The World View of General James Mattis

>> Andrew Roberts: General Jim "Mad Dog" Mattis is a former Secretary of Defense and one of the most formidable strategic thinkers of our time. Jim, you're on the record as saying that we are now living in a more unstable world than at any time since the end of the Second World War.

We might be nostalgic about the Cold War, I mean, do you think we are now in a second Cold War?

>> James Mattis: I don't know, Andrew, first of all, Andrew, thank you for having me. This is an honor.

>> Andrew Roberts: Great honor for us to have you on the show, I have to say, thank you.

>> James Mattis: But on whether this is a second Cold War, we had achieved a degree of equilibrium during the Cold War with some predictability, even some arms control, some unofficial or informal methods of dealing with one another. And we're now at a time when those rules are no longer in play, the equilibrium is not there.

One of Secretary Shultz's descriptions of the age, I think, sets the broader framework, and that is the world is awash and change. And he meant that it's gonna take a renewed effort to understand and comprehend this time. Now we will always look back at an age when we had certain mental models for what were going on, and we try to apply those models with a degree of rigor to recognize what's changed.

But at the same time, those models, even with all of our caution, can sometimes take us too far. And I think that we're in perhaps what could be called a Cold War or pre-war situation right now. But I don't wanna emphasize the equilibrium of the Cold War and somehow take refuge there when I see an increasingly precarious situation.

>> Andrew Roberts: And you talk about the speed, I mean, it's true that changes taking place, taking place faster than ever before. There's that quotation that I know you like from Lenin saying there are decades when nothing happens, and then there are weeks when decades happen. That's very much the case here as well, isn't it?

Everything's speeding up so much. Is there anything that can be done about that particularly?

>> James Mattis: All we can do about the speed of change, the speed of societal change, of technological change, of climate change, is we're going to have to embrace it and deal with it. Denial is not going to work, you're not going to stop it.

Globalism, for example, is not a policy, it's a reality. And so if you take these matters of change as reality to deal with, instead of trying to go back to a simpler time. History would tell you that you're doing the right thing by dealing with it and not by trying to restore something, a past that cannot be restored today.

 

That's my view of it. I would say that there are increased signs of global disorder around us. And the longer you spend trying to look back to the good old days, the less time you're taking to try to understand, really comprehend and do something about the increasing turmoil we see in the world.

And there I would just give a sneak peek at my view of how to deal with it. And that is three words, Allies, Allies, Allies.

>> Andrew Roberts: We will come on to that, to your theory later on. What I'd like to do now though is to talk about the increasing alignment of what Elliot Cohen calls the coalition of the malevolent.

Namely China, Russia, North Korea and Iran and what you've called two or three wannabes who might be join joining that or have joined that group. Do they have anything in common? What naturally aligns them? There seem to be some things of course that drive them apart. Can it survive this axis?

>> James Mattis: Yeah, I agree with you, there are some things that drive them apart. But I'm rather impatient intellectually with those who wanna say that they're not natural allies. Okay, they're unnatural allies, but they are coming together. I mean they are and they do have some things in common.

One, is a resentment against the United States, but most importantly the sense that democracy in general and the United States in particular are on irreversible decline. They point to our national debt that is mushrooming, they point to January 6th. They point to a Congress that will not deal with some of the fundamental issues in Washington.

But they also point to the weakness of a coalition government in Berlin, of the turnover of prime ministers in UK, the French situation, some of the primary democracies. You'll notice that in Japan the leading party lost its majority here a week ago. Their view and what brings them together is we're on irreversible decline and there are opportunities for a much more authoritarian form of government.

Basically, to surmount the challenges today and to deliver a new world order. And let me give you, let me give you one example here. On January 2nd of this year, the Russians launched a major offensive against the Ukrainians energy infrastructure. They did so using Russian and North Korean missiles that incorporated Chinese technology.

They had 170 odd drones from Iran and they clobbered the Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Now you can say they're not natural allies, but this is why I say it doesn't matter. Because they do have some common ground and that provides the opportunity for them and certainly a victory for one of them is a victory for all of them.

In other words, a partnership without limits, such as was signed following the Chinese Olympics. A partnership without limits between Russia and China is quite simply linking the Asia Pacific Theater with the European Atlantic Theater. By the heartland being linked the way it is, and NATO declaring China as the decisive enabler of Russia's war in Ukraine.

So there you see the nexus we're going to have to deal with this reality.

>> Andrew Roberts: Can you see a kind of Article 5 like we've got in NATO building up with this access of ill will, as Neil Ferguson calls it. The China China's buying 50% of Russia's oil and coal, 20% of its natural gas, Iran has got drone factories in Russia.

We've now just heard that an entire brigade of North Koreans is going to be fighting in In Ukraine. To what extent could they come together so much in such a way that an attack on one would be an attack on all?

>> James Mattis: Well, it could happen by accident, it could happen by design, it could happen simply by opportunism.

China thinking that the democracies, NATO following the American election, maybe there's a slackening of support for Ukraine. Russia reinforced by the North Korean troops and aided by China, and Iran starts making advances there. And China thinks now is the time to move against Taiwan in a more aggressive way.

Maybe not a full throated invasion, maybe a blockade of some sort, this sort of thing. So a victory for one is a victory for all and provides opportunities for what you just brought up. Remember, if a victory for one is a victory for all, a defeat for one is a defeat for all.

So this is a double edged sword here. And the question is, will the Americans stand firm? Will the democracies hold together? We had Jens Stoltenberg doing a masterful job for ten years at NATO, but I don't see that sort of organization in the Pacific, at least not yet.

You see the quad, India, Japan, Australia, the United States. You see Aukus, UK, Australia, the United States. Now you see both Japan and South Korea saying they are interested in Pillar 2 of the AUKUS. Then you also see for the last two years running the NATO summits having the attendance of the leaders of New Zealand, and South Korea all showing up at the NATO summit.

So you can see that threat is now registering across the democracies. Do we have the leadership now, such as you've examined during World War II, to actually turn our effort into one that is cohesive and say no further to the authoritarians? That is the question of the day.

>> Andrew Roberts: And if you look at Taiwan, the incursions have trebled recently. They've come very close to the Taiwanese territorial waters in a very confronting way. They've got the disinformation campaign using influencers and so on. China has the political will, the economy, the desire, certainly the ideological belief that Taiwan needs to be reincorporated into China.

Has the Taiwan crisis actually begun, would you say?

>> James Mattis: No doubt the Taiwan crisis has begun. Remember, going back to 1972 when Nixon opens to China, and certainly when President Carter, makes his stand, we make it very clear at that time we are continuing to support Taiwan to include with military.

We have not changed anything here. But China has changed because of one man, and that's President Xi. And you have to understand President Xi as the sole decision maker there. As you look at this pre-war activity that's going on right now with Taiwan, and there is 110 miles of very bad water, spoken as a naval officer between China and the island of Formosa of Taiwan.

So it's not a simple thing to say, it would go into a combat situation. But if you look at President Xi, a Marxist, economically locking up his entrepreneurs, putting Chinese Communist members on all his corporate boards of directors, this sort of thing, pouring money into state owned enterprises.

He is a Leninist, politically locking up his political foes, so he is hearing no opposition. And if you wanna see what happens then, like Putin locked up all his opposition or shot them and he's told in six weeks we can take over Ukraine. That didn't turn out so well.

So the danger of a Leninist Marxist in charge, when you couple it to a nationalist foreign policy. Where a very muscular China is treating all other nations like tribute states who owe tribute to the Emperor, then you have the very potential for what you're talking about. And this could easily slip into another wartime situation.

The Japanese Prime Minister last year said that the next Ukraine could be in the Pacific theater. And of course, he was talking about Taiwan. I think his very sharp remark is instructive for us.

>> Andrew Roberts: But that would involve two nuclear powers coming face to face, that is China and the United States in a way that didn't happen in Cold War I.

I mean, couldn't this be worse than Cold War one?

>> James Mattis: I think it has the potential to be worse, more unpredictable, specifically, because we don't have the kind of almost some formal, but mostly informal agreements in practice that we had within the Soviet Union. So yes, it is very unpredictable.

I would say too that it's increasingly precarious as the Americans seem to be unable to get a degree of political unity in terms of budgetary efforts and overall military efforts. And to create the kind of bilateral relations with various countries in the absence of a NATO like structure in the Pacific, that China may feel that now is the time to do it.

And now of course, it's up to that one man, President Xi.

>> Andrew Roberts: And discussing the nuclear issue, the United states has about 1,500 warheads, Britain and France, 250 to 300, Russia, 1,500, but China, which has at the moment only got 500, wants to have 1,500 by 2035. One can understand under these circumstances why 67% of South Koreans want to have nuclear weapon themselves.

And shouldn't they be allowed to get them?

>> James Mattis: Well, I don't wanna speak to the internal Korean situation. They have a very legitimate concern with the threat across their border. And thus this nexus between Russia and North Korea, China, which is Korea's number one treaty ally, and how this is all coming together as a destabilizing force.

China, since World War II, has expanded its military more than any other nation on Earth. Part of that is the massive expansion of its nuclear force that began just a couple years ago. And their lack of willingness to engage on arms control talks and their unwillingness to be transparent about what their goals are has the potential.

To create a broader arms race you bring up South Korea. That's not the only country that's looking toward nuclear weapons these days. And I think when you look back during the Cold War, you saw in our own way, the Soviet Union and the United States both trying to restrain the spread of nuclear weapons.

We no longer have, again, that equilibrium between us and China appears to be unwilling to do anything if it could in some way stabilize the situation. For example, the American just this week have been talking to China about getting a hold of what Korea is doing with this expanding nuclear situation and sending troops to Russia to fight in Ukraine.

And so far, that has been met with absolutely no indication of Chinese interest even in dealing with that. So if you extrapolate from that, their level of interest in doing anything to stabilize the situation, whether it be with nuclear weapons or with a partnership without limits with Russia.

Or vis a vis the North Korean threat to peace in the Northwest Pacific, I don't see anything that they're going to do. And I believe it's because President Xi sees anything that disrupts the global order right now, the World War II, post World War II global order, that the democracies led by the United States put in place.

He sees this as an opportunity for China.

>> Andrew Roberts: And Putin, who you've described as straight out of Dostoevsky, has a. And also, you said that Russia is turning into an economic colony and extraction state for China. He seems to be very much the junior partner, doesn't he? Compared to Xi, he's lost half a million killed and wounded over the last two and a half years in Ukraine.

What does history tell us that Russia's likely to do?

>> James Mattis: Well, the real tragedy for Russia, and I do refer to Putin as a creature straight out of Dostoevsky, because if you read Russian literature, you think, my gosh, that sounds a lot like Putin. I mean, you see it in there.

And he goes to bed every night with nightmares of Russia being surrounded. And perhaps he's drunk enough of his own whiskey that he actually believes this, that NATO is a threat. In fact, NATO is not a threat and has never been a threat to them. And the real tragedy right now is there's one country in the world that can best help the Russian people, and that's America.

We're far enough away from Russia, we're not afraid of Russia, we don't fear them. We're strong enough to stand up to them. And the tragedy is that under Putin, that opportunity has been lost for at least a generation. And perhaps permanently because of the nature of this growing relationship with China, which is gonna be a very difficult customer, as anyone who's dealt with China knows.

And Russia is gonna be drawn further away from Europe. They've already lost market share in the energy sector in Europe, and they're going to be tied to a very unhealthy partner. So the situation that Russia faces right now is trying to, with a very unsentimental view of their soldiers, continue to feed them into this meat grinder of Ukraine and try to come up with something that he can call a victory there.

Out of the disaster that he's unfolded for the Ukrainian people, for the Russian people and for the people of Europe, I don't know that he can do it. If the democracies stand firm, if the democracies don't stand firm with Ukraine, then Putin has the potential to eke out something he could refer to as a victory and somehow hang on to power.

Diminished economically, now a subordinate to China and the Russian people continuing to see their economy and their society become downgraded in the future.

>> Andrew Roberts: With regard to North Korea, only two treaty countries, it only has two connections to treaty partners, China and Russia. We've read about these 3,000 or so troops going to Ukraine.

It's got 50 nukes, and it's working on a deliverable system that could actually nuke San Francisco. What can you see? What do you see as the way in which one can deal with a country like that?

>> James Mattis: Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, we have soldiers on 24/7 alert in California and Alaska manning interceptor.

They are specifically designed to defend against an attack by North Korea. I think the way we have to look at it is two-fold. One, who makes all the decisions in Korea, and that's the politically unaccountable Kim. So we're going to have to hold him accountable. In other words, he has to know that he will not survive any such attack that he initiates.

That is the only way to convince him that this is not the right thing to do. But the second and larger issue about how do we deal with this again, is allies. As you know, there has never been a peace treaty between the north and South Korea. We have a ceasefire, basically, the United nations force is still there.

And we should look to expand the number of nations in that force. And make certain that we have an international effort to checkmate politically, economically, diplomatically, the North Korean efforts to throw their weight around. But I think ultimately, we're going to have to make certain that Kim knows that he, his family will not survive any such reckless behavior and that alongside an allied response.

I think is the best way to check this kind of misbehavior since China and Russia apparently have no interest in being responsible stakeholders in the international community. And doing what they could I think easily do in terms of getting a handle on Kim.

>> Andrew Roberts: Whenever you look for chaos in the world sorry certainly in the Middle east you find Iran don't you?

In 1983 Iran declared war on America. It hasn't really let up terribly much since has it? There are five major threats that you've identified that Iran uses against America and the West. They're slightly on the back foot now at the moment aren't they? Is this a good moment to take advantage of that?

>> James Mattis: I think they are on the back foot there in Tehran right now largely due to the Israeli military and secret services efforts. But also due to the Abraham Accords of a couple years ago and I think that we're at a point where. You say, okay, if they're on the back foot.

And I think that is objectively the case, at least for the short term, what do we use this time to do? And I would give you three lines of effort. One of them would be you want to do everything you can right now to expand the Abraham Accords.

And if that means feeding the people of Gaza so that in other Arab capitals that they can expand on what the Crown Prince of the United Arab Emirates had the political courage to do here a couple years ago. And if you can expand on that, then you create a stronger regional opposition to the mayhem that Iran is trying to foment.

The second point would be in Lebanon, you would want to support the Lebanese Armed forces, for example. It's the only multi-confessional organization in Lebanon. So if we were to say with Lebanese Hezbollah being bloodied there in south Lebanon in the Israeli campaign. Is there a way to come up with a solution where strengthening the Lebanese armed forces and saying only the Lebanese armed forces will be found south of the Litany river.

Start restoring Lebanese sovereignty over their country that has been basically lost to the Iranian supported Lebanese Hezbollah. So there may be an opportunity there, that would be a second opportunity. The third one is, to start a process for a two state solution in Palestine. Now I hear all the problems to doing that.

I just don't see the alternative to a two state solution. So even if it's gonna be a 10 or 15 year process, start now, put technocrats from Egypt and Jordan, United Arab Emirates, from Bahrain, Kuwait, in charge of four ministries in Gaza. The first would be security to get an international security force in there, mostly Arab probably.

Would be a security ministry with the understanding they will never have an army that will have a heavy police force but no army. You would want to have a Ministry of Health, a Ministry of Education, so you raise children without this ideological hatred of everybody else in the world.

And you would want a Ministry of Commerce technocrats under the King of Jordan with the promise to the King of Jordan that none of the Palestinians will get Jordanian citizenship. That would destroy the Hashemite Kingdom, but with international support. Have the King of Jordan running the technocrats and for 10 or 15 years put in a rail system that links the west bank to Gaza so that they're linked up.

Hamas, PIJ have no role in the future after what they did in October a year ago. And make darn certain that the international community stands with the King of Jordan so that what he can do is create a new future for the Palestinian People. So I think three prongs, Lebanon, restore the Lebanese armed forces and sovereignty south of Litany and perhaps in part of Beirut.

Certainly, expand the Abraham Accords as much as you can, using whatever efforts it takes to include humanitarian efforts in Gaza. And then create a 10 year process, 15 year process to a two state solution, back over to you.

>> Andrew Roberts: Well, at least that is a sort of practical series of suggestions.

I want to look at those five threats that I mentioned earlier that you've identified and how each of these can be dealt with. In part, actually, you've answered this question, but the first is cyber. The second is the maritime threat, especially in the Straits of Hormuz and with regard to oil.

Ballistic missiles against Israel, which of course we've seen recently, the nuclear problem, how close they are, how many months away they might be from getting a nuclear weapon. I think you've called Israel a one bomb country. It doesn't require too much in the way of nuclear to destroy Israel.

And then of course, all their various proxies like the Republican Guards, the Houthis, the Hamas, Hezbollah, various various militias in Iraq and Syria and so on. Do you see a way of dealing with all of these separately or do they have to all be dealt with together?

>> James Mattis: Well, I think you have to do both.

You have to deal with them as a group, as a threat, a combined threat, but you also have to deal with each of the individual threats as you try to neuter them. I think that however you do this, it takes the widest possible international organization to do it again, Allies, allies, allies.

And the point I'm making is that if cyber is a threat, and I think it is, I would liken it to Iranians juggling light bulbs filled with nitroglycerin. They don't know what they're doing and one of these days they're gonna drop one and it's going to cause havoc somewhere and you're going to see many nations now having to deal with the outcome.

So you can't deal with something like that that sees no borders without having an international group associated against them. And this also involves the punishment of nations that support them, economic punishment, this sort of thing. As this threat grows, for example, the maritime threat that they are employing their Houthi proxies to carry out down in Yemen against the Red Sea route.

It's interesting that we have now identified the Russians as helping identify ships in order for the Houthis to target them. In other words, you see this connection again of Iran and Russia playing out there. So it's going to be something where Russia comes under even more sanctions, I think, as we continue to isolate them, and sanctions either get weaker or stronger, they never stay in a stable way.

So we're going to have to always be tightening the sanctions on those who support Iran. But do so intelligently, not with a Medax, but with a scalpel to make sure we're causing maximum damage with least harm to borderline states. To states that are not pro Iran, but have certain economic interests there because of the cheap oil, this sort of thing.

We've got to figure this out. And it's hard and it's complex, but it's gonna take an international consortium to blunt the five threats that you just outlined.

>> Andrew Roberts: There are several, as you call, wanna be axis of ill will states, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Belarus. And South Africa, could you see South Africa dripping into this, they obviously turned up to the BRICS meeting the other day rather than attend the Commonwealth meeting.

Might that they've been aggressive in the International Criminal Court against Israel. Do you think South Africa might go the wrong way, as it were?

>> James Mattis: Well, they can, I think for many of us who watch South Africa fight its way out of apartheid and the promise that we all saw there as Mandela and de Klerk worked together and what was starting there.

And then we've seen a lot of the wheels come off this effort, and then we see them making common cause with countries that offer in the short term, some advantages, whether it be investment or whatever. But in the long term, it's going to again be a disappointment for the people of South Africa when they see who they've gotten into bed with.

You can get social diseases from sleeping with those kinds of people. And I think what we're going to see there is that South Africa can be brought back from the precipice of falling in with them. But that too is going to take a number of countries working together to, number one, remove the opportunity for China simply to use economic might.

And enslaving the South Africans in a new form of colonialism with economic debt being piled on them that will force them to become again an economic colony of China. So it's gonna take a sustained effort. And I would just say that there's a number of countries who have sufficient connections there that we can build out on them.

I just can't believe the majority of South African people made aware of what they're signing up for, would find that in their best interest. But right now, the democracies are having a hard time to take their own side in many of these challenges, including in Africa as a whole, in South Africa in particular.

So it's going to take a sustained effort again and it's going to take people with a vision of where to take South Africa inside South Africa. That goes back to the image, the vision that Mandela had, when he saw a new South Africa emerging.

>> Andrew Roberts: You've said that the US Indian relationship is one of the most important in the modern times?

India, of course, is buying a lot of Russian oil. It hasn't denounced the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Tell us about what you think about the importance of India in all of this.

>> James Mattis: Well, I think India is of critical importance. In fact, one thing I think that America has done well going back to the Obama administration, the Trump administration, certainly the current administration, is the priority that's been placed on India.

There's a lot of quiet work going on between our countries economically, it's expanding militarily. In 2008, India bought zero American defense articles. That's up over $28 billion today to include some of the high-tech. And I think the Indian military, looking at the woeful performance of much of the Russian arms in the Ukraine war, recognize that this is not the way to make India strong.

But I think it's most important that we in the west recognize India is only two generations out from underneath colonialism and their willingness to subordinate their independence to a more international organization. For example, the way we have all done in the NATO nations. The appetite's not there for that.

We're going to have some strategic patience. For many years, we would not sell them weapons. So for quite some time they will continue to buy Russian engines for their MiGs. You don't live next door to Pakistan and China and think you can get by each day without a strong military.

So we're going to have to show some strategic understanding, some strategic patience. We're going to have to build it out economically, educationally, commercially. In other words, the relationship we have continue what started with the quad, for all the Chinese saying that that was going to disappear like sea foam, it has not.

And it's increasingly angered the people in Beijing, which says it must be something strong and work with India because it's in our best India interest that India have a strong economy. And right now they're getting Iranian and Russian oil very cheap, right? It's not a bad thing either that some of the anti-aircraft systems that India employs up in northern India near the line of control are provided to the Indians by Russia, and China cannot be happy with that.

And so this is a much more complex issue for a country only a couple generations out of colonialism. And there's a lot more in common between India and the United States. Naturally, it's a fit between the world's largest democracy and the world's oldest democracy. But we're going to have to show the patience and the strategic foresight to have it really accrue all the advantages for India and the United States and the free world that it can.

But it is the most important, I think relationship for America in the next 50 years will be how we develop it with India.

>> Andrew Roberts: At the time of the Korean War, America spent 16.9% of its GDP on defense. By the time of Vietnam that was down to 6.6%, in the Cold War, 6.8%.

1979 it was 4.9%, Iraq, Afghanistan, 4.7%. It's projected next year only to be 3%. Where should it be? What's the correct sort of level if the world is getting into a more dangerous state than ever before? Surely, 3% is too low for a massive international global superpower like America.

>> James Mattis: Well, I agree with you and let's do what we call worst case scenario. A war breaks out between the United States and China over Taiwan over some reason. Let just think of that nightmare that, that would be. If you think Covid was a blow to the world economy, that would be nursery school compared to a war between two nuclear armed superpowers, even if it doesn't go nuclear.

Especially when you look at the degree of collaboration with North Korea, Russia, and Iran. And the mischief each one of those might add to any kind of a war, because the opportunity presents with a distracted United States focused on the Western Pacific. So if you look at the budget today, you see Japan doubling its military budget.

You see what Sweden and Finland have done by joining NATO, Sweden was last in a military alliance in Napoleon's time. You see what nations are doing as they watch these pre-war activities by China and Russia and what they're doing with their budgets and their international relations. And then you find the United States has actually reduced its military budget when you take into account, you take into account inflation.

So is it enough? No, it is not enough. And at the same time, the dysfunctional US Congress nearly every year passes a continuing resolution which basically short stops, stops in effect, innovation, because you can't do anything new under the continuing resolutions. So when you get done, you've got too few dollars being spent in such an agonizing way that it's not taking into account the increasing peril of the international situation.

So it's not enough if you were to look at the cost of such a war, as I mentioned, if something was to break out between the US And China. And then look in your rearview mirror and say what would have happened if we had doubled the military budget?

It would look like chump change compared to the cost of a war. So I would be all for right now, intelligently and with the Congress providing oversight, a gross increase in our military budget with an expectation that would be matched by other democracies that see the threat in a similar light.

And the idea being that if we deter war, it would be the best possible investment in the world's economy and our own prosperity, back over to you.

>> Andrew Roberts: Well, you've also argued that the investment that America has made in Ukraine has been a good return on investment with regard to the amount of Russian armor that's been destroyed and so on.

And also that the United States in terms of GDP is actually only the 17th largest country to give help to Ukraine, although obviously it's a, it's been a massive amount of help and, and as much as the European Union virtually. So what do you see as the, as the future with regard to helping Ukraine?

Obviously, by the time this show goes out, we'll know who the next president is. But what's your sense?

>> James Mattis: Well, I noticed that when the pro Putin caucus in the House of Representatives stopped them for five months from providing aid and during that is the period during that time when Russia regains the offensive, tactical offensive.

That aid, when it was finally voted on, received well over 75% votes. I think it was even in the 80 percentile of congressmen and senators, congresswomen voting for it. Furthermore, a year before the Congress had voted zero money can be spent by the US military on any withdrawal from NATO.

In other words, you see in our very wonderfully imperfect form of government, you see the role of the Congress as actually being won in several different sectors of actually strengthening the American support for Ukraine. And the military budget to which the President submitted. Budget, they have added over $100 billion in the last four years.

Some of those years when the Democrats controlled, for example, the House of Representatives and certainly the Senate. So I think there's a strong support for Ukraine. In the midst of the chaos of our election, that issue has not received as much attention as it probably should for the reasons you brought up, that Ukraine is fighting the war against Russia that NATO never wanted to fight.

And so if we see the Congress and we see coming out of this election a continued stalwart America still protecting the idea of democracy in Europe by supporting the Ukrainians, then we'll be fine. Were the Americans to betray Ukraine? That will come back and cost us more economically, militarily, diplomatically, credibility wise in so many different ways that it's probably hard to fully calculate the cost downstream of something like that.

>> Andrew Roberts: This is essentially what Condi Rice means when she says that credibility is not divisible, isn't it?

>> James Mattis: Exactly, you can't say that you're reliable in this arena, but you're not reliable in that arena. All it does is create a sense of unreliability across all arenas if you don't live up to your word.

>> Andrew Roberts: Now, you served 712 days as Secretary of Defense, during which you set up the first defense strategy in a decade. You gained bipartisan support for a budget and to implement it. You confused America's adversaries with unpredictable deployment schedules and you increased the destruction of the ISIS caliphate and you reassured allies.

Not bad for two years work. Jim, when you look back on that time, how do you feel?

>> James Mattis: Well, of course it was heavily dependent on allies, allies at home in the Congress. I did receive 98 to 1 on my confirmation so at a time of polarization, you could see that Congress had a sense that defense was a bipartisan or nonpartisan issue.

And you carry that idea more broadly because we wrote the strategy with every Republican and Democrat Senator and Congressman, Congresswoman willing to give me input. We didn't write it all in, we went back to some and said, here's why some of it's not going in. But also the NATO nations helped us on it, Japan, Korea.

And I would just tell you that in a very partisan time today, basically the Biden administration has embraced the same great power competition strategy. There's some rhetorical changes to it, but really, it's the same strategy. And so I think what you have is, if you put a strategy together and that strategy is drawn broadly in a democracy, it needs to be.

And then you use strategic sense, such as Colin Gray and others have taught us over the years, the great strategists. You can actually gain support for bigger budgets, as we did, and you can gain support across the body politic, not just in America, but across NATO and across our allies, for unity of action.

And it's out of unity of act, remember, in World War II, the Nazis idea of how to break the allies was divide and conquer. And our response was in unity, there is strength. In other words, stick together. Now we didn't share all of Joe Stalin's views of the world and politics.

But we were able to work together in order to ensure the survival of our way of life, of our Constitution in the United States, which all of our troops swear an oath to uphold and defend. And so there's a way to do this strategically, but we're going to have to adapt to this nexus that we see forming.

And deal with the reality that we are under attack right now by these countries and by those who wish us ill.

>> Andrew Roberts: What book are you reading? What history book or biography have you got on your bedside table at the moment, Jim?

>> James Mattis: Yeah, I'm rereading Grant, the Chernow book, right now, on Grant.

It's so good, it's so rich, and frankly, it's so lens-changing that I'm rereading it as I look at how Grant helped put a society back together. And you know why I would be very focused on his time as president and what he did after the Civil War. And by the way, it's something you find in Mannerheim in Finland, Mandela in South Africa, in Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s in the US.

It's an accountability and forgiveness that you see in play there. But right now I'm also reading a history book, it's called Once Upon a Distant War, by Prochnau. And it actually explains how the lies got us into the Vietnam situation. It actually takes it apart and shows what happened in the early 1960s that gave us that tragedy that tore America apart later.

So it's been quite an eye-opening book, tell you the truth.

>> Andrew Roberts: And your what if, what about that? What's your favorite what if book? Your what if of history.

>> James Mattis: Yeah, for any military guy, at least in the America, you've got to look at what would have happened if Lee won at Gettysburg.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes.

>> James Mattis: I mean, you always have to-.

>> Andrew Roberts: I don't think you're the first of my guests to have considered this one, yeah, absolutely.

>> James Mattis: Yeah.

>> James Mattis: But also I'm thinking-

>> Andrew Roberts: But tell me what would have happened if Lee had won at Gettysburg, in your view?

>> James Mattis: Well, I think that the Union army would have fallen back on Washington DC, which had a strong additional army there. But also the army in the West, you'll remember, at that very point, is winning at Vicksburg and breaking the Confederacy there along the river. And so I think it would have lengthened the war by at least 18 months, but I think the outcome would still have been the same.

>> Andrew Roberts: Fantastic, thank you very much indeed. One last question, a personal one here. Objectively speaking, speaking as a historian, you have the best nickname in the world, and yet you don't seem to like it. I'm talking about, not Warrior Monk, you're not a warrior monk any longer. But Mad Dog, they never call historians Mad Dog.

Why do you not like being called this extraordinarily impressive nickname?

>> James Mattis: Yeah, even my troops laughed about it, because they all knew my call sign was Chaos, yeah.

>> Andrew Roberts: By the way, that is fabulous as well. And your superb autobiography, Call Sign Chaos, that's the coolest name for any autobiography one can think of.

But why don't you like Mad Dog? I mean, that's something everybody would love to be called.

>> James Mattis: It's for a sobering reason, I still, obviously, see gold star families, the families who lost their boys in the fight. And the last thing I think they need is to think the general who was in charge was some frothing at the mouth guy who just wanted to fight, they lost.

They gave, as General Marshall put it, on the altar of our country, their own sons. And I don't want them to think that there was just some thoughtless mad dog, get in and fight kind of thing. I want them to know I cared as much about their son as they did, and I just did it, for that reason alone that I shy away from it.

>> Andrew Roberts: Anybody who's been listening for the last 50 minutes or so, Jim, will realize that you are the exact opposite of that kind of thoughtless person. Jim Mattis, 11th Commander of US Central Command, 26th United States Secretary of Defense, thank you very much indeed for appearing on Secrets of Statecraft.

>> James Mattis: Thank you, sir Andrew, it's an honor.

>> Andrew Roberts: Thank you.

>> Andrew Roberts: On the next episode of Secrets of Statecraft, I'll be talking to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is an activist, author, and one of the most outspoken advocates for free speech in the world.

>> Presenter: This podcast is a production of the Hoover Institution, where we advance ideas that define a free society and improve the human condition.

For more information about our work, or to listen to more of our podcasts or watch our videos, please visit hoover.org.