Admiral James Stavridis was 16th supreme allied commander of NATO and 12th dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He spent the bulk of his operational career in the Pacific, and is author of "2034: A Novel of the Next World War."
By almost any measure, 2021 has been a cruel year -- a relentless and stubborn pandemic, significant economic disruption globally and deteriorating geopolitics with tensions rising from the Middle East to Eastern Europe to the Taiwan Strait.
