular soldiers:
And I said, “Well, sister, be honest with you, they’re not my best soldiers.”
She said, “Yeah, but they’re your soldiers, right?” I said, “Yeah, they’re all my soldiers.”
She said, “Well, you haven’t given up on them, have you?”
And I thought: “You just stabbed me in the heart. And you just taught me a lesson.”
I graduated from West Point after 47 months, and I learned more that day from that nun about leadership than I’d learned in my entire career. What she was saying was, “Look, don’t give up on people. Some of them will give up on you, but don’t you give up on them. Make them feel a sense of belonging and who knows what’ll happen.”
(Twenty years later, Dempsey encountered one of the soldiers in a receiving line and learned he had risen to master sergeant, the second-highest enlisted rank.)
How he would describe the state of global security if he were advising senior elected officials today:
The importance of the United States engaging globally is far more important than it was even when I was chairman.
It’s a very complex environment that, in my judgment, requires exquisite intelligence and very thoughtful relationships with allies and partners to share information and learn. And then, in our case, it requires a significant amount of diplomacy to keep our allies and partners solid with us.
About the role of the U.S. in the world today:
The more power you have, the more (there is) the responsibility to use it responsibly — in a way that can be imitated, that’s seen as exemplary and is seen as productive and that cultivates hope. That’s who I think we are.
We have the capability. We have to be a little bit humble about it, really. Some people think humility is a sign of weakness. . . . Everything in moderation kind of applies here. Too much courage is recklessness. Too much humility is frailty. But humility and ambition can coexist. And when you get them in the proper balance, it’s powerful.
Margaret Fosmoe is an associate editor of this magazine.