H.R. McMaster

Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster is the chair of the Hudson Institute Japan Chair Advisory Board and the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He teaches courses at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and in the master of international policy curriculum at the Freeman Spogli Institute. Upon graduation from the United States Military Academy in 1984, Lt. Gen. McMaster served as a commissioned officer in the United States Army for 34 years before retiring as a lieutenant general in June 2018. His final appointment was as the twenty-fifth assistant to the president for national security affairs.

His experience leading soldiers and organizations in wartime includes commander, Combined Joint Inter-Agency Task Force—Shafafiyat in Kabul, Afghanistan from 2010 to 2012; commander, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq from 2005 to 2006; and commander, Eagle Troop, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Operation Desert Storm from 1990 to 1991. Lt. Gen. McMaster also served overseas as advisor to the most senior commanders in the Middle East, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

From 2014 to 2017, Lt. Gen. McMaster designed the future Army as the director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center and the deputy commanding general of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC). As commanding general of the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, he oversaw all training and education for the Army’s infantry, armor, and cavalry force.

Lt. Gen. McMaster holds a PhD in military history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is author of the bestsellers Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World and Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam. He was a contributing editor for Survival: Global Politics and Strategy from 2010 to 2017. His essays, articles, and book reviews on leadership, history, and the future of warfare have appeared in many publications, including Survival, National Review, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Wall Street Journal, The Spectator, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times.