an introduction

Continuing his career in public service, Larry Seaquist invests his energies in citizen-led strategies as we meet the extraordinary challenges which are upending public health, our economy, and our democracy. With a life-long confidence in the common sense and practical, can-do spirit of his fellow citizens, he works with community leaders to restore competence and integrity to America’s repertoire.

Early life. Born 7 September 1938 in Idaho Falls, Idaho, Larry is the first of five children in a farm family. He grew up in Eastern Oregon when his farm family bought a small farm outside Vale. Graduating as class valedictorian in 1956, he went on to study physics and meteorology at Oregon State University.

Leaving college in his Junior year, Larry wintered over twice, first in the Arctic then the Antarctic, with the U.S. Weather Bureau’s Polar Operations Project. His first year as a weather and ice observer was at the DEW-line station near the village of Kaktovic on Barter Island in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska. Then assigned as U.S. rep to the Argentine expedition, he next spent 14 months as a weather and ice observer at Ellsworth Station on the Filcher Ice Shelf on the Weddell Sea. Returning to the U.S. via the first Argentine flight to the South Pole, he resumed his college work, graduating from Oregon State University in 1963.

Navy Career

Enlisting in the U.S. Navy Reserve in order to return to college, Larry reported to the Navy’s San Diego boot camp the day after graduation for what turned out to be his graduate education in America and Americans. Drilling as a reservist in diesel submarines, he also worked as a lab technician in a spacecraft coating lab at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. To meet his active duty requirement, he applied to Navy’s Officer Candidate School, beginning what would be a 32 Navy career.

Larry’s sea duty began with assignments as Assistant Navigator in USS NORTHAMPTON (CC-1), ASW officer in USS DAMATO (DD-871), and Weapons Officer in USS O’HARE (DD-889), all homeported in Norfolk, VA. Selected for early command he was the commissioning, “plank owner” CO, of the new construction USS BEACON (PG-99) homeported first in San Diego, CA and then in Little Creek, VA. He then commanded three more warships: USS BRONSTEIN (FF-1037) (San Diego), USS DAVID R. RAY (DD-971) (San Diego), AND USS IOWA (BB-61) (Norfolk).

Larry alternated commands at sea with duty ashore. As Combat Systems Officer on the COMNAVSURFPAC staff in San Diego he directed a comprehensive overhaul of the Pacific Fleet surface ship training regimen. Special, one-year appointments took him to the Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, as a Federal Executive Fellow and to the Naval War College, Newport, RI, as a member of the Navy’s Strategic Studies Group.

Larry served repeatedly in the Pentagon as a budget and strategy analyst on the Navy staff, as head of the Navy’s Maritime Strategy office, as Deputy head of the Joint Staff office of Strategy and Policy, and in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Coming at the end of the Cold War, his several years as Assistant to the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Policy) and then in the Office of Net Assessment we focused on the transformation of American and international security strategy to the new, post-Cold War realities. He completed his 32-year career in October 1994. (See his military bio for fuller details.).

Peacebuilding and Community Development

Invited by the Director-General of UNESCO to join a group of international leaders in Venice while still on active duty in 1994, Larry continued his work on conflict prevention and peacebuilding for the next decade. Newly retired, he founded the non-profit Strategy Group, an independent, international “do tank”.

Appointed a Senior Advisor to the Director-General of UNESCO in Paris 1994-1999, Mr. Seaquist created and directed UNESCO’s innovative “Venice Process” of conflict prevention. His monograph, Professional Peacebuilding, was published by UNESCO in Russian, Arabic, Spanish and English. All three of his Venice Papers may be read on-line at www.unesco.org/venice.

Working in the Middle East, Central and South Asia, Latin America, and Europe he developed a new toolkit for rapidly and inexpensively enabling concrete, locally led conflict prevention and peacebuilding campaigns. Extending the power of wargaming to the much more complex challenges of peace, his “PeaceLabs” and “PeaceGames” equip local communities in at-war and at-risk countries to construct durable frameworks for conflict prevention and peacebuilding civil society.

That international work led to requests to apply these concepts in American cities. Working with local political and community leaders, for a time with staff at Ohio State University, and with Dr. Joseph Bell, Larry conducted “Community Labs” (CoLabs) in Columbus and Marysville, Ohio; in Washington, D.C.; Seattle/King County, Washington; and with smaller communities and university groups.

Elected Service

Returning to their native Pacific Northwest in 2001, Carla and Larry settled in Gig Harbor, Washington. Invited to run for the state legislature, Larry was elected in 2006 to represent the 26th Legislative District where he served eight years, four terms in the House of Representatives. He served on the Appropriations Committee, Health Care policy and budget committees, education and youth services committees, and the joint pension committee. He chaired the House Higher Education Committee for four years, visiting all the 40+ university and college campuses in the state; working to fully fund a higher education system that had been underfunded after the 2008 crash.

Current Service

Larry continues his full-time engagement with citizens and community leaders on the pressing public policy challenges. Those include revising our education systems so we stop leaving so many people behind. Often working with the League of Education Voters and many area homeless services providers, he explores strategies to reduce and prevent the growing crisis of homelessness. Continuing his contribution of local and state politics, he helps encourage new candidates to run for office. Appointed an adjunct teacher at The Evergreen State College, Larry teaches and advises on the strategies of leading strategic change.

Writing and films

In the years prior to politics, Mr. Seaquist periodically contributed an op-ed column to the international daily newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor. He appeared as a guest expert in several TV documentaries, on Fox News, Good Morning America, Sixty Minutes, and on various national and regional radio talk shows.

His work has also been published the Washington Post and professional journals including the US Naval Institute Proceedings, the Defense Intelligence Digest, and the National Security Strategy Review. He is the invited author of an article on the history of naval strategy-making in the Oxford Companion to American Military History (OUP, 2000) and a chapter, “The Ten Foot Tall Electron,” in The Information Revolution and National Security (CSIS, 1998).

He has been at work on a book, working title Steering in the Whitewater, which offers a fresh look at the state of civilization at the beginning of the 21st Century. Starting with the assertion that the world—with the US in the lead—finds itself unable to solve any of its major problems, the book outlines the profound changes in the nature of war, peace, and authority since the hopeful days at the end of the Cold War and offers some guidelines for steering through the decades of turbulent challenges that lie ahead.

Working with a leading Los Angles executive producer, Tracey Alexander, he was technical advisor to film and TV projects which dramatize issues of national security, the war on terrorism, and military professionalism. Those projects included “THE GRID,” a six-hour TV dramatic series on the global network of terrorists and the counter-terrorism campaign co-produced by TNT, BBC, and Fox Studios. Broadcast by TNT in the US and worldwide by BBC the series may be seen Netflix and DVD.

Larry’s wife, Carla, a brilliant playwright-writer is the author of several plays including: “Who Cares? The Washington-Sarajevo Talks”, and “Kate and Kafka. Her commentary formerly published in The Christian Science Monitor and then on-line by Huffington Post now appears via Medium. See her website to enjoy her essays, plays and to buy her books. www.CarlaSeaquist.com.

CAPTAIN LARRY SEAQUIST, U.S. NAVY (Ret.)

Larry Seaquist completed his very satisfying 32-year Navy career in 1994. Commissioned from Officer Candidate School in 1964 after enlisting in the Naval Reserve in 1962, his sea-going service included repeated command of warships. Ashore his service spanned a series of senior security strategy assignments in Washington.

His early career was entirely at sea. After a first sea tour as assistant navigator in the cruiser USS Northampton (CC 1), he served in USS Damato (DD 871) as antisubmarine warfare officer (ASW), and in USS O’Hare (DD 889) as weapons officer, operating both in the Mediterranean Sea and in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf regions. Damato won the Fleet ASW award and O’Hare was awarded several battle efficiency “Es” for excellence in weaponry.

As a Lieutenant in 1969 he was selected as the first commanding officer of a new, jet engine-powered patrol gunboat, USS Beacon (PG 99). Commissioned in Boston after construction in Michigan, Beacon first joined the U.S. Pacific Fleet and then transferred to the Atlantic Fleet, winning battle efficiency “Es” in both. Following that two-year command tour and early promotion to Lieutenant Commander, he reported in 1971 to the Pentagon as aide and flag lieutenant to the admiral responsible for the surface Navy. Later appointed to the team which managed Navy’s budget strategy, he was designated a proven subspecialist in systems analysis, designing new per-sonnel training strategies and overhauling Navy’s ship maintenance strategy.

In 1976 he returned to sea in command of USS Bronstein (FF 1037) where he and his talented crew pioneered new long-range submarine hunting techniques using advanced acoustic sensors in the Pacific and the Far East. Bronstein won the battle efficiency “E” and the coveted Golden Anchor award for highest career retention in the fleet. After a two-year tour in command and promotion to Commander, he led the combat readiness staff on the Pacific surface force where he designed and implemented a radical overhaul of the fleet combat systems training architecture.

In 1981 he returned to sea for two years in command of USS David R Ray (DD 971), a new Spruance-class destroyer which operated in the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean and Western Pacific before being refitted in Seattle, Washington. Crewed by superstar sailors, David R Ray won the battle efficiency “E” and the Navy-wide award for antisubmarine helicopter operations. Promoted early to Captain and back in the Pentagon, he led Navy’s Strategic Concepts Group, a hand-picked team of young strategists, where he helped shape maritime strategy during what was later called a renaissance in strategic thinking. During this tour of duty he also played a key role in devising an innovative form of war-prevention measures which could be pre-positioned to interrupt grave international crises and preclude major wars and nuclear exchanges.

In 1986 he returned to sea in command of battleship USS Iowa (BB 61), recently modernized and recommissioned after service in WWII and the Korean War. Iowa’s crew of 1500 had been selected from top-drawer sailors and officers from all over the fleet. Iowa served as President Reagan’s flagship in New York harbor during the July 4th, 1986 International Naval Review and rededication of the Statue of Liberty. After training operations with NATO in the North Atlantic and Norwegian Sea and in the Caribbean region, Iowa led the first modern battleship battlegroup into the Mediterranean Sea in 1987. Continuing on through the Suez canal, the Iowa battlegroup then operated for several months in the North Arabian Sea and Straits of Hormuz to provide protection to US-flagged tankers when the Iran-Iraq war spilled into the waters of the Persian Gulf. During these operations Iowa’s crews systematically created modern 16″ gunnery techniques, gunnery training methods, and gunnery safety procedures including the world’s first use of TV-equipped drone aircraft for gunnery. Iowa won many awards include two battle efficiency “Es” and many other honors including an unprecedented “perfect” score in nuclear weapons safety.

In 1988, Captain Seaquist returned to the Pentagon as the Assistant Director of Strategy and Policy in the Joint Staff (J-5) where he oversaw the development of all U.S. military strategic plans including nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare defense planning and helped set in motion radically different planning mechanisms to enable the U.S. military to adjust to rapid changes in the international security climate.

In 1989, he was asked to join the Office of the Secretary of Defense in order to help create a group of new security policy and resource oversight organizations. As the Assistant to the Dep-uty Under Secretary of Defense for Policy he helped orchestrate a series of top-level strategy re-views which radically altered U.S. national security policy as the Cold War came to an end and the U.S. recognized that a “revolution in military affairs” required that military forces and opera-tions be transformed. He helped direct both the strategy for and the history of the Gulf War, he directed the multi-million dollar annual strategy research program, and he conceived and implemented the strategy of “counterproliferation” to modernize American responses to the growing international problem of nuclear, chemical, and biological capability proliferation. Throughout this period he worked closely with senior officers from each of the military services and with sen-ior officials from the White House, State Department, and Congress. He spoke frequently to citizen’s groups on military policy and security strategy issues. In 1990 he served for nearly a year as Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning responsible for directing the work of a large staff of specialized policy and regional affairs analysts and research projects. From time to time he also served briefly as Acting Deputy Under Secretary of Defense. His earlier career included two professional development sabbaticals: 1975-76 he was a Federal Executive Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC where he wrote a monograph on military resource allocation strategies and explored civilian executive and strategy-making methods. In 1983-84 he was selected for the Navy’s Strategic Studies Group where he concentrated on strategies to manage regional conflicts short of war. This fellowship involved extensive travel in the Middle East and Europe plus an around-the-world executive development tour.

Captain Seaquist completed his career in the Office of Net Assessment, a famed in-house think tank in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon, where he examined the changing nature of conflict and created new wargaming methods in order to engage the non-military organizations of the international community in new forms of military-civilian security strategies.

Captain Seaquist has lectured at the National War College, Naval War College, Army War College, and Air War College; he conducted military strategy seminars at Harvard, Stanford, George Washington, Georgetown, and American universities. He continues to conduct frequent seminars on U.S. security strategy and military policy for military and university audiences. He was cited as 2002 “adjunct teacher of the year” by the Foreign Service Institute, the education arm of the U.S. Department of State. He is the author of numerous articles on military strategy and information technology including a major article on the history of naval strategy in the Oxford Companion to American Military History. His article “Community War” published in the US Naval Institute Proceedings outlined the ongoing changes in the nature of conflict and the consequent imperative of developing new conflict prevention and peacebuilding strategies.

Anything but “retired”, Captain Seaquist followed his Navy career with more than a decade helping local communities develop practical paths to peace and community wellness in at-war and at-risk countries in the Middle East, South and Central Asia, and Latin America. He was later elected to four terms in the Washington State House of representatives. He continues to work with citizens and community leaders on strategies to improve education, prevent homelessness, and strengthen our democracy.