Battlegrounds

November 15, 2020
The retired general and former national security adviser limns the failures of American foreign policy. Although he was forced out for being insufficiently laudatory about Donald Trump's fawning approach to dictators in Russia, North Korea, and elsewhere, McMaster's criticisms of his former boss are more nuanced than one might expect. While being interviewed for the job as national security adviser after Michael Flynn was himself forced out, he writes, "President Trump seemed sympathetic to my observation that the United States had not competed effectively in recent years and that, as a result, determined adversaries had gained strength and our power and influence had diminished." In this ongoing degradation, the U.S. had lost ground, especially to Russia and China, both of which played the long game in geopolitics, leaving the U.S. a victim of its own "strategic narcissism." That flaw, writes the author, plagues both the right and the left, abetted by the likes of George Soros and Charles Koch to the same effect. McMaster finds fault in the strategic policies of the last several administrations, though none more so than Trump's, which he seems to view as feckless. Certainly, Trump's people have not been able to counter adequately what in military-speak is called RNGW, or "Russia new-generation warfare." The fundamental problem, he suggests, is psychological, even spiritual. "Our will is diminished," writes McMaster. "As our foreign policies swung from over-optimism to resignation, identity politics interacted with new forms of populism." The manifestations are political polarity, an inability (even if Trump was amenable to the idea) to counter Russian cyberwarfare and especially electoral interference, "diminishing trust in authoritative sources of information," a "toxic environment in Washington," and, as one international relations expert put it, the inability to play a strong hand well even as adversaries play poor hands well. An illuminating source of geopolitical insight without the tell-all urgency of so many other books by former Trump aides.

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