Mattis the magnanimous warrior

General Jim Mattis had his day today, outlining the Pentagon's national defence strategy, with Trump by his side. Mattis is quite a cool customer. He is not particularly media-friendly, he doesn't hold that many briefings for the press and on the whole keeps a low public profile. With the president doing the opposite from the White House, in terms of public profile, it seems to me to be eminently sensible for the retired four-star Marine Corps general to get on with his job without blowing his trumpet in the manner of his commander-in-chief. There was one little gem during his press conference today to launch the national defence strategy document. Mattis said he was very happy to listen to allies and partners to get their views on the big defence subjects - and to be persuaded by them. He then added: "Not all good ideas come from the country with the most aircraft carriers." Now that's what I call magnanimous. The US has ten aircraft carriers, all over 100,000 tonnes, and there isn't a country in the world that can even dream of matching that. China is doing its best to catch up but won't have anything like this sort of capability for 30 or 40 years. But then China isn't an ally, so Mattis won't be asking the Chinese for advice. So he's thinking of countries such as Britain, France, Poland, Italy, Spain etc etc. The French have one carrier that often goes wrong, the Brits have a new one built but has no aircraft and another one being built but still way off, and the rest of the alliance has a handful of what they claim are carriers but really aren't. But Mattis says, never mind, he will listen to America's allies and consider their views. I'm sure he meant what he said. But if you're the defence secretary with ten nuclear-powered aircraft carriers behind you and an array of stealth bombers, fighter aircraft, ballistic-missile defences, the Marine Corps and all the other superpower stuff, is he honestly going to take notice, for example, of little old Britain with an army of 78,000 soldiers and a fast dwindling supply of warships if some Brit general advises: "Oh please Secretary Mattis, I think you're on the wrong track there, now what I think you should do is......" Ah well, it was very nice of Jim Mattis to say what he said. But forgive the chuckle!!