Firing Line

Navigating the fog of war, this week on Firing Line.

You have a very well-armed regime that is fighting a total war right now.

Total war.

We're fighting a limited war.

I think it would be very unlikely that this regime would break right now.

General James Mattis commanded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, retired as a four-star Marine general, and served as President Trump's first defense secretary.

>> He is the real deal.

He is the real deal.

Thank you, Jim.

>> During the Iranian revolution in 1979, he was deployed to the region and has been reckoning with the threat posed by Iran ever since.

>> They are toast and they know it.

Or at least soon enough, they will know it.

>> The big thing we're missing is humility.

Humility allows you to proceed confidently, knowing that you have a plan that matches strength against weakness, as opposed to the delusion that ego brings, which is complete ignorance of your vulnerabilities and weaknesses.

>> Ryan Holiday is a bestselling author and is frequently cited by General Mattis for connecting the ancient philosophy of Stoicism to contemporary challenges.

We brought them together on a stage at the Hoover Institution as a new war unfolds in the Middle East.

What do General James Mattis and Ryan Holiday say now?

Firing Line with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by... And by the following.

- General Jim Mattis, Ryan Holiday, welcome to this special taping of Firing Line at the Hoover Institution, where General Mattis, you serve as a senior fellow, and I am privileged to serve on the Board of Overseers.

It is especially meaningful to have you here now, General Mattis, as somebody who spent 40 years in the military studying Iran, and Ryan as someone who thinks deeply and writes frequently about the relationships between leaders and the people they lead.

General Mattis, you first dealt with Iran in 1979 when you were stationed in the Indian Ocean during the hostage crisis at the U.S.

Embassy in Tehran.

What have you learned about the enemy that America is now fighting?

Well, first of all, the Iran regime that we are fighting, we are not fighting the Iranian people.

Eighty, ninety percent of them would get rid of that regime just as fast or faster than we would.

And you'd have to go a long way to find someone who dislikes that regime more than me because I was stationed at the Naval Academy Prep School in the early 80s and I had to do seven of the next of kin notifications to moms and dads in Rhode Island whose sons were killed in the Marine Peacekeeper Barrack when the French paratroopers and the Marines were attacked there in that bombing.

And that was done directly at the behest and direction of the Iranian regime.

And it starts there.

They declared war on us through their proxies and they have been at war with us ever since.

So you probably could never make a charge that this is an illegal war that we are conducting right now because I can give you the murderous attacks that go over decades that they have conducted not just against the Americans but against Israelis, against Arabs, I mean the list is very very long and there is probably no end to their hostility with that regime in charge.

We have seen one administration after another try to find what I call the the fruitless pursuit of the Iranian moderate somewhere in that regime and we haven't found him yet, okay?

It doesn't exist.

This is a regime, like if the CIA is analyzing the regime, to show you how we learn about them, they have a list of what are the indicators of an autocrat staying in power.

There's over 70 indicators and they look at all these things.

One of them, one of those indicators outweighs all the rest.

Will the regime murder their own people at the industrial level?

If they will, they're going to stay in power.

You have an unarmed population up against a very well-armed regime that is fighting a total war right now, total war.

We're fighting a limited war.

The American president a week ago called it a little excursion.

But they are fighting for their lives, the mullahs are, because the people probably will kill them if they overthrow them.

They're just that angry at them.

So they're fighting like that.

What have we learned from it?

It's going to be a darn difficult problem, a darn difficult problem.

I hope we learned it.

Newly reported assessments suggest that the Iranian regime is not budging.

They are not, quote unquote, not cracking, and they are willing to fight to the end.

Is it your understanding, based on what you know of the Iranian regime, that it is, it seems plausible that their will is unbroken?

>> I think it would be very unlikely that this regime would break right now.

But like Hemingway's point about how a man went broke gradually and then suddenly.

>> And all at once.

>> You know, it is a very fragile regime in terms of its grip, but it's strong enough with its murder and all.

They've told, for example, they've told the Iranian parents, don't let your sons and daughters demonstrate, because we will shoot them.

We will go after them.

So no, they're not going to go away anywhere.

Right now, I would not think that they're going to break.

>> So you've summarized one of your leadership techniques, and especially on the battlefield, as clearly stating the purpose, sparsely outlining the methods that are to be used, and then explaining the desired end state of any mission.

So how do you understand as a civilian now, the Operation Epic Fury's purpose and desired end state?

>> As you can see, the lady does her homework.

It's murky.

It is murky right now to understand what we in the military call the commander's intent.

And we've heard things like unconditional surrender, we will select the next leader.

We've heard all sorts of things, frankly.

And it's been murky and it's hard to articulate an end state that's achievable.

For example, as the American President has said, it just takes a couple people to screw up the Gulf because they can get down there in their fishing boats and drop mines in and Lloyd's of London jacks the insurance rates up and people don't want to send their ships through and for the American President to say, well, you know, they're just going to have to show guts.

Let me tell you, I've been in minefields and I hate them.

And every ship can be a minesweeper once.

But that's not the way you want to find the mines, I guarantee you.

So right now, yeah, it's pretty confused.

>> Ryan, you're also a communications expert.

And one of the things General Mattis has always said is, and you said this to me when you were first on the Firing Line in 2019, you said, you have to get out in front of the American people and you have to persuade them.

You have to have a vigorous debate.

People have to debate why they're engaging and then they have to be informed.

But Ryan, from a communication standpoint, is there still an opportunity to communicate with the American public?

- Well, probably seems murky because it is murky.

And we have this sort of part of our culture right now that seems to think that planning and strategy and perspective, and I mean, you have one of the richest people in the world saying that empathy is gonna be the downfall of Western civilization.

We had another big Silicon Valley person say, you know, I have zero introspection.

I move forward, I never look backwards, which by the way is not what introspection is.

Introspection is looking inwards.

(audience laughing) And a little bit of introspection probably would have saved Mark Andreessen the scandal that came from those remarks, just thinking about how they might come off.

But the point is, you're not an egghead or a loser or a dweeb because you wanna step back and think about things and you wanna have a plan.

Because ultimately you have to communicate those plans to the people down the line.

And I think we are dealing with the consequences of the sort of celebration and the raising up of passion and emotion and impulse and gut, which the Stoics would have told us to be quite suspicious of.

And we're raising that up over strategic thinking, forethought, expert knowledge, a sense of history.

And then of course, I think the big thing we're missing is humility, right?

A sense of limitations, a sense of weakness.

This isn't to say that you never proceed because you're humble, no.

Humility allows you to proceed competently knowing that you have a plan that matches strength against weakness as opposed to the delusion that ego brings which is in complete ignorance of your vulnerabilities and weaknesses and I think we are we are dealing with that.

General Mattis, how would you estimate the likelihood of the regime's falling?

I do not believe the regime will fall in the near future.

Now understand war is fundamentally unpredictable.

Fundamentally.

That is part of war.

So what I'm saying could be completely reversed in 24 hours.

But I think it is very unlikely that that regime will fall any time soon.

I think we're going to have to deal with it.

So how do you deal with it?

I'd suggest that America has got some of the greatest strengths, our economy, our education system.

We have ways of engaging with the world no other country has.

And yes, we need a very strong military to defend this idea of a democracy.

But at the same time, if we don't use all of our strengths-- and there I would point to allies-- without them, we're not going to get there.

You say in your memoir, nations with allies thrive, those without them die.

Whether we like it or not, we are part of a world that needs allies, and yet, President Trump has said, "We don't need anybody.

We're the strongest nation in the world."

So can the United States succeed in this war without allies, other than Israel?

No.

>> What is your sense of the biggest concerns from our allies right now?

>> Well, there are many of the same concerns that we hear from our fellow citizens.

America is becoming predatory.

America is unreliable.

They say one thing and they change seven days later or two days later.

So there's a sense that we are not a reliable security partner right now.

The first time NATO went to war was after we were attacked.

And one of the countries that lost as many boys per capita fighting alongside us after America was attacked on 9/11 was Denmark.

And Denmark is, of course, the country that owns Greenland.

So when you think of a threat against a NATO ally, or when you hear that we're putting tariffs on allies at the same time we're demanding they increase their defense expenditures, which requires a robust economy, you're seeing a strategic disconnect.

And right now, many of the actions we're taking, unfortunately, mean that we're working against our own strategic outcome at the end.

And you can't bring allies on board if they don't trust you.

We're going to have to deal with this threat by this aberrant, bizarre, murderous regime in Tehran, and we're going to do it at the end of the day with allies, lots of allies.

Ryan, in 2021, you welcomed then Major General Dan Caine, who is now currently the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to your wildly popular Daily Stoic podcast.

How does the man who is now supervising America's military engagement around the world rely on stoicism?

- I imagine it is a difficult position that he finds himself in.

You don't get to choose your boss in the military or in any part of the world, right?

You don't get to choose your boss, but you do choose how you decide to serve them.

I think he's done an admirable job being the voice of reason when he can.

He seems to be someone in command of himself.

You don't see him engaged in backstabbing or attention-seeking behavior.

You see him when he addresses the press, doing so respectfully, doing so, you know, with a certain amount of humility and gravitas, given the nature of what he's dealing with.

And I'd like to think, and I do know his sort of personal study of the Stoics has informed that approach.

And you want to go back to the jobs that these types of people had 2000 years ago.

Marcus Aurelius is the emperor of Rome.

Seneca is the advisor to Nero.

Cato is there as Caesar attempts to overthrow the Republic.

The Stoics were there in the thick of things, in good times and in bad, and tried to do the best they could.

They tried to do their duty as they understood it, and that's what I understand General Caine is doing.

- General Mattis, in 1979, not only were you in the Indian Ocean, but it was one month after the Shah fled Iran, after the Islamic Revolution, that General L Haig joined William F. Buckley Jr.

as a guest on the original Firing Line.

I'd like you to listen to a short clip from General Haig reflecting on what happened in the Iranian Revolution.

Take a look.

I have been concerned about Iran for a matter of weeks.

I suspect I've been as guilty as most anyone with respect to the ultimate outcome with which we are now faced.

>> In what sense were you guilty?

>> Well, I think the compression of events that we've observed here over the past two months exceeded even the most pessimistic of concerns that I certainly held and most anyone in the West.

This is one month after the Shah has fled Iran.

Buckley says, in what sense are you guilty?

And Haig says, I think the compression of events we've observed here over the past two months exceeded even the most pessimistic concerns.

Is this a reflection on unpredictability in war?

>> That and some other things.

But what happened in 1979 when this is being filmed is that changed everything in the Middle East.

In Iran, the Shah falls and this regime that we're now dealing with comes in some 47 years ago, whatever it is, the Grand Mosque falls to the nutcases, the political Islamists, what eventually becomes the Sunni side of the terrorist organizations coming out of the Mideast.

And so out of that, the question when this war started some couple weeks ago, were we going to fundamentally change on from a strategic point of view, fundamentally change the construct of the Middle East?

Israel using hard power had basically shattered two of the militias and was there an opportunity now to rock them back so far on their heels that the regime would fall.

That obviously has not happened although it's been defanged in terms of its proxies, in terms of its nuclear program has been set back, but the regime is still there so basically the war on a strategic level has not changed the overarching framing principle of what we have to deal with in that area and we will have to deal with it.

We can't walk away and say sorry we got distracted or we got tired of this.

We're gonna have to deal with whatever comes out of this current war and I think it's going to include that regime still there that goes back to that that fateful year 1979 in the Middle East.

>> I think Truman said the only thing new in the world is the history you don't know.

And a real basis and understanding of why we are where we are, and not just your immediate emotional reaction to a situation strikes me as something very necessary.

- A prudent character of leadership.

General Mattis, if we are going to deal with a regime that is in place and we are not going to do it without our allies, is there a method or a mechanism for trust rebuilding?

Is there a path forward?

- Yeah, and you go to the heart of it right there.

There's a saying about trust, it departs on a horse at a gallop, it comes back at a very slow walk.

And I get the sense it's gonna take us 8 to 12 years to restore the levels of trust that the Allies believe that we are once again someone they can count on.

We've treated them poorly, and I think it's gonna take a while to recover.

But it's gonna be by giving our word on something and living up to it and going back to a strategic approach and a good strategy is an appetite suppressant to war.

It is not an appetite increasing tool because you don't go off and do silly things if you've got a strategy because it sets priorities and you don't do something.

For example, reopen Russian oil, take sanctions off Russian oil because, you know, that's a key problem for Europe right now.

You don't do certain things that end up actually causing you more problems down the road.

So we're going to have to get back to thinking strategically and giving our word and living up to it.

>> You mentioned easing the sanctions on Russian oil.

President Zelensky said that that certainly does not help peace and only strengthens Russia's position.

It sounds like you agree.

How is China reading these actions?

Is there a lesson?

- Well, China is benefiting from a lot of this and Russia is benefiting militarily because weapons that could have been given to Ukraine are not being given, they're being used in other places, that sort of thing.

Economically, Russia is benefiting.

So right now, China and Russia are probably benefiting from this war.

-Ryan, today, as President Trump tests the limits of executive power and lawmakers face investigation for reminding troops that they do not have to obey illegal orders, what is the duty of those who are serving in the military?

As General Mattis has said, I think your duty is to hold the line, to live up to the values that you were taught, the oath that you swore, to do what the Stoics talk over and over and over again, which is, you know, you do the right thing, Marcus Aurelius says in Meditations, whether you're cold or you're warm, whether you're tired or you're hungry, whether you're loved for it or despised for it, you got to do the right thing.

You got to do what you were trained to do.

And so I think these are timeless struggles.

These are timeless, thorny, thorny questions.

But we have to have both the willingness to look backwards and to study and learn from them.

And then we have to have the sort of courage and the conviction to make those hard, right decisions when they fall upon us.

>> Last one, General Mattis, you carried famously, Stoke philosopher Marcus Aurelius' Meditations in your rucksack on the battlefield in Iraq.

If you were to pull it out now, what would you reach for?

>> Well, good question.

I would just tell you that you need to have a code that you're going to live by.

You would reach for whatever is going to allow you to keep a quiet mind as you consider strategically what is going on.

Do the best you can while you're there and keep the faith.

Doubt your doubts.

Don't doubt the Constitution.

The Constitution will hold, and we will get through this.

It's not dark times.

It's a tough time, it's a testing time, it's not a dark time.

- All right, we have 10 minutes for questions.

Go for it.

- So the idea of America is informed citizenry makes decisions through the electoral process, but we have such a fragmented media environment where everybody has a different idea of what the truth is and the competition for ideas, emotion sells better than thought.

So how do we have an informed citizenry to make the decisions?

It is very easy to despair, to say, hey, the media environment is stacked against us, the political environment is stacked against us, we don't have people like we used to.

One of my favorite novels is "The Moviegoer" by Walker Percy.

There's this stoic inspired character in it, Aunt Emily, and she says, you know, the age of Catos is past.

She's sort of lamenting that we don't have any of those sort of great Roman-esque figures anymore.

But we also get to decide if the age of Catos is over.

We get to decide if there are any bright spots or green sprouts or any leaders of character out there.

And we get to decide that by choosing to be one.

As you said, it's not a spectator sport.

It's a game we're supposed to be participating in.

And the ancients, the great philosophers, were in the arena, literally and figuratively.

They weren't just talking about the stuff, they were trying to make a difference in the communities, the countries that they lived in.

And if you want to see good in the world, like be a good person in the world, be a leader of virtue and character.

And it's always important to remember that that sends a strong signal.

It sends a strong signal to the people who are on the sidelines, who don't think that an individual can make a difference.

And that's how I think we turn things around.

General Mattis, Ryan Holiday, thank you for joining us here at the Hoover Institution for a special edition of Firing Line.

- It's an honor.

- Indeed.

Thank you.

Firing Line with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by... And by the following.

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