We celebrate the birth of our nation today. It could not have happened without the sacrifice of our founding Americans who were our first veterans.
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Giving back is an ideal that’s embedded in our heritage. This is one reason – but far from the only one — that Dow Chemical Company works so actively to recruit our fighting men and women when they have returned home from the battlefield, and to find them a place to contribute to our work. They have done more for this nation than any one company can ever do in return. It is our deepest obligation to do right by our veterans.
One way I give back is through involvement in Business Executives for National Security (BENS). For more than thirty years, BENS has called on those of us who contribute to the common prosperity to also play a role in the common defense. It is a voice for free enterprise, free peoples, and the idea that we cannot truly support one without supporting the other.
This is a noble idea. An American idea. It is also an idea that President Eisenhower supported: that our national security — whether in peacetime or in war — cannot be achieved without the active involvement of the business community.
What that involvement is — what it requires of us — is always evolving. The question is eternal: How can the business community heighten our national security? When people think of the private sector and how it has strengthened the United States in the contest of nations, they might think of the years just before and during World War II, when America’s manufacturing muscle became the Allies’ great “arsenal of democracy.”
Dow is proud to have played a role in that effort. Among other contributions, we drew ocean water into our factories to extract magnesium for planes and flares. We built the technology to produce everything from tires to radar domes. And before Dow’s saran was ever marketed as “Saran Wrap,” the military used it to cover crates of ammunition and keep them dry on their passage to the beachheads and landing zones.
The production of war materials has always been an essential task of the nation’s private sector. It still is.
But I do not believe it is the most important way we can ensure America wins an armed conflict or, better yet, avoids one altogether. The best way the business community can provide for the common defense is through our everyday work — inventing and building things, creating jobs in America, conducting trade with other nations, and making breakthroughs in science in technology that solve not only American problems, but global ones.
That is how America’s businesses can best keep our nation strong and free. The idea that economic security is national security goes way back. Many of our nation’s military leaders — and surely some of the corporate ones — studied Sun Tzu’s The Art of War during their training. About 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu warned that “When the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain… [And when] your treasure is spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage.”
This is no less true today. But today, our understanding of economic security is broader than at any time in history.
We are increasingly aware that everything from energy security to the strength of our manufacturing sector — or from the resilience of our infrastructure to the productivity of our agricultural system and the health of our banking system — determine the overall strength of our economy. It also determines the power we project around the world.
Our work at Dow touches virtually every one of these areas. This kind of public engagement is crucial for most business leaders, because no less today than during World War II, business, government, and society need to work together as partners for national security.
One of the pillars of America’s economic and national security is our access to affordable and reliable sources of energy. As presidents of both parties have pointed out, energy security is national security. It is especially crucial for manufacturing.
At Dow, we have become outspoken advocates over recent years for the revitalization of America’s manufacturing sector. We have developed a comprehensive plan to boost advanced manufacturing — and I have been proud to contribute our ideas as a co-chair of the President’s Advanced Manufacturing Partnership. The premise of our plan is manufacturing lifts nearly every metric of our nation’s competitiveness. Trade, productivity, job growth, the value of our natural resources and exports. Manufacturing multiplies all these things. It is, therefore, crucial for advancing America’s long-term interests around the globe.
Optimizing America’s energy resources must be a national priority. Energy sources must be plentiful, reliable, and affordable for American manufacturing to fully flex its muscles on the international stage. We must all therefore be efficient in using the energy resources we have on tap. It is job one, two, and three.
Thanks to the hard work of our armed forces, we are making progress on that.
The Department of Defense is setting a high standard when it comes to efficiency, retrofitting out-of-date facilities and building new ones with state-of-the-art technology. This is no small effort. The U.S. Department of Defense is the world’s largest single buyer of both oil and of renewable energy. This is a big deal, and it is making a big difference.
But to meet America’s demand for energy, we have more work to do in developing all viable sources–not just oil and fossil fuels but also nuclear and wind, bioenergy and solar. It now also includes, in a very big way, the cleanest of all fossil fuels: natural gas. The discovery and availability of shale gas in recent years is the most significant energy find for this country since oil was discovered in Pennsylvania, back when James Buchanan was commander-in-chief.
According to the experts, this affordable supply of natural gas — like the one we have now — will fuel $121 billion in increased economic output over the next seven years.
That is not just because our energy costs are lower, but because manufacturers like Dow use key components of this natural gas as feedstocks in our manufacturing processes. It is the first, indispensable ingredient in everything we and so many other companies make, from advanced batteries for cars to components of military aircraft. This is already having an immense impact on this country’s economic recovery.
That impact can be even greater if America uses this energy source thoughtfully and strategically. Recognizing shale gas as a strategic resource would be an important step toward true energy security as the defining reality of this American century.
On this issue, the country needs a strengthening of the historic partnership between business, government and civil society.
It should be a partnership that takes a national view of these issues and works to implement solutions in countries’ best interests. This partnership would reflect the vision of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Ike was not content to rest after winning the war that defined his generation. As president, he laid the groundwork to win the peace that would define the next generation. He funded universities, built better schools and invested in infrastructure so that businesses could scale up. And they did, dramatically.
That is how President Eisenhower helped what was, up to that time, the longest period of domestic economic expansion in America’s history. In doing so, he gave us a massive strategic advantage over our adversaries, some of whom were militarily strong but economically weak, and – in time – crumbled under their own misplaced weight.
Today, let us find that same kind of foresight. Let us forge that same kind of partnership. For if we do — and if we all contribute as only we can — then America can continue to play its indispensable role as the world’s greatest force for prosperity and peace.
Andrew Liveris is CEO of the Dow Chemical Company.