Here comes the general. After months of chaos and infighting, John Kelly, a former US Marine Corps four-star general with a love of whisky and ribald jokes, took the White House by the scruff of the neck last week and imposed some discipline.
Even Donald Trump’s powerful daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, were told they must go through Kelly before talking to the president.
Trump himself seemed a little different as he prepared to embark on an extended summer holiday this weekend at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Despite the empanelling of grand juries in the Russia collusion investigation, he avoided making incendiary comments and his public pronouncements were more restrained than usual.
Should Americans be worried or reassured that the new chief of staff, part of a formidable triumvirate of battle-tested warriors at the heart of the government, was in uniform only a year ago? He has become the most powerful of the “axis of adults” in the Trump team — which also includes the secretary of defence, James “Mad Dog” Mattis, a fellow former Marine Corps general, Lieutenant General HR McMaster, an active-duty US army officer who is national security adviser, and Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state and former Exxon chief executive, whom Kelly calls “T Rex”.
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Ryan Zinke, a former commander in Seal Team 6, the navy unit that killed Osama bin Laden, is Trump’s interior secretary. He wears a cowboy hat and rode a horse to work on his first day.
Military influence on American foreign policy is well established. Since the Gulf War the generals commanding the US military presence in the Middle East and much of Asia have been treated as potentates there. Kelly, however, will also have control of domestic policy.
Trump’s detractors point out the last military man to be White House chief of staff was Al Haig, a serving four-star general brought in by a beleaguered and paranoid President Richard Nixon
in 1973.
According to one former member of the Nixon cabinet, Haig became president in all but name as the Watergate scandal approached its denouement.
Later as secretary of state when President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981, Haig notoriously announced, “I am in control”, which was said to have led the Kremlin to believe a coup might have been under way in Washington.
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Kelly, critics say, could wield too much influence because Trump does not focus on detail and could become — like Nixon — distracted by scandal.
His arrival has certainly heralded a cultural shift in Trump’s White House. A tall, imposing 67-year-old with a serious demeanour, he is a working class
Irish-American who speaks his mind. In just a week, he has made a striking impact.
He was barely in the door last Monday before he fired Anthony Scaramucci, the bombastic and profane communications director. One White House aide described the abrupt dismissal as the equivalent of Kelly “putting a head on a stake” outside the West Wing to warn Trump’s feuding advisers what could befall them, too.
The door to the Oval Office, previously left open so that any member of staff could talk to Trump, is closed. Kelly listens in on phone calls between Trump and his cabinet and has said he wants to see every piece of paper that goes before the commander-in-chief. He cuts off rambling presidential advisers in mid-sentence and has barred middle-ranking aides from meetings.
The blunt-speaking new chief of staff, the bullet-headed McMaster and the gnarly Mattis, who is a frequent visitor from the Pentagon, represent a stark contrast with the shambolic Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist and ideologue.
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The principal beneficiary of Kelly’s arrival appears to be McMaster, who, after months of trying, has succeeded in forcing the removal of a Bannon ally, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, senior director for intelligence programmes on the National Security Council. Cohen-Watnick favoured regime change in Iran and advocated military action against North Korea. Two other prominent Iran hawks have also been pushed out by McMaster.
Kelly knows the cost of war. His son, Robert, was killed serving in Afghanistan in 2010, and one of his closest friends was among the 220 US marines who perished in the Beirut barracks bombing in 1983.
The military triumvirate, along with Tillerson, are viewed as more internationalist and multilateral than figures such as Bannon. Establishment Republicans hope they can tame the president.
But can they? Trump is fond of referring to them as “my generals” and lauding their martial exploits. During the election campaign, however, he mocked senior officers, saying that “the generals have been reduced to rubble” and declaring: “I know more about Isis than the generals do. Believe me.”
He has been irritated at times by McMaster, whom he has contemplated firing, and recently undercut Mattis by declaring via Twitter that transgender troops would no longer serve in the US military, which is not Pentagon policy.
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At a July meeting on Afghanistan held in the White House situation room, Trump repeatedly criticised his military advisers and suggested that General John Nicholson, the US commander in Afghanistan, should be sacked.
Much of Trump’s frustration was directed towards Mattis, whom he told, according to NBC News: “We aren’t winning. We are losing.”
A White House aide said: “Love him or loathe him, President Trump is not going to change. He is the ultimate disrupter and he will not stop tweeting or allow himself to be cut off.
“The fretting about ceding civilian control to the military is overblown. Trump is the boss. He respects Kelly but he’s never going to defer to him. If Kelly oversteps the mark — he’ll be out.”
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https://twitter.com/tobyharnden?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor ● The UN Security Council unanimously backed a US-drafted resolution last night that significantly strengthened sanctions on North Korea. Measures designed to deprive the regime of $1bn a year included an export ban on coal, iron and iron ore, lead and lead ore as well as fish and seafood.
Mr Trump tweeted: “The United Nations Security Council just voted 15-0 to sanction North Korea. China and Russia voted with us. Very big financial impact!” Nikki Haley, Washington’s ambassador to the UN, said the council had put Kim Jong-un “on notice” by imposing the “most stringest set of sanctions on any country in a generation”. http://www.twitter.com/tobyharnden