PALM BEACH — US President Donald Trump appointed Lt Gen H R McMaster as his new national security adviser on Monday (Feb 20), picking a widely respected military strategist known for challenging conventional thinking and helping to turn around the Iraq War in its darkest days.
Mr Trump made the announcement at his Mar-a-Lago resort, where he interviewed candidates over the holiday weekend to replace Mr Michael T Flynn, who was forced out after withholding information from Vice President Mike Pence about a call with Russia’s ambassador.
Unlike Mr Flynn, who served as a campaign adviser last year, Mr McMaster has no links to Mr Trump and is not thought of as being as ideological as the man he will replace. A battle-tested veteran of both the Gulf War and the second Iraq War, Mr McMaster is considered one of the military’s most independent-minded officers, sometimes at a cost to his own career.
The selection encouraged Republicans who admire Mr McMaster and waged a behind-the-scenes campaign to persuade Mr Trump to select him. Sen Tom Cotton of Arkansas, an Army veteran who once served under Mr McMaster, contacted the White House to suggest that it consider him, and a coterie of other national security conservatives, including a top aide to Sen. John McCain of Arizona, also lobbied for him. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, who has worked with Mr McMaster, encouraged him to take the job.
“He’s a man of tremendous talent and tremendous experience,” Mr Trump told reporters as Mr McMaster, wearing his uniform, sat next to him. “I watched and read a lot over the last two days. He is highly respected by everyone in the military and we’re very honoured to have him.”
The choice continued Mr Trump’s reliance on high-ranking military officers to advise him on national security. Mr Flynn is a retired three-star general and Mr Mattis a retired four-star general. Mr John F Kelly, the homeland security secretary, is a retired Marine general. Mr Trump’s first choice to replace Mr Flynn, Mr Robert S Harward, who turned down the job, and two other finalists were current or former senior officers as well. Mr McMaster will remain on active duty.
Mr McMaster, 54, made a name for himself as a young officer with a searing critique of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for their performance during the Vietnam War and later criticised the way President George W Bush’s administration went to war in Iraq.
As a commander, he was credited with demonstrating how a different counterterrorism strategy could defeat insurgents in Iraq, providing the basis for the change in approach that Gen David H Petraeus adopted to shift momentum in a war the United States was on the verge of losing.
Like Mr Mattis, Mr McMaster is stocky and physically unimposing. But he is known as smart and soft-spoken with a sense of humour. For all of his war-making experience, however, he has little background in navigating Washington politics, which could be a challenge for him in his new role with a fractious national security team to corral.
His challenge now will be to take over a rattled and demoralised National Security Council apparatus that bristled at Mr Flynn’s leadership and remains uncertain about its place in the White House given the foreign policy interests of Mr Stephen K Bannon, the former Breitbart News chairman who is the president’s chief strategist.
Most of the National Security Council staff is composed of career professionals, often on loan from military or civilian agencies, and they have complained privately about being shut out of their areas of expertise and kept in the dark about important decisions. Mr Trump’s aides look on many of those holdovers from the last administration with suspicion, blaming them for leaks. The atmosphere has grown so toxic that some NSC staff members have said they feared they were being surveilled.
Several security council aides said Monday that they learned about Mr McMaster’s selection the same way the public did and expressed concern that Mr Flynn’s associates, nicknamed the Flynnstones, would still stick around. The White House has said it promised the original first choice complete autonomy in picking staff members, and it seems likely that Mr McMaster would insist on the same.
Mr Trump said Mr Keith Kellogg, another retired lieutenant general, would remain as the NSC chief of staff. Kellogg has been acting national security adviser since Mr Flynn’s resignation a week ago and one of the four candidates interviewed by Mr Trump on Sunday for the permanent job. Mr Trump made no mention of Ms K T McFarland, the top deputy national security adviser, and whether she would stay.
Mr McMaster thanked Mr Trump but gave no insight into his plans. “I’m grateful to you for that opportunity,” he told the president, “and I look forward to joining the national security team and doing everything that I can to advance and protect the interests of the American people.”
The other two candidates interviewed on Sunday were Mr John R Bolton, a former ambassador to the United Nations under Bush, and Lt Gen Robert L Caslen Jr, the superintendent of the US Military Academy at West Point.
This was the second time Mr Bolton, an outspoken conservative skeptic of international organisations and treaties, has been considered and rejected for a high-level post in Mr Trump’s administration. Mr Trump made a point on Monday of praising Mr Bolton and saying that he would find a position for him in his administration eventually.
“We had some really good meetings with him. Knows a lot,” the president said. “He had a good number of ideas that I must tell you I agree very much with. So we’ll be talking with John Bolton in a different capacity.”
He made no specific mention of Mr Caslen, but added that “we’ll be talking to some of the other generals that I’ve met”.
Mr McMaster has served as director of the Army Capabilities Integration Centre at Fort Eustis in Virginia since 2014. A West Point graduate with a doctorate in military history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he commanded a unit that clashed with Iraq’s Republican Guard in one of the biggest tank battles of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, earning him the Silver Star.
But he came to prominence with his 1997 book, “Dereliction of Duty”, which critiqued the Joint Chiefs for not standing up to President Lyndon B Johnson during the Vietnam War. He cemented his reputation in 2005 during the second Iraq War when he led the 3rd Armoured Cavalry regiment in regaining control of Tal Afar.
The operation was cited as a textbook example in a manual on counterinsurgency doctrine prepared by Mr Petraeus. Another commander who had a role in drafting that manual was Mr Mattis, then a Marine general. Mr Petraeus took a similar approach when he assumed command in Iraq in 2007 with a surge of troops authorised by Mr Bush.
Yet McMaster was passed over for the rank of general until Petraeus and Robert M. Gates, then the defense secretary, rallied support for him.
One protg from that time was Mr Cotton, who nearly resigned from the Army in 2007 when it looked like McMaster might be forced out.
After Mr Flynn’s resignation, Mr Cotton reached out to Mr Pence, Mr Bannon and Mr Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, about Mr McMaster, according to an associate of Mr Cotton who spoke on condition of anonymity. Another congressional Republican who was an advocate for the general was Mr Chris Brose, the staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee, whose chairman is Mr McCain.
Mr McCain, who has been sharply critical of Mr Trump in recent days, praised the appointment and said, “I could not imagine a better, more capable national security team than the one we have right now.” THE NEW YORK TIMES