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, Wall Street Journal, The Spectator, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times.
Recorded live at the Hoover Institution’s fall retreat: Hoover senior fellows Niall Ferguson, H.R. McMaster, and John Cochrane discuss unfolding events in the Middle East—Israel’s response, failures in intelligence gathering, plus America’s strategic choices vis-à-vis a complicit Iran. The trio then reflects on what an anti-Israeli backlash on the campuses of America’s elite universities—students and faculty denouncing the initial victims as aggressors, university leaders offering only lackluster “word salads”—says about the current state of higher education in the United States.
McMaster 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.