For two years, the world counted on leaders such as US Secretary of Defense James Mattis to hold firm against US President Donald Trump’s “America first” doctrine. Now that last line of defense is gone.
Mattis’ abrupt resignation as defense secretary and Trump’s rapid-fire moves to reshape the US military footprint abroad are provoking fears that there is no one left to restrain Trump’s most combative and isolationist impulses.
Already the floodgates are opening.
US forces in Syria will be rapidly withdrawn — the very issue that provoked Mattis’ resignation — as Trump declares victory over the Islamic State (IS) group. US troop levels in Afghanistan are to be slashed in half even as peace talks founder. Both decisions signal Trump’s willingness to leave key allies on the battlefield.
In a Washington that had grown accustomed to White House chaos, the developments this week forced even Trump’s most reliable allies to question his thinking.
US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — usually loathe to criticize Trump — said he was “distressed” over the departure of Mattis, who he said had a “clear-eyed understanding of our friends and foes.”
“It is regrettable that the president must now choose a new secretary of defense,” McConnell said. “But I urge him to select a leader who shares Secretary Mattis’ understanding of these vital principles.”
US Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was on Friday last week strikingly effusive in praising Mattis, calling him a “national treasure” who will be “sorely missed.”
“His leadership of our military won the admiration of our allies and adversaries,” he said in a statement.
The news heightened the sense of tumult in Washington, already consumed by a partial government shutdown egged on by Trump’s insistence that the US Congress meet his demands for border wall funding. It followed the departure or planned departures of several other key Trump aides, including White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley and former US attorney general Jeff Sessions.
None of those moves fell with the force of Mattis’ decision — first announced in a Trump tweet and soon after in a letter released to the public. The 68-year-old former Marine general’s decision appeared to mark the death knell for the hope that a small group of “adults in the room” — of whom Mattis was the last — could dissuade Trump from his most impulsive and potentially disastrous decisions on the world stage.
“Mattis was the administration’s last representative of the traditional American view of its strategic role,” Australia National University strategic studies professor Hugh White said. “It will mean more erratic decisionmaking.”
Those effects could be felt on a series of key foreign policy decisions Trump has to make in the early months of next year, including whether to quit a Cold War-era nuclear treaty with Russia, end waivers that let allies keep buying Iranian oil and determine whether to add Venezuela to a list of state sponsors of terror.
Inside the White House, some aides close to the president said they felt unsettled by Mattis’ departure and expressed concern that it could affect foreign leaders’ perceptions of the administration’s stability.
That extended to the US Congress, where key lawmakers were already deep in a fight with the Trump over a possible government shutdown this weekend.
“This is scary,” said Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, in a tweet late on Thursday last week. “Secretary Mattis has been an island of stability amidst the chaos of the Trump administration.”
Mattis’ exit might indicate a fundamental change in the way that adversaries and allies approach the administration, a trend that is already visible with North Korea.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s regime has all but shut out US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US Special Representative to North Korea Stephen Biegun, instead looking to deal with Trump himself, knowing that he is the ultimate authority.
“Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw US troops from Syria without consulting his national security team will reinforce North Korea’s inclination to only deal with Trump,” Carnegie Endowment senior fellow Suzanne DiMaggio wrote in a tweet. “Trump has set up a dangerous dynamic that undercuts attempts to conduct real diplomacy.”
In a blistering two-page letter to Trump, Mattis laid out his convictions on the value of US leadership in strategic alliances, including NATO and the 74-nation coalition to defeat IS. His letter also suggested differences with Trump over the president’s handling of strategic challenges posed by Russia and China.
“Because you have the right to have a secretary of defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position,” Mattis said in the letter to Trump released by the Pentagon.
White House officials publicly played down the idea that Mattis’ departure betrayed serious problems plaguing the administration.
White House senior adviser Stephen Miller said during an interview with CNN that the media were displaying “hysterical reactions.”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in an appearance on the Fox Business Network that the focus should not be on “palace intrigue.”
The question is who is left to replace Mattis, and who would serve a president who seems so willing to disregard the recommendations of his advisers.
Trump’s hope is to name a replacement for Mattis by the end of the year, Sanders said on Thursday.
Possible successors include Senator Tom Cotton, retired General Jack Keane, Senator Lindsey Graham and former senator Jim Talent.
A veteran of two Army combat tours and a Bronze Star recipient, Cotton has earned a reputation as a national security hawk who boldly challenged then-US president Barack Obama, particularly on the Iran nuclear arms deal and in arguing for an expansion of government surveillance authority.
Keane is a former Army vice chief of staff who makes regular appearances on Fox News, Trump’s preferred media outlet.
Graham, a retired Air Force lawyer, has served as an informal counselor to the president. He advocates what he calls “security through strength,” including an aggressive posture against IS militants.
Talent, who was viewed as in the running for defense secretary before Trump chose Mattis, has broad foreign policy experience, particularly in Asia and the Middle East.
US Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing Co executive, might also draw attention as a potential successor to Mattis.
However, Senator Marco Rubio encapsulated many observers’ fears about the road ahead in tweeting that Mattis’ resignation letter “makes it abundantly clear that we are headed toward a series of grave policy errors that will endanger our nation, damage our alliances & empower our adversaries.”
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