Defense nominee less mad dog than lucid cat
America’s new secretary of Defense nominee has an apparently quite divergent — and more realistic — sense of the world than either President-elect Donald Trump or even, in some respects, the new nominee for national security adviser, retired Army lieutenant general Michael Flynn. Trump must bring himself to tap these resources before impulse and emotions send the nation off the rails, perhaps irrevocably.
Retired Marine general James Mattis sees Russian President Vladimir Putin not through rosecolored glasses but as the autocrat that he is.
Mattis recognizes the value of our Iran nuclear treaty and rather than ripping it up, he’d prefer to make sure it’s enforced to the hilt.
He’s also a genuine fan of NATO and believes in force with reason in the Middle East.
Mattis also apparently already talked Trump down off the ledge of waterboarding as an interrogation technique, believing instead in the value of a “pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers.”
Even so, there’s still so much unknown about either of the two retired generals and how they may be used in crises, or in just day-to-day phone calls or tweets.
Let’s hope Trump never consulted Flynn or Mattis before taking that perhaps fateful call from Taiwan’s president that could push America and Asia further down a path toward conflict that Mattis could be left in the end to sort out.
China’s brilliant foreign minister, Wang Yi, cut Trump some slack — this one time — laying the
blame for the first direct conversation between a U.S. and Taiwanese president or president-elect in 37 years squarely on Taiwan’s new leader, Tsai Ing-Wen.
But the learning curve is pretty short and steep. Trump must learn to consult with someone wiser than he is in the world of war and diplomacy. The stakes are enormous.
In Mattis, there’s an individual who is deeply experienced and eminently schooled. Unlike Trump, who is not known to have read any book recently, even one with his name on the cover, Mattis has accumulated a library of more than 7,000 titles. He has even helped write The U.S. Army/ Marine Corps Counterinsurgency
Field Manual with then- Gen. David Petraeus, considered a potential finalist with Mitt Romney for secretary of State.
The question is how broadly real wisdom might exist in the Trump administration. If Trump had indeed planned to send a message of a deliberate and strategic pivot to India by taking a call with the prime minister of its neighbor and arch foe Pakistan, or to Beijing in Friday’s call with Taiwan, then each should have been preceded by other moves to lay the groundwork so his calls won’t be misinterpreted.
Presidential transitions have often been used to test us by friends and foes alike. Trump would be wise not to make more foreign moves without consulting experienced hands like Mattis, or his eventual secretary of State.