Call Sign Chaos

by Jim Mattis

So “whilst” I continued to spend my time forward to sense how operations were trending at the front, my now multinational operations staff transmitted my intent more clearly to my tens of thousands of U.S. Marines.

Uncertainty runs riot if you don’t keep cool.

Digital technologies do not dissipate confusion; the fog of war can actually thicken when misinformation is instantly amplified.

Never think that you’re impotent. Choose how you respond.

“I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.”

Then, by intimidation, they took over towns and farmlands. This should surprise no one. Think of any Hollywood western. Tough guys with guns move in. The townsfolk do not rebel; instead, they accommodate. Not one man in a hundred will stand up alone to a bad man with a gun. The more fanatical the killers, the more intimidated the community.

But whether you’re a general or a CEO, win or lose, you have to fight a false narrative or it will assuredly be accepted as fact.

housekeeping,

decision-making,

alarms,

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.

In our military, lack of time to reflect is the single biggest deficiency in senior decision-makers.

“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.

“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.

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.

Our commanders must be the coaches and team captains for our own team, building trust with the grunts in the fight. When the brass lose influence over their troops because their rules are out of touch, the discipline that binds all ranks together is undercut.

“Jim, the central question is: Will all your successes just be transient, because you don’t have the forces or the time to solidify them?”

“The Muslim religion isn’t the barrier to progress here,” he said. “The problem is a whole culture that rejects Western concepts of playing by the rules and cooperating with each other.”

example of South Korea is instructive. Since the cease-fire in 1953, we have kept tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers there. Our large troop presence and steady diplomacy safeguarded the transformation of that war-torn country from a dictatorship into a vibrant democracy. But it took forty years. In Afghanistan, we were unwilling to devote the resources and time needed to transform the country, decade by decade, into a thriving democracy.

one in every three Arab youths was unemployed.

After a rebellion, however, power tends to flow to those most organized, not automatically to the most idealistic.

When we go abroad, our noblest instinct—to champion democracy—must be guided by prudence and humility: as difficult as it is to understand our own political life at times, hoping for a full understanding of another country’s politics is outright fanciful.

First, I reassured our traditional friends that we stood with them in defending their security against the terrorist threat, which was taking no holiday. Second, I made it clear that we would not tolerate any threat of Iranian incursion violating their territorial integrity. Third, I reinforced our ambassadors’ efforts and encouraged regional leaders to be responsive to and inclusive of all their people. I saw all this

as buying time for them to make reforms aligned with their societies’ carrying capacity.

Cooperation, too, occurs at the sp...

us. I listened to my full share. My ironclad rule was to never imply by silence that I agreed with any criticism of the policies of my Commander in Chief.

Public humiliation does not change our friends’ behavior or attitudes in a positive way.

It is better to have a friend with deep flaws than an adversary with enduring hostility.

Nothing can inspire others more than our ability to make our own democracy work.

Instead, the President decided not to strike.

Obama wasa great domestic politician but a weak military leader.

“Dynamite in the hands of a child,” Winston Churchill wrote, “is not more dangerous than a strong policy weakly carried out.”

The consequences included an accelerated refugee flow that changed the political culture of Europe, punctuated by repeated terrorist attacks.

I sensed that only Iran’s impression of America’s impotence could have led them to risk such an act within a couple of miles of the White House.

But Washington was not interested in my Zimmermann analogy. We treated an act of war as a law enforcement violation, jailing the low-level courier.

Weak ass, Obama!

like-minded nations to join in the exercise. I anticipated that a half dozen navies might participate. Instead, twenty-nine nations came on board.

Because of his strong leadership example.

Only one navy in the world, the U.S. Fifth Fleet, forward deployed in the region, had both the capability and the trust of so many nations to draw together such an international response.

I wanted calculated actions, to restrain the regime so it couldn’t thrust us into a war.

If you allow yourself to be goaded and trifled with, one of two things will happen: eventually a harder, larger fight will explode, or you will get moved out of the neighborhood.

But there was a reason for the administration’s restraint. The administration was secretly negotiating with Iran, although I was not privy to the details at the time.

While I fully endorse civilian control of the military, I would not surrender my independent judgment.

I obeyed without mental reservation our elected Commander in Chief and carried out every order to the best of my ability.

“If the strategy be wrong, the skill of the general on the battlefield, the valor of the soldier, the brilliancy of victory, however otherwise decisive, fail of their effect.”

“Men make history; history doesn’t make the man.”

America has more tools than its military and CIA to draw upon. In league with our allies, our economic strengths and our use of traditional diplomatic practices can reduce the militarization of our foreign policy. Unilateralism will not work, and we must craft an integrated, multidimensional strategy that incorporates America’s deepest wells of power.

Whatever we learn to do, we learn by actually doing it,” Aristotle wrote. “People come to be builders, for instance, by building, and harp players, by playing the harp. In the same way, by doing just acts we come to be just. By doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self-controlled, and by doing brave acts, we become brave.”

Courage as an act of self-discipline can be infused by coaching a team until every member acquires the skills to have and to share confidence. Group spirit binds warriors together in a necessary way that keeps them distinct from the civilian society they are sworn to protect.

we best deter adversaries or, if conflict occurs, win at lowest cost to our troops’ lives.

our volunteers who sign a blank check payable with their lives must be given every opportunity to return home.

Those who choose to not serve, and especially those in civilian oversight roles, must show reserve in directing social changes inside our military. They need to listen to those senior officers and NCOs who know how to compose warfighting organizations. Our military exists to deter wars and to win when we fight. We are not a petri dish for social experiments. No one is exempt from studying warfighting and lethality as the dominant metric, and nothing that decreases the lethality of our forces should be forced on a military that will go into harm’s way.