Ivo Daalder is president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, which hosts the Chicago Forum on Global Cities on June 7-9.

James Lindsay is senior vice president at the Council of Foreign Relations. They are coauthors of The Empty Throne: America’s Abdication of Global Leadership.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’ resignation marks the end of a storied career. It also signals the end of a powerful myth in Washington—that a team of national security advisers could form a so-called “axis of adults” that would persuade a president deeply hostile to the U.S.-led world order to embrace the importance of American global leadership.

Mattis was just one of the advisers official Washington hoped would rein in an impetuous and inexperienced president. He was joined by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, national security adviser H.R. McMaster and National Economic Council director Gary Cohn.


The four were in a way surprise picks for Donald Trump’s foreign policy team. None had advised his presidential campaign and none had much experience working in Washington. Mattis and McMaster had spent most of their careers in command positions rather than in the Pentagon, while Tillerson and Cohn had made their names and fortunes in business.

Just as surprising, none of them had embraced the America First ideas Trump had expounded on the campaign trail. They instead all held mainstream views on foreign policy. They believed in the importance of American leadership in the world—and what it could accomplish. They stressed the value of alliances, the importance of diplomacy, the benefits of free trade and the need to find common ground with others.

So their appointments drew cheers from the traditional foreign policy elites who had worried about Trump’s views and inexperience. “I could not imagine a better, more capable national security team than the one we have right now,” Sen. John McCain, a frequent Trump critic, said in early 2017. This team knew the complexities of global affairs and understood the risks of disrupting seven decades of American foreign policy. They would steer Trump onto a more conventional course, or so the conventional thinking went.

That expectation always rested on two questionable premises: that presidents change their views easily and that advisers matter more than the man they are advising. But early on it seemed true. When Syria launched chemical weapons attacks against rebels in April 2017, the Trump White House followed a textbook process in determining whether and how to retaliate. David Ignatius, the dean of Washington foreign policy commentators, concluded, “Trump is making gains because he has assembled a competent national security team—and listens to its advice.”

Trump’s decision four months later to send additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan reinforced the belief that his advisers held the reins. Trump seemingly admitted as much when he announced the troop increase, saying, “My original instinct was to pull out—and, historically, I like following my gut.” He had changed his mind because of meetings with “my Cabinet and generals.”

But by that point, the ability of Mattis and his like-minded colleagues to persuade Trump to abandon his instincts was already fading. The Afghan troop increase came only after Trump railed at his generals for wanting to do more in Afghanistan, leaving Mattis visibly upset after one meeting. Worried by Trump’s poor grasp of global politics, Mattis held a now-famous briefing for the president in July 2017 on why America played an outsized role in the world. With charts and maps, the briefers patiently explained how alliances and trade deals actually benefited the United States. Trump’s response was short and to the point: “This is exactly what I don’t want.”

What Trump wanted was what he had promised on the campaign trail—for the United States to pursue its narrow self-interest, not mutual interests. He saw allies as free riders who used terrible trade deals to steal American jobs that had produced an “American carnage.” He wanted to turn the table. He wouldn’t look to lead other countries but to beat them. And if forced to choose between the policies he preferred and what his advisers offered, he would stick with his gut.

Cohn was the first to go, resigning in March 2018 after Trump rejected his recommendation not to impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, even from allies, which Trump insisted posed a threat to national security. Tillerson followed him out the door a week later, fired because he had called for continuity when Trump demanded change. By the end of the month, McMaster was gone as well, a victim of his hawkish stances on Afghanistan and Syria and for saying publicly that the evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election was “incontrovertible.”

Now Mattis has joined his other colleagues out the door. The immediate reason was Trump’s decisions to pull U.S. troops out of Syria and halve the number of U.S. forces deployed in Afghanistan, both over the loud objections of his secretary of Defense.

Mattis’ resignation letter didn’t mention those decisions but instead outlined his deep disagreement with Trump’s America First worldview. His four decades of military service had taught him “that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships.” The clear implication was that Trump’s instincts wouldn’t “advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values.”

But as Mattis acknowledged in his resignation letter, presidents have the right to have advisers who share their worldview. If Trump holds to form, he will look for a new secretary of Defense who sees the job as turning his preferences into policy rather acting as a guardrail on his impulses. The locus of power in the administration swung to pro-tariff forces in the wake of Cohn’s departure, and neither Secretary of State Mike Pompeo nor national security adviser John Bolton sees their job as correcting Trump’s hostility to America’s allies or his frequent embrace of America’s adversaries.

The consequences of Mattis’ departure will be significant and lasting. By dint of his demeanor and experience, he provided assurance to friends and allies around the world that regardless of what the president said or tweeted, American foreign policy had not changed. Mattis’ resignation, however, was an admission that it has.

Donald Trump campaigned on the promise to do different things in foreign policy and to do them differently. He now has a team of advisers who will enable him to do just that.

