The Last Grown-Up Is Gone

[babylonsister]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/12/mattis-retires-the-last-of-the-grown-ups-is-gone.html

The Last Grown-Up Is Gone
James Mattis is not “retiring with distinction.” He’s resigning in protest.
By Fred Kaplan
Dec 20, 2018
7:40 PM

snip//

On Thursday evening, in the wake of the Syrian pullout and the Mattis resignation, NBC News reported that Trump has ordered the Pentagon to draw up plans for the pullout of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.* [Update, 8:41 p.m.: The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Trump has ordered the start of the reduction of American soldiers in Afghanistan.]

Rather than raise a stink, as Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, had done, Mattis kept his head down and pursued his agenda more quietly. He led several new initiatives in NATO, most notably a plan to mobilize troops more rapidly to defend the Baltic states from Russian aggression. And many times he assured allied leaders that the United States would back them up, regardless of what they may have heard from other quarters—to the point where some leaders in allied nations, and on Capitol Hill, referred to the Department of Defense under Mattis as “the Department of Reassurance.”

A Cabinet secretary’s reassurances can go only so far, though, when it’s clear that the president—the ultimate decision-maker—disagrees. The same pattern occurred when Colin Powell was President George W. Bush’s secretary of state: Powell would say very welcome things on his trips to Europe, but after a while, they meant nothing, because it was clear they didn’t reflect the views of the man in charge.

Trump’s myriad departures from normal practice this past year have stirred concern in allied capitals, in Congress, and among U.S. diplomats and combatant commanders—his kowtowing to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, his expressed “love” for North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, his scorn for allies in once-cordial conferences, and now his withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan, which aren’t entirely unreasonable except that they were so sudden and announced without appreciation of possible consequences or consultation with the regional players or even with his own security advisers.*

The departure of Mattis—the last “grown-up the room”—is sure to set off tremors of anxiety. During the final phase of Colin Powell’s tenure as Bush’s secretary of state, a European diplomat asked how he was coping with all the mishandled crises of that administration (which, compared to the current president’s, now seem trivial). He reportedly replied, “I sleep like a baby … every two hours I wake up screaming.” We all may be doing that soon.