by Jim Mattis
Above all, I cautioned them that their natural inclination to be team players could not compromise their independence of character. They had to be capable of articulating necessary options or consequences, even when unpopular. They must give their military advice straight up, not moderating it. Avoid what George Kennan called “the treacherous curtain of deference.” Don’t be political. They had to understand that their advice might not be accepted. Then they must carry out a policy, to the best of their ability, even when they might disagree. Recognize, too, that ultimately any President gets the advice he desires and deserves, but in the dawn’s early light you need to be able to look in the shaving mirror without looking away. As Secretary Shultz had said before Congress, to do our jobs well, we should not want our job too much.
At inflection points, as history has made clear, change must come at the speed of relevance. This meant that now, right now, we had to pick up the tempo. It could not be business as usual. I wanted disciplined but not regimented thinking. Commanders must encourage intellectual risk taking to preclude a lethargic environment. Leaders must shelter those challenging nonconformists and mavericks who make institutions uncomfortable; otherwise you wash out innovation.
I told my one-star admirals and generals: “You’re still low enough in rank to be in touch with your troops, but senior enough to protect our mavericks. That’s your job.” If you’re uncomfortable dealing with intellectual ambushes from your own ranks, it’ll be a heck of a lot worse when the enemy does it to you.
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By the end of 2009, I had made major changes. The NATO command for transformation had passed into European hands, and JFCOM’s direction had been altered. I now had the time to wander among the 2,800 servicemen and federal workers and the 3,000 contractors on my staff, soliciting their questions and gaining their input. Our largest building was 640,000 square feet. I could get lost in there for days.
My fundamental questions were always the same: “What do you do? What impact does your team make?” Some junior officers with a wicked sense of humor sent around an email saying that people were locking their doors or leaping out of windows when I came down the corridor. At the same time, the candor of many answers was refreshing. “General,” one young officer said, “I don’t know the value my section is bringing to the military.” I heard that repeatedly from young officers chafing at not being in the fight. I found great people who wanted to do great things but were more often frustrated by the convoluted processes and other obstacles internal to JFCOM. The feedback both troubled and goaded me.
Anything that built lethality for those at sea or in the field, I encouraged. For instance, Rear Admiral Ted Carter had an element called the Joint Enabling Capabilities Command (JECC), composed of top-notch planners plus wizards who could swiftly patch different communications systems into our global command system. JECC provided “Flyaway” teams that set up robust connectivity immediately for any commander assigned to command a crisis response. When a task force was dispatched to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, Ted and his JECC team deployed overnight to provide the commander, Army Lieutenant General Ken Keen, with communications, knitting together thousands of civilian and military personnel from various countries. They were clearly “best of breed.”
Within JFCOM, there were other bright spots. I witnessed enormous value in our joint training exercises, but I had to balance that against the huge price tag JFCOM was costing the American taxpayer. While back in 1999 the case could be made that the services weren’t operating jointly, by 2010, after a decade of war, arguing that case was no longer sufficient. “Jointness” had been achieved, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and service leaders were the agents to sustain it in the mainstream, not JFCOM. I thought back to a Baghdad dinner I’d had with Dave Petraeus when I was visiting my Marine forces in Iraq in 2007.
“Jim, can you recall any positive impact, other than joint training,” he said, “that JFCOM has had in six years of war?”
After two years, I became convinced that our staff of thousands and our large budget were largely redundant. Other existing organizations could perform several of our functions better. Further, I had to accept that much of our work was not adding capability to our forces.
In the spring of 2010, I was in the Secretary of Defense’s conference room for a budget meeting. Sitting at the long mahogany table with Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen were the Joint Chiefs and my fellow combatant commanders. Secretary Gates’s message was that we had to take cuts in lower-priority areas so we could maintain readiness while investing now for the future.
The combatant commanders had felt the budget pain of two wars being fought in the Middle East, with DoD cutting back on support everywhere else. Yet our treaty obligations had not been reduced, even as our forces were being cut back. The services were providing forces to our current wars, but they were also responsible for anticipating and preparing for threats coming over the horizon. In effect, we were mortgaging our future. Secretary Gates and our Joint Chiefs were determined to solve the shortfall.
We had to free up funds. After several hours of discussion, the lack of good options was apparent. I listened attentively, not wanting to add my gripes to the litany already heard. I got up to get a Coke in the back of the room, where I stood listening. I thought for a few seconds and decided, What the hell. I took a napkin and scribbled on it:
Disband JFCOM—Mattis.
As I walked past Admiral Mullen, I put the crumpled napkin down so he would see it. When he finished speaking, he unwrapped the napkin and raised his eyebrows. Are you serious? I nodded, and Mike nodded back. A major command eliminated? Hundreds of millions of dollars a year saved and thousands of personnel slots reduced…Not a halfway measure, even by Washington’s accounting standards. It was a seemingly spur-of-the-moment offer, but it was based on many months of reflection and the experience of decades spent looking at what delivers real capability.
Once established, a government bureaucracy provides steady jobs and steady routines. It grows deep roots in the community, attracting the protection of influential politicians. It becomes a self-perpetuating entity. But the American taxpayer is footing the bill, so every organization must serve a worthwhile purpose or it should go away. Who can best judge whether an organization adds value to the lives of the American people? In this case, I was the commander who had studied this organization for two years. I was confident that I’d made the right recommendation.
Secretary Gates was not a leader who sat on decisions. It was done. Over the next months, the valuable parts of JFCOM were moved elsewhere, and the rest of the command was disestablished. I had succeeded in firing myself.
IN JUNE 2010, THE PRESS WAS BUZZING about a shake-up at the top of the military. General Stan McChrystal, our four-star NATO commander in Afghanistan, was in trouble. A magazine had quoted Stan’s staff cavalierly making derogatory statements about our elected officials. Those staff officers had demonstrated shocking immaturity and a straight-up lack of professionalism. They cost us a superb leader, as Stan was rightly held responsible and fired.
To replace him in Afghanistan, President Obama appointed General Dave Petraeus, who at this time was commanding the U.S. Central Command, in charge of all of our operations across the Middle East and Central Asia. I thought Petraeus was a wise choice, especially because his stepping down from a broader job sent a message of commitment to our many allies fighting and dying alongside us.
This shift left a vacancy at CENTCOM. In Norfolk, I was packing away my uniforms when the senior military assistant to the Secretary of Defense called. “Sir, Secretary Gates wants you to come to Washington,” he said. “You’re to bring your dress uniform.” I assumed he was interviewing several flag officers to replace Dave at CENTCOM. I figured the odds still favored my getting home by fall, in time to hike the high country before the snows hit the Pacific Northwest.
When I arrived at the Pentagon, I checked in with the Chairman, Admiral Mullen. He told me I was Secretary Gates’s choice. I went upstairs and reported to Gates. In his succinct fashion, he confirmed that he was recommending me to replace Dave. But the final decision lay with President Obama. I glanced at the picture of Mount Rainier Gates kept as a reminder of our home state. I guessed I wouldn’t be seeing it for a while. When asked to stay in the fight, a Marine has only one answer. I didn’t really have to think about it. I told Secretary Gates I could do the job.
Secretary Gates sent me to the White House, where my meeting with President Obama was much like a standard job interview. He asked questions about my previous commands and my views of the Middle East, without commenting on my answers. His thoughtful and reserved side was on full display, so much so that I left not knowing whether I’d been hired. Another four-star job held no appeal to me, because I didn’t draw the same energy from high command as I did from the infectious high spirits of the troops. But I reminded myself that I had been educated in war, and it was my responsibility to be ready to apply what I had learned.
A couple of days later, the President called me back. In brief, pleasant terms, he said he had chosen me for CENTCOM, lightheartedly adding that he trusted me to be discreet. Secretary Gates had also touched on my reputation for being outspoken. Twice heard, even a Marine gets the message.
I prepared extensively for my confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee: I read intelligence updates, spoke with officers recently returned from the fighting, listened to foreign ambassadors, and called on members of the committee. I had never gone in front of a hearing without a “murder board,” where I rehearsed succinct answers to complex questions. As long as you are candid and have done your homework, such hearings are not an intellectual challenge. The hearing went well and I was unanimously confirmed, taking responsibility for a region that had spawned much of the world’s misfortune over the preceding decade.
The vote closed the circle, so to speak, of my service in the Middle East. I’d first sailed into those waters as a captain in 1979, deployed there by President Carter. Now, three decades later, I was dealing with the ramifications that had grown out of that momentous year, commanding our 250,000 troops in the region.
For thirty-eight years, my role had been leading and coaching, as a tactical or operational commander executing policy. Now my role was to inform policy and support our diplomats, engaging with political leaders and heads of state while guiding my subordinate military commanders. It was to prove a time for fighting, and not just for our troops on the ground. At my level, the next several years would be a fight to keep faith with our troops and the rules of engagement under which we sent our young women and men into combat; faith with our allies and friends who had stood with us; and faith with coming generations, to whom we owed a responsible strategy by which to build a better peace despite the existence of implacable enemies. It was to be a time when I would witness duty and deceit, courage and cowardice, and, ultimately, strategic frustration.
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The Central Command area of responsibility encompassed the twenty countries stretching from Egypt to the Arabian Peninsula, up through the Levant, Iraq, and Iran, eastward to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and then north into the Central Asian former Soviet republics—a region accurately called “the arc of crisis.” The Ottoman Empire had collapsed during World War I, replaced in many Arab states by European colonialism. Following World War II, the European colonialists left, Israel was established, and indigenous Arab leaders came to power. Some states had enormous oil wealth, and others were impoverished. Across the region, communications technology and petrodollars enabled violent strains of Islam, previously isolated, to gain regional traction in the 1990s. Combined with widespread unresponsive governance, the situation was a powder keg.
Under CENTCOM, U.S. troops and aircraft were deployed across the region, plus vessels at sea, from the Suez and the Red Sea across to the North Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, an American four-star general commanded the coalitions. From one level up, I would be directing and integrating all U.S. military activities across the greater Middle East and Central Asia.
At CENTCOM, I had to inform and design strategies to carry out the President’s policies while enabling operational execution by field commanders. Preparing for my Senate hearing, I had written out succinct answers to anticipated questions. The discipline of writing always drove me to be more exact, even at times driving me to different conclusions than I had originally held. A concern began to gnaw at me: I found myself grasping to define the policy end states and the strategies that connected our military activities to those end states. In the back of my mind rang the adage “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” What I had seen in Baghdad and Fallujah had taught me the dangers created by a lack of strategic thinking. Based on both experience and study, I could not identify a sustainable vision for our diplomatic and military efforts across the Middle East. In some cases, I could see what our policymakers didn’t want to happen—we didn’t want Israel attacked, didn’t want Iran with nuclear weapons or mining the Straits of Hormuz, and so on—but I couldn’t find an integrated end state we were trying to achieve: What does it look like when we’re done?
Again I sought advice from both inside and outside government. Dr. Kissinger, in particular, was most insistent that I concentrate upon the foreign policy horizon before diving into military details or deciding on the correct application of our military power. I also understood that many disputes defied resolution in crisp form or on an expected timetable. Some crises could be solved; others could only be managed; and our military approach had to accommodate both.
On my two-day drive alone from Norfolk to Tampa, I had time to reflect on the mission awaiting me. From combat in the desert to my duty at NATO, the inestimable value of allies was deeply imprinted on me. I was heartened that more than sixty nations worldwide were represented at my U.S. military headquarters and living in Tampa, a reminder of America’s unique and invaluable strategic leadership role.
I saw my job as conveying respect to those who had stood by us and foiling the designs of those who opposed us. Living in the toughest neighborhood since Poland in 1939, our friends in the Middle East were understandably anxious. The alternative of American disengagement in this region, due to its unending violence, could only result in vicious enemies or competitors stepping into any leadership vacuum we gifted them. I decided that, while my official job was to coordinate the activities of our U.S. and allied troops across the region, my real role was to fight for a better peace—or what passed for peace—in the region for one more year, one more month, one more day…until diplomats could direct us to a better path.
No one contributes money to a presidential campaign to be assigned ambassador to a Middle East country. We military leaders in CENTCOM realized that we had a varsity team of diplomats. We had the best, the most proven, and the most experienced. Ambassadors like Jim Jeffrey in Iraq, Ryan Crocker in Afghanistan, Anne Patterson in Egypt, Stu Jones in Jordan, and Elizabeth Richard and Gerald Fierstein in Yemen.
My overarching, guiding concern was the terrorist threat, because it was growing. It manifested itself in two different groups. First was the Iranian-regime-supported Shiite terrorists, with Lebanese Hezbollah and other associated groups, who declared war on us in 1983, four years after Khomeini took power in Tehran. The 1983 attacks on our Beirut embassy (killing 46, including 17 Americans) and the French and U.S. Marine peacekeeper barracks in Beirut (which killed 58 French military personnel, 241 Marines, and 6 civilians) were the opening salvos.
Second was the Sunni brand of jihadist terrorists—Al Qaeda and associated movements—who declared war on us in the mid-nineties, eventually culminating in the 9/11 attacks on our homeland. This was followed by a metastasizing of
its brand globally, from Africa to Southeast Asia.
To date, only the Shiite terrorists have a state sponsor, namely Iran. While we have shredded Al Qaeda’s core leadership in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier and Al Qaeda’s Middle East offshoot ISIS in Iraq and Syria, Shiite militias have a steady stream of financial, military, and diplomatic backing from the revolutionary regime in Iran and as a result have been left virtually unscathed by our counterterror campaign.
While our intelligence community’s and military’s successes had prevented additional terrorist attacks on our soil emanating from overseas following 9/11, I did not patronize this enemy. I had dealt with them long enough to know they had not arrived rationally at their hateful, intolerant worldview, and they would not be rationally talked out of it. We had to fight, or there would be worse to come.
Our enemies had made clear that they intended to attack us, our friends, and our interests. So, while our tempo of operations had kept them on their back foot and protected our country against overseas terrorists, many other nations had not been spared. In the years following 9/11, terrorism was a growing reality, from London to Bali, Mumbai to Paris, across the Middle East and beyond.
Back in 1984, returning to the States after my first two deployments to the region, I read a speech given by then Secretary of State George Shultz in New York City. In following years, I often referred to this speech because it gave clarity to what I’d been studying. His words guided my approach to dealing with terrorism from those days forward. Secretary Shultz made a cogent case that passive defense against terrorism would not suffice. Active prevention would be needed. He highlighted the “moral right, indeed a duty” to defend our populations and values. Seventeen years before the city where he was speaking would lose thousands of innocents in the 9/11 attack, he made two points: that our public needed to be made aware that we would lose lives among our troops fighting this enemy as well as innocents, and that public support would be “crucial if we are to deal with this challenge.”