That “other shoe” dropped Thursday evening, as news leaked out of the West Wing that the national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, would be resigning from his position, and had requested to retire from his 34-year Army career this summer. McMaster will be replaced by former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, who along with Mike Pompeo, the CIA director set to take over at State, is sure to move U.S. foreign policy in a more “hawkish” direction.
I’ll save the discussion of Bolton until tomorrow. Today is the time to reflect on McMaster’s unlikely path to the National Security Council and why that path is at least partly to blame for his decision to retire, and the Army’s failure to offer him a fourth star.
A General From 73 Easting to Chapel hill
Had he done nothing else, McMaster would be remembered for his time as commander of Eagle Troop, 2nd Squadron, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Operation Desert Storm. That squadron (cavalry-speak for battalion) was at the heart of the most intense tank battle of the invasion of Kuwait, the so-called Battle of 73 Easting. Named for the spot on the map where it occurred, the battle was called “the last great tank battle of the 20th century.” On February 26, 1991, the outnumbered 2nd ACR soundly defeated the Tawakalna Division of the Iraqi Republican Guard, entering the history books.
McMaster, who earned a Silver Star for his courageous leadership in the engagement, attended graduate school at the University of North Carolina, earning master’s and doctorate degrees in history before teaching at the United States Military Academy, his alma mater. His Ph.D. dissertation on the leadership failures during the Vietnam War became the best-selling book Dereliction of Duty, published in 1997.
As unusual as it was for an active duty officer to publish a book critical not just of the decisions of President Lyndon Johnson—but of the failure of the Joint Chiefs to confront those decisions—this wasn’t what put McMaster on the wrong side of the status quo. That would come in Iraq.
Early National Security Strategy: Clear, hold, build
As a colonel commanding the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, in 2005 McMaster was given the mission of retaking the northeastern Iraqi city of Tal Afar from al Qaeda. General George Casey, the senior commander in Iraq, had been given the mission of handing over the war to Iraqi troops as quickly as possible. In contrast, McMaster’s troopers took the leading role in Tal Afar and essentially created the counterinsurgency strategy of “clear, hold, build.”
This strategy involves conventional operations to drive the insurgents out of a populated area, intensive security operations to keep them out, and softer “nation building” tasks, not just to build infrastructure, but to build the local government’s capacity to sustain itself, and the local population’s support for that government (and the coalition).
Much to Casey’s dismay (as well as to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld), “Clear, Hold, Build” became the official national strategy in Iraq. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President George W. Bush held up McMaster’s success in Tal Afar as the shining example of the kinds of effects the strategy could achieve.
The problem was, no one had talked to Casey or Rumsfeld about this before it was announced. That put a target on McMaster’s back. When Casey left Iraq to become the Army’s chief of staff, its top general officer, it looked as if McMaster’s career, like many before him, would end at the rank of colonel . He was not selected by two successive general officer promotion boards.
It didn’t help matters that while in Iraq, McMaster collaborated on the drafting of the Army’s new counterinsurgency field manual, which had its share of detractors in the senior ranks, or that in May of 2007, less than a month after Casey took over as chief of staff, McMaster’s deputy commander at the 3rd ACR, Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, published his disruptive essay “A Failure in Generalship” in Armed Forces Journal.
McMaster had his allies in Washington’s think tanks and the Pentagon press corps, though, who mounted an publicity blitz on his behalf. Spurred at least in part by public talk of passing over McMaster, and the chord Yingling’s essay struck with junior officers, Secretary of the Army Pete Geren asked Gen. David Petraeus to lead the 2008 general officer promotion board, and McMaster got his star.
No troop time, no fourth star
The press got McMaster into the generals’ ranks, but it couldn’t help his assignments. He served in largely theoretical and training roles within the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, including a stint as the commander of the Maneuver Center of Excellence, the combined armor and infantry schools at Fort Benning, Ga. The closest he got to troops in combat again was as the “J-5” the chip of plans for the International Security Assistance force in Afghanistan.
Without command of a division as a two-star, there was little chance that McMaster would have gained that elusive fourth star following his stint as national security adviser. I’m not buying the theory that his time “across the river” as they say in the pentagon, made him “too political” to return to the force. Colin Powell served as President Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser in Reagan’s second term, and subsequently earned a fourth star, taking command of Army Forces Command before becoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Before that, Alexander Haig, who like Powell would serve as secretary of state, served not just as assistant to Henry Kissinger when he was national security adviser, but served as White House chief of staff during the end of President Nixon’s term and the start of President Ford’s. He went on to serve as supreme allied commander in Europe.
McMaster’s assignments as a general, combined with the fact that he seems to have lost the confidence of the president—most likely for his principled hardline position regarding Russia and his desire to save the Iran nuclear deal—meant that there was simply no chance that any other serving Army four-star would willingly leave his position early to make room for McMaster. The law sets a limit on how many four-star generals there can be, and when the music stopped, there wasn’t a seat for McMaster.
The general says he will retire from public life when he takes off the uniform later this year. That would be a loss for the country. The national security establishment, and indeed the country, has benefitted from having his hand on the tiller at the NSC and establishing the McMaster Doctrine by guiding the groundbreaking national security and national defense strategies to publication.
I, for one, hope McMaster stays involved. Count me as a fan.
