A Military Strategist for Trump’s NSC - Wall Street Journal editorial

President Trump likes government by billionaires and generals, and on Monday he chose another one as his National Security Adviser in Army Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster. This could be an inspired choice if Mr. Trump heeds his counsel and White House politicos don’t interfere.

The three-star general certainly won’t be intimidated by the bright lights of the White House. He made his early reputation as a tank commander during the Gulf War when his badly outnumbered unit cut apart Saddam’s armor like target practice. In the Iraq war he adapted to the al Qaeda terror campaign in the city of Tal Afar with counterinsurgency tactics that sought to win over the local population. His methods inspired the strategy that in 2007 would become the “surge” that staved off U.S. defeat in Iraq.

As for political warfare, his 1997 book “Dereliction of Duty” criticizes the high-ranking officers of the Vietnam era for not doing enough to challenge Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and LBJ. If Mr. Trump wants a yes-man who’ll merely salute White House aide Stephen Bannon, he has picked the wrong general. Lt. Gen. McMaster also has extensive experience at Central Command, which conducts operations in the Middle East, and a 20-month deployment in Afghanistan.

One question for Lt. Gen. McMaster, like all generals, is whether he can step out of his military background to become a foreign-policy strategist. With former Marine General Jim Mattis at Defense and retired Army General John Kelly at Homeland Security, the Trump security team is top-heavy with distinguished Pentagon brass.

But someone—and we don’t mean Mr. Bannon—has to plot and steer a strategy for reclaiming U.S. influence as China, Russia and Iran press to drive the U.S. out of what they consider to be their spheres of influence in Asia, Europe and the Middle East…

Read on.

McMaster Will Be a Good Teammate as National Security Adviser by Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post

… McMaster is highly respected in the conservative foreign policy community, and a man with little pretense and a great deal of battlefield experience. “H.R. McMaster is widely respected as a terrific combat leader and also as a brilliant scholar and writer,” says Tim Kane, a Hoover fellow. “He is the whole package. McMaster will speak truth to power and, frankly, his selection reflects extremely well on President Trump.”

Unlike his predecessor, who many would say was “wound too tight,” McMaster is forceful but not tense, with a good sense of humor. He is, as one foreign policy academic put it, a “straight arrow.” This is not a man to promote coddling with Russia or to buy into the notion that NATO is a burden or to indict the entire Muslim world. He’s no Michael T. Flynn — and that’s a good thing. Thomas Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute tells me, “He may be the best possible outcome under the circumstances.”…

In his role as national security adviser, he is supposed to be an honest broker, a presenter of information and formulator of choices for the president. Without his own axes to grind and with good working relations with Mattis, he has the opportunity to be an effective conduit between the president and the various foreign policy agencies and departments. If the strategy for surviving the Trump years and quarantining Stephen K. Bannon is to provide coherent, unified and persuasive advice without political interference, you’d want someone like McMaster, a no-nonsense manager who can create whenever possible a united front with Mattis, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, director of national intelligence nominee Dan Coats, CIA director Mike Pompeo and others. That still leaves the problem of Trump’s judgment, conflicts of interest, honesty and impulsivity, but at least the foreign policy apparatus won’t be a cause of his failures…

Read on.