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."
In the midst of the Ukraine crisis created by Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of his neighbor and deployment of Russian "peacekeepers" in the Donbas region, there are ripple effects reaching far into the Pacific.