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Drawing on his extensive experiences as commander of the U.S. Army’s 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq, Brigadier General H. R. McMaster, one of the "warrior-intellectuals" involved in the movement to reform the U.S. Army, discussed the challenges of command in counterinsurgency operations, drawing upon his essay in the recently
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released volume Lessons for a Long War: How America Can Win on New Battlefields (AEI Press, May 2010).
The U.S. military’s experiences in the current conflicts have highlighted the need for sound leadership and keen judgment at all echelons and an approach that encourages subordinates to exercise initiative while preserving overall operational coherence. Such an approach is built upon traditional and timeless principles of command and stresses the human complexities of conflict rather than the seeming technological certainties too often emphasized by advocates of defense "transformation." Following the formal presentation, General McMaster continued the conversation in a discussion moderated by Thomas Donnelly, director of AEI's Center for Defense Studies.
| 2:45 p.m. |
Registration |
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| 3:00 |
Keynote Address: |
Brigadier General H. R. McMaster |
| 3:30 | General Question and Answer |
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| Moderator: | Thomas Donnelly, AEI |
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| 5:00 |
Adjournment |
WASHINGTON, MAY 27, 2010--Brigadier General H. R. McMaster emphasized at an AEI event Thursday that the United States needs to learn from the conflicts in which it is engaged. The story of Iraq and Afghanistan, McMaster said, has been one of extraordinary adaptation. McMaster argued that concepts such as the revolution in military affairs and defense transformation, prevalent throughout the 1990s, presented a fundamentally flawed vision of future conflict. Paraphrasing a well-known Clausewitzian dictum, McMaster said that war is nothing but an extension of politics. Military action, McMaster stressed, must be consistent with America's policy goals and objectives. It is, therefore, essential to understand how America's enemies operate. The need to ask the right questions and understand the character of conflict is a key lesson of the long war. In the pursuit of this objective, McMaster said, it is important not to lose sight of the local dimension of the conflict America is fighting. McMaster underscored the importance of applying firepower discriminately, saying, "confidence in combat serves as a bulwark against fear."
- "H.R. McMaster is truly a man of his institution [the U.S. Army]."
--Thomas Donnelly
- "War is not elective."
--Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster
- "War is an extension of politics."
--Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster
- "It is important to understand how our enemies operate."
--Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster
- "We [the U.S. military] need to remain sensitive to local realities."
--Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster
Speaker biographies
Brigadier General H. R. McMaster is director of Concept Development and Learning at the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. He is the author of Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam (HarperCollins, 1997) and numerous articles and monographs on military history and defense affairs. General McMaster is a senior consulting fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as special assistant to Commander, Multinational Force-Iraq from January 2007 until May 2008. From June 2004 until June 2006, he served as the seventy-first colonel of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. He joined U.S. Central Command in May 2003 and served as director of the Commander’s Advisory Group until May 2004. General McMaster was an assistant professor of history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point from 1994 to 1996.
Thomas Donnelly, a defense and security policy analyst, is the director of the Center for Defense Studies. He is the coauthor with Frederick W. Kagan of Lessons for a Long War: How America Can Win on New Battlefields (AEI Press, 2010). Among his recent books are Ground Truth: The Future of U.S. Land Power (AEI Press, 2008), coauthored with Frederick W. Kagan; Of Men and Materiel: The Crisis in Military Resources (AEI Press, 2007), coedited with Gary J. Schmitt; The Military We Need (AEI Press, 2005); and Operation Iraqi Freedom: A Strategic Assessment (AEI Press, 2004). From 1995 to 1999, he was policy group director and a professional staff member for the House Committee on Armed Services. Mr. Donnelly also served as a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He is a former editor of Armed Forces Journal, Army Times, and Defense News.
