H. R. McMaster in New Book: U.S. Must Know Both Its Enemies & Itself

I first met Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster almost exactly ten years ago. In the fall of 2010, I was working on the Iran desk in the office of the undersecretary of defense for policy, and General McMaster was heading up a new Pentagon unit charged with rooting out the rampant corruption in Afghanistan that was undermining the U.S. war effort in that country. We scheduled a video teleconference call to see whether I might be a good fit for his team in Kabul.

I was a bit nervous going into the meeting. General McMaster was already a larger-than-life figure. He was part of a new generation of warrior-scholars among the U.S. military officer corps. As a young armored-cavalry officer in the first Persian Gulf War, he led good forces that destroyed roughly two dozen of Saddam Hussein’s tanks in 23 minutes in the now-famous Battle of 73 Easting. He then earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His dissertation was turned into a book, Dereliction of Duty (1997), in which he excoriated the U.S. military establish­ment for withholding its best military advice from political leaders during the Vietnam War. This blunt criticism of his predecessors and superiors almost certainly slowed his deserved promotion to flag officer but also heightened his legend among Department of Defense staff. The string of successes continued in 2005 when, back in Iraq, his successful command in Tal Afar served as a model for the subsequent “Anbar Awakening” and for the “surge” of U.S. forces that tempo­rarily quelled the insurgent violence in that country.

Despite my nervousness, the call went well. McMaster needed all the help he could get with this difficult task and I was tempted to join him. After much deliberation, I declined the opportunity, but I always wondered what it might have been like to work for this esteemed national-security leader.

Now, in his gem of a new book, Battlegrounds, we can all get a better glimpse into H. R. McMaster’s approach to U.S. national-security policy. Of course, McMaster is best known today as a former national-security adviser to President Donald Trump, and Battle­grounds provides a light autobiographical tale of General McMaster’s career, in­cluding his stint as national-security adviser. But its bigger contribution is as a review of contemporary global politics through the prism of U.S. national-security policy. It is a serious and in-depth study of the national-security challenges facing the United States -- Russia, China, the Middle East, Iran, North Korea, and transnational challenges, including climate change. It is also a guidebook with sage advice to policymakers on how to handle these threats.

This may not be the book that we want, but it is the book that we need. After just over one year, McMaster was reportedly forced out of office after clashing with the president on matters of both substance and style. Many will be disappointed that, unlike other former senior Trump-administration officials, McMaster has not written a gossipy “tell all” about his time in the White House. But that would have been a waste of his considerable intellect and experience, which are much better suited for this weightier work.

His central argument in Battlegrounds is that U.S. foreign and defense policy has too often been plagued by “strategic narcissism.” In other words, we see the world narrowly through our own prism and repeatedly view dangerous adver­saries as we wish them to be, not as they really are. For example, Washington hoped that China would become a “responsible stakeholder” in the U.S.-led, rules-based international system. In 2015, the Obama administration bet that a nuclear deal with Iran would strengthen the moderates in Tehran and usher in a new era of cooperation with the West. Currently, U.S. officials see the Taliban as a potential peace partner in ending the 19-year-long-and-counting war in Afghanistan. According to McMaster, all of these views were misguided because our enemies have other ideas.

He argues that a better national-security policy would begin with “strategic empathy.” We should see our adver­saries as they really are. What are their worldviews, goals, and strategies? And how does the United States fit into their calculation, not the other way around? It is only by first understanding our adversaries that we can begin to formulate effective strategies for dealing with them. He approvingly cites Sun Tzu’s aphorism that “if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

This recurring theme holds the book together well without clogging the narrative. Indeed, the book is very well written, weaving in the author’s experience and analysis seamlessly with a recounting of recent history and current events.

The book is studiously nonpartisan and apolitical, as we might expect from a career military officer who swore an oath to serve any duly elected commander in chief. Indeed, in recent interviews, the general has even said that he has never voted because he does not want partisan politics to interfere with his commitment to country.

McMaster offers a mix of praise and criticism for past U.S. administrations, including Trump’s. But the Obama ad­ministration seems to be a recurring target, particularly for its persistent belief that U.S. adversaries were friends-in-waiting if only the United States would try a bit harder to show some kindness.

What is perhaps the most interesting, important, and timely portion of the book deals with China. Recent U.S. national-security-strategy documents (including the 2017 “National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” whose writing and publi­cation McMaster oversaw) correctly diagnose the return of great-power rivalry with China as the foremost threat facing the country but are less clear about the goals of that competition or how we are to go about achieving them.

In the book, McMaster brings more insight to this evolving challenge. He persuasively describes China’s strategy as one of “cooption, coercion, and concealment.” In other words, the Chi­nese Communist Party (CCP) uses its influence to co-opt foreign governments and firms, exploits this interdependence to coerce them into doing China’s bidding, and then uses lies and subter­fuge to conceal that it is doing any such thing. China’s growing geopolitical influence through its Belt and Road Initiative, a series of major overseas infra­structure investments, is a good example of this approach.

McMaster correctly argues that the goal of great-power competition should be to change the minds of China’s leaders. The desired end state is not regime change, endless competition, or to fight and win World War III. We must “convince party leaders” that it is “in their interest to play by the rules internationally,” he writes, and to “return to the path of reform and openness.” And he articulates a compre­hensive list of hard-hitting military, economic, intelligence, and diplomatic measures to help persuade the CCP to change its approach.

The organization of the book, centered on the national-security threats facing the United States, works well, and McMaster is deeply versed in these matters. But it also means that he does not elaborate on the more positive aspects of the U.S. foreign-policy agenda: The question is not only What are we defending against? but also What are we trying to build? The U.S.-led, rules-based international system has worked well for the past 75 years, but it is coming under increasing strain. How do we revitalize and adapt the system for a new era? Where does the United States stand with regard to multi­lateral institutions, international trade and finance, development aid, and demo­cracy and human rights? These important issues are sometimes dis­cussed as antidotes to the threats we face, but they are not given sustained attention in their own right.

The focus on threats and the central argument about U.S. “strategic narcissism” put a spotlight on Washing­ton’s recent failures, at the risk of giving insufficient credit to the remarkable successes of U.S. foreign policy. After all, the world was more peaceful, prosperous, and free during the post–Cold War “unipolar moment” than at any time in world history. The thrust of the book and portions of the conclusion (including the author’s warnings against American retrenchment) suggest that McMaster would agree with this sentiment, but a somewhat critical tone in the discussions of recent U.S. national-security policy pervades the work.

But these are relatively minor criticisms of an otherwise superb book.

Indeed, in my judgment, this is the best recent book on the national-security threats facing the United States of America and on what we should do about them. Anyone who wants to know more about these challenges should take the opportunity to learn at the feet of this warrior-scholar who has devoted his life to making America safer.