Tag: James Mattis

Yes Trump’s personal diplomacy may not have led to any long term solutions for the North Korea problem, but neither has any of his predecessors plans lead to anything either:

Donald Trump’s unconventional summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in 2018 and 2019 produced nothing, former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said at a forum here Friday.

The United States under Trump’s presidency was “not traditional for what America’s role has been in the world,” the retired Marine general and former head of Central Command said at a gathering hosted by the Seoul Forum for International Affairs, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Korea Society in Seoul.

The two nations were threatening war in 2017, but Kim and Trump emerged friends from their 2018 summit in Singapore, trading “love letters” afterwards. The two met again the following year in Hanoi, Vietnam, and at the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea.

Trump hailed the meetings as momentous developments, but foreign policy experts widely criticized them for failing to produce any agreements between the two countries.

“As far as what came out of it, I would say nothing,” Mattis said of the summits. “I saw nothing that came out of it.”

In 2020, North Korea resumed missile tests and its bellicose statements aimed at the U.S. and South Korea. North Korea has so far this year launched 17 rounds of missile tests, a one-year record.

“President Trump was an unusual leader” who believed in “personal diplomacy,” Mattis said.

“He was convinced that he could work something out with Kim — I was not optimistic,” he added. “My job was to make certain I did everything I could to stand by the [South Korean] Ministry of Defense and make certain the U.S. military … ties were absolutely at the top of their game to ensure that we were buying the time to safely engage in that summit.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

It great to see that the Joong Ang Ilbo is sponsoring this award in honor of the late ROK General Paik Sun-yup:

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis received the 8th Paik Sun-yup ROK-U.S. Alliance Award in a ceremony Tuesday in Washington for his contributions to bilateral relations and the security of the Korean Peninsula.  
   
Korean Ambassador to the United States Lee Soo-hyuk presented the award and medal to Mattis, a retired Marine Corps four-star general who served as Pentagon chief from January 2017 to January 2019, on behalf of Defense Minister Suh Wook at the U.S. Embassy in Washington.  
   
The JoongAng Ilbo is a sponsor of the award, named after the famed Korean general critical in establishing the early military ties between the allies.  
   
The Korean Defense Ministry said that Mattis was selected for the award in recognition of his stable leadership during a period of crisis on the peninsula in 2017, helping lay the foundations for the pursuit of diplomatic talks. He also helped create a blueprint for how the alliance would operate following the transition of wartime operation control (Opcon) from the United States to Korea.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Here is an analysis piece in the Stars & Stripes about what the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis means for the US-ROK alliance:

Mattis didn’t mention South Korea, but his departure will deprive officials in Seoul of somebody they considered a voice of reason in the Trump administration. It also comes as the president’s surprise decision on Syria earlier this week underscored the unpredictability of U.S. foreign policy.
“It’s certainly going to cause concern, I think, in South Korea,” said Jenny Town, a Korea specialist at the Washington, D.C.-based Stimson Center. “Mattis is one of the few people they looked to for direction and reason in an administration where it has been often difficult to decipher what our policy is and where our relationship is going.”

She noted that Trump has said he may be willing to pull troops out of South Korea to save money.
“It’s hard to see where this goes until we have a better sense of who’s coming next, but it’s also hard to see that this move is going to improve relations both with our friends or our adversaries at this point,” Town said.

[Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but trying to equate withdrawing troops from Syria with withdrawing USFK is quite a stretch as speculated on later in the article. The US has treaty obligations with South Korea that cannot cause a quick troops withdrawal like what is expected in Syria.

Something that could lead to a partial US troop withdrawal in South Korea it is the ongoing US-ROK cost sharing negotiations. Another possibility to save money as well as send a message to North Korea if denuclearization talks are not going well, is restricting US military dependents from South Korea:

The friction escalated in January when Trump ordered Mattis to end the practice of allowing the family members of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea to accompany them during their deployments. But Mattis, with the assistance of chief of staff John Kelly, put off implementing the directive, say one defense official and one former administration official, angering Trump.
Trump repeatedly said he wanted to sign an order changing the policy on military dependents in South Korea, but Mattis and other officials, including Kelly, tried to stall him, according to three former officials. “It was kind of like a game of tag. There were plenty of other people, in addition to Mattis, who slow-walked that,” the former official said. The order was never implemented.
“He knows that he told them to do it and they didn’t do it,” another former senior White House official said.

NBC News via a reader tip

I guess we will see how all of this plays out over the next year.

When asked which country poses the most serious threat, China, Russia, Iran or North Korea, Mattis says: "in terms of URGENCY, North Korea is the problem." #RNDF2018

— Lara Seligman (@laraseligman) December 1, 2018

Hopefully “progress” with North Korea’s denuclearization doesn’t reach a point where Secretary Mattis has to become the one to make it happen:

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said there is progress on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, although it remains a difficult issue.

Mattis told reporters traveling with him to Vietnam Monday that the efforts to denuclearize North Korea continue to be diplomatically-led.

He cited U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent trip to Pyongyang, where the top American diplomat met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to push progress on denuclearization and plan a second summit between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump.

“There is progress,” Mattis said. “We know it’s going to be difficult as they deal with this difficult issue. No surprise there.”  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but this was a pretty vanilla statement about the “progress” being made.

Secretary Mattis has been extremely apolitical which in today’s partisan political environment is an extreme rarity:

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said President Donald Trump has reassured him of his full support after the Republican president described his Pentagon chief as “sort of a Democrat” who could leave the administration.

Mattis, speaking to reporters before landing in Vietnam on Tuesday, said he received the reassurance from Trump in a phone call during his nearly 20-hour flight from Washington.

“(Trump) said, ‘I’m 100 percent with you’,” Mattis recounted, playing down Trump’s remarks to CBS’ “60 Minutes,” which aired on Sunday.

Asked whether he was a Democrat, as Trump suggested, Mattis, disclosed that he had not registered as a Democrat or a Republican.

“I have never registered for any political party,” said Mattis, a retired Marine general.

Mattis sought to portray national defense as an issue above partisan politics. He also pointed to a long military career that taught him to act in a “proudly apolitical” manner, in which U.S. servicemembers carry out orders from Republican and Democratic presidents alike.

Mattis said he did not talk to Trump about leaving his job and dismissed speculation he was being pushed out.

“I’m on his team. We have never talked about me leaving. And as you can see right here, we are on our way (to Asia). We just continue doing our job,” Mattis said.  [Reuters]

You can read more at the link, but I hope Secretary Mattis gets to stay at the Pentagon for as long as possible.

I can only imagine what the bill the Kim regime would demand the US pay to search for war remains within North Korea:

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis acknowledged Friday the Pentagon could send military teams into North Korea to search for the remains.

Pentagon officials previously said North Korea had already excavated about 200 sets of remains of fallen American soldiers. North Korea experts suggested that the regime would want compensation for recovering the remains, which in turn could jeopardize the U.S.-led economic sanctions on North Korea.

After vowing to continue putting ‘maximum pressure’ on the North until it is fully denuclearized, the Trump administration now faces a dilemma as it may have to make a deal with North Korea to continue the excavation work without appearing to make compromises.
Kim Bum-soo, KBS World Radio News.  [KBS World Radio]

Here is the latest on the future of USFK according to Defense Secretary Mattis:

U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis says the fate of U.S. Forces Korea is not an issue to discuss with North Korea.

Mattis, who is attending the Asia Security Summit in Singapore, said the issue is not on the table for the North Korea-U.S., nor should it be.

He also vowed efforts to achieve complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization(CVID) of the Korean Peninsula.

During a speech at the security summit on Saturday, he said the U.S. will support unrelenting diplomatic efforts for this aim.

South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo also spoke at the summit and said the South will not pursue North Korea’s collapse or Korean unification through absorption or any artificial means, and vowed to gradually ease inter-Korean military tensions.   [KBS World News]

You can read more at the link.

The defense ministers of South Korea and the United States are shown in this picture, provided by Seoul’s defense ministry, on Jan. 27, 2018, walking to the venue for a summit, in the U.S. Pacific Command in Honolulu, Hawaii. (Yonhap)

This Kind of War by T. R. Fehrenbach: The book Jim Mattis recommends as US faces threat of conflict with N. Korea https://t.co/uFJB6Qj3PI

— Dr. Mark P. Barry (@DrMarkPBarry) December 25, 2017