Mattis vows to embrace allies, diplomacy as Trump Defence Chief

WASHINGTON — Retired General James Mattis will reaffirm US support for its historic alliances and diplomacy if confirmed as President-elect Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defence, a message aimed at assuaging concerns the country could step back from its leadership role in the world.

“We must embrace our international alliances and security partnerships,” Mr Mattis will tell members of the Senate Armed Services Committee at his confirmation hearing on Thursday (Jan 12), according to prepared remarks obtained in advance. “History is clear: nations with strong allies thrive and those without them wither.”

Comments made by Mr Trump on the campaign trail and since the election have raised questions about whether he would honor long-term US commitments to alliances, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, at the same time he says he wants better relations with traditional adversaries like Russia.

While Mr Trump has called for the US to pull back from foreign entanglements — criticising the 2003 invasion of Iraq and praising Russia’s intervention in the Syrian war — Mr Mattis has argued for a more assertive US posture in the world.

‘MAD DOG’

The 66-year-old Marine was hailed as “one of the finest military officers of his generation and an extraordinary leader who inspires a rare and special admiration of his troops” in a statement after his nomination by Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain of Arizona. Short and wiry with a brush-cut haircut, Mr Mattis was known as the “Warrior Monk”, while Mr Trump calls him by another nickname: “Mad Dog”.

In a potential sign of his influence, Mr Trump said soon after the election that the blunt-talking Mr Mattis had caused him to rethink his campaign pledge to revive waterboarding, an interrogation tactic used against suspected terrorists that President Barack Obama had banned. “He said, ‘I’ve always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I’ll do better,”’ the president-elect recounted to the New York Times.

The two men have also found common ground in their criticism of Iran and a nuclear deal reached by the Obama administration in 2015. Mr Mattis has called the regime in Tehran “the single most enduring threat to stability and peace in the Middle East”.

F-35 COSTS

The former head of US Central Command, Mr Mattis’s prepared remarks don’t address over-budget Pentagon programs, such as Lockheed Martin Co’s next generation F-35 jet, that Mr Trump has singled out for criticism since winning election. But he does promise to “bring business reforms to the Department of Defence by instilling budget discipline and holding our leaders accountable”, according to the remarks.

Mr Mattis retired in 2013 after a 41-year career in the Marines that took him from rifleman to head of the US Central Command. He will indicate in his testimony that he views a strong military as a catalyst for promoting effective diplomacy.

One reason Mr Mattis may back US alliances including NATO is because he’s worked there: He led NATO’s transformation office and rewrote — along with former Army General David Petraeus — the military’s counterinsurgency field manual.

“I will work to make sure our strategy and military calculus are employed to reinforce traditional tools of diplomacy, ensuring our president and our diplomats negotiate from a position of strength,” Mr Mattis said.

One non-military question likely to come up during Mr Mattis’s Senate confirmation hearing is his role on the board of Theranos Inc, which has become embroiled in a scandal over faulty claims for its blood-testing technology. Mr Henry Kissinger and Mr George Shultz, former secretaries of state, also have been among the company’s directors. Filings show that Mr Mattis was paid at least US$150,000 (S$213,000) to serve as a director at the company.

In 2012, before the flaws in its technology were uncovered, Ms Elizabeth Holmes, the company’s founder and chief executive officer, asked Mr Mattis, who was still in the military, to squelch a Pentagon reviewer’s “blatantly false information” about the company, the Washington Post reported last year. Mattis declined to answer specific questions, the newspaper reported, but issued a statement saying he had “the greatest respect for the company’s mission and integrity”.

He may also face questions about the impact of his decision this month to step down from the board of General Dynamics Corp., the fifth-biggest US defence supplier with US$10 billion in contracts last year. As a result of his position, he’ll likely have to recuse himself for at least a year from decisions involving the company, taking him out of the loop on billion-dollar decisions across the military services.

Because Mr Mattis has only been retired since 2013, Congress must pass legislation waiving a law that bars appointing anyone as secretary of defence “within seven years after relief from active duty as a commissioned officer”. The Senate Armed Services Committee plans to act on that legislation right after Thursday’s hearing,and the House Armed Services Committee is scheduled to act on Thursday (Jan 12) as well.

While members of both parties praise Mr Mattis as a skilled and thoughtful military leader, some have expressed concern about exemptions from the law intended to preserve civilian control. Mr Mattis gave a nod in his prepared remarks to the perceived need for the defence secretary to be a civilian.

“Civilian control of the military is a fundamental tenet of the American military tradition,” he said. “Both the commander-in-chief and the secretary of defence must impose an objective strategic calculus in the national security decision-making process and effectively direct its activities.” BLOOMBERG