by Bob Woodward
Their destination was Mount Vernon, the historic estate of George Washington. After landing, the leaders of two of the world’s most powerful militaries stepped into the crisp fall air.
Mattis was on a mission both personal and professional. As the civilian head of the United States armed forces, he was sure that his job was, if possible, not simply to avoid war but to prevent war.
China was building up a nuclear strike force—not just a few nukes intended for deterrence, or what the French call a force de frappe, but a significant nuclear force.
Mattis knew he had to proceed carefully—firmly, but gently. Early in his career, he had been a Marine recruiter and had often been sent into schools where his presence was not welcome. The experience had taught him the value of persuasion when you could not order someone to comply.
Wei, a former member of China’s governing Politburo and a former artillery and rocket force officer, had not seen combat. Mattis had, in the deserts of the Middle East—Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq. Mattis believed a lack of wartime experience often lured people into taking risks they otherwise might not.
Actors playing George and Martha Washington escorted Mattis and Wei around the 500-acre estate. In the 21-room main house, Mattis intentionally stopped and pointed out the key to the Bastille, prominently displayed in Mount Vernon’s central hall. The key had been a gift to George Washington from the Marquis de Lafayette, who had received it after angry French citizens had stormed the Bastille, a symbol of royal repression, near the start of the French Revolution.
“You see, in true revolutionary societies, you let political prisoners out of jail,” Mattis said. It could not be lost on Wei that Mattis knew China was now considered the global leader in the number of political prisoners.
At the end of the tour, the actors retreated to the estate’s greenhouse. Mattis and Wei, accompanied by only an interpreter, continued their walk along a path. Mattis carried a lantern to light the way.
Mattis reminded Wei, “We weren’t part of the 100 years of humiliation,” a reference to a time of international subjugation of China when many countries extracted huge financial concessions. Except for a brief time spanning from the beginning of the Cold War in 1949 to 1972 with Nixon’s opening of China, “we haven’t been adversaries. The American people actually have an affection for China.”
Now Mattis pushed closer to the bone. “Are you aware that it was the Americans that created the world that allowed the hardworking Chinese people to advantage themselves and move out of poverty?” Mattis asked, turning to look at Wei. Trade with America had helped propel the dramatic modernization of China.
Wei looked intently at Mattis and pulled him close, an apparent gesture of unusual affection.
“Yes,” Wei said. “And we know we owe the Americans most of the thanks for this.” No ambiguity. “Absolutely,” he said. “We owe the Americans most.”
“Well, that’s good to hear,” Mattis said. “So I hope we can figure out how to make things work.”
Mattis had been trying for months to develop a strong relationship with his Chinese counterpart. While his earlier personal meetings had been cordial, there were underlying tensions stemming from the trade war and China’s expansion in the South China Sea, where they built artificial islands and installed missile systems and landing strips for jet fighters and bombers on the contested Spratly Islands.
The U.S. Navy was apoplectic over the Chinese expansion into what was internationally considered free and open seas, and where it regularly conducted freedom of navigation exercises.
Mattis and Wei’s first meeting at a June 2018 conference for Asian defense ministers in Singapore had been followed by Mattis’s visit to Beijing’s Forbidden City later that month, where he was greeted with a night he thought made The Great Gatsby look like a cheap date. Now, six months later, Mattis decided it was time for a more candid discussion with his counterpart.
As they continued down the path at Mount Vernon, Wei told Mattis he was disappointed China had been disinvited in May from RIMPAC, a massive international naval military exercise held biannually in Hawaii, after China placed weapons in the Spratly Islands.
“What do you expect me to do?” Mattis asked. “Two months before the biggest naval exercise in the world, you violate President Xi’s words to President Obama in the Rose Garden that you would not militarize the Spratlys. We remember words around here.”
In September 2015, Xi had said “China does not intend to pursue militarization” of the Spratlys. China’s continued militarization of the islands was considered a violation of the Law of the Sea treaty, which China had signed, and a U.N. tribunal in 2016 ruled China had no evidence for its claim to “historic rights” over large areas of the South China Sea.
“Either your president lied to our president and actually intended to militarize the Spratlys,” Mattis said, “or your military’s not obedient to civilian control. And either one of those worries me.”
“Well, but General, they were defensive weapons,” Wei replied.
“General—General, come on. I may be wearing this”—Mattis pointed to his civilian suit—“but we’re both generals,” Mattis said. “I’ve been shot at by defensive weapons and offensive. I can’t tell the difference, okay?”
Wei smiled slightly as the translator’s words sank in.
The bottom line, Mattis said, is “I want to cooperate with you. I’m looking for ways to cooperate. But we’re going to confront you when you decide to screw with us.”
In Mattis’s view, the island military installations were part of a bigger Chinese plan: Shanghai would replace New York City as the center of world finance by 2030. Taiwan would be reincorporated as part of China. The only way for China to do that would be with intimidation or force.
The two walked further into the woods, Mattis’s lantern illuminating the path. They had walked for half an hour.
Mattis and Wei returned to Mount Vernon’s greenhouse for dinner. As they ate, the West Point choir sang. The cadets were in dress uniform with Mount Vernon arrayed behind them. Each song was introduced by a different cadet speaking Mandarin, which they were all studying.
Mattis hoped the show would be a personal memory for Wei.
Next the Marine Corps silent drill team carried out marches and a perfect rifle drill with no sound or oral cadence. The message was one of lethal coordination.
Mattis and Wei resumed their walk after dinner.
“Those last guys,” Wei asked. “Who were they?”
“They’re Marines.”
“They look very fit.”
“They run three miles in 18 minutes. And they’re all at over 21 pull-ups.”
Mattis reminded Wei of the history the two nations shared.
“Remember, the Americans have never tried to contain you,” he said. “We want you to play by the rules. But the bottom line is: How are we going to manage our differences when two nuclear-armed superpowers step on each other’s toes? That is the fundamental question of this age. And the whole world is watching.” He referenced the two world wars fought in the previous century: “Are we going to be as stupid as the Europeans, and twice in the 20th century light the world on fire? Or are we not going to do that?”
Mattis noted how the nations of the Pacific region had stood up to various forces over the past 200 years. “No one country is going to dominate the Pacific,” he said. “History is very 100 percent compelling on it. If you think you’re going to take over the Pacific, you’ll just be the fourth who thought so,” he said, referring to the European colonialists, fascist and militarist powers, and Soviet communists who had made attempts. The United States is not afraid to fight when necessary, he said.
“Look if you want to fight, I’ll fight. I’ll fight anybody. I’ll fight frigging Canada, okay,” Mattis said. “But I’ve had enough of fighting. I’ve written enough letters to mothers. I don’t need to write any more. And you don’t need to write them, either.”
Mattis knew th
at like Wei, most of China’s military officers had perhaps never experienced armed combat—and certainly had not in any major conflicts since China’s short-lived invasion of Vietnam in 1979.
Mattis wanted Wei to know that war would be extraordinarily tough on the Chinese.
“I’ll just tell you,” Mattis said, “the country I would most be willing to fight would be one whose entire officer corps had never heard a shot fired at them. War is so different from training that a shock wave will go through them. I’ve got—probably 80 percent of my officers have been shot at in one form or another. But I’d prefer not to put them through another war.”
EIGHTEEN
In late 2018, it was time for Mattis to fill several important four-star jobs in the military—a complicated minuet of recommending the right general or admiral for the job best suited to their strengths and particular responsibilities. It had to be elegantly orchestrated. Mattis had one focus: Who best to lead if there was a war?
Mattis probably knew more about actual fighting of wars—about life in the infantry with bullets flying, on ships at sea for months at a time, and planes loaded with bombs and missiles—than any recent secretary of defense.
General Joe Dunford was retiring as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Mattis had the perfect candidate to replace him as the number-one military man and chief military adviser to the president. The chairman could be a potent force in a time of war, as General Colin Powell had demonstrated when he served as chairman during the First Gulf War in 1991—one of the most sensible, short and relatively low-casualty wars of all time. Powell, a Vietnam veteran, had pushed for an overwhelming force of 500,000 U.S. military personnel in the operation in order to get in, get out, and protect as many soldiers as possible.
Mattis had been a 41-year-old lieutenant colonel then, commanding a battalion of 1,250 in the blistering heat of the Saudi desert. They spent five months preparing for the mission to eject Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard from Kuwait. Mattis lost 20 pounds. His superiors estimated that half of his troops would be either killed or wounded while breaching the Iraqi lines—a staggering prospect. Mattis rehearsed his troops nonstop, teaching them to maintain momentum at all costs and to improvise. No days off, no television, no phones. During the training, the fastest breach had taken 21 minutes. In actual combat, it took 11 minutes. Extraordinarily, none of his Marines were killed in the fight.
Without reservation, Mattis wanted “Fingers”—Air Force Chief of Staff David L. Goldfein—to be the new chairman. “Fingers” was Goldfein’s call sign because of the mastery of cockpit controls he’d developed over 4,200 flying hours across six types of aircraft. At 58, he was skilled, young, vigorous, humble and the most proven strategic thinker. He would bring a level of intellectualism to the job that the president had resisted.
When Mattis had been CentCom commander in the Middle East, Fingers had been the Air Force component commander for two years. He had performed brilliantly and was probably the most “joint” Air Force general Mattis had ever seen—meaning he demonstrated an ability to look beyond the capabilities of his own service and find ways to integrate with and complement others.
For example, when Fingers arrived in 2011, U.S. aircraft carriers would sail through the dangerous, Iran-controlled Strait of Hormuz with their only air cover provided by Navy planes—standard service-on-service parochialism. Fingers soon had Air Force F-15s and F-16s escorting the carriers and teed up helicopters and F-18s on the carrier deck, ready to launch. Between the constant fighters overhead and the F-18s on the carrier, the Iranian Republican Guard soon began to fade away. It was a classic case of flooding the zone—the airspace—as well as increased readiness and training.
Mattis also knew he could work well with Fingers. When Mattis had tasked him with reorganizing the war plan for the Gulf and Iran, Fingers took Mattis’s guidance and cited Eisenhower’s advice: If a problem can’t be solved easily, make it bigger. As Mattis put it, if the Iranians had a 29-inch reach, he wanted a 30-inch reach. And Fingers had given it to him, expanding the airspace so the American air power had a greater reach than the Iranians’. Fingers was cunning, accepted guidance and had well prepared CentCom for possible war.
Just as meaningful to Mattis, Fingers had been shot down in an F-16 over Bosnia in 1999. He knew that coming face-to-face with your own mortality changed the way you look at the world, at war and at yourself.
Mattis also had to find a new NATO commander. Given Trump’s ceaseless criticism of NATO, he thought Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley would be the best. Mattis considered him a loud optimist. The New York Times would later call him “a general who mixes bluntness and banter.” In June 2018, Trump had praised Milley for being “good at pricing” bombs as well as “throwing them.” Mattis thought Milley would both appeal to Trump and infuse NATO with the needed self-confidence, bolstering the alliance.
Under Mattis, the Army had many changes to make and needed to gut many now irrelevant programs. Milley oversaw a methodical improvement in Army brigade readiness, bringing the number deemed immediately combat ready up from three to 30, a remarkable improvement.
Milley also improved the physical fitness of the Army, an issue of immense importance to Mattis. “It was humiliating to watch the U.S. Army march in a parade and then go watch the Mexican army or the Ukrainian army or the Norwegians,” Mattis said. The armies of other nations were so much more fit. He concluded that a third of the Army was overweight or obese. It was appalling. Milley had aggressively raised Army physical fitness.
Mattis recommended Fingers to Trump to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Army Chief Milley to take over the NATO command. The defense secretary’s recommendations for these top military posts were almost always accepted by the president.
But David Urban, a lawyer-lobbyist and early Trump supporter who had helped Trump win the crucial state of Pennsylvania in 2016, weighed in with the president directly. Urban, a West Point graduate, advocated that Milley, instead of Goldfein, be made chairman. Pompeo, another West Pointer, also recommended Milley.
Trump quickly offered the top job to Milley, who accepted. Questions would linger on how Milley earned the chairmanship and whether he was too accommodating to Trump. Mattis thought it hurt Milley’s reputation because it looked too much like raw politics.
Mattis was sure Milley’s fellow Joint Chiefs would not have chosen him as chairman. His style was too brash. But the other chiefs, of course, did not have a vote.
Mattis did not protest Trump’s decision. “I wasn’t paid to express my exasperation,” Mattis told an associate. The damage was done. Mattis believed he had not really been given a shot because of the president’s preemptive, impetuous decision making. The military and the country would lose Goldfein’s leadership, although he stayed on as Air Force chief of staff. Milley was more than acceptable. Having a bond with the president might help. It also, though, might make it harder for Milley to stand up to the president—increasingly a central part of the job of chairman.
Mattis realized that, more than ever, he and Trump were not hitting it off. But Mattis felt he was still winning more than he was losing. Behind the scenes, he continued to make gains on military readiness, budget and training. He was focused inwardly on his relationships with Pompeo, Coats and CIA director Haspel.
Trump’s problem extended further, to the president’s failure to build a smooth working team—to listen, gather various informed opinions, debate, identify options, debate some more and bring everyone on board with a decision.
“I consider myself the most reluctant person on earth to go to war,” Mattis wrote in his 2019 book on leadership. But it had to be asked: What might it mean if a war came and the best person was not in the chairmanship? Suppose the great military leaders of World War II had been cast aside on the impulse of the commander in chief? In that environment, would there have been an Eisenhower or Marshall or MacArthur or Nimitz or Halsey? And what would have been the price paid for
not having them there?
The answer, of course, was unknowable. But it was important to address the issue of succession. Every large organization or business had a responsibility to make sure there was a process for finding the very best. And in 2018, Mattis believed, the commander in chief had failed and let the country down.
* * *
Mattis had long detested and distrusted Iran. In 1983 Lebanese terrorists, later determined to be acting at the direction of Iran, drove two truck bombs into the Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. Those killed included 220 Marines and 21 other military personnel. Mattis, at the time a major assigned as the executive officer at the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Rhode Island, was tasked with making casualty calls in Rhode Island. First he visited seven families to tell them their sons were missing. Then he returned several days later. Your son has been found, he had to report. He’s dead. And no, you can’t have an open casket.
In 2013, after being fired by Obama, Mattis returned to Richland, Washington, a civilian for the first time in over four decades.
Over the years, he had written more than 800 letters to the families of those who had died under his command. These were the Gold Star families. He would often get replies from the families asking him to come see them. Or someone in the fallen Marine’s unit would forward a copy of a handwritten note or letter. Mattis would have someone investigate to make sure it was authentic, and if so, would forward it to the family with a note from him: Here’s what we found out about your son or husband. Often the family would then say, please come see us.
Then, with time on his hands, Mattis hit the road in his light brown 1998 Lexus sedan. He would stop to speak at organized groups of veterans or Gold Star families, or to an individual family. He would pull into a town, get a hotel room, read the folder about the fallen Marine or soldier, put on a suit and go pay his respects. Sometimes this led him to a mobile home, sometimes to the home of a very wealthy family.