America's biggest security threat now is lack of political unity

MEETING then-US president Barack Obama at the White House in October 2010, James Mattis, then the head of US Central Command, was asked what he regarded as the major threats to American national security. "I have three: Iran, Iran, and Iran," the former Marine Corps general responded. That was what kept him awake at night.

But when the retired general was asked the same question by The New Yorker in May this year, he explained that now that he was nominated to serve as the nation's Secretary of Defense, what worried him most was not Iran or, for that matter, any other foreign threat. What did keep him awake at night in 2017 was, he said, "the lack of political unity in America".

"It seems like an awful lot of people in America and around the world feel spiritually and personally alienated, whether it be from organised religion or from local community school districts or from their governments," the highly respected Pentagon chief observed, adding that if "you lose any sense of being part of something bigger, then why should you care about your fellow man?". Why fight and risk your life to protect another American?