What Mattis Needs to Do As Defense Secretary

By Kathleen Hicks

Kathleen Hicks is senior vice president, Henry A. Kissinger Chair, and director of the International Security Program at CSIS. Dr. Hicks is a frequent writer and lecturer on geopolitics, national security, and defense matters. She served in the Obama administration as principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy and deputy under secretary of defense for strategy, plans, and forces. She led the development of the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance and the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review. She also oversaw Department of Defense contingency and theater campaign planning. From 2006 to 2009, Dr. Hicks served as a senior fellow in the CSIS International Security Program. From 1993 to 2006, she served as a career civil servant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, rising from Presidential Management Intern to the Senior Executive Service. Dr. Hicks is concurrently the Donald Marron Scholar at the Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She serves on the Boards of Advisors for the Truman Center and SoldierStrong and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. Hicks served on the National Commission on the Future of the Army and currently serves on the Commission on the National Defense Strategy. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an M.P.A. from the University of Maryland, and an A.B. magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Mount Holyoke College. She is the recipient of distinguished service awards from three secretaries of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and received the 2011 DOD Senior Professional Women’s Association Excellence in Leadership Award.

The arcane art of measuring the health of civil-military relations is experiencing a renaissance. Although it is welcomed by those who practice it, the reasons for the renewed focus are less so.  Contributing factors include 15 years of continuous wartime deployments and the lack of a shared experience between the general public and the small percentage of Americans who have served or whose family members have served. Add on to that more recent tension over the obligation of military personnel to obey presidential orders regardless of legality, as well as the role of retired senior military officers in the electoral process, presidential transition, and in populating the Trump administration, and you have the makings of a potential civil-military crisis.

Enter Jim Mattis, née General and now Secretary of Defense. It is not without irony that Mattis is seen as one of the Trump administration’s foremost diplomats rather than a “mad dog” military man. Perhaps that perception reflects the low bar for American diplomacy today, but I believe Mattis deserves more credit than that. He has moved with a sure and steady hand to underscore the full faith and credit of the United States to allies, friends, and foes alike. If only the White House could follow his example.

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