Loren Thompson
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s disclosure that he will seek to name retired Marine Corps General James N. Mattis as the next Secretary of Defense portends big changes at the Pentagon. Although Mattis will require a congressional waiver to serve because he is only recently retired from the military, few in Washington doubt the waiver will be granted.
And with good reason: Mattis is one of the most gifted warfighters of his generation, a highly decorated officer who has led troops in every major U.S. military campaign conducted since the new millennium began. That includes the occupation of Afghanistan, where he was the first marine ever to command a Naval Task Force in combat, and the invasion of Iraq, where he led the 1st Marine Division and then went on to command in both battles of Fallujah.
He subsequently held several of the most senior positions in the Marine Corps before heading two joint commands, retiring in 2013 from the leadership of U.S. Central Command — the regional command that oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East. As his oft-quoted aphorisms indicate, Mattis is an unusual combination of battle-hardened warfighter and military intellectual. Nobody like him has led the defense department since General George C. Marshall served 65 years ago.
Mattis has little in common with the politicians, businessmen and academics usually chosen to head the Pentagon. He not only has an unsurpassed understanding of combat, he actually enjoys engaging in it. So putting him at the top of the nation’s military system heralds a significant cultural shift. As the President-elect put it, James Mattis is the closest thing in modern America to the hard-charging General George S. Patton of World War Two fame — but nobody ever considered making Patton Secretary of War.
“I don’t lose sleep at night over the potential for failure. I cannot even spell the word.” — General James N. Mattis (USMC-Ret.) (Retrieved from Wikimedia)
It’s too soon to say precisely what policy shifts a Trump security team including Mattis might decide to make in relations with Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. But given what we already know about General Mattis’ experience, values and character, here are a few changes in the way the Pentagon operates that seem highly likely.
A more realistic view of war. America’s military has been at war since 9-11, but the political class that oversees it often seems detached from the realities of combat. Perhaps that’s because so few members of the elite serve nowadays. So injecting political correctness and domestic legalisms into the oversight of warfighters has become commonplace, even though it gets in the way of winning. Secretary of Defense Mattis will restore clarity of purpose to the Pentagon’s mission, treating war like the unsentimental contest of wills it has always been.
A clear sense of who’s in charge. During the Obama years, much of the authority for making U.S. security policy has been centralized at the White House in an overgrown National Security Council staff. The NSC was originally conceived as a venue in which the most senior officials in the cabinet could meet to discuss security matters, not an independent player. With Mattis at the Pentagon and the President focused on economic issues, confusion as to who is in charge will likely give way to unity of command — with Mattis first among equals.
Merit-based appointments. It’s a longstanding tradition in American politics to select service secretaries and other senior appointees with an eye to shoring up domestic political constituencies. Under President Obama, this practice has been carried to absurd lengths, with the gender, ethnicity and even sexual orientation of candidates playing a role in deciding who gets what jobs. But the President-elect doesn’t owe much to the political establishment, so he won’t resist when Secretary Mattis insists competence should trump connections.
Impatience with politics. The outgoing Pentagon acquisition chief complained this weekend about the “incredible level of micromanagement” that Congress imposes on his department. Much of the time, congressional involvement in managing the Pentagon consists of thinly-veiled efforts to assist district-level interests at the expense of warfighters and taxpayers. As Secretary of Defense, General Mattis will have the moral high ground to push back against such intrusions, and he won’t mince words about how they endanger warfighters.
Skepticism about new technology. Mattis understands that technology and training are the twin pillars of military success, but he is much more focused on the human elements of combat than the tools that warfighters carry. He told a conference on military transformation during the peak of U.S. involvement in Iraq that none of the “leap-ahead” technologies being discussed would have made much difference there, but cultural and language training would have helped a lot. So he isn’t likely to be visiting Google or Tesla anytime soon.
More support for ground forces. The Obama Administration’s ill-timed “pivot to the Pacific” was all about getting soldiers and marines out of harms way while shifting to reliance on air power and sea power. But Mattis began his military career commanding rifle and weapons platoons, so he has a deep affinity for warfighters who get down in the mud to kill enemies and seize real estate. He will be more inclined to see air power and sea power as means for supporting the primary battle on land, rather than as alternatives to ground combat.
The latter point suggests that Mattis could be a good friend of the Army even though he is a marine. Mattis understands land warfare about as well as anybody, and he will be appalled at the under-manned, under-equipped state in which the Obama Administration has left U.S. ground forces in Europe. He knows Europe is mostly an Army theater, but the handful of Army units that would face an invading Russian army are so lacking in force protection, air defense, electronic warfare and the like that they are an invitation to aggression.
Regardless of how the Trump Administration chooses to deal with Moscow, Mattis knows that preparing for war is the most effective way of keeping the peace. So rather than kicking off a new wave of gee-whiz technology projects, he will favor fast fixes where he detects warfighting deficiencies. And when it comes to dealing with enemies at home and abroad, his tenure as Secretary of Defense will likely resemble the 1st Marine Division motto he popularized: “No better friend, no worse enemy.”
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