by Jim Mattis
They were trained in urban combat, where one must take immediate action. When under fire from a building, you must attempt to close with the enemy. You can’t remain exposed on the street. That’s how we had trained these Marines to respond, staying inside their rules of engagement. At Haditha, the sergeant leading the squad had no battle experience. It was his first combat deployment, although a number of his men were veterans. In the chaos, they developed mental tunnel vision, and some were unable to distinguish genuine threats amid the chaos of the fight.
The most important six inches on the battlefield are between your ears. I concluded that several Marines forgot that and made serious mistakes in the moment of crisis. In each case, a young Marine was reacting to what he thought was the continuation of the attack initiated by the IED blast that had killed and maimed his brothers. This enemy routinely hid among the civilians. In the moments they had to react, several Marines had failed, or had tried but were unable, to distinguish who was a threat and who was an innocent. I concluded that several had made tragic mistakes, but others had lost their discipline. So I recommended courts-martial for some members of the squad but not for others.
There’s a profound difference between a mistake and a lack of discipline. Mistakes are made when you’re trying to carry out a commander’s intent and you screw up in the pressure of the moment. I’m a walking example of the Marine Corps giving second chances to those who make mistakes—I’ve made many—recognizing that my mistakes served as a bridge to learning how to do things right.
But the Naval Service is the varsity, and a lack of discipline is not a mistake. In the Naval Service, consistent with the enormous authority granted to a commander, and the wide latitude and deference they’re given to exercise their judgment, if a ship strikes a shoal, the captain is relieved, even if he was asleep at the time and his subordinates were at the helm. Similarly, if lance corporals are not trained properly, their superiors must be held to account for their lack of leadership competence and professional supervision.
The local commander—in this case, the battalion commander at Haditha—should have known the details the same day it happened. The killings were brought to light only months later, thanks to the diligence of a reporter for Time. The commander was then relieved because the number of civilian deaths and the lack of detailed reporting should have alerted him that something very out of the ordinary, even in a chaotic firefight, had occurred. He ignored what his training, seniority, and leadership role demanded that he notice.
That was not the end of it. The lack of discipline extended to higher ranks. Specifically, it was a gross oversight not to notice and critically examine a tragic event so far out of the norm. I recommended letters of censure for the division commander—a major general—and two senior colonels. “By their actions or inactions,” I wrote, “they demonstrated lack of due diligence.” These officers were forced to leave active service, an abrupt end to decades of honorable service.
In dismissing charges for courts-martial against several of the junior squad members at the bottom rank (see Appendix E), I wrote:
The experience of combat is difficult to understand intellectually and very difficult to appreciate emotionally. One of our Nation’s most articulate Supreme Court Justices, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., served as an infantryman during the Civil War and described war as an “incommunicable experience.” He has also noted elsewhere that “Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the face of an uplifted knife.” Marines have a well-earned reputation for remaining cool in the face of enemies brandishing much more than knives. The brutal reality that Justice Holmes described is experienced each day in Iraq, where you willingly put yourself at great risk to protect innocent civilians. Where the enemy disregards any attempt to comply with ethical norms of warfare, we exercise discipline and restraint to protect the innocent caught on the battlefield. Our way is right, but it is also difficult.
You have served as a Marine infantryman in Iraq where our Nation is fighting a shadowy enemy who hides among the innocent people, does not comply with any aspect of the law of war, and routinely targets and intentionally draws fire toward civilians. As you well know, the challenges of this combat environment put extreme pressures on you and your fellow Marines. Operational, moral, and legal imperatives demand that we Marines stay true to our own standards and maintain compliance with the law of war in this morally bruising environment. With the dismissal of these charges you may fairly conclude that you did your best to live up to the standards, followed by U.S. fighting men throughout our many wars, in the face of life or death decisions made by you in a matter of seconds in combat. And as you have always remained cloaked in the presumption of innocence, with this dismissal of charges, you remain in the eyes of the law—and in my eyes—innocent.
AS THE FIGHTING IN ANBAR was winding down in the spring of 2007, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates summoned me to the Pentagon. Several months earlier, he had called me to Washington to interview for the top command job in Iraq. “We’ve already decided to send Dave Petraeus,” he had said when we met. I assured him that I knew Dave well and he was the best possible choice. After we talked about the challenges of our two wars, I flew back to California wondering what that was all about. Looking back, it seems the secretary may have wanted to size me up in case some other job opened up.
Before flying to Washington this time, I had received phone calls from Jim Conway, now Commandant, and Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Secretary-General of NATO. Both told me that Secretary Gates intended to recommend me for a fourth star. I was to take command of the U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) and concurrently serve as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander for Transformation (SACT), two jobs traditionally linked together. Of course, it was an honor to be selected for four stars, but I was already in the best three-star job I could have imagined. I was not eager to leave. But the American people had paid my tuition going on thirty-five years, and if this was where my seniors wanted me, I would go. (See Appendix F.)
For those who had forecast that I’d never receive the Senate’s consent for another promotion in light of some well-publicized remarks: my past statements never came up, and I was confirmed by a non-contentious voice vote.
Given my job at MCCDC, I had experience in the “transformation” business, but I had no background in NATO. By now, however, I had learned in the field the value of allies and of America’s leadership role. The sense of purpose that would guide me was taking shape even before I arrived at my headquarters, in Norfolk, Virginia, to commence my duties. NATO, not Joint Forces Command, would be my main effort. Why? History is compelling; nations with allies thrive; those without them die.
I sized up my readiness for the job. I had never served in the European theater. But I had great familiarity with NATO and NATO partner troops in combat in Afghanistan. Commanding at Quantico, I had learned how to transform my own service. However, trying to persuade twenty-six sovereign nations to align the transformation of their militaries was a much bigger challenge.
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Like the Marshall Plan, the United Nations, and Bretton Woods, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was part of the organizational cement binding the security of North America with that of Europe. Created as part of the Greatest Generation’s vision for how to prevent catastrophic wars such as had occurred twice in the first half of the twentieth century, NATO was founded after World War II to deter an attack by the Soviet Union on Western European democracies. The founding nations pledged solidarity: an attack on one would be an attack on all.
The Soviet threat had faded when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed. But Western Europe wanted the security assurance NATO provided to continue, with American might remaining its core. Moreover, a succession of newly independent Eastern European nations formerly in the Soviet orbit quickly asked to join NATO, and were accepted. By 2007 NATO had expanded from its origina
l twelve nations to twenty-six.
Over a lunch in Washington, the Australian ambassador, Kim Beazley, remarked that, following World War II, our nation’s willingness to commit a hundred million dead Americans in a thermonuclear war to defend Europe was the single most self-sacrificial pledge in history. For me, that cut right through the criticisms of NATO that I continually heard in Washington, D.C. Whether we liked it or not, we were part of the world and needed allies, for our benefit as much as theirs. I was determined to leave the alliance in better shape than it had been in when I started the job.
I had to consider how to prepare for a job that required a new skill set. As the saying goes, the military does not accept “difficult” as an excuse for failing at anything. I recalled also how hard Secretaries Perry and Cohen had worked to keep the alliance effective. I had reached a break point in my military frame of reference. I was no longer a military operator; instead I was now at a place where policy and military factors intersected. I had to understand the politics and motivations shaping member nations’ militaries and defining the unwritten rules by which they operated. These rules were as much cultural as martial, stemming from each individual nation’s history. I had to determine what future threats could be out there so that we’d have the fewest regrets when crises struck. Transformation meant getting everyone together to adapt their militaries to confront those future threats.
I turned to first-rate minds on military transformation: Professor Colin Gray, Dr. Williamson Murray, Dr. Frank Hoffman, and Australian Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen. I consumed their writings and asked for their guidance. Eventually I settled on twenty-two books to guide me. I expanded my contacts with practitioners of strategic leadership. Most important among them were Generals Colin Powell, Tony Zinni, John Abizaid, Gary Luck, and George Joulwan, as well as others; statesmen like Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, and Newt Gingrich; and former Secretaries of Defense. They gave freely of their time. These three lines of effort allowed me to build a framework within which I could operate in the years to come as I dealt with transformation.
At one point, it struck me as odd that the generals and statesmen I focused on were all retired. In a country that, outside of a few universities, no longer teaches military history, it should have come as no surprise. I was having to come to grips with a lack of strategic thinking in active diplomatic, military, and political circles—and the need for a renaissance in this domain.
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SACT’s headquarters in Norfolk was the only NATO headquarters in America. There, I inherited a staff of fine officers from across the NATO nations, plus forty other nations partnered with NATO around the world. SACT’s task was to facilitate the adaptation and integration of military forces among nations—each with its own distinct military culture and doctrine. The goal was to be able to fight together seamlessly in the future.
Reviewing my self-assigned reading, one fact stood out repeatedly about militaries that successfully transformed to stay at the top of their game: they had all identified and defined to a Jesuit’s level of satisfaction a specific problem they had to solve. The effort to define the military problems we had to solve in our time would consume a lot of my attention.
History shows that wars don’t wait until you’re ready, so it was unsettling, coming from a culture that considers every week of peace your last opportunity to prepare for war, to experience the exasperatingly slow decision cycles required to get twenty-six independent democracies aligned.
Any coalition has two parts: political and military. Political agreement on the purpose must be the first priority. Trust permits coalition militaries to work harmoniously together. On the battlefield, strength comes with unity of effort and a strong spirit of collaboration. I often reminded my American officers, with their hard-won pride in combat leadership and tremendous capabilities, that not all good ideas come from the nation with the most aircraft carriers. Additionally, the various NATO headquarters, my own included, had to maintain an atmosphere of respect that nurtured team readiness. That wasn’t always easy.
In NATO service, when an American senior officer failed to perform well, with a few phone calls and a word in private I could send him back to a job in his own service. It was a bit trickier with foreign officers, because they represent their nations and have a political role that you have to grasp. I had a brilliant admiral from a European nation. He looked and acted every inch the leader, always crisp, intellectually fit, and forceful. Too forceful. He yelled, dressing officers down in front of others, and publicly mocked reports that he considered shallow instead of clarifying what he wanted. He was harsh and inconsiderate toward officers from half a dozen countries. My NATO sergeant major was Czech; my deputies were British and Italian. My personal staff was largely German. All were disturbed by his conduct, and his subordinates were fearful. I called in the admiral and carefully explained why I disapproved of his leadership.
“Your staff resents you,” I said. “You’re disappointed in their input. Okay. But your criticism makes that input worse, not better. You’re going the wrong way. You cannot allow your passion for excellence to destroy your compassion for them as human beings.”
This was a point I had always driven home to my subordinates.
“Change your leadership style.” I continued. “Coach and encourage, don’t berate, least of all in public.”
He was one of my finest operational thinkers and I didn’t want to lose him. After our talk, there was no doubt he understood my message, and things were all right for a time. But he soon reverted to demeaning his subordinates. I shouldn’t have been surprised. When for decades you have been rewarded and promoted within your own nation’s service, it’s difficult to break the habits you’ve acquired, regardless of how they may have worked in another setting. Now collaboration had become brittle, and officers were complaining of ill treatment to their home countries. Finally, I told him to go home. He was the senior officer from his country serving in the States, and my action did not play well in the news back there. But my decision stood.
The underlying problem with NATO transformation was not individual personalities, though; it was, rather, a lack of energy and initiative, resulting from a process-driven culture. Entropy prevailed; process had replaced output. They had many papers about what NATO needed to do, but, reviewing them, I could detect no steps taken as the outcome of what looked like good thinking. Why was that? Part of the reason was that fighting in Afghanistan was consuming NATO’s attention. Why spend time on future threats when you’re fighting a present-day one? But, as with the Marine Corps, I didn’t want America’s allies to have tunnel vision. Eventually they’d be out of Afghanistan and facing different kinds of threats.
I knew I had to be persuasive. Sovereign nations do not take kindly to being ordered around. NATO was necessarily a consensus-driven security organization, with the military subordinate to the political component. I had to gain political agreement on the solution. I couldn’t do that if no one could agree on the problem. If we wanted the nations in on the landing of our effort, we had to get them in on the takeoff.
So I asked all NATO nations to send their best strategic thinkers to Norfolk to define the specific military problem facing our alliance. After many months of work together, the NATO Secretary-General and I convened a meeting in Europe with the senior political and military representatives of the NATO countries. I knew it would be messy. But as President Lyndon Johnson put it, it’s far better having people inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in. I had a sense of urgency. We had to seize the opportunity to adapt the alliance while it stood strong.
“If you want your militaries to transform,” I said, “we must have a starting point. We must—political and military representatives together—define the problem: What are the future threats our forces must be prepared to overcome? Wars don’t wait until you’re ready. The way you win or deter wars
is by being ready. You can’t be dominant in the last war and irrelevant in the next. Here’s a document prepared by officers from all your countries. You all sent your best and brightest; if you have questions, speak now. But we need to get this problem statement out there so we’re all working on the same problem.”
After days of debate, the group agreed upon a set of threats and security trends. The result—entitled Multiple Futures—comprised the problem statement against which each European state could measure the adequacy of its country’s contribution to NATO’s forces.
This was in 2009. We had already opened the door and solicited ideas in various European capitals, and now there were only two days of debate. We foresaw that Russia, in particular, despite all of our efforts to work with them, would emerge as a new sort of threat. At one point, to emphasize this concern, the Polish Minister of Defense Bogdan Klich flew me in a helicopter from Warsaw to the Baltic so I could see with my own eyes the lack of natural obstacles in his country.
NATO could not cling to legacy forces designed for a World War II–type industrialized war against a nonexistent Warsaw Pact, nor could it adopt simply one preclusive form of warfare. If NATO did so, as Colin Gray cautioned, an enemy would choose a different form. We could not be focused solely on border defense, or counterinsurgency, or nuclear deterrence. While we couldn’t get the future exactly right—no one ever can—we sure couldn’t afford to get it totally wrong.
Because of the fight in Afghanistan, NATO recognized the need to make irregular warfare a core competency. But the Russian invasion of Georgia highlighted an emerging threat. A bright U.S. Army major we sent to examine both the Israeli-Hezbollah fight in south Lebanon and the Georgia case pointed to a confluence: Hezbollah in 2006 used largely nonconventional tactics leavened with conventional capabilities; conversely, in 2008 in Georgia, the Russians used conventional forces buttressed by irregular tactics. Together these signposts pointed to an emerging character of warfare, a hybrid sort of fight. As history teaches us, the character of warfare adapts to new circumstances. And as the saying has it, “Only the dead have seen the last of war.”