Could Mattis Be Out by
Year's End?
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/could-mattis-be-out-by-years-end-25615
Could Mattis Be Out by
Year's End?
Curt Mills
April 27, 2018
Knife fighting with the National Security council and public
dissention on the Iran deal have many questioning Secretary James Mattis’
future.
Curt Mills
April 27, 2018
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Is James Mattis, secretary of defense, the deputy president of the
Trump administration?
Other operators have occupied this ex-officio role in this still-young
administration: Steve Bannon in the early days, John Kelly at the height of his
power. The former was ousted and the latter is, of course, now much diminished.
It’s a contradictory role: maximum influence, the most curtailed
half-life.
Mattis’ role as defense secretary adds a different flavor—and a
further layer of power—to the arrangement.
After what some defense officials describe as Barack Obama’s imperial
White House—civilian micromanagement of military decisions—President Donald
Trump has devolved substantial powers back to the Pentagon.
Add to that Mattis’ sprawling alliance structure on the Hill—he’s the
one of the last “adults” in the room, the narrative for many goes—and on war
and peace he is peerless.
But as with Bannon and Kelly, as well as the tenures of Rex Tillerson
and H. R. McMaster and Reince Priebus, among others, it just might not
last.
Mattis has widely been viewed as an immovable force: kept on in a new
administration if the president were somehow forced from power.
Now he might be out by years’ end, three sources familiar with the
matter say.
A former senior White House official predicts just that.
If Michael Wolff is to believed, the only person on the planet the
president sees as above him is Rupert Murdoch.
But entertained as peers are generation-leading generals like Mattis
and Kelly (in 2016, Trump interviewed David Petraeus, still wearing an ankle
bracelet, for secretary of state).
But a Defense Department source says that Mattis, once essentially
bulletproof with 45, is imperiled as never before.
The new National Security Advisor, John Bolton, smells blood in the
water.
“It’s no secret the secretary doesn’t think much of Ambassador
Bolton,” says a White House official.
Indeed, as I reported in March, Mattis attempted to block Bolton from
his current post.
While both are too smart to allow this to descend into an outright,
public scrum, Bolton is poised to twist the knife where he can.
The National Interest reported exclusively last week that Bolton was
seeking to hire Mira Ricardel, a Commerce aide whom Mattis holds in low esteem
and blocked at the DOD in 2017.
Last Friday, the White House signed off on the installation of
Ricardel as his deputy.
Now, Mattis is breaking more publically with Trump’s more hawkish
aides—the new Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Bolton and Ricardel—especially on
Iran.
The JCPOA (the Iran deal) could be dead and buried before Memorial
Day.
Mattis said yesterday, about a deal Trump calls the worst in history,
that the inspection regime the Iranians are subject to is “pretty robust.”
For a White House that doubles daily as Shakespearean drama, one of
the more buried ironies is that Mattis has emerged as perhaps the administration’s
leading Iran dove. Mattis was forced from uniform by Obama because he was
perceived as an Iran obsessive out for revenge against Tehran—as a military
commander in the Iraq War, he sent American men and women to die at the hands
of murderous Shia militias backed by Tehran.
“Iran, Iran, Iran” is what Mattis, as a retired general, once famously
said was wrong with the Middle East.
Mattis is no “restrainer”—he’s the frontman behind the largest defense
spending increase since the Bush administration, as well as the mascot for a
robust, new Authorization for Military Force (AUMF) quietly being pushed by
Sen. Bob Corker’s office.
Mattis could be quietly trying to solidify legacy items in case he’s
on his way out—the AUMF, generous financing of the Pentagon and preserving
something like that looks the Iran deal.
A senior aide to a prominent Democratic senator told me it was Mattis
who killed a surprisingly robust challenge last month to America’s support for
the Saudi war on Yemen. He traveled from the Pentagon to attend both the
Democratic and Republican Senate luncheons on the day of the vote; given
Mattis’ popularity on the Hill, the die was cast.
In addition, officials on their way out often warn of coming crises.
Obama warned Trump that his first term could be defined by North Korea. On
Thursday, Mattis talked openly of a new conflagration in the Middle East.
Direct military confrontation between Israel and Iran is now “likely,” Mattis
said in Washington.
Curt Mills is a foreign-affairs reporter at the National Interest.
Follow him on Twitter: @CurtMills.
Image: Reuters
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