Battlegrounds review: HR McMaster plots paths Trump won't travel
“Strategic narcissism” is the term of reference for HR McMaster’s latest book. Coined by the late Hans Morgenthau, it refers to a tendency “to view the world only in relation to the US”. Instead, McMaster argues that America should embrace “strategic empathy” as its doctrine for international relations. But what sounds good as theory is not always easily deliverable.
Donald Trump’s second national security adviser, a retired three-star general, positions himself as a historian and thinker who would rely upon diplomacy, democracy, alliances and realism to implement policy objectives. He is not an isolationist, a subscriber to the theory the US is to blame for the world’s ills, or a doctrinaire realist.
Driving his point home, he castigates Charles Koch, on the right, and George Soros, on the left, and their jointly funded Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. As McMaster sees it, they wrongly advocate “American retrenchment”. McMaster also criticizes those within the Trump administration who argue against a large US footprint in the Middle East and advocate against “endless wars”.
In McMaster’s view, the US cannot easily walk away. As if to prove his point, reports abound of US troops and tanks redeploying to eastern Syria after clashes with Russian troops. Other events, however, have caught up with McMaster – and passed him by.
The normalization of relations between Israel, Bahrain and the United
Arab Emirates forms a western-allied bulwark against Iran, without an increased US military presence. The president and his son-in-law got this one right. Practically speaking, US allies will be doing more heavy lifting in the notso-cold war against Tehran.
Interestingly, Battlegrounds is more critical of George W Bush for postwar failures in Iraq than for invading in the first place. McMaster blames unfounded optimism for the chaos that followed an unnecessary war. “The USled coalition was too slow to adopt to the evolution of the enemy and its strategy,” he writes. “There was insufficient civilian capacity to stabilize the country.”
But McMaster fails to lay out what could have been done differently – not attacking Iraq would appear the simpler path. Beyond that, it is not clear the US public is in sync with the more muscular and constant use of force that McMaster supports.
Granular examination of election returns from 2016 shows body counts mattered. There was a notable correlation between battlefield casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan and support for Trump.
Those parts of the US that felt the carnage more as reality than abstract swung Republican. According to Douglas L Kriner of Boston University and Francis X Shen of the University of Minnesota, “Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan could very well have been winners for [Hillary] Clinton if their war casualties were lower.” Strategic empathy ought to begin at home.
Those who were hoping Battlegrounds would be a vehicle for settling scores with the president will be disappointed. McMaster is not John Bolton. Rather, he endeavors to call balls and strikes in assessing foreign policy. He takes the Obama administration to task for the Iran nuclear deal. To McMaster, the US gave away too much and received too little.
He characterizes Iran as ideologically hostile to the US and Israel, and does not foresee any thaw in the near future. Instead, he argues for vigilance. That said, he did advise Trump against abandoning the deal.
The president did not take heed.