Colonel McMaster had spent the first two years of the war at Central Command under General John Abizaid, trying to get their boss, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defense Secretary, to acknowledge that America was fighting an insurgency in Iraq. Rumsfeld refused to admit it, because it went against his high-tech approach to the global war on terror. He would fax McMaster pages from Che Guevara’s memoirs to prove that Iraq didn’t fit the classical definition.
.. McMaster believed that a counterinsurgency strategy—putting the focus on securing the population and bringing economic development, not just killing the enemy—could turn things around.
.. He sent his troops into the city and kept them there, establishing connections with local leaders and Iraqi Army units, gathering intelligence on the jihadis, providing security in the streets, and showing that the Americans—appearances throughout the country notwithstanding—were not abandoning Iraq to its warring factions.
.. it failed strategically because it could not resolve the basic struggle for political power between sectarian groups. As McMaster told me again and again, counterinsurgency is eighty per cent political.
.. He could also be tough on his men, who did not universally love him.
.. McMaster was too intellectually rambunctious for his own good.
.. Lieutenant General McMaster has a lot of faith in American power, especially military power.
.. I imagine that he would shake his head over the conspiracy theories about Muslims that held Flynn spellbound.
.. I wasn’t surprised to learn from a mutual friend that McMaster considered his new boss’s ban on refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries to be heinous and self-defeating.
The national-security adviser has to master three fundamental things.
- He has to stay on top of fast-moving events around the world while helping to develop long-term American strategy across regions and issues.
- He has to allow the views of the key national-security officials in Washington to reach the President in an honest and independent way.
- And he has to win the trust of the President himself
.. Will he have the bureaucratic skill to outmaneuver the long knives of Steve Bannon and his shadow National Security Council?
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.
Trump and Candidates for National Security Adviser Spar Over Staffing
Retired Vice Adm. Bob Harward and retired Gen. David Petraeus have dropped out of consideration
President Donald Trump won’t guarantee that his next national security adviser will have full control over staffing and process, a move that is shortening the list of people willing to take the job at a tumultuous moment for the new administration, people familiar with the matter said.
.. Retired Vice Adm. Bob Harward and retired Gen. David Petraeus have dropped out of consideration for the critical post
.. Both candidates have cited concerns about staffing and independence, the people said.
.. “It is dumb to demand Flynn’s people go. Why are you creating embarrassment?” said the official. “If you make that a precondition, you are not a loyal soldier and you don’t deserve the job.”
.. Mr. Petraeus, the former Central Intelligence Agency director and a retired four-star general, said on Friday that anyone considering the job should have control over personnel and gain a commitment from the White House to have a disciplined process for crafting security policy.
.. The White House was miffed by Mr. Petraeus’s demands to take control of policy. Administration officials want someone who is going to coordinate and limit conflicts with the agencies on the council, not try to take policy-making away from them or the president, said the officials briefed on the search.
.. An official briefed on the search said Mr. Petraeus is no longer being considered because the White House thought his demands were unreasonable.
The media botched this Trump story last week — and that’s bad for everyone
Normally, an honest misunderstanding of this kind would be quickly sorted out in normal contacts between reporters and White House staff. This one wasn’t. Instead, last Monday, Spicer opened his daily press conference by declaring that the reporting on the purported downgrade had been “utter nonsense.” He then delivered a lengthy explanation laying out how the composition of the Principals Committee was the same as it had been in 2001. He said that “we called several outlets who were misreporting the topic to better inform them.”
.. The White House, on the other hand, looks utterly unable to coherently explain its own policies. Some quiet, professional, off-camera communication between White House staff and reporters — the mechanism that has usually ensured that the truth eventually gets out in previous presidencies — would help.