After meeting with retired Marine Gen. James Mattis last weekend, Donald Trump described him as a “general’s general.” The president-elect might have been more accurate if he called Mattis, who could be Trump’s next secretary of defense, “a thinking general’s general.”
When it comes to deep thinkers, few military leaders have drilled deeper into the arcana of foreign policy and military strategy than the legendary Marine known as “Mad Dog” by his legion of admirers.
But that affectionate appellation should not be misconstrued. Mattis is neither crazy nor dogmatic, and his nuanced views on national security should not be confused with his penchant for plain-speaking and spouting of quotable maxims, and colorful metaphors.
The same man who in one breath will glibly liken the threat from Iran to “children juggling light bulbs with nitroglycerin,” can in the very next breath soberly advocate a nuanced strategy of patience and pressure.
His candor can at times come off as cockiness. Mattis, the former commander of the U.S. Central Command, once said of killing the Taliban: “Actually it’s quite fun to fight them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people.”
But the retired general is anything but cocksure, and his thinking is flexible and infused with an extensive sense of history and profound respect for the vagaries of warfare.
And while Mattis is currently riding a groundswell of support based on his self-evident qualifications, in many ways he’s not a perfect fit with Trump’s foreign policy, at least in its bare-bones articulation on the campaign trail.
Iran is a good example. Mattis was not a fan of the nuclear deal, but is pragmatic enough to conclude that it may have been the best of the bad options.
In April, when Mattis’ name was being tossed around as a possible Republican or independent challenger to Trump, he gave a speech in Washington in which he urged critics to recognize the advantages of the deal that he said was “not a very good one.”
“It’s not a friendship treaty, and some people have tried to make it into a friendship treaty say it’s worthless,” Mattis argued. “As a friendship treaty it would be worthless, but it’s an arms control agreement that fell short of a lot of hopes, but it’s not completely without some merit.”
Mattis sees the nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers as a done deal. “I don’t think that we can take advantage of some new president, Republican or Democrat, and say we’re not going to live up to our word on this agreement. I believe we would be alone if we did, and unilateral economic sanctions from us would not have anywhere near the impact of an allied approach to this.”
Perhaps the biggest schism between Mattis and Trump may be on the care and feeding of America’s allies.
For Mattis’ life is full of little tradeoffs, and loyal partners are to be valued, even if they fall short in some respects.
“If we’re waiting for perfect allies, we’re going to be awfully alone in this world and from what I have seen in our own country, we’re not perfect ourselves,” Mattis said in his April 22 remarks before Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Mattis said when he heard President Obama complaining in a magazine interview about some U.S. allies not carrying their weight, he thought he was confusing Obama with Trump.
“I would just say that for a sitting U.S. president to see our allies as freeloaders is nuts,” Mattis said in a comment that would seem to be at odds with Trump’s vow to get America’s allies to pay more for their own defense.
For Mattis, that sends the wrong message. “Worth more than 10 battleships or five armored divisions is the sense of American political resolve,” he said.
In his more than 40 years in uniform, Mattis earned another nickname, “The Warrior Monk,” because he never married, and because of his avid reading and extensive knowledge of military history.
That also sets him apart from the next commander in chief, but then again that’s precisely what could make Mattis one of the most influential members of Trump’s national security team.
