Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is on tour promoting his book Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead, and while he wants to talk about what he learned leading troops in combat, all interviewers want to know about is his experience working for President Trump.
Trump, who has a well-known aversion to heavy reading, is not likely to crack the Mattis book, but in an interview with the Washington Examiner, Mattis says anyone who does might pick up a few hints on how to be a better leader.
Asked if he would recommend his book to the commander in chief, Mattis avoided answering directly.
“I am not giving political advice right now,” he told the Washington Examiner. “As far as do I want him to read the book? Well, I think anybody who’s in a leadership position that wants to see what worked for me can read the book and then see if any of it matches their challenges.”
Mattis, who has always been a voracious reader, boasts a personal library of 7,000 books and preaches: “If you don’t read, you can’t lead.”
He says even the most ancient history holds lessons for modern warfare and that he almost always uses knowledge of the past to inform his decisions.
“Human nature doesn’t change that much, and much of war is reliant on the human factor,” said Mattis. “Technology changes, tactics change, but going into someone else’s country and expecting certain outcomes, that’s probably not consistent with what history tells you invading armies generally find.”
“Now I’m not saying history tells you what to do, but it at least tells you what to question,” Mattis continued, citing what he said was the failure of post-conflict planning in the 2003 Iraq invasion. “I think that when you look at what happened to the British when they went into Iraq in the 1920s, if you studied the uprising there, you can use history to ask the right questions.”
In his book, Mattis has a sub-chapter titled “READ, READ, READ” in which he writes, “We have been fighting on this planet for ten thousand years; it would be idiotic and unethical to not take advantage of such accumulated experiences.”
“Any commander who claims he is ‘too busy to read’ is going to fill body bags with his troops as he learns the hard way.”
But as he has in every interview he’s given, Mattis avoided criticizing president Trump’s very different leadership style, which relies more on his gut instincts than a deep study of history.
“Everyone has to lead in their own way,” Mattis said. “I’m just saying this is what worked for me. I’m not arrogant about it and saying this was the right way for everyone to go.”
[Related: ‘I’m going to frustrate you here’: Mattis refuses to bad-mouth Trump during MSNBC interview]
