At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House by H.R. McMaster
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
He is no Kissinger.
Where to start with this book? I picked this up with a sense of respect for McMaster based on his rank and just general knowledge of his career. After reading the book that respect has not gone away but is diminished.
In terms of the book itself, and in light of McMaster constantly citing Kissinger, I have to make the comparison to the Kissinger memoirs. Kissinger’s first volume dealt with his tenure as national security adviser to President Nixon, the same position that McMaster held. The difference is stark, with Kissinger offering great detail about policy and tactics and strategy that went into developing that policy. It was well known that Kissinger, during his tenure, had an extremely poor relationship with Secretary of State William Rogers, and a rocky relationship with defense Secretary Mel Laird. Despite that Kissinger did not use his memoirs to even scores. He went out of his way to acknowledge these differences but did not score settle, In fact Kissinger assumed some measure of blame for the poor relationships, and actually expressed regret for some of his actions. In this book McMaster constantly slams Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. They are the bad guys and he is the policy white knight. McMaster tells us of a Zoom call with Kissinger:
“I told him that around the time of our lunch together in my office, I realized that I faced a fundamental choice of either fighting off those who were engaged in subterfuge with the president and were weaponizing various media against me or ignoring the noise and doing the best job I could. I chose the latter. Kissinger told me in his distinctive German accent, ‘You made the right choice; they would have eaten you alive.’”
H.R. McMaster At War with Ourselves My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House pg. 137
I think McMaster may have missed Kissinger’s essential point there, but I am not surprised.
McMaster left the job after being fired by Trump. It is amazing that he lasted for as long as he did (13 months)and despite being at odds with Tump on so many national security issues he chose to blame those folks that he believes undermined him with Trump. He does not appear to believe that fundamental differences with Trump on NATO, on Russia and Vladimir Putin, on North Korea, Afghanistan, and on the fundamental role in the world to be played by the U.S. contributed to his ouster.
McMaster tries to give us the two-step on the relative merits of the Trump Administration foreign policy while poking big holes in his own position. We get some praise for the effectiveness of the Trump foreign policy, coupled with his belief that Trump was in thrall to Putin. He describes a meeting between Trump and Putin:
“Putin used his time with Trump to launch a sophisticated and sustained campaign to manipulate him. Profilers and psychological operations officers at Russia’s intelligence services must have been working overtime. … Putin got the desired effect from the meeting and the dinner.”
H.R. McMaster At War with Ourselves My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House pg. 188-189
I doubt the Russian profilers had to work overtime. The serious differences between Trump and McMaster on NATO are also highlighted, with some lip service given by McMaster to the need for NATO members to increase their own defense spending. Aside from that the ignorance of how and why NATO was formed, and that the true beneficiary of NATO division or destruction is Russia, is principally ignored. But McMaster does take plenty of time to question why some people are uneasy over the influence in U.S. elections of Vlad Putin. I am not quite sure how McMaster believed he could effectively serve a President with whom he had such major disagreements on fundamental policy.
In areas where McMaster does get into policy it is my view that we were talking small ball. Some tactical victories but nothing that would bring any comparisons to Kissinger. We do get plenty of criticism of Mattis, with Mattis (and Tillerson) taking the hit for the lack of additional achievement.
As a final note on how this guy, in my opinion, got some pretty basic stuff wrong McMaster compares Trump to LBJ.
“I saw in Trump trail similar to those in Lyndon Johnson. As with LBJ, Trump’s insecurities and desire for attention left him perpetually distracted and vulnerable to a mainstream media that was vehemently opposed to him. Also, like LBJ, he had a loose relationship with the truth and a tendency toward hyperbole.”
H.R. McMaster At War with Ourselves My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House pg. 67
Everybody is entitled to their opinion, but this one betrays a rather fundamental lack of understanding. LBJ , like him or not, is arguably the President with the greatest hands on knowledge about how government works in U.S. history. Trump has no real idea about how government works and is not interested in learning. Johnson, even when his policy was wrong, was driving towards his policy goal(s). Johnson was not distracted in the least. He worked around the clock, and when the time came he gave up the levers of power voluntarily. Pretty poor comparison.
Despite my many objections I am glad I read the book and I can say that it is not likely that H.R. McMaster will be working in any administration, Democratic or Republican, in the future.
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Bill Manzi.com 