MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Jim Stavridis and Elliot Ackerman are both veterans. Ackerman is a Marine, five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Stavridis is a retired four-star admiral, also a former supreme allied commander of NATO. So it might not surprise you that when these two set out a few years ago to write fiction together, they wrote about war. Their first novel was titled "2034" because it was set in the year 2034. It imagined a war between the U.S. and China. When they came to the phone to talk with us about it, Admiral Stavridis told me the book was meant to strike a warning bell.
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JIM STAVRIDIS: Almost any time an established power is challenged by a rising power, it leads to war. It's a dangerous moment, and 15 years from now, I think will be a moment of maximum danger because China will have advanced in its military capability and technology. We're standing in the danger, as we would say in the Navy.
KELLY: All right, so that was China, Book 1. A few years later, the Stavridis-Ackerman duo struck again with a second novel titled and set in "2054." So we called them again. Ackerman told me this time the plot was about AI and about Americans turning on each other.
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ELLIOT ACKERMAN: These forces of change, which seem to be, you know, pushing the United States up to the brink of civil war, making it so we can't, you know, speak to one another or hear one another's viewpoints, and that seemed to have led to the assassination of an American president.
KELLY: Well, today Elliot Ackerman and Jim Stavridis are wrapping up their trilogy, and the focus is the havoc climate change has wrought. They join me to talk about their new book, "2084." Hi, you two. Welcome back.
JIM STAVRIDIS: Thanks, Mary Louise.
ACKERMAN: Yeah, thank you.
KELLY: OK, so here we are. The future you imagine in "2084" involves so many storms that authorities have stopped naming them. They're numbering them instead. You write that a traditional hurricane season by 2084 had become a quaint notion. Why, Elliot - because it's always hurricane season?
ACKERMAN: Basically, because it's always (ph) hurricane season, and then as we look at the challenges that are going to face us in the year 2084, it includes changing geography and the importance of that changing geography and the political tensions that will arise versus - the winners versus the losers as the equatorial zones in the world become less and less inhabitable. So not only are we imagining the future for a future (ph) of war, but we're also imagining the future of geopolitics and how geography is going to relate to that.
KELLY: Yeah. Some things haven't changed in your imagination. The U.S. is still the U.S. Washington, D.C., is still the capital. You do imagine things, though, like, the U.N. - the United Nations headquarters is now in Greenland - in New Greenland.
JIM STAVRIDIS: Indeed, the headquarters is in Greenland, and I think people will be happy to hear it's not part of the United States at this point. But here's a really interesting geopolitical angle, picking up on Elliot's point. By 2084, it's entirely possible, and the book theorizes, that the U.S. and China had become allies.
KELLY: Elliot, go back to the alliance that Admiral Stavridis mentioned. It seems unlikely, sitting here in 2026, but the U.S. and China are tight. This is a three-pronged alliance, though. It's China, it's the U.S. and...
ACKERMAN: Well, we see that it's - you know, it's mainly - I mean, it's - mainly driving this is China and the United States, and we frame them as a - basically a consortium, and that includes India and really the main industrialized powers. And the main political tension in the book is against the Reparationists. And these Reparationist nations are equatorial. They're ones that have really felt the pain of climate change. And a key theme in this book is migration. The Reparationist nations are claiming land reparations against the consortium, and that really frames the military conflict that is at the centerpiece of "2084."
JIM STAVRIDIS: I think that's absolutely right. And the tensions pulling at the United States today are pulling us in different directions. They are pulling us apart. And I think it is not impossible to imagine California and Oregon become some kind of different entity. Florida is on its own. Perhaps the larger center holds together. We just don't know. But again, all of this is a cautionary tale about where these tensions might lead us.
KELLY: Where are we putting Texas in here, Admiral?
JIM STAVRIDIS: (Laughter) I think Texas very likely will be standing alone as well, by that time.
ACKERMAN: Well, I would just make the point to caveat off what Jim said is that, you know, one of the things we also - you know, no spoilers here - but that the book imagines and takes the reader through is how alliances shift and how geopolitical events affect these actors and, you know, the reason that Florida has split off from the United States. So, you know, we're doing that work, that imaginary work, because I think we've recognized in writing these books, in our study of history that the only thing you can really bet on is change.
KELLY: You are reminding me, Elliot, of something you told me when we were speaking about the earlier books, which is, you find it really cathartic, imagining all these catastrophes that you're inventing. And again, this is all fiction. But I remember you saying that maybe if we imagine the worst-case scenarios, we may be able to avoid them. That feels...
ACKERMAN: Absolutely.
KELLY: ...Tough when it comes to climate change. It feels like the worst-case scenario is in real life coming at us fast.
ACKERMAN: Well, I think it's - you know, we have approached this trilogy of books in the spirit of not trying to predict the future but trying to speculate what worst-case outcomes would be if we're not awake and aware of the challenges that exist.
JIM STAVRIDIS: Let me add to that, if I can, Mary Louise, that these are not books about the end of the world, but they are, indeed, warning flags to us about what we need to do to avoid the disasters that could befall us.
KELLY: Yeah. So do you all finish this trilogy more optimistic about America than when you began? Admiral, you first.
JIM STAVRIDIS: I do. And again, I'm an optimist. I'm Greek American, so I'm required to be optimistic. It's a nature of our DNA. But I wouldn't bet against the human spirit. And I go back to the last scene where the vineyards are planted - I'll do a little spoiler alert. Those are vineyards, cuttings from the island of Santorini in Greece. And that symbolizes my view that we will get through these moments. I firmly believe that.
KELLY: And that ancient roots and vines will be bearing fruit...
JIM STAVRIDIS: Yep.
KELLY: ...Well toward the end of this century. Elliot, how about you?
ACKERMAN: I do. I remain optimistic, and I think that, you know, we - as Americans and humanity, we've always, you know, figured a way through. We are a tenacious species. And I think when you read this story through the eyes of the characters that are in it, you can see the optimism that the admiral and I have brought to this entire endeavor.
KELLY: Elliot Ackerman and Admiral Jim Stavridis talking about the latest and last book in their fiction trilogy. It is titled "2084." This was a pleasure. Thank you both.
ACKERMAN: Thank you.
JIM STAVRIDIS: Thank you, Mary Louise.
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KELLY: Stavridis and Ackerman and I also talked about the future of warfare and what lessons they're taking from the war in Iran. You can hear our full conversation on our national security podcast, Sources & Methods, wherever you get your podcasts.
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