David A. Andelman

America’s new secretary of Defense nominee has an apparently quite divergent — and more realistic — sense of the world than either President-elect Donald Trump or even, in some respects, the new nominee for national security adviser, retired Army lieutenant general Michael Flynn. Trump must bring himself to tap these resources before impulse and emotions send the nation off the rails, perhaps irrevocably.

Retired Marine general James Mattis sees Russian President Vladimir Putin not through rose-colored glasses but as the autocrat that he is. Mattis recognizes the value of our Iran nuclear treaty and rather than ripping it up, he'd prefer to make sure it’s enforced to the hilt. He’s also a genuine fan of NATO and believes in force with reason in the Middle East (not just the Trump doctrine of “bomb the s---" out of the Islamic State terror group), but he wants an even more muscular U.S. military to back the rhetoric. Mattis also apparently already talked Trump down off the crazy ledge of waterboarding as an interrogation technique, believing instead in the value of a “pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers.”

It will be interesting to see whether Mattis emerges as the lone voice of reason in a Trump wilderness that’s looking increasingly scary to Washington, Asia and especially to Europe, where a right-wing Putin-friendly populism seems to be spreading all but unchecked. Moreover, there’s still so much that’s unknown about either of the two retired generals who right now are atop America’s national security pyramid and how they may be used in crises, or in just day-to-day phone calls or tweets.

Most recently, there’s China — or more precisely, Taiwan. Let's hope Trump never consulted Flynn or Mattis before taking that perhaps fateful call from Taiwan's president that could push America and Asia further down a path toward conflict that Mattis could be left in the end to sort out.

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China's brilliant foreign minister, Wang Yi, quite wisely cut Trump some slack — this one time — laying the blame for the first direct conversation between a U.S. and Taiwanese president or president-elect in 37 years squarely on Taiwan’s new leader, Tsai Ing-Wen. But the learning curve is pretty short and steep. Trump must learn to consult with someone wiser than he is in the world of war and diplomacy. The stakes are enormous.

Fortunately, in Mattis, there’s an individual who is at once deeply experienced and eminently schooled. Much of this has been sadly lacking in Trump Tower. Unlike Trump, who is not known to have read any book recently, even one with his name on the cover, Mattis has accumulated a library of more than 7,000 titles that, in the absence of a family to transport, he has hauled around the world for years to various outposts where he served in the Marines. He has even co-authored The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, masterful in its field, with then-Gen. David Petraeus, considered a potential finalist with Mitt Romney for secretary of State.

Any number of U.S. presidents have used their generals and secretaries of Defense to make their political cases for battles they needed to fight. President George W. Bush told Petraeus to make the case for the 2007 surge in Iraq that broke the back of that nation’s insurgency, which he did most effectively. President Obama let his generals make the case for a continued presence alongside NATO in Afghanistan.

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Hopefully, Trump will follow suit, listening to the wisest voices around him, rather than forming a foreign policy like that of North Korea’s child dictator Kim Jong Il with a military and foreign policy that rests entirely in his personal whim. The president-elect has had no shortage of smart visitors in recent days — Henry Kissinger then more recently Robert Gates, Defense secretary under Obama and Bush, but both without any proper slots in the Trump administration.

The question is how broadly real wisdom might exist in the Trump administration. Mattis has expressed deep wariness of Russia's intentions, saying it wants "to break NATO apart," while Flynn has reveled in his proximity to the Kremlin leader, seated next to him at a Kremlin banquet.

If Trump had indeed planned to send a message of a deliberate and strategic pivot to India by taking a call with the prime minister of its neighbor and arch foe Pakistan, or to Beijing in Friday’s call with Taiwan, then each should have been preceded by other moves to lay the groundwork so his calls won't be misinterpreted.

Presidential transitions have often been used to test us by friends and foes alike. Trump would be wise not to make more foreign moves without consulting experienced hands like Mattis, or his eventual secretary of State.

David A. Andelman, a member of the USA TODAY Board of Contributors, is editor-emeritus of World Policy Journal and author ofA Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and The Price We Pay Today. Follow him on Twitter @DavidAndelman.

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