by Jim Mattis
A decade earlier, I had driven around the Pacific Northwest, encouraging sergeants to recruit Marines; only months before, I had thanked the Lord for the sergeants who had bailed me out when I made a mistake in combat. Those same men who had helped me along the way, crawled through minefields, and faced other hazards now had to gather their families, load U-Haul trailers, and head down the road. Marines with four, fourteen, or twenty-four years of faithful, brave service had to be let go. Those with twenty years had pensions, but most didn’t. That wasn’t the determining factor. In a society that equates a person’s value with the size of their paycheck, the military has a different social contract with those who serve. If you commit to the defense of this country, giving a blank check to the American people payable with your life, you expect a career path in return. Now every rank and age had to be trimmed back to keep a balanced force, ensuring that our ranks didn’t stagnate in the post–Cold War period. As I traveled to Marine Corps bases with my NCOs to explain the bad news, it was hard to look the people we were forcing out in the eye.
The war was over. Those we forced out would be missed following the surprise attack on September 11, 2001.
READ, READ, READ
I was forty-three when I attended the National War College. Over the course of the previous twenty years, I had trained in probably twenty-five countries and had served in a dozen different assignments. Each job broadened my skill set. This is standard in our military. Every officer and noncommissioned officer goes through that same maturing process. The military is a “closed labor” system, and we take responsibility for educating our leaders. I would have gladly paid for that privilege.
Most of us at the War College had reached the rank of colonel. Up to this point, we had focused our attention principally down the chain of command. Step by step, rank by rank, we had accumulated the skills necessary to command a warship or to lead a battalion of eight hundred troops or a squadron of aircraft costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Each of us had been promoted based upon a mastery of tactical and operational skills. The War College curriculum in strategy, history, and economics broadened me. Guest lecturers included senators, cabinet members, foreign officers, and historians. When we left, after a year of study and reflection, many of us were assigned to jobs that required executive rather than direct leadership.
I learned this as an officer candidate, when a hard-nosed sergeant would correct my tactical mistake by sarcastically saying, “Good job, candidate—you just got your Marines killed.” Several years later, I was training in the jungles of northern Okinawa when, without warning, I was temporarily put in command of a 180-man company. On a Saturday morning, the sergeant major requested that I drop by for a quiet discussion. Technically, I outranked him, but no lieutenant with his wits about him is slow to respond when his top noncommissioned offer wants to talk with him alone.
“You are a very persuasive young man,” he said, handing me a book about a Roman centurion, “but it would be best if you did your homework first.”
Before going into battle, you can learn by asking veterans about their experiences and by reading relentlessly. Lieutenants come to grasp the elements of battle, while senior officers learn how to outwit their opponents. By studying how others have dealt with similar circumstances, I became exposed to leadership examples that accelerated my expanding understanding of combat.
The Marines are known for their emphasis on physical toughness. But I well recall an Israeli exchange officer, on a sweltering run in the Virginia woods, bellowing at me that the physically vigorous life is not inconsistent with being intellectually on top of your game. “Read the ancient Greeks and how they turned out their warriors,” he said.
Reading is an honor and a gift from a warrior or historian who—a decade or a thousand decades ago—set aside time to write. He distilled a lifetime of campaigning in order to have a “conversation” with you. We have been fighting on this planet for ten thousand years; it would be idiotic and unethical to not take advantage of such accumulated experiences. If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you. Any commander who claims he is “too busy to read” is going to fill body bags with his troops as he learns the hard way. The consequences of incompetence in battle are final. History teaches that we face nothing new under the sun. The Commandant of the Marine Corps maintains a list of required reading for every rank. All Marines read a common set; in addition, sergeants read some books, and colonels read others. Even generals are assigned a new set of books that they must consume. At no rank is a Marine excused from studying. When I talked to any group of Marines, I knew from their ranks what books they had read. During planning and before going into battle, I could cite specific examples of how others had solved similar challenges. This provided my lads with a mental model as we adapted to our specific mission.
Reading sheds light on the dark path ahead. By traveling into the past, I enhance my grasp of the present. I’m partial to studying Roman leaders and historians, from Marcus Aurelius and Scipio Africanus to Tacitus, whose grace under pressure and reflections on life can guide leaders today. I followed Caesar across Gaul. I marveled at how the plain prose of Grant and Sherman revealed the value of steely determination. E. B. Sledge, in With the Old Breed, wrote for generations of grunts when he described the fierce fighting on Okinawa and the bonds that bind men together in battle. Biographies of Roman generals and Native American leaders, of wartime political leaders and sergeants, and of strategic thinkers from Sun Tzu to Colin Gray have guided me through tough challenges. Eventually I collected several thousand books for my personal library. I read broadly and selected a few battles and areas where I was weak to study deeply. Asked by a fellow Marine to provide specific examples, I sent him a list of my favorite books. (See Appendix B.)
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Coming out of the War College, I took command for the next two years (1994–96) of Colonel Fulford’s old regiment, the 7th Marines, stationed in the Mojave Desert. This included more than six thousand Marines and sailors organized into six battalions. I had hit the point where I could no longer lead by hands-on, direct, eye-to-eye contact. My directives were filtered through officers and staffs, and my direct contact with junior troops required increased effort to sustain.
Once he’s removed from direct interaction with his troops, a commander must guard most rigorously against overcontrol, compounded by the seduction of immediate communications. That is, any senior officer or staff member can dash off a query and numerous officers will hasten to respond. Digital technology—instant questions demanding instant responses—conveys to higher headquarters a sense of omniscience, an inclination to fine-tune every detail below. When you impose command via that sort of tight communications control, you create “Mother may I?” timidity.
Once subordinate commanders sense that, they hesitate. The very brittleness of detailed orders that cannot possibly anticipate unknowns sucks the initiative out of them, suffocating their aggressiveness and slowing operational tempo, a problem doubled if hobbled by risk aversion. Success on the battlefield, where opportunities and dangers open and close in a few compact and intense minutes, comes from aggressive junior officers with a strong bias for action. Unleashing this quality among junior leaders, disciplined by my commander’s intent, was always my vision. Trust up and down the chain must be the coin of the realm.
To instill that trust, the Marine Corps demanded that, as young officers, we learn how to convey our intent so that it passed intact through the layers of intermediate leadership to our youngest Marines. For instance, you may say, “We will attack that bridge in order to cut off the enemy’s escape.” The critical information is your intent, summed up in the phrase “in order to.” If a platoon seizes the bridge and cuts off the enemy, the mission is a success. But if the b
ridge is seized while the enemy continues to escape, the platoon commander will not sit idly on the bridge. Without asking for further orders, he will move to cut off the enemy’s escape. Such aligned independence is based upon a shared understanding of the “why” for the mission. This is key to unleashing audacity.
Developing a culture of operating from commander’s intent demanded a higher level of unit discipline and self-discipline than issuing voluminous, detailed instructions. In drafting my intent, I learned to provide only what is necessary to achieve a clearly defined end state: tell your team the purpose of the operation, giving no more than the essential details of how you intend to achieve the mission, and then clearly state your goal or end state, one that enables what you intend to do next. Leave the “how” to your subordinates, who must be trained and rewarded for exercising initiative, taking advantage of opportunities and problems as they arise.
The details you don’t give in your orders are as important as the ones you do. With all hands aligned to your goals, their cunning and initiative unleashed, you need only transparent sharing of information (What do I know? Who needs to know? Have I told them?) to orchestrate, as opposed to “control” or “synchronize,” a coordinated team.
Subordinate commanders cannot seize fleeting opportunities if they do not understand the purpose behind an order. The correct exercise of independent action requires a common understanding between the commander and the subordinate, of both the mission and the commander’s intent of what the mission is expected to accomplish.
If a corporal on the front lines could not tell me what my intent was, then I had failed. Either I had not taken the time to be clear or my subordinates were not effectively conveying it down the chain of command. Instillation of personal initiative, aggressiveness, and risk-taking doesn’t spring forward spontaneously on the battlefield. It must be cultivated for years and inculcated, even rewarded, in an organization’s culture. If a commander expects subordinates to seize fleeting opportunities under stress, his organization must reward this behavior in all facets of training, promoting, and commending. More important, he must be tolerant of mistakes. If the risk takers are punished, then you will retain in your ranks only the risk averse.
Viscount Slim was the finest British field commander in World War II. In 1941, the Japanese had driven the British out of Southeast Asia. In his book Defeat into Victory, Slim explains how he reinvigorated his beaten forces and outmaneuvered the Japanese. I was struck by how he directed units that were far away in deep jungles, even out of radio contact for days and weeks.
Slim wrote: “Commanders at all levels had to act more on their own; they were given greater latitude to work out their own plans to achieve what they knew was the Army Commander’s intention. In time they developed to a marked degree a flexibility of mind and a firmness of decision that enabled them to act swiftly to take advantage of sudden information or changing circumstances without reference to their superiors….This acting without orders, in anticipation of orders, or without waiting for approval yet always within the overall intention, must become second nature in any form of warfare.”
“Acting without orders…yet always within the overall intention.” That was how Colonel Fulford had led the 7th Marine Regiment in Operation Desert Storm. Looking back, I realized that in the open desert of Kuwait, he had ideal communications. Yet he rarely called me, and his staff stood ready to help my battalion, not badgering me for information. From Slim to Fulford—both promoted to four-star general—came the same message: at the executive level, your job is to reward initiative in your junior officers and NCOs and facilitate their success. When they make mistakes while doing their best to carry out your intent, stand by them. Examine your coaching and how well you articulate your intent. Remember the bottom line: imbue in them a strong bias for action.
Let me give a concrete example. My regimental base at Twentynine Palms, near Palm Springs, comprised a maneuver area only slightly smaller than Rhode Island. On one exercise in 1995, my regiment faced a cunning Red Force enemy dispersed across six hundred square miles of deep canyons and sharp ridgelines. I took a page from Colonel Fulford’s book about issuing mission-type orders. I removed the boundary lines between my battalions, widening their fire and maneuver area, giving increased opportunity for their initiative while intentionally necessitating increased collaboration. Within minutes, the lieutenant colonels began coordinating over my regimental radio net. For the rest of the exercise, I listened as they swiftly maneuvered, saying things like “You shoot artillery left of that hill and we’ll move to the right.” The tempo of thousands of Marines picked up, swiftly exploiting the successes of units on their left and right. By decentralizing authority to take full advantage of opportunities on the broader front, we maneuvered faster than the enemy, getting inside his decision-making loop. Guided by my intent, they acted, and the feedback loops kept me attentive to anticipated decision points. My subordinates taught me a lot that day.
It was a lesson in team building and tempo; they knew my intent and didn’t seem to notice I was gone from the radio net. (Actually, maybe they benefited!) So in the weeks after, I tried to dispense my wisdom by way of a short note here and a subtle suggestion there. I saw myself passing on advice from a combat-tested colonel, light hands on the steering wheel guiding the regiment. Then, one day, I walked into the operations office. There before the blackboard stood my operations officer, chalk in hand. Lieutenant Colonel John Toolan, with his thick Brooklyn accent and a busted nose, was still playing in the rugby scrum in his forties. He often made wry comments, accompanied by a disarming Irish smile. On the board, in capital letters, he had written: C H A O S.
Curious, I asked him what he was thinking. He handed me the chalk.
“Does,” he asked, “the Colonel Have Another Outstanding Solution?”
Thus did Chaos become my call sign. Rumors later claimed that Chaos referred to my desire to inflict bedlam in the enemy ranks. That was true. But the underlying reality is that my often irreverent troops assigned me the call sign. There’s always a Toolan waiting out there to keep your ego in check, providing you keep the risk takers and mavericks at your side.
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In 1996, I was selected to serve as executive secretary to Secretary of Defense Dr. William Perry and his successor, Senator William Cohen. I reviewed pounds of paperwork, signed off on reports, and found it amazing to see the diverse issues they dealt with, from running the largest corporation in the world to a small newsmaking story. In the morning, the SecDef might meet with a king, decide about a billion-dollar aircraft carrier, and cope with a story about a corporal in trouble on Japan. In the afternoon, he would meet with congressional leaders, plan how to visit seven countries in seven days, and parse every word of a speech he would deliver before a global audience. I was struck by the speed of decision-making, given the limited amount of time available even for weighty matters.
While Washington duty was not my cup of tea, I gained an abiding respect for those with whom I served and from whom I learned a new skill set. I received a pragmatic introduction to Article I of the Constitution, which assigns Congress responsibility “to raise and support armies and to provide and maintain a navy.” I watched how funding for defense was allocated and listened to earnest debate about deploying troops to the Balkans and what qualities were needed in senior uniformed officers. Often I was dealing with my civilian counterparts at the State Department, at the CIA, and on the National Security staff in the White House. They were consistently helpful in guiding me through the unimaginably complex interagency process.
I had a front-row seat to policymaking as it was supposed to work. Weekly meetings between my boss, the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Adviser, and the Secretary of State kept foreign policy aligned. The NSC coordinated the inputs from the agencies, and the cabinet officers met to work out their differences in both
planning and execution. The process was necessarily messy, and required ugly compromises. The view from the top of the Pentagon further informed my understanding—I watched, listened, and learned, with no idea how relevant this on-the-job training would prove in time.
In 1998, I returned to Headquarters Marine Corps to direct our personnel planning and was promoted to brigadier general. At first, I questioned why an infantry officer should be assigned to superintend personnel policy. By the time I left, I understood why the job demanded a warfighter’s focus. If an organization gets the behavior it rewards, promoting warriors fit for war is where the rubber hits the road.
This is no less true for selecting generals, because that says what a service values. Each year in the Marine Corps, a board of senior generals is convened to select fewer than a dozen new brigadier generals from about two hundred eligible colonels. Each board member is given the records of ten or more colonels, covering their decades of service. After several days of study, the board member briefs the case for every colonel in his group, ranking them in a rough order. The board as a whole takes a vote—who is out and who is still in the running.
This goes on day after day, until the board has whittled down the candidates to the final twenty or thirty. You choose the best from the warfare specialties: the best infantry, artillery, aviation, and logistics officers. At that cutoff point, chance plays a large role. If the final picks were on a plane that crashed, the next in line would be promoted, with no difference in overall performance, such is the quality of our colonels, winnowed by years of service and previous selections, their professional reputations known by members of the selection board.
All Marines are coequal in their commitment to carrying out the mission when they face the enemy. I never thought, as a general, that I had more commitment than my nineteen-year-old lance corporals; I could see it in their eyes. Because a Marine’s greatest privilege is to fight alongside a fellow Marine, we respect one another regardless of rank. Yet the popular culture treats generals as above everyone else. The Pentagon sends them to a special course, called Capstone. There they are instructed by retired generals about their new roles. The Vietnam vets put their stamp on us, reminding us that once you made general, you never had a bad meal and you never again heard the truth. From the men we called “graybeard generals,” we heard firsthand about their mistakes and their lessons learned. But in this course and others I would attend over my next dozen years as a general, the graybeards also taught us humility and dedication to maintaining our professional ethics.