Jim Mattis has resigned as US defence secretary to protest against the way Donald Trump has treated allies and dealt with adversaries such as China and Russia, in a dramatic exit that came a day after the president said he would withdraw forces from Syria.
Mr Trump wrote on Twitter on Thursday that Mr Mattis would be “retiring”. But in a resignation letter, Mr Mattis made clear he was leaving because he disagreed with the commander-in-chief over a wide range of policies and suggested that the president was putting the nation at risk. Mr Mattis and other officials opposed the withdrawal of troops from Syria.
“Because you have the right to have a secretary of defence whose views are better aligned with yours . . . I believe it is right for me to step down from my position,” Mr Mattis wrote in the letter, which was released shortly after a meeting with Mr Trump.
In the letter, Mr Mattis said US strength was “inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships”. He said the US should be “resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours”, including China and Russia.
While many other senior Trump administration officials have resigned — or been fired — Mr Mattis is the first to write such a critical letter as he prepares to depart the Pentagon in February.
Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democratic senator who spoke with Mr Mattis on Thursday morning, told CNN that the Syria decision had been “the straw that broke the camel’s back”.
The resignation came as reports circulated that Mr Trump was considering following his move on Syria by withdrawing 7,000 troops from Afghanistan. Sarah Sanders, White House press secretary, declined to comment “on future strategic developments”.
In the 24 hours since Mr Trump announced his Syria plans, he has come under heavy fire from Republicans, with one senator calling his claim that Isis had been defeated “fake news”.
William Cohen, a friend of Mr Mattis who was secretary of defence in the Clinton administration, said Mr Mattis was “distraught” about the Syria decision. “He felt this is a betrayal of our allies . . . who have supported this battle against Isis. He was concerned about our credibility,” said Mr Cohen, who spoke to Mr Mattis on Wednesday.
The move to withdraw troops from Syria, which was opposed by most top officials, suggested Mr Trump was not listening to Mr Mattis, a retired four-star Marine general who has more than four decades of military experience and was respected around the world.
In a sign Mr Trump had been distancing himself from his defence secretary, he ignored a recommendation from Mr Mattis in choosing General Mark Milley, chief of staff of the army, to succeed General Joe Dunford as chairman of the joint chiefs in September.
James Stavridis, a former Supreme Allied Commander of Nato, said he was “deeply worried” about the exit of Mr Mattis who had tried his best to “inject some measure of reality and experience into a White House that is clearly in complete dysfunction”.
Mr Stavridis said he hoped Mr Trump would replace Mr Mattis with an experienced person who the president would listen to, but said “every indication would tell us that he will continue to swing for the fences [and] follow his gut and that path may lead us into very dangerous waters”. He said the “big winners” from the Mattis departure were Russia, Iran, Syria, and North Korea, “all of our opponents”.
The departure of Mr Mattis came a week after Mr Trump revealed that John Kelly, another retired Marine general, would leave his position as White House chief of staff.
It follows the departure this year of Rex Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil chief executive, who was secretary of state until Mr Trump grew tired of the Texan.
Mr Mattis and Mr Tillerson were frequently referred to as the “adults” in the Trump administration. They frequently found themselves reassuring US allies that the president’s comments and tweets about allies did not mean that the US was abandoning its friends around the world.
Bob Corker, the Republican head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, last year said Mr Mattis was a critical pillar in an otherwise dysfunctional administration.
“Secretary Tillerson, Secretary Mattis and Chief of Staff Kelly are those people that help separate our country from chaos,” said Mr Corker, who called the White House an “adult day-care centre” because of Mr Trump’ actions.
The resignation adds to the long list of departures. After less than two years, Mr Trump is on his third national security adviser, second secretary of state and soon will have a third chief of staff. He also recently fired Jeff Sessions as US attorney-general.
When Mr Mattis was interviewed by Mr Trump for the Pentagon position, he made clear to the president that he disagreed with the critical comments that he made about allies.
Over the past two years Mr Trump largely toned down the kind of criticism of allies that was common during the presidential race. But he has on occasions angered allies with his outbursts about nations, including Germany, France, Japan and South Korea.
Mr Trump has also continued to vent privately to friends and advisers about why the US needs to maintain so many troops in Japan and on the Korean peninsula — which has greatly worried allies who see them as a bulwark against China and North Korea.
At the annual Nato summit in Brussels this summer, Mr Trump stunned the other leaders by castigating Chancellor Angela Merkel over Germany’s contributions to the transatlantic security alliance. US allies were particularly angry at his attacks on Nato since they came days before he met Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.
At the summit with Mr Putin, Mr Trump shocked his intelligence officials by appearing to accept the denial by the Russian president that the Kremlin did not interfere in the US election. The US intelligence community is unanimous that Russia did interfere.
The decision to remove troops from Syria — and signs of a similar move in Afghanistan — marks another step towards Mr Trump’s implementation of the isolationist policy that was central to his presidential campaign and a central part of his inauguration speech.
Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican senator, expressed “great sadness” about Mr Mattis, and described him as a “role model for the concept of duty, honour, country”. He called on Mr Trump to reassess his decision to remove troops from Syria.
Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican senator, said Mr Mattis had made it “abundantly clear that we are headed towards a series of grave policy errors which will endanger our nation, damage our alliances and empower our adversaries”.
Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the news about the departure was “scary”.
Speaking on CNN, Leon Panetta, defence secretary during the Obama administration, said the departure raised serious alarm bells.
“This country is going through a steady diet of chaos and crisis . . . that I think puts our nation at risk,” Mr Panetta, a former CIA director, said.
The resignation adds to the turbulence in Washington just before the end-of-year holiday season. Mr Trump is threatening to shut down the federal government from midnight Friday unless Congress provides $5bn to pay for the wall on the US-Mexico border that he pledged to build during the 2016 presidential race.
Mr Trump is facing widespread criticism from Republican lawmakers and military allies over his Syria decision. While the president tweeted on Wednesday that US troops had “defeated Isis in Syria”, critics said his decision would leave the region open to a resurgence of Isis, the terrorist group, while emboldening Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and giving US adversaries Iran and Russia greater influence in the region.
A military withdrawal not only breaks with existing US policy on Syria, but contradicts the position of a host of Mr Trump’s closest advisers. Three months ago John Bolton, US national security adviser, said US troops would ensure that Iranian forces left Syria.
On Monday Jim Jeffrey, US envoy to Syria, stressed the US commitment to maintain forces in the region. Last week Brett McGurk, a top state department official, said that although the “end of the physical caliphate” was in sight, “nobody is declaring a mission accomplished”. On Wednesday, however, Mr Trump did exactly that.
On Twitter, Mr Trump thanked Mr Mattis and said he would soon name a replacement.
Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, thanked Mr Mattis, saying he had “contributed much to the deterrent power of the US-Japan relationship and to the stability of the Indo-Pacific region”.
