McMaster led a counterinsurgency operation in Tal Afar, Iraq, which is now used as a textbook case for how to win over hearts and minds. Flynn accepted tens of thousands of dollars from Russia Today, and broke bread with Vladimir Putin. McMaster has argued that the U.S. needs to upgrade its tank units to prepare for a possible land war over Ukraine.
.. McMaster, for all his military achievements, will enter the White House as the greenest national security adviser in recent memory. He has spent his entire career in the Army
.. What McMaster has not done, unlike every national security adviser from the Nixon presidency up until Trump, is hold a high-level diplomatic or White House job.
.. Trump has suggested that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, might be the right person “to broker a Middle East peace deal.”
.. Among the reasons that Trump is turning to amateurs and political lackeys to fill senior posts is that many of the professionals are keeping him at arm’s length.
Can McMaster Stabilize Trump’s Foreign Policy Team?
General McMaster is a compelling choice: a scholar-warrior in the mold of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, with the bonus of looking every inch the part — allegedly a critical asset in the image-conscious Trump administration.
Yet those very qualities could spell more trouble ahead. General McMaster’s deep understanding of civil-military relations, and his reputation for not suffering fools, could quickly make him an irrepressible critic — and political enemy — of Mr. Trump and his senior adviser, Stephen K. Bannon.
.. At the same time, General McMaster has a cooler head than Mr. Flynn, or for that matter John Bolton, whom he beat out for the job.
.. Perhaps the best indication of General McMaster’s thinking, and the likelihood of conflict with Mr. Bannon and others, is his 1997 book, “Dereliction of Duty,” a merciless, meticulous study of the early days of the Vietnam War, and how senior civilian officials and the Joint Chiefs of Staff led the country into a quagmire.
.. His central thesis is that the Joint Chiefs became inordinately politicized, caving to senior civilian officials in the Johnson administration like McGeorge Bundy, the national security adviser, who knew little about Vietnam, or military doctrine. Those officials were more concerned about appearing just strong enough not to lose hawkish domestic support without compromising the Great Society agenda than they were about actually winning the war.
.. “The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field nor was it lost on the front page of The New York Times or the college campuses,” he wrote. “It was lost in Washington,” even before “the first American units were deployed.”
.. Men like Mr. Bannon, of course, are not likely to be either silent or deferential. Instead, they will try to bureaucratically outflank dissenters.
.. General McMaster, for his part, vehemently objected to the way President Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara largely circumvented the Security Council’s interagency process in formulating and implementing Vietnam policy; it’s unlikely he’ll abide a similar move by Mr. Bannon and his circle. He’ll probably be joined by General Mattis
.. Expect fireworks. General McMaster’s unblinking, incisive criticism of national security officials reflects a conviction that they are duty bound to do all they can to avoid making or repeating historical mistakes — even at the risk of insubordination.
.. And Mr. Trump, given his rhetoric, appears willing to indulge the use of military force with little regard to strategic consequences.
A Comparative Guide to Russia’s Use of Force
From Ukraine to Syria, Charap cogently identified an important trend in how Russian leadership deploys the military: “Moscow has used just enough force to get the policy job done, but not more.”
This is part and parcel of a Russian strategy defined by reasonable sufficiency, compelling an outcome with the least amount of force required. It contrasts sharply with working to achieve battlefield dominance and overmatch at the outset. Perhaps, this is best understood for what it is not. The Russian approach is the polar opposite of the Weinberger Doctrine, which Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger laid out in a famous 1984 speech. Weinberger’s six conditions for the use of force included, “if we are unwilling to commit the forces or resources necessary to achieve our objectives, we should not commit them at all,” and the “need for well-defined objectives and a consistent strategy is still essential.”
.. In the Russian view, force must be used cheaply, deniably when necessary, and with emphasis placed on retaining agility, which requires holding the bulk of its forces in reserve.
force is meant for coercion rather than conquest
.. This approach stems from a healthy fear of commitment that could result in overextension, quagmires, and offer opportunities for opponents to counter. It is driven by a cognizance of Russia’s limits in terms of economic and human resources
.. In the post-Cold War period, the U.S. policy community also rejected the Powell-Weinberger doctrine, but it has arguably not replaced it with anything serviceable.
.. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya are hardly the resume of a successful policy establishment. What’s more, large parts of the national security community have trouble even admitting these wars have not gone well, with the notable exception of President Obama identifying Libya as one of his greatest mistakes.
.. The Russian armed forces are actually small relative to the size of the country they have to defend, perhaps exceeding no more than 900,000 in total size with a ground force doubtfully greater than ~300,000. That may not seem small, but Russia is one eight the earth’s land mass. As a comparison, countries like Turkey or Pakistan are fraction of Russia’s geographic size, yet they possess comparable if not larger armies with over 400,000 in the land forces.
..
In the case of Syria, Russia was engaged in a two-level game. Its objective was to change the foreign policies of the United States and Turkey. To do this, Moscow recognized that it would have to annihilate the Syrian opposition on the battlefield, destroying any alternatives to Assad. Moscow, with its Syrian, Iranian, and Lebanese partners, killed its way to victory on a part of the battlefield in order to coerce adversaries at the strategic level.
.. In order to deter and dissuade peer adversaries Russia will often introduce high-end conventional capabilities, such as long range air defense, anti-ship missiles, and conventional ballistic missile systems. These weapons are not meant for the actual fight. Instead, they are intended to make an impression on the United States.
.. the Kremlin prefers to use regular forces in burst mode, both to prevent combat losses and avoid uncontrolled escalation once they shift into the high gear.
.. It is a remarkable amalgamation: a feudal economy, headed by what can best be described as a national security aristocracy, but the principal agencies required to manage government affairs (like the Ministry of Defense) tend to be run by competent administrators.
.. Russia places strong emphasis on having an exit strategy. In fact, a viable exit strategy seems just as important than whatever they are trying to achieve.
.. Russia prefers to establish dominance for brief periods of time, but does not desire mastery of the battlefield, and would rather take a long time with limited application of power than have to ‘own’ the war.
.. Moscow is comfortable with failure, preferring for it come fast and cheap so it can improvise the next evolution rather than investing in a failing plan. As I described in an earlier article, the overall Russian strategy is emergent, preferring a lean approach to deliberate planning.
.. Much of Russia’s effort to establish plausible deniability is intended to create the political space to make mistakes, paving the road for cycles of retreat and escalation as necessary.
.. the United States should consider using force differently. A better motto for conflicts against small and middle sized powers, many of which tend to be wars of choice, could be “go small or go home.” If Russia can figure out how to use its much smaller conventional force for coercive effects over countries sized big and small, certainly the U.S. policy establishment can get smarter on the subject. Only in the shadowy drone war, a component of the global counter terrorism campaign, has the United States shown the sort of tactile flexibility and creative thinking required of this century.
Pence Backs NATO; Russian Official Touts a New World Order
She said Germany would continue increasing its military spending until it reaches 2% of gross domestic product, the NATO standard. But she cautioned against believing that “security is only ensured by raising one’s defense spending.”
.. He added that Moscow is looking for a new kind of world order, one where Russia has a loud voice. “If you want you can call it a post-West world order,” he said.
.. Mr. Lavrov also said the U.S. has produced few hard facts backing up its accusation of Russian interference in the American presidential election, which Moscow denies. He said people complained that Mr. Trump provided no evidence when he said there was voter fraud in U.S. election but didn’t demand evidence in this case... NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has taken up Mr. Trump’s call for allies to spend more on defense and has been pressing allies to develop spending plans ahead of the president’s visit to Europe in May... Without mentioning Mr. Trump, Ms. Merkel pushed back against the notion that the West is at war with Islam... German officials worry that Mr. Trump’s emphasis on bringing NATO more directly into waging the war on terrorism—rather than doing so in a broader coalition with Arab countries, as the Obama administration did—could feed anti-Western attitudes in the Middle East.