Shanahan spent much of his first formal (albeit off-camera) Pentagon pressroom briefing as SecDef emphasizing continuity with his ousted predecessor, Gen. Jim Mattis. He made a point of praising Mattis’s National Defense Strategy, America’s allies, and even the press – not exactly favorites of President Donald Trump.

“The Army has aligned itself with Secretary Mattis’s National Defense Strategy, which we will not walk away from,” Gen. Milley told an Association of the US Army breakfast. “It’s a solid strategy, it’s written in history, it’s written in the blood of generations past, and we subscribe to it.” And allies are key to the strategy.

Mattis’s last message to the troops is three brief, carefully crafted paragraphs packed with historical references and political messages — which are implicitly critical of President Trump.

Whatever you think of Jim Mattis, his resignation and the outflow of officials that will follow create a major foreign policy problem for the United States. There is not one ally who is applauding Mattis’s departure — but depart he will, all the same. So what must President Trump and his next defense secretary do,… Keep reading →

The relationship went through a messy ending. Will the president now try and give Mattis the Rex Tillerson treatment?

WASHINGTON: After two years of reassuring US allies that Donald Trump’s America would not abandon them, Jim Mattis finally had enough. Even before Trump was sworn in as president, the announcement that he would pick Mattis as his Secretary of Defense was met with delighted relief “from the right, from the left, and from overseas.”… Keep reading →

Few of the experts we spoke to expect the administration to actually see the full $750 billion President Trump will reportedly propose this week. Between Trump himself calling the figure a “negotiating tactic” and the potential for it driving a $1.2 trillion deficit, the odds are awfully long.

We have been here before. In 1982 Caspar Weinberger and David Stockman had a similar showdown referred by President Reagan. DOD won that time. What does that have to tell us about the impending Mulvaney–Mattis showdown? And if OMB wins this time, would Mattis stay on?

Retired Maj. Gen. Bob Scales is the former commandant of the Army War College, a Vietnam veteran (and recipient of the Silver Star for valor) turned military historian and futurist. He’s also one of the fathers of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s Close Combat Lethality Task Force to reform the infantry. In this op-ed, Scales goes… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon is preparing to release its first-ever audit as soon as this week, making it the last federal agency to complete a top-to-bottom scrubbing of its processes, business practices and finances. The fallout is likely to be messy. While expectations have built over the years that the audit will uncover large savings and… Keep reading →