Loren Thompson
On January 27, 2017, shortly after his inauguration, President Donald J. Trump directed the Pentagon to undertake a Nuclear Posture Review and a Ballistic Missile Defense Review. Trump had spoken frequently about nuclear threats during the campaign season, so he wanted to make an early start on evaluating the adequacy of both the offensive and defensive features of U.S. strategic policy.
The posture review of offensive forces -- nuclear missiles and bombers -- was completed on time in January of this year. It proved to be a status quo document, upholding precepts that had guided Washington's approach to nuclear deterrence since the Cold War. Most observers agreed it was compatible with the nuclear plans of the Obama administration.
The Ballistic Missile Defense Review was another matter, because the White House had been signaling since inauguration day that it wanted to significantly strengthen the nation's ability to intercept and destroy nuclear weapons posing the greatest threat to the American homeland. That goal went well beyond what the Obama administration had planned. In fact, Obama's advisers feared too much investment in missile defense of the homeland might lead to a destabilizing arms race with Russia and/or China.
That is at least part of the reason why the missile defense review never quite got completed. At first the Pentagon said it would be done in the same time frame as the study of offensive nuclear forces. Then it said maybe in February of 2018. Then it said maybe in May of 2018. Today, as midterm elections approach, we still have no missile defense review. Some insiders say it might be released in October. Others say it might never be released.
James Mattis is one of the most distinguished warfighters that his generation has produced. However, his views on national security are out of step with those of the president.DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
The Pentagon has offered explanations along the way for why one report was completed on time, and the other seems trapped in bureaucratic limbo. Key political appointees took a long time to confirm. The department lacked sufficient staff to complete two major reports at the same time. The missile defense review needed to look beyond ballistic threats to the danger posed by long-range cruise missiles and "hypersonic" weapons that might appear in the future.
These explanations may have some validity, but there's one other factor that got in the way of promptly completing what amounts to a glorified term paper. The missile defense review was a threat to the military and political status quo, in much the same way that President Trump has posed other challenges to cherished beliefs of the nation's security establishment. And because it would have signaled a departure from conventional wisdom, it got bottled up by players who didn't want to see security priorities rearranged.
Preventing deviations from conventional wisdom by the Trump White House has become a core competency of Secretary James Mattis during his tenure at the top of the Defense Department. He convinced the president to send more troops to Afghanistan rather than pulling out. He contradicted criticisms the White House leveled at NATO allies who spent too little on their own security. He tried to persuade the president not to withdraw from the nuclear agreement with Iran.
Trump was willing to listen during his first year in office because he was new to the job, Mattis was a distinguished warfighter, and other security advisers around the president echoed the concerns of the defense secretary. But as time went on, Trump began to doubt whether he and Mattis shared the same views on national security. That became especially evident after hardliners Mike Pompeo and John Bolton joined the administration as, respectively, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor.
Much of this was laid out in a September 15 story in the New York Times, which predicted -- correctly -- that Mattis will soon be departing his Pentagon job. Trump's preferred successor is another retired general, but one who shares the president's approach to protecting the nation. Not surprisingly, the Times relates all this as part of an ongoing decline in the quality of U.S. leadership:
"Mattis himself is becoming weary, some aides said, of the amount of time spent pushing back against what Defense Department officials think are capricious whims of an erratic president."
That's one way of looking at the prospect that Mattis will soon be forced out. Another interpretation is that Trump, as an outsider, has noticed defects in the nation's defense posture that are not obvious to people who made their careers in the current security establishment. For instance, is it sensible to have almost no defenses against nuclear attack when the future sanity of leaders in other nuclear states is unknowable? Is it smart to be spending more money on the security of Afghanistan than on intercepting the greatest military threat to our democracy?
Trump, a product of the dog-eat-dog environment that is New York real estate, never assumes we can count on our allies or that common sense will prevail. He has a penchant for stating uncomfortable truths. He upset the security establishment by saying that maybe Japan and South Korea needed their own nuclear deterrents, but this was just his way of pointing out that the main reason North Korea has been seeking nuclear weapons capable of hitting America is that U.S. forces are in South Korea and Japan.
For Trump, it isn't so obvious why the U.S. should be helping two of the world's biggest economies to counter the threat posed by a country -- North Korea -- that has a GDP smaller than that of metropolitan Los Angeles. He looks at Europe and the Middle East the same way, because as a nationalist he believes first and foremost in protecting America. That doesn't mean keeping troops in Afghanistan, but it does mean taking missile defense of the homeland and our overseas forces more seriously.
For some reason, this view is not considered sophisticated among the current crop of security experts. They think offensively-based deterrence is going to last forever, so we don't need to spend much money on active protection. They think we need to maintain our commitment to NATO even if members like Germany can't bring themselves to spend more than 1% of GDP on mounting a defense against Russian aggression. James Mattis has been the keeper of the flame for such views during his tenure at the Pentagon.
Which is the biggest reason why Secretary Mattis will soon be gone. The long delayed report on building better missile defenses for America is emblematic of the way Mattis has ordered Pentagon priorities. He has protected a status quo that drains national resources to compensate for the failings of our allies, and will leave the nation naked to aggression on the day deterrence collapses. You don't have to love Trump to see that he understands human nature better than most of the "experts" do.
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