Opinion | With James Mattis’ resignation, what now for US-China military ties?
- Defence secretary seen as a symbol of continuity by America’s Asian allies and his departure could lead to turbulence in region, says Ankit Panda
- A new defence chief who shares Donald Trump’s mistrust of China might usher in a more dangerous period
US President Donald Trump’s first appointed secretary of defence, James Mattis, has resigned. Despite the president’s claim on Twitter that Mattis was retiring, his resignation letter makes clear that his departure is effectively one borne of long-term ideological disagreements with Trump and his “America first” foreign policy agenda.
The proximal cause, while not stated by Mattis himself, appears to be the Trump’s sudden decision to withdraw US forces from Syria. That decision may also be accompanied by a similar drawdown order for US troops in Afghanistan, where Trump initiated a moderate surge after an August 2017 policy announcement.
In Asia, Mattis’ departure will be met with trepidation – particularly among states partnered and allied with the United States. For many of these countries, the defence secretary was seen as a symbol of continuity in American foreign policy. Whatever Trump might have tweeted or uttered during summits, Mattis’ stewardship of the massive US defence bureaucracy would result in predictability.
During several trips to US-allied and partnered states since Trump’s inauguration, I even heard half-joking comments from analysts who confessed they prayed for Mattis’ health every night. Whatever Mattis might have done in practice – and he did work to implement uniquely Trumpian policies, like a ban on transgender personnel and the deployment of troops to the US-Mexico border – he was seen in Asia as a marker of continued allied commitment.
At the two most recent Shangri-La Dialogues in Singapore, both of which Mattis attended, I was struck by how several attendees took comfort in his use of familiar phrasings of American policy. Each year, Mattis spoke as a “normal” US secretary of defence might, pledging his commitment to a rules-based order, freedom of navigation, and US allies. All of this was naturally in tension with Trump’s own strongly held beliefs about the nature of US alliances as effective protection rackets designed to take advantage of the United States.
Perhaps the comfort Mattis gave US allies was a defence mechanism of sorts to rationalise the fundamental chaos that Trump represented as the president, but the view of Mattis as a bulwark was not entirely wrong.
In his resignation letter, Mattis goes to lengths to underline his strongly held belief in the importance of US alliances. In Asia, in particular, these represent a massive asymmetric advantage for the United States vis-à-vis a rising China. Mattis’ concerns suggest Trump does not share this view. That has been a well-known fact from the president’s rhetoric, dating back at least to the Republican primaries in early 2016.