Mattis' Message to the World: Trump Is Out of Control

Mattis’ Message to the World: Trump Is Out of Control
That was more than a letter of resignation provided today by Defense Secretary James Mattis. It was a bright red line in American history.
David Rothkopf
12.20.18 9:11 PM ET


On Thursday, President Trump suffered the most serious repudiation of his presidency to date and the most important defection from the team of advisers he brought into his administration when he took office. Both came with the resignation of Secretary of Defense James Mattis and the powerful, trenchantly timed letter he submitted explaining the reasons for his departure.

Two key points were cited by Mattis as intractable differences that existed between him and the president. First, he stated his strong belief in the alliances on which U.S. foreign policy has depended for three-quarters of a century and which have been serially attacked and eroded by Trump. Next he offered an explicit critique of the actions of Russia and China which he characterized as profoundly threatening on many levels.
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The president tried to characterize Mattis’ decision as a retirement. But it was clearly not just a resignation but a public statement of discomfort with the policies and approaches of the president following directly on the heels of his shocking decision to ignore his advisers' counsel and to withdraw immediately from Syria.

Each of Mattis’ points resonated with the Syria decision. Allies were shocked by it and some, such as the Kurds, who fought valiantly in the conflict with the Islamic State alongside U.S. troops, were left unprotected and at risk. The British announced they learned of the action from a tweet. Further, the decision gave a great victory to the Russians, one that they hailed in their role as one of the few defenders of the president’s action. It came on a day that the Treasury Department also relaxed sanctions on two major Russian oligarchs including Paul Manafort’s former client Oleg Deripaska. Needless to say, it also came in the context of a growing awareness of the number of ways the Trump Team was compromised by their Russia ties and of the ways they have sought to obstruct that investigation.

Filling a Mattis-shaped hole in the president’s cabinet will be exceedingly difficult. He was widely regarded by both Democrats and Republicans as the gold-standard of the Trump team, a distinguished military leader known for his thoughtfulness and commitment to principle. He was part of the so-called “Axis of Adults” and “Trump’s Generals,” groups seen as potential checks on the erratic, impulsive and inexperienced president. Those generals—Mattis, H.R. McMaster, John Kelly and, briefly, the disgraced Mike Flynn—are all gone or going. So to is any semblance of a collection of adults. Trump is now surrounded by evil-minded toadies like Stephen Miller, sharp-elbowed partisans with outside-the-mainstream agendas like National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And a large number of positions are unfilled and, apparently, given the president’s legal predicaments and famously unhinged management style, they will be difficult to fill going forward.

This raises of course, the prospect of Trump, increasingly under pressure from the 17 investigations into him and his family, behaving ever more erratically and compounding the Syria policy spasm with others that may be even more grievous in their consequences. This is the worst case. Trump has proven himself unstable and unfit for the presidency and just as his worst traits are likely to become even more threatening to our national security and that of other nations, he is increasingly unchecked, left to be advised by his famous “gut” which he has argued is better than the brains of all his advisers.

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