by Jim Mattis
When I reread his speech yet again just prior to my 2010 Senate confirmation hearing, his emphasis on public support caught my attention. It had been nine years since 9/11 and many Americans had since forgotten their sense of vulnerability in the days and months following what had struck Manhattan and Washington. Further, the war in Iraq had cost us international and domestic support by muddying the waters. Yet fighting a global menace required an international effort.
Putting such a campaign together started with answering one fundamental question: is political Islam in our best interest? That policy question had to be answered if we were to craft strategies fit for our time. The most direct, thoughtful response I received was from the Crown Prince of the UAE. He said, “Absolutely not. Religious leaders should not be running countries.” Sustaining a coalition in this war would call on every lesson I had learned over the preceding four decades. I would be dealing with friends and allies who had stuck with us through good times and bad, nations and leaders with whom we had trusted relations and with whom we knew we could work.
I would also need to back up the State Department and be prepared to treat roughly those who supported or employed terrorism. At the same time, we would be using suasion and even transactional methods to work with those in the middle.
With many Middle East states only a generation or two beyond being European colonies or Soviet satellite states, I had to recognize that they often lacked the institutional enablers for democracy. But if our counterterrorism efforts were to be successful, I still had to work with them. I would help them to maintain their territorial integrity against terrorism or Iranian threats while advocating more inclusive and participatory forms of government that would strengthen civil society, making their countries more resistant to terrorism.
When I arrived in Tampa, I called in my staff to give them my three priorities: support our commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan; reassure our friends across the Middle East; and have military options ready for the President in case of Iranian or other aggression.
I spoke weekly with our commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan to ensure we were working in tandem. In Iraq, General Ray Odierno had shifted to a training and equipping mission. In Afghanistan, General Dave Petraeus was leading the broadest wartime coalition in modern history: fifty nations fighting together under NATO command, half of those militaries not even members of NATO. At Joint Forces Command, I had sternly dealt with too much second-guessing of requests from battlefield commanders. I was determined that CENTCOM would be an advocate, not an obstacle, in getting our warfighters what they needed in a speedy manner.
“Let me be clear,” I told my staff. “We back up our commanders. Whatever they ask for, we deliver immediately. Ask enough questions to clarify what the field commanders need. Then make sure they get it when they need it. That’s our role.”
I emphasized that our job was to keep the support aligned to their needs at the speed of relevance, so that it would make a difference to our troops in the fight. I didn’t want requests languishing. I consider myself the most reluctant person on earth to go to war. But once at war, our field commanders must be given what they need without delay. We could not have them fighting a two-front war, one against the enemy in the field and the other against us in the rear, extending from Tampa to Washington. A former boss, Navy Captain Dick Stratton, who was held in the Hanoi Hilton for 2,251 days as a “prisoner at war,” had taught me that a call from the field is not an interruption of the daily routine; it’s the reason for the daily routine.
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As it is for any senior executive, time was my most precious commodity. At my headquarters in Tampa, my staff was coordinating contingency plans and directing ongoing operations. Additionally, an unrelenting drumbeat of unforeseen matters had to be dealt with. Further, representatives from sixty nations had pressing issues to discuss. Most had only a small number of troops deployed in combat or support across the region—but some were taking casualties for the first time in a generation. Naturally, they wanted their voices heard.
For a commander, fighting in a coalition is the trigonometry level of warfare. This is because coalition warfighting denies what is considered axiomatic in military circles: that when you assign anyone a mission or duty, you must also provide them with sufficient authority over everyone assigned to execute that mission. Coalitions, however, combine many nations’ forces, and those forces still belong to their home nations. Most nations, our own included, place “caveats” on the forces they assign, in effect restrictions that lessen the command authority a coalition commander has over some of his assigned troops, even to the point of denying their use in certain missions. In this environment, the persuasive power of a high-level commander is tested, as is his staff’s imagination as they work to identify missions that can be assigned. My direction to my American officers was to concentrate on what allied forces could do, rather than moan about what the allies’ home governments or low levels of training prevented them from doing.
An oft-spoken admonition in the Marines is this: When you’re going to a gunfight, bring all your friends with guns. Having fought many times in coalitions, I believe that we need every ally we can bring to the fight. From imaginative military solutions to their country’s vote in the United Nations, the more allies the better. I have never been on a crowded battlefield, and there is always room for those who want to be there alongside us. Speaking with young generals and admirals, I would explain that in coalitions, I could not give them sufficient military authority to override an ally’s decision. “Nonetheless,” I explained, “your nation expects success from you.” Nothing new under the sun: this was the same challenge Marlborough and Eisenhower had to deal with.
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One of my predecessors at CENTCOM, General Zinni, had taught me to break information into three categories. The first was housekeeping, which allowed me to be anticipatory—for example, munitions stockage levels and ship locations. The second was decision-making, to maintain the rhythm of operations designed to ensure that our OODA loops were functioning at the speed of relevance. The third were alarms, called “night orders.” These addressed critical events—for instance, a U.S. embassy in distress or a new outbreak of hostilities. “Alarm” information had to be immediately brought to my attention, day or night.
Sorting out the way ahead found me in many meetings in Kabul. Following one with my friend of many years General Abdul Wardak, the Afghan Minister of Defense, I quietly took him aside.
“You look terrible, absolutely exhausted,” I said.
He half smiled and looked back at me, two old soldiers who had both fought for years.
“You’re one to talk,” he said. “I know I’m tired, and I’m getting snappish with my staff.”
As I was flying home, my friend’s comment stayed with me. Here I was, the advocate for command and feedback, but I was constantly tired, too. Was I getting “snappish” with my staff? What kind of feedback did that encourage? (Note to self: I wasn’t immune.) Are my manners deteriorating? Was I becoming an impatient tyrant rather than a coach? The tougher the situation, the more I needed to choose to set a calm example, not allowing long hours and wicked issues to dictate my behavior around a team doing their utmost.
Whether in Tampa or overseas, my schedule included videoconference sessions, assorted briefings, and meetings with heads of state, ambassadors, generals, policymakers, and foreign affairs experts. My daily calendar began shortly before 4:00 A.M., when I reviewed intelligence reports and overnight updates. My schedule, even though broken down into fifteen- and thirty-minute intervals, was frequently interrupted by calls from Washington, others from ambassadors in the region, and discussions with subordinate commanders.
Each morning, I tried to go through my emails before working out and having a light breakfast. I knew in many cases that if I didn’t answer promptly, a delaye
d response could result in weeks of work for staffs undoing hasty decisions made by someone without a full appreciation of the problem.
In our military, lack of time to reflect is the single biggest deficiency in senior decision-makers. If there was one area where I consistently fell short, that was it. Try as I would, I failed to put aside hours for sequestering myself outside the daily routine to think more broadly: What weren’t we doing that needed to be done? Where was our strategy lacking? What lay over the horizon? I had fine officers working hundreds of issues, but a leader must try to see the overarching pattern, fitting details into the larger situation. Anticipating the second- and third-order consequences of policy decisions demanded more time than I was putting aside.
It’s easy for an outsider to say, “Well, tell your chief of staff to be more efficient.” But some unforeseen issues had to end up on my desk due to their gravity. Not two hours into any given day, some commercial ship might report a pirate attack. A foreign leader had read a news report and had urgent questions. Or a cruiser had to go into port for emergency repairs, meaning that a priority mission would have to be dropped or we’d have to request another ship. An ambassador called needing refugee support via military channels. The Special Forces commander needed to brief me on a sighting of a leading terrorist in a sensitive location. The Chairman was calling about a troop request and he needed my input before the Secretary of Defense left on a trip or the decision would be delayed past the deadline. A foreign chief of defense had sent an officer to brief me on a sensitive matter, and, no, he wouldn’t tell anyone else what it was about…And so it went.
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In Tampa, I had sixteen admirals and generals directing operations and staff activities. Having been engaged in two wars for almost a decade, CENTCOM was a magnet for top talent. The services were sending their best officers. This experienced crew was all in, seven days a week. I quickly warmed to them and encouraged them to use their initiative, keeping me informed following my mantra “What do I know? Who needs to know? Have I told them?” I repeated it so often that it appeared on index cards next to the phones in some offices.
Early on, a staff officer, thinking I was in Tampa, sent me a short email asking if he could come by the office regarding a sensitive issue. I typed back, “Hard for you to pop up to 30,000 feet over Saudi Arabia, where I am now. Understand what you want to do. You are cleared hot. Run with it and next time you know this sort of matter is your call. / M.”
Every few weeks, I was in Washington to meet with Pentagon, intelligence, and State Department officials, National Security staff, and elected officials and their staffs on the Hill and at think tanks. I needed an understanding of diverse points of view and to be alert to what was coming. Conversely, I had to be able to explain to others our military needs and concerns. I also had to ensure that my command’s stance was consistent with that of the political realm above me. You can’t carry out those tasks sitting behind your desk.
Wherever I was, I was directing military activities across a zone that extended 2,500 miles east to west, and the same north to south. Scattered across that region were dozens of admirals, generals, American ambassadors, and CIA station chiefs. I recalled Secretary Gates at a breakfast sharing his perspective about teamwork. “The only thing that allows government to work at the top levels,” he said, “is trusted personal relations.” Within my theater, the American team—diplomats, intelligence, and military officers—exhibited a high degree of trust in one another. You can’t achieve this leading by email.
My senior operational commanders met with me every two to three months at our forward headquarters in Qatar. This was our “Knights of the Round Table” get-together: the five component commanders (Army, Navy, Air Force, Special Forces, and Marines); representatives of the Iraq and Afghanistan commanders; my leading officers in Pakistan, Yemen, and Lebanon; the cyber commander; and officers representing adjacent commands in Europe and Africa.
In these meetings, our main focus was warfighting—who would do what, and who would support—examining the details and reordering the priorities, senior officers presenting their war plan and “what if?” thoughts, all the while walking over a map the size of a basketball court, nicknamed the “BAM”—the Big-Ass Map. Meals were taken together, with commands intermixed at stand-up tables so that they conversed with one another across all ranks.
I recognized that if we tried to tightly control and synchronize warfighting from a single headquarters across a far-flung command, we would create a critical vulnerability, even a single point of failure. One disruption could bring the whole system down. Instead, I intended to unleash loosely coordinated but aligned offensive attacks by commands in the air, on land, and at sea. An intimate working understanding of one another’s anticipated responses to various war-game scenarios would build synergy and give our team the edge. Our new “jersey drills” walked us all through the maneuvers of our air, land, and sea forces, building confidence across the force. As I had learned, visualization or “imaging” is a critical team-building skill in any command, especially in an age when we anticipate that our communications could be disrupted by the enemy.
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Every month, I flew thousands of miles to meet with heads of state and military commanders of two dozen nations. My first stop was always with the American ambassador and the CIA station chief. I didn’t want to come off as a plenipotentiary or proconsul acting on my own agenda. Every time I visited, I first asked our ambassador how I could best help his or her diplomatic efforts. In keeping with George Washington’s approach to leadership, I would listen, learn, and help, then lead. Secretary Shultz and General Zinni had both strongly urged me to cultivate my foreign counterparts. “The U.S. military,” Zinni said, “has been focusing huge attention on the two theaters of war—Iraq and Afghanistan. Don’t lose sight of the anchor states in the Middle East. Get out there and spend time in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. And don’t forget our other friends. Everyone wants a personal visit to be reassured. You’re a bachelor; sleep on your aircraft.”
His advice aligned with my strongest conviction: I had to gain the trust of foreign leaders, civilian and military. If regional leaders didn’t know me and didn’t feel comfortable with my understanding of what they faced, I’d be nothing more than a place card at the dinner table. The intimate conversations and the sharing of confidences would flow around me as if I didn’t exist. I’d be irrelevant, treated with indifferent courtesy as a tourist instead of a player. To avoid that, I was determined to be a good listener and to be direct in laying out my thoughts, explaining the courses of action I was considering and asking for their views. I represented the world’s most powerful military. But they lived in the Middle East, and I wanted them to know that, where our interests overlapped, their problems were my problems.
Wherever I went during my tenure at CENTCOM, I heard blunt questions about our reliability as a security partner. The impression of many Arab leaders was that we might abandon them. America was emphasizing “rebuilding at home.” The lack of constancy in American foreign policy left them unsettled. Many were now openly doubting our word. I understood their concerns but explained that we had enduring interests in the region.
In these countries, we could not insist on the same level of democratic achievement as the United Kingdom had, six hundred years after the Magna Carta was signed. In the meantime, our enemies were not taking a holiday as they moved against our imperfect partners and against us. So, while I unhesitatingly reinforced our State Department’s efforts supporting inclusive government, I was also determined to work with our friends on critical, time-sensitive security matters.
In late 2010, WikiLeaks began to release classified State Department cables exposing to the world our diplomats’ assessments of foreign leaders. A new kind of adversary had inflicted deep harm to our interests, and of course many friends whose secrets had bee
n compromised were livid. I encountered several who said they would no longer be candid with me, because they didn’t trust that Americans could keep secrets anymore. I assured them that I had not written “cables,” emails, or after-action reports containing sensitive information. Instead, if I considered an issue sufficiently important to report, I would either pick up a secure phone or meet personally with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs or the Secretary of Defense. Initially, I encountered silences and superficially brittle discussions. In some cases, the damage was so severe that only with the appointment of new ambassadors could we start rebuilding trust. Instituting on the strategic level what I had learned at the tactical level, “hand-con” became the order of the day, with handshakes cementing trust.
After a few months, the broader complaints about America stopped, and specific disagreements were discussed more productively. But I wasn’t naive about relationships and hand-con. Partners were beginning to hedge their bets, now engaging with countries that were competing with us. I had returned to the region even as the dynamics of the Middle East were changing. As Heraclitus put it, you never step into the same river twice. My former commander and predecessor at CENTCOM, General John Abizaid, cautioned me, “This is not the same CENTCOM you and I served in four years ago. Ever since CENTCOM was created, America was seen as an ascending power. Today some see us as a descending power.”
America’s lack of strategy in setting priorities that would earn their trust resulted in a growing sense that we were proving unreliable. This would cause a series of challenges for me in the Middle East and would later concern me on a global scale.