Let me cut to the chase: Donald Trump’s appointment of Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as his National Security Adviser is a great choice. First, Lt. Gen. McMaster understands the problems caused by the United States’ foreign policy retreats under President Obama, both for the United States and its allies, and the need for the United States to take a more forward position in the world. Let me quote from Lt. Gen. McMaster’s review of The Unquiet Frontier: Rising Rivals, Vulnerable Allies, and the Crisis of American Power, by Jakub J. Grygiel and A. Wess Mitchell, in The Wall Street Journal in March of last year:
“‘The Unquiet Frontier’” paints a gloomy picture – the specter of large-scale conflict and the unraveling of alliance networks that have offered a critical strategic advantage to the U.S. – but the authors close with specific recommendations to officials in Washington. These include diplomatic policies that prioritize allies, a forward military presence, shared intelligence and helping countries at the outer reaches of American power develop strong defensive capabilities.
Historians will likely regard Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine as the event that punctuated the end of the post-Cold War era. How America and its allies cope with growing threats will help determine whether the world order that has prevented great-power conflict for the seven decades since the end of World War II will survive or collapse.”
While the first paragraph says more about the book than Lt. Gen. McMaster’s views, the second paragraph speaks of Lt. Gen. McMaster’s views and his understanding of the need for the United States to engage and lead.
But even more important than having the right perspective, is being willing to tell things to the President that he may not want to hear or that may be contrary to his beliefs. Based on Lt. Gen. McMaster’s record, I don’t think there is any doubt he will do this.
When he was a colonel, commanding the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq in 2005-05, then-Colonel McMaster understood that the fight in Iraq was an insurgency and had to be fought that way, long before people in Washington figured it out.1
But more importantly, look at Lt. Gen. McMaster’s book, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. Fred Kaplan summarized Lt. Gen. McMaster’s thesis:
“[I]n the mid-to-late 1960s, the Pentagon’s top generals betrayed their constitutional duties by failing to express their honest military judgments to the president and secretary of defense as the nation plunged into the quagmire of Vietnam.”2
Any person who is willing to write a dissertation with that thesis, and allow it to be published, regardless of the effect on his future in the Army (Lt. Gen. McMaster was a major when it was published), is going to tell the President what he thinks, regardless of what the President may wish to hear.
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1 Fred Kaplan, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War (2013), p. 169-73.
2 Kaplan, p. 168.
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