Counter-Terrorism from the Obama Administration to President Trump by Donna G. Starr-Deelen

Author:Donna G. Starr-Deelen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Trump’s Second National Security Advisor

On February 20, 2017, President Trump announced that Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster would become the administration’s next National Security Advisor. McMaster, who has been praised as a prudent choice for the position, will remain on active duty while serving as National Security Advisor. He wrote the book Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam as part of his PhD dissertation. It explores the failure of high-ranking military officials to confront President Lyndon Baines Johnson on his faulty strategy regarding the war in Vietnam. In 2013, McMaster wrote an opinion piece in which he warned that the USA needed to guard against wishful thinking vis-à-vis modern conflict. According to McMaster, a decorated combat veteran, the following age-old truths about war should be kept in mind: war is political, war is human, and war is uncertain “precisely because it is political and human.”13

The approach of President Trump’s second National Security Advisor, McMaster, contrasts sharply with that of retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn on the dangers of radical Islam. In fact, McMaster has a more nuanced view of the role of Islam in motivating jihadists and this nuance contrasted sharply with the worldviews of both Steve Bannon and Dr. Gorka. Although McMaster does not use the phrase “ radical Islamic terrorism,” President Trump did use it in his first State of the Union speech to Congress in February 2017. Six months later, in his August 21 Afghanistan speech, President Trump did not use the notorious phrase and observers speculate that this is the result of McMaster’s influence. How the differences regarding radical Islamic terrorism, the role of religion, and semantics will influence and shape concrete policies in the field of national security is not certain and should be watched closely in the next four years.

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