As the cameras panned President Trump’s national security team as they sat across a conference table from President Putin in Helsinki, there was one face that was noticeably absent: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
Mattis could be spotted a few days earlier escorting his boss around NATO’s gleaming new headquarters during the allied summit in Brussels, but unlike Pompeo was not called upon to speak, and remained for the most part where he is most comfortable — in the background, out of the limelight.
While the rest of Trump’s team left Belgium for the marquee event in Finland, Mattis continued to Croatia and Norway for the less glamorous, but important business of ally maintenance.
The defense secretary had his work cut out for him after six-day stretch in which President Trump again berated NATO allies as deadbeats; accused Germany of being a captive of Russia; chastised British Prime Minister Theresa May for bungling Brexit; called the European Union an economic foe; and capped it all off with a squirm-inducing performance in Helsinki in which he faulted the U.S. for being “foolish” while praising Russia’s Vladimir Putin for his “powerful” denial of interference in U.S. elections.
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Mattis’ job just got “100 percent more difficult,” said former Pentagon and State Department spokesman John Kirby on CNN after Trump’s widely-criticized appearance with Putin.
“If I’m Jim Mattis or I’m Mike Pompeo, I’m thinking, holy cow, what do I do now? How do I wake up tomorrow and figure out, what am I going to do in terms of policy?” said Kirby, a retired Navy Rear Admiral.
Mattis, who was once Trump’s favorite cabinet member back when he liked to call for retired Marine “Mad Dog,” is now increasingly the odd man out, with his views rarely sought and his advice even more rarely followed.
Yet Mattis plods along, showing no outward sign of frustration, and going about the methodical and often thankless job of attempting to reshape the U.S. military into his vision of a more nimble, modern, and lethal force.
President Trump has overruled Mattis on matters as trivial as whether to stage a military parade to rival the French (a frivolous waste of money), to suspending military exercises with South Korea (putting U.S. readiness at risk), to creating a Space Force as a separate military services (adding needless overhead).
But probably nowhere do Mattis’ views diverge more from his commander in chief than in his assessment of the threat posed by Russia, and the need for allies to deter Russian adventurism to advance America’s strategic goals.
Known for his keen intellect and his deep knowledge of history, Mattis is fond of quoting Winston Churchill as saying, “The only thing harder than fighting with allies is fighting without them.”
While Trump has been touting his desire to get along with Russia as a “good thing,’ Mattis continues to see Russia as a destabilizing force which continues to “undermine the democratic fabric of nations,” as he told reporters traveling with him to Norway.
Mattis described Montenegro, the newest member of NATO, as a success story, but Trump openly questioned whether it is worth the U.S. going to war to protect a tiny country with “aggressive” people, thereby undercutting the bedrock principle of the alliance that an attack on one is an attack on all.
It doesn’t help that in questioning Montenegro’s value to the alliance, Trump is tacitly endorsing a view espoused by Putin, who allegedly tried to foment a coup to prevent the country from joining NATO.
But for all the discord, there is no sign that Mattis is contemplating resigning in protest.
It’s hard to know what he’s really thinking, and here the old Washington maxim applies in spades: “Those who know aren’t talking, and those who are talking don’t know.”
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Mattis has maintained the lowest profile of any defense secretary in decades, giving no interviews, appearing on no talk shows, and meeting reporters only away from cameras in unannounced informal sessions.
But those who do know him say, while he’s not that fond of the grueling job and certainly doesn’t need the money, he remains deeply committed to the Constitution and his troops, and therefore plans to stick around as long as he thinks he can do good.
It’s not in his nature to quit, and he considers it his patriotic duty to serve the man who was duly elected president. Mattis gives his advice to Trump in private, and never complains publicly when it is ignored.
It’s as if he is following his own advice, given to U.S. troops on a trip to the Middle East last summer, and captured in a video posted on Facebook
“You’re a great example for our country right now and it’s got problems,” Mattis tells the troops in the video. “You know it and I know it. It’s got problems we don’t have in the military. And you just hold the line, my fine soldiers, and sailors and airmen and Marines.”
