Jim Mattis

Biography

James Mattis was born in Pullman, Washington, in 1950. He enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve in 1969, graduated in history from Central Washington University in 1971 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant through the Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps in 1972. He later earned a master's degree at the National War College and became known in the corps for his study of military history.

As a lieutenant colonel he commanded an assault battalion of the 7th Marines in the Gulf War, and in late 2001 he led Task Force 58 into southern Afghanistan, the first Marine officer to command a naval task force in combat. He commanded the 1st Marine Division in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and in the fighting around Fallujah in 2004. From 2007 to 2010 he headed U.S. Joint Forces Command, serving until 2008 also as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, and from 2010 to 2013 he led U.S. Central Command.

After retiring he became a fellow of the Hoover Institution and sat on the boards of General Dynamics and of Theranos, the blood-testing company whose claims were later found to be fraudulent. Donald Trump chose him as secretary of defense, and he took office on 20 January 2017. He reaffirmed U.S. defence commitments to South Korea during the 2017 North Korea crisis and disagreed with the president over the Iran nuclear deal and troop withdrawals.

When Trump decided in December 2018 to pull all U.S. troops out of Syria, Mattis resigned; Trump brought his departure forward to 1 January 2019. He returned to the Hoover Institution and in 2019 published Call Sign Chaos, a memoir and argument for an internationalist foreign policy.