Given that many folks aren't so intimately familiar with General Mattis' career as am I, I thought I'd put together a quick post with some items in which he's featured since retiring. In late 2013, The Director sent me a link to General Mattis' lecture at the Foreign Policy Research Institution, aptly titled "Reflections of a Combatant Commander in a Turbulent World".
In June of 2014, General Mattis was interviewed by Harry Kreisler of UC Berkeley. You can download the podcast, or watch the video on YouTube. General Mattis is known for his direct manner of public speaking, as evidenced in that original quote compilation I posted. This interview, of which I was unaware until a few days ago, provided a brand new Mattis anecdote with which I was previously unfamiliar:
"In Pakistan's case, when I first got there [in 2001], and landed in Islamabad, I had a great little map, and it showed what I was gonna do, showed a little ship out in the ocean and an arrow going to Afghanistan, and this sort of thing. And I walked in to see our ambassador there, I'd landed at midnight, walked into her office about eight o'clock in the morning, and she said, 'Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my country?' and I thought, 'This isn't going to go so well.' So I said, 'Well, Madame Ambassador, my name's Jim Mattis. I'm gonna take about a thousand of my best friends up in Afghanistan and kill some people.' And she said, 'Really, General?' And I said, 'Yes, ma'am.' She said, 'Well, sit down, I think I can help you.'"
- General James N. Mattis, USMC (Ret.), 2014
In January of 2015, General Mattis testified before the Senate Armed Services committee on national security threats. He's a fellow at the Hoover Institution, and in February of 2015 he published an essay entitled "A New American Grand Strategy", which echoed many of the points he made in his testimony. In April of 2016, General Mattis addressed the Center for Strategic and International Studies in a lecture entitled "The Middle East at an Inflection Point". As I mentioned earlier, General Mattis is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, and in May of 2016 they released a podcast of a speech he gave entitled "General Mattis: What Should We Do About Iran?". In September, General Mattis and fellow Hoover analyst Kori Schake were interviewed by Ryan Evans for the War on the Rocks Podcast about their new book on civil-military relations.
Without opining on President-Elect Trump, from a purely analytical standpoint, the selection of General Mattis suggests that a number of the controversial statements that Mr. Trump made during the campaign may have been mostly bluster - "serious, but not literal", as the vogue phrase states.
First, judging from his tenure as Commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command, General Mattis is likely to be unapologetic about cutting wasteful Pentagon spending. As an example, he drastically scaled back USJFCOM's investigation of "Transformation" concepts and technologies, most notably Effects Based Operations. These programs had a lot of political capital behind them, and produced lucrative contracts, but proved to be limited in their battlefield utility in Afghanistan and Iraq. So, General Mattis' selection suggests the possibility of fiscal responsibility on the part of the Trump Pentagon.
Second, General Mattis has been an outspoken advocate for America's coalition and alliance partnerships, particularly but not limited to NATO. (For most of his tenure at USJFCOM, General Mattis was "dual-hatted" as the NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Transformation.) President-Elect Trump's comments about NATO and other American allies raised questions about the future of those partnerships under a Trump presidency; General Mattis will push to maintain those alliances.
Third, General Mattis' testimony before the Senate, among other public remarks, suggest that contrary to his reputation as a ruthless killer - earned though it is - General Mattis is likely to caution President Trump against precipitous use of armed force in open-ended conflicts with poorly defined or insufficiently resourced goals. Basically, America will either be slower to enter into military engagements that don't serve the natural interest, or General Mattis' tenure as Secretary of Defense will be short-lived.
As an aside, several friends have also asked me about Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, President-Elect Trump's selection for National Security Advisor and one of the more vocal members of his campaign team. I'll admit to not having heard of General Flynn prior to the election. On Friday, I listened to a couple of interviews with him, one from SOFREP Radio, and the other from the International Spy Museum. I'd like to give both podcasts another listen, but General Flynn said some pretty smart things about how the Department of Defense learned the wrong lessons from Operation Desert Storm and then ran around trying to fit all future engagements into that operational concept. That's something that I've been saying for years, and it's pretty controversial among foreign policy folks. I'm less confident about General Flynn's appointment than I am with General Mattis, but unlike the six minute NPR segment on Lieutenant General Daniel Bolger from 2014, General Flynn didn't say anything in roughly two hours of interviews that came off as immediate red flags to me. I share some of my progressive friends' concerns about General Flynn's son spreading the "PizzaGate" conspiracy theory, and it seems appropriate that the junior Flynn was subsequently fired from the transition team as a result.
I'm decidely less enthusiastic about some of President-Elect Trump's other cabinet picks, but I'm also less qualified to discuss them, so I won't.
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