Ex-national security adviser to speak at ODU this week
McMaster will discuss foreign policy, elected officials
NORFOLK — H.R. McMaster, a retired Army lieutenant general and former national security adviser, will join Old Dominion University’s Waldo Family Lecture Series this week, discussing Hampton Roads’ critical role in national security.
He will talk about how empathy can be used in foreign policy at 7 p.m. Thursday in the north cafeteria of the Webb University Center. The event is free and open to the public but guests are encouraged to register on the university’s events webpage.
“The main theme is to demand better from our politicians but not wait for the political class to bring Americans together for meaningful, thoughtful discussions like this lecture series does,” McMaster said in an interview. “I think what ODU has done has taken a leadership role in in fostering discussions that are important to our national security in the future of our country.”
His lecture — “Regaining Strategic Competence: Empathy as the Foundation of Foreign Policy and National Security Strategy” — will explore the complexities of strategic narcissism, competence and confidence as it relates to historical and current events.
“I think it’s important to understand what really drives and constrains these leaders,” McMaster said.
Understanding these
concepts and applying them to the “perspective of the other,” he said, will help U.S. leaders to improve its warfighting and deterrence strategies.
“For way too many years, we clung to the assumption that China, having been welcomed into the international order, would play by the rules. … That’s not happening and the reason is the Chinese Communist Party is not interested in playing by the rules,” McMaster said.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said in February the Chinese government is the “single greatest threat to the economic and national security of the United States.” His comments, made during a visit at the bureau’s Norfolk Field Office, came less than two weeks after an F-22 fighter jet from Langley Air Force Base in Hampton shot down a Chinese “spy balloon” off the South Carolina
coast.
And in April, U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman, a Virginia Republican, asserted that China is on track to surpass the capabilities and capacity of the U.S. in the next few years.
Hampton Roads is home to the world’s largest naval base, Naval Station Norfolk, and more than a dozen other crucial military installations and defense contractors. Additionally, the only North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters on U.S. soil is in Norfolk.
“Service today is as important as ever to deter conflict and to be prepared to respond if U.S. federal interests are or the homeland is threatened, and, of course, Norfolk and the Tidewater area is critical across all services,” McMaster said.
He said he hopes locally based military leaders will hear his lecture and use it to put policies in place that prioritize American interests. But the lecture is oriented for the general public.
“I do think that one of the ways for us to regain our strategic competence is for American citizens to demand more sound policies and strategies from their elected officials,” McMaster said.
McMaster served as the national security adviser to President Donald Trump from 2017-18. He retired in June 2018 after a 34-year career as a commissioned officer in the Army.
During his service, McMaster directed the Army Capabilities Integration Center and was the deputy commanding general of the Army Training and Doctrine Command. He also commanded the Combined Joint Interagency Task Force — Shafafiyat in Kabul, Afghanistan, from 2010-12; the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq from 200506; and Eagle Troop, Second Armored Cavalry Regiment in Operation Desert Storm from 1990-91. Later in his military career, McMaster deployed overseas to be an adviser to the most senior commanders in the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Today, McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He has previously served on a dissertation committee for an ODU international studies graduate student attending from the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk.