Mattis is mildly eccentric by military standards, with his penchant for studying Roman philosophy in Latin and suggesting reading lists for his troops. But like every successful Marine and Army general, he is fundamentally a team player who moves with a group, rarely in isolation.
What that has meant in practice is that Mattis has bonded with Trump’s other key foreign policy advisers: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, national security adviser H.R. McMaster, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. This is a strong, self-confident group; there’s little of the infighting that characterizes Trump’s domestic advisers.
Mattis’s closest link, interestingly, may be with Tillerson, the ExxonMobil chief-turned-diplomat. Mattis believes that U.S. foreign policy became overmilitarized in recent years and that a strong State Department voice is essential.
The national-security process worked well in the two-day planning and execution of a missile strike this month on a Syrian airfield. Within hours of the Syrian chemical weapons attack on its people, Mattis was framing options drawn from a list of contingency plans. The Pentagon prepared for the possibility that Russia would respond. Planners predicted an 85 percent success rate for the United States; it turned out to be closer to 95 percent.
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