Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Tuesday. He briefed lawmakers on Capitol Hill about last week’s allied airstrikes in Syria. Credit Erin Schaff for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis urged President Trump to get congressional approval before the United States launched airstrikes against Syria last week, but was overruled by Mr. Trump, who wanted a rapid and dramatic response, military and administration officials said.
Mr. Trump, the officials said, wanted to be seen as backing up a series of bellicose tweets with action, but was warned that an overly aggressive response risked igniting a wider war with Russia.
Friday night’s limited strikes on three targets, which lasted under two minutes, were the compromise.
The debate reflects a divide between Mr. Trump and the defense secretary, who, like no other member of the cabinet, has managed to maintain a cordial relationship with the president even while reining him in.
Until this month, Mr. Mattis had a buffer at the White House in the former national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who often deferred to the defense secretary, a retired four-star Marine general. The arrival of Mr. Trump’s new national security adviser, John R. Bolton, means that buffer is gone.
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Administration and congressional officials said the hawkish Mr. Bolton is not expected to defer to the defense secretary; already, neoconservative members of the Republican foreign policy establishment have started to air concerns that Mr. Mattis is ceding strategic territory to Iran and Russia in Syria.
Mr. Mattis is widely viewed by global leaders as the strongest and perhaps most credible voice on foreign policy in an administration that has been rocked by firings and resignations among senior presidential advisers. The recent exits of both General McMaster and Rex W. Tillerson as secretary of state has focused more attention on Mr. Mattis’s role in the cabinet.
On Tuesday, Mr. Mattis and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefed lawmakers on Capitol Hill about the Syria airstrikes in closed-door meetings.
“We’ve got to put a check on this president, on any president, when it comes to Congress’s constitutional responsibility to wage war,” Representative Barbara Lee, Democrat of California, said in an interview on Tuesday. She called last week’s Syria’s strikes “illegal.”
As he pressed his case last week, before the allied strikes with Britain and France, Mr. Mattis lost the battle over getting congressional authorization. But he won the larger war.
Mr. Mattis prevailed in limiting the strikes to three targets that did not risk endangering Russian troops scattered at military installations around Syria. Nor did the 105 missiles hit Syrian military units believed to be responsible for carrying out an April 7 suspected chemical weapons attack on Douma, near Damascus.
In the end, the narrowly targeted strikes belied Mr. Trump’s description Friday night of a larger coordinated response that could take days or weeks.
“The combined American, British and French response to these atrocities will integrate all instruments of our national power — military, economic and diplomatic,” Mr. Trump said in an address to the nation as the strikes were underway. “We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents.”
But there have been no additional strikes since then, and the Pentagon said no more are being planned. “This is a one-time shot,” Mr. Mattis said on Friday, calling the airstrikes “a very strong message to dissuade” President Bashar al-Assad of Syria from using chemical weapons against his own people.
Mr. Trump’s drumbeat of threats last week of a sharp response to the suspected gas attacks all but guaranteed that the United States military would strike Syria, according to two Defense Department officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.