James Mattis helped keep Trump in check. The world will miss him | Peter Beaumont
The decision to pull out of Syria has dismayed allies, delighted foes – and proved the final straw for the US secretary of defence
In mid-October General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, issued a discreet warning about the continuing threat from Islamic State.
While he noted that the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate had shrunk to almost nothing in terms of territory, he pointed to the hundred foreign fighters a month still crossing Turkey’s border into Iraq and Syria that suggested a continuing level of resilience.
“It’s the flow of
