Between entanglement with Trump, Mattis tries to reshape the US military

Shortly after his arrival at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis aimed to turn the US military into a more equipped and deadly force that would waste less money, strengthen alliances in the United States. world and evolve to counter Russia and China.

But President Trump quickly began to throw curved balls.

The president demanded a space force, a ban on transgender troops, a military parade, a deployment of the National Guard at the border and other initiatives with political shades far from the priority list of Mattis.

Trump launched an improvised campaign against US allies, threatened to wage war on North Korea, and defended unconventional ideas about military operations, leaving Mattis to comfort his American partners or make decisions. hasty in their childhood. Although he did not look for it, the Pentagon's chief has carved a reputation as "chief reinsurer."

The result is that the retired general of the Marine Corps has less time to focus on the program that he has set.

Mattis' ability to execute his vision will largely determine whether he leaves a lasting mark in the armed forces or where he becomes the chief of defense who has spent most of his tenure in protecting the company. 39, army and its alliances and to stifle the outbursts of an erratic president.

The extent to which Mattis will be able to go with his projects will also depend on how long he will be able to stay in his work in an administration undergoing upheavals and lay-offs. The resignation of US Ambassador Nikki Haley last week has spurred speculation that Mattis is also leaving.

In an interview given on CBS News' "60 Minutes" broadcast on Sunday, Trump said that he had a "very good relationship" with Mattis but that he "could be that he" was not a good friend. it's going away, fueling speculation that the defense secretary might be missing after the mid-term elections. .

"He can leave. I mean, at some point, everyone leaves, "said the president, who called Mattis" kind of a democrat. "

During his 21 months of service, 68-year-old Mattis has laid the groundwork for substantive change, but has yet to materialize the reforms that characterize the story of how the Armed Forces train them, fight each other and are equipped. A former public servant who worked for him stated that he had obtained an "A" for the first semester. The rest, said the manager, is up to now an "incomplete".

"I think it's clear he has a vision. There is generally no doubt about the nature of this vision, which is actually quite significant, "said Mara Karlin, Pentagon strategist under President Barack Obama, who is now teaching at Johns Hopkins University.

"The next question is to what extent is this vision being implemented?" She said. "Here, I think the story is a bit more mixed."

This account of Mattis' work was written after speaking with more than a dozen officials, past and present, from the Department of Defense and other government bodies. Some spoke of the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the discussions and the need to continue to deal with the Pentagon.

It shows a portrait of a secretary trying to reorganize the army against the threats of his enemies abroad, the surprises of a mercurial president and the concerns of his allies about the future of America.

[Account of friction between Trump and Mattis threatens to undermine their relationship]

Questions about Mattis' future lay especially after the publication of a book by Bob Woodward that claimed Mattis was comparing Trump to a "fifth or sixth grade student." Mattis described Woodward's report as a "fiction" and dismissed speculation that he would leave the Pentagon. .

The Pentagon declined to directly address issues regarding Mattis' future on Sunday. "Secretary Mattis is focused on his work, ensuring that the US military remains the deadliest force on the planet," said Defense Department spokesman Colonel Rob Manning. a statement.

The rumors have diverted attention from what Mattis would prefer to address: his vision of the US military.

Mattis articulated his concept earlier this year in a new national defense strategy that defined major power competition with Russia and China at the top of the military's agenda – and downplayed the focus on fighting counterterrorism and threats from rogue nations.

He played a crucial role in concluding a two-year budget agreement with Congress to lift the military spending ceiling and spend $ 716 billion on the defense budget in the next fiscal year, made the army worn out by uncertain financing and 17 years of war.

All the while, he largely isolated the Pentagon from the type of politicization that Trump inflicted on the CIA and the FBI.

Mattis convinced his allies that they could always count on the US military to defend them, despite Trump's cheat words, while persuading them to contribute more to their own defense.

But until now, Mattis has adopted only a few large-scale changes to allow him to survive longer. It has not initiated the cancellation or introduction of renowned weapons programs or systems. His plan to create a more lethal force is still in its infancy. With few exceptions, his efforts to increase the Pentagon's efficiency have failed, according to many accounts.

The most critical point is that the difficult task of reconfiguring a giant bureaucracy to attack in Moscow and Beijing is still largely on paper. Key political documents on this front, such as the long-delayed review of missile defense, have not been published. Some analysts argue that to devote sufficient resources to this goal, Mattis would eventually need to withdraw to Afghanistan; Until now, he has done the opposite, with no end to the expenses in sight. The war is one of Trump's biggest frustrations with Mattis, officials said.

"He must now apply his vision and strategy to the entire joint force deliberately and with the same ruthless application to his past operational campaigns," said Frank Hoffman, defense analyst under Mattis in the Marines and the US. Pentagon.

Pentagon chief spokeswoman Dana W. White said the move takes time and the entire department is implementing Mattis' defense strategy. She told Mattis to have "the largest increase in defense spending in recent decades in record time with overwhelming bipartisan support in a highly controversial environment."

Bureaucratic challenges

Mattis' over 40 years of uniform prepared him to pursue military campaigns and develop a high-level strategy to deal with threats to national security, but spent relatively little time at the Pentagon. He is accompanied by Deputy Secretary General for Defense Patrick Shanahan, former Boeing leader, leaving the two main offices of the building without an educated leader to break the bureaucratic thicket of Washington.

Analysts say that in order for the Pentagon to better fight against Russia and China, it must use fewer vulnerable ships and fixed bases that can be easily attacked and fly fewer short – range planes. The army must also fully embrace cyber-warfare and electronic warfare, artificial intelligence, hypersonic missiles and defenses in space – areas that have caught the attention during in recent years.

Mattis' advisers have already stated the modernization of the nuclear force trained mainly in Russia, elevated the cyber-command to the 10th unified command of the fighters of the department and developed a strategy on cyber.

Elbridge Colby, former head of Mattag at the Pentagon, congratulated the secretary for introducing a new refocused vision, while highlighting the enormous task at hand.

"Its implementation will require dramatic and dramatic changes to the defense budget, the way the military is fighting and almost everything the department does," said Colby.

Shanahan recently said that Mattis' skills went far beyond leadership and motivation and that he had learned a lot from him.

"He understands how to govern," said Shanahan at the annual conference of the Air Force Association. "He understands how the government should work. He understands politics. He understands the law. He understands the value of relationships. "

The question of whether the Secretary of Defense has the skills and the opportunity to reinvent the US military is another question.

A former official said that Mattis' mind was either "a guy in the mud, a field commander, or he operated at the George Shultz level," a reference to the former secretary of state and strategist renowned in the Foreign Affairs. It is difficult for Shanahan to bridge the gap because, according to another former official, "he does not learn the culture of the building" and has experienced problems of rotation of his immediate staff and tensions with military services.

White, Pentagon spokesman, said Mattis had chosen Shanahan for a good reason. "It brings a new way of thinking about complex challenges," she said. "It infuses common sense and forces people to think and act differently."

Tension with Trump

Senior Pentagon officials promised that their budget request for the next fiscal year, announced publicly in early 2019, would provide evidence that the department was making tough choices to reorient and restructure the military. Shanahan called the budget document "the chef-d'-oeuvre".

This masterpiece could face considerable challenges if Democrats took control of the House or Senate in the mid-term elections in November or if a subsequent budget agreement does not materialize at Capitol Hill. A departure from Mattis could also delay the effort to reshape the army.

At least half a dozen current and former officials aware of the situation have indicated that Trump's occasional dissatisfaction with Mattis began to surface this spring, when National Security Advisor John Bolton appointed his Under-Secretary Mira Ricardel, Undersecretary of Commerce, who, according to officials, faced Mattis while leading the transition of Trump. His reappearance at the White House fueled the Pentagon's suspicion of harming Mattis, they said.

Ricardel, in a statement issued by the National Security Council, said: "The SNC coordinates the implementation of the President's program by government agencies, including with the Department of Defense led by General Mattis, for whom I am Have a lot of respect. "

Officials familiar with Mattis' thinking said that he did not intend to leave his post, that he felt it was his duty to stay and that he was not by nature a quitter. "He's not going anywhere," White said.

If Trump wants to get Mattis out, officials say, the president will probably have to fire him.

Such dismissal could cause a backlash in Trump's political base, given Mattis' distinguished military career and his popularity with many conservatives and base troops.

"Troops commemorate his quotes as a gospel," said Jeff Davis, retired naval captain, who was director of press operations at the Pentagon. "He is respected and respected orders of magnitude more than any of the secretaries we have had."

Nevertheless, few officials would have ruled out the possibility that the president could dismiss Mattis at some point after the mid-term elections, particularly because of possible political disagreements with the White House over how the administration should approach Iran and Syria.

Mattis has sometimes disagreed with many of the President's impulses in foreign policy. Trump remains deeply suspicious of US involvement in Afghanistan, even after approving a strategy that Mattis backed up 13 months ago and modestly increased the number of US troops to nearly 15,000. while intensifying air strikes against the Taliban.

US officials have sought to show that the war in Afghanistan was proceeding smoothly, with few deaths in the United States and no major cities falling into the hands of the Taliban. It remains to be seen whether Trump will be patient with a stalemate conflict in which Mattis intends to pressure the Taliban to negotiate a peace agreement, despite the lack of clarity about the militant group's resolve. .

Mattis was applauded by the president for his handling of the campaign against ISIS, a continuation of the Obama administration's efforts. The defense secretary also helped to temper Trump's desire to immediately withdraw American troops from Syria. According to Mattis, a precipitous departure of the country in the United States would risk to revive the extremist group in Syria. Now, the administration maintains that US troops should stay until the departure of Iran.

Mattis pleaded against setting up military exercises in talks with North Korea, implementing national security tariffs, reducing the number of accepted refugees and withdrawing from the nuclear deal Iranian, said former officials. He lost each time.

Christopher Preble, vice president of defense and foreign affairs studies at the Libertarian Cato Institute, said Trump had taken office promising to reduce military intervention abroad and to guarantee the rich allies, but that he did not largely do it. Mattis is the symbol.

"It is a source of continuity in an administration that has been elected in part on the basis of change," Preble said.

Less waste, more "lethality"

At the Pentagon, Mattis is also set to set fiscal discipline and reduce waste.

In internal discussions, the Pentagon aimed to save $ 100 billion over five years by reducing overhead and other programs. But officials quickly decided that it was too ambitious and brought the goal back to $ 46 billion over five years, according to a former senior Pentagon official.

One of the key leaders in managing savings, chief executive John "Jay" Gibson, is about to leave, according to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal. The Pentagon declined to comment on Gibson's future.

The senior civilian official of the army recently announced that the service had generated about $ 25 billion in expenditures that can be applied to other priorities. He added that the changes would be clearly reflected in the next budget request for the service.

Meanwhile, Mattis touted the agency's first audit of Pentagon accounts. Pentagon officials said the price of the audit, estimated at nearly $ 1 billion, was small compared to the size and complexity of the Defense Department's budget.

Budget hawks are wondering if Mattis can actually cut Pentagon waste at a time when so much new money is pouring into the system.

Mattis especially insisted on the "lethality" which has become a new word of the Pentagon for the efforts of the secretary to make the force more deadly.

This year, he formed the Close Combat Lethality Working Group, which examines how to improve the weapons, training and resilience of infantry and other fighters at their side.

The task force made few announcements, but retired Major-General Robert Scales, the group's advisor, said he weighed ideas that Mattis had considered for at least a decade such as the development of new rifles that shoot larger ammunition.

The effort had other consequences, Pentagon officials at the lowest level having applied the term "lethality" to existing initiatives to satisfy the boss. Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the word was likely to lose importance.

"You can not just apply the word" lethal "to everything the army does," he said. "It just does not make sense."

Greg Jaffe contributed to this report.