Neocon Paul Wolfowitz Speaking Privately With McMaster And Mattis

To liberals and other critics, Wolfowitz would be the last person they want Trump to listen to. Long a lightning rod because of the havoc unleashed by the Iraq invasion, Wolfowitz has never apologized for advocating the war, although he has said—and repeated in our conversation—that it was not carried out as he would have wanted it to be. In recent days he‘s jumped right back into the public debate, nudging President Trump from the pages of the Wall Street Journal to follow up his bombing strike in neighboring Syria with more aggressive action—and, he tells me, privately emailing with Trump Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and national security advisor H.R. McMaster, both longtime contacts since his Bush days, in hopes they will pursue a U.S. strategy of stepped-up engagement in the Middle East.

“I think there is a fantastic opportunity here. It’s only a first step, it’s only an opportunity,” he says of Trump’s surprise decision to unloose an American Tomahawk missile strike in Syria after President Bashar Assad’s regime again unleashed chemical weapons on civilians, a strike that turned Wolfowitz and many of his fellow neoconservatives into unlikely cheerleaders for the actions of an administration they had previously viewed as a threat. “If nothing is done to follow up on it, it will start to seem a little bit silly in retrospect; certainly the enthusiasm will seem silly. But more importantly it will look like a lost opportunity in retrospect.”

...But he’s now wondering whether the Trump presidency may offer more than he initially thought possible as Trump talks tough on North Korea, proclaims willingness to take further military action in the Middle East and seems to have marginalized anti-free trade, neo-isolationist advisers in favor of his more conventionally Republican national security team, led by CEO-turned-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Generals McMaster and Mattis, whose worldviews are very much shaped by their own participation in the Iraq war.

When I ask about Trump, Wolfowitz waxes surprisingly optimistic about his chances in a region that has humbled many an American president before him. “Look, he’s said a lot of things. He’s changed a lot of things,” he says. “I don’t think anyone would deny that he’s opportunistic, and I don’t think anyone would deny that he would like to be ‘the greatest president in modern times’ or ‘huge’ or you pick your adjective. And I think to achieve a Dayton-like peace settlement in Syria would not only be something that would be widely acclaimed, it would be hugely in the interest of the United States.”