Building Strategic Competence: An Urgent Priority For Government And The Academy | Reimagining American Institutions

The Hoover Institution Center for Revitalizing American Institutions webinar series features speakers who are developing innovative ideas, conducting groundbreaking research, and taking important actions to improve trust and efficacy in American institutions. Speaker expertise and topics span governmental institutions, civic organizations and practice, and the role of public opinion and culture in shaping our democracy. The webinar series builds awareness about how we can individually and collectively revitalize American institutions to ensure our country’s democracy delivers on its promise.

The seventh session discussed Building Strategic Competence: An Urgent Priority for Government and the Academy with H.R. McMaster and Stephen Kotkin on Wednesday, May 7, 2025, from 10:00 - 11:00 am PT.

We might define strategic competence as the ability to integrate all elements of national power and efforts of like-minded partners to advance US interests. The nation needs leaders who can think in real time and understand what it takes to implement ideas and strategies on the ground. The academy has an important role in educating leaders to compete effectively in war and in competitions short of war. A reinvigoration of history in higher-level education is particularly important, as many courses in diplomatic and military history have been displaced by theory-based courses, which tend to mask the complex causality of events and obscure the cultural, psychological, social, and economic elements that distinguish cases from one another. Some theories risk sapping students of strategic empathy and encourage them to reduce complex problem sets into frameworks that create only the illusion of understanding. A growing interest in applied history in some universities is a promising development.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
[MUSIC]

>> Eryn Tillman (00:08):
Hello, my name is Eryn Tillman,
an Associate Director at the HooverInstitution, and we'd like to welcome you
to today's webinar organized bythe Hoover Institution center for
Revitalizing American Institutions,also known as rai.
Today's session will consist of briefopening remarks from our panelists and
facilitated discussion with our moderator,followed by a period where our panelists
will respond to questionsfrom audience members.

(00:30):
To submit a question, please use the Q and
A feature located at the bottomof your zoom screen.
We will do our best to respond to as manyquestions as possible, and a recording of
this webinar will be [e-mail] within the next few days.
Rai operates as the Hoover Institution'sfirst ever center and
is a testament to one of our foundingprinciples, Ideas Advancing Freedom.

(00:53):
The center was established to study thereasons behind the crisis and trust facing
American institutions, analyze howthey are operating in practice, and
consider policy recommendations to rebuildtrust and increase their effectiveness.
RAI works with and supports Hoover Fellowsas well as our faculty, practitioners and
policymakers from across the countryto pursue evidence based reforms that

(01:13):
impact trust and efficacy in a widerange of American institutions.
Today is the final webinar in our 20242025Reimagining American Institutions series.
We'd cover topics related to executivetransitions, trust in elections and
polling, the climate for conservativestudents at college campuses, and
last week we explored how restrictionson speech in other countries impact

(01:33):
Americans right to free expression.
Today our conversation turns to the roleof the academy and particularly those
engaged in teaching applied history andeducating future leaders.
It gives me great pleasure to introducetoday's moderator, Stephen Kotkin.
Stephen is the Klein Heights Fellowat the Hoover Institution,
as well as a Senior Fellow atStanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for
International Studies.

(01:55):
He's also the Berkeleyprofessor in History and
International Affairs Emeritus atthe Princeton School for Public Policy and
International affairs,where he taught for 33 years.
He earned his PhD at the Universityof California, Berkeley and
has been conducting research atthe Hoover Institution Library and
Archives for more than three decades.
Stephen Co leadsthe Hoover History Lab and his research
encompasses geopolitics and authoritarianregimes in history and present day.

(02:19):
Thank you Steven, formoderating today's discussion.
I'll turn it over to youto introduce today's guest.

>> Stephen Kotkin (02:26):
Thank you Eryn.
It's great to be here and I have the greathonor to introduce my good friend and
colleague General H.R.i woke up early this morning at 5:30 to
begin rereading his biography and I didn'tfinish and those were just the highlights.

(02:46):
HR McMaster is the Fouad and
Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow here at theHoover Institution at Stanford University,
among many otherdistinguished affiliations.

>> HR McMaster (02:56):
He was on track to become a globally renowned rugby player, but
he gave up the fame andglory of sport to enter public service.

>> Stephen Kotkin (03:06):
After graduating from the US Military Academy,
he earned a PhD in military history fromUniversity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
He currently serves as chairman ofthe War Studies Department at West Point.
Alongside his Hoover appointment, GeneralMcMaster spent 34 years in the U.S. army,
and he served in command positions leadingour forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

(03:33):
He wrote what remains an indispensablebook on the Vietnam War,
Dereliction of Duty, whose lessonshave only increased over time.
He served as national security Adviser toPresident Trump during his first term and
wrote another indispensable book aboutthat tour of duty in government.

(03:56):
He is an accomplished impersonator, but
he chooses only to impersonatevery obscure subjects,
which is perhaps why this remarkabletalent of his is not better known.
He hosts an important and timelypodcast at Hoover called Battlegrounds,
which is also the title of yet anotherbook of his and which should help inform

(04:20):
today's webinar on developing strategicculture for our next generation leaders.
General HR over to you.
I'm thrilled to be here with you.

>> HR McMaster (04:30):
Hey, Stephen.
It's great to be with you,somebody who I admire and I'm so
grateful to be your friend and yourneighbor up there in the Hoover Tower.
But I've learned somuch from you over the years.
And what I'm hoping is this willbe a conversation where both of
us will contribute to the answer tothis question of how do we restore our

(04:51):
strategic competence andtherefore confidence,
confidence in our institutionsof government and the ability of
those institutions to achieve goodoutcomes for the American people.
Because I think we really do have a dearthof confidence these days, Stephen,
where we're, you know, we really don'thave faith that our government can
advance our interests effectively abroad,whether in war or

(05:14):
in competitions, you know,short, short of war.
And I think where that comes from, andI'll try to be like brief here, but, but
is a neglect of history.
You know, I, I, I really, you know,you know, hashtag predictable for
us two historians willprobably agree on this, right?
That, that it is, it is ignoranceof history which I think oftentimes

(05:35):
lends itself or creates the conditions forfolly in foreign policy and in war and
in particular, I think the neglect ofhistory and the associated atrophy in,
in, in academia in terms of the,the Ability to study diplomatic and
military history in particular,has led to a kind of prevalence of.

(05:57):
Of social science theories, which areuseful and important to, to, you know, to.
To interdisciplinary study of war inthe context of programs like a war studies
program.
But I think if you don't study history and
instead you study these theories,that it, it creates kind of a.
A veneer of understanding, andit encourages students, graduates to

(06:19):
try to fit these complex challenges thatwe're facing in the world into the theory.
Instead of, as we learn, as historians,ask the question, what is the nature of
the challenge associated withthe Chinese Communist Party?
And then be sensitive tothe complex causality of events,
which is what history really helpsyou gain is that kind of sensitivity.

(06:44):
And I believe also that the study ofhistory is an exercise in humility
because you can see how others,you know, smart people typically can run
at difficult challenges andoftentimes fell short, you know, because.
Because of maybe sometimesthe intractability of problems, the limits
of agency that we often have over someof the complex challenges we're facing.

(07:09):
So, you know, I think the number onerecommendation here that's consistent with
this awesome programthat we have at Hoover on
revitalizing American institutions is torevitalize the study of diplomatic and
military history in the academy.
And, and to do so in a way that kindof eschews these, you know, you know,
kind of, you know, postmodernistapproaches to the study of history and

(07:34):
tries to understand, you know,
understand historical events and,and, and trends on their.
On their own terms.
So I think what I like to do is justrelate quickly my own experience in
coming into the job of NationalSecurity Advisor, quite unexpectedly,
and how the study of history informedwhat we tried to achieve for

(07:55):
President Trump in the period2017 to 2018.
I cover this a little bit in the book.
But, in February of 2017,
I'm walking down Walnut streetin my hometown of Philadelphia.
Go Phillies, and as I'm on my way to briefout this study that we had done on Russian
new generation warfare, and my job atthe time was to design the future army,

(08:16):
we took an historical approach to that.
We modeled our study of Russia'sinvasion of Ukraine in 2014 and
their broader campaign of what we'recalling Russian new generation warfare
of political subversion,the use of assassinations,
cyber naval information warfare, cyberattacks, all those range of activities

(08:37):
that Russia engages in to try toaccomplish objectives below the threshold
of what might elicit a concertedresponse to this Russian aggression.
And we modeled this study offthe study that General Don Starry
had done of the 1967 war inIsraeli Arab war in 1967.

(09:00):
And he brought an interdisciplinary teamto try to distill out of that experience
the lessons that were important tothe development of the future Army.
So we put this interdisciplinaryteam together.
And then I was briefing out this studywhen my on my way to brief it out
when my phone rang and said, hey,will you come to Mar A Lago and
interview forthe job as National Security Advisor?

(09:20):
Well, as I was reflecting on,well, am I up for this job?
I thought about my previousexperiences in the Army.
But what I was most grateful for, Stephen,was the opportunity to read, study,
research and write history atthe University of North Carolina in my
master's and PhD program there.
And the question I took on was how widedid Vietnam become an American war?

(09:43):
And what were the roles of PresidentLyndon Johnson's principal civilian and
military advisors in the decisions thatled to an American war in Vietnam,
mainly between Kennedy's assassination andthe Noen Diemku and the July 65 decisions.
And in the process of writing thatdissertation, which became a book,

(10:05):
I became a student of the nationalsecurity decision making process in
the post World War II period.
And then at West Point had the opportunityto teach, to teach a survey course,
two semesters of military history and
a course called the Historyof the Korean Vietnam Wars.
And what this I think allowed me to gainan appreciation for were how different

(10:26):
presidents made decisions,how they structured their decision
making processes, what the various rolesand how the roles were similar and
different between variousnational security advisors.
And so when I get hired on President'sDay, you know, Monday at Mar A Lago,
fly to Washington, didn't live inWashington, but start work the next day in

(10:49):
the White House, I took out a legal padand just wrote down what I thought were
the five main lessons ofVietnam War decision making.
And the first of these were take moretime to think about the nature of
the challenges we're facing.
And this is where history andthe academy can equip students to think
holistically about complex challengesto security or vital interests.

(11:13):
The second of these was that it's reallyimportant to have a clear goal and
objective in mind andto take time crafting it.
You might think, well, that sounds kind ofobvious, but McGeorge Bundy had concluded
in this period of time that I wasstudying today, it's better not to have
an objective in Vietnam because that way,if the President doesn't accomplish it,

(11:34):
it will give him more flexibilityin the domestic political arena.
The third key lesson was, andthis is a lesson you can also
glean from Peter Robin's greatbook Presidential Command,
that it's important to give a presidentmultiple options because, hey,
the President's the personwho got elected.
But it's really in the comparison of thesecourses of action, these options, you can

(11:57):
draw out long term costs and consequencesand risk and mitigation and, and so forth.
The fourth key lesson, andthis is what's really important,
and I think where the study of historyis immensely important, is to, is,
is to make explicit any assumptions thatare underpinning your planning efforts.
My experience has been, Stephen,that 90% of the problem with flawed U.S.

(12:22):
policies and strategies is implicitassumptions that are fundamentally flawed,
but because they're implicit,they never get challenged.
You know, Pakistan, if we're niceto Pakistan, right, And we, and
we have sustained aid to them, they'regoing to really cut off their assistance,
you know, for jihadist terroristorganizations and, and help us with,
you know, the Al Qaeda andTaliban problem.

(12:43):
Well, how did that work out?
You know, China, if China's welcomedinto the international order,
China will play by the rules andit's China prospers, guess what?
They'll become just like us,the CCP will liberalize its economy and
liberalize this form of governance.
How did that one work out?
Vladimir Putin, what he really needs is heneeds his security concerns allayed and
then everything will be okay.

(13:04):
And so, these are the kinds ofassumptions that underpin policies across
multiple administrations, right?
And then, finally,I kind of alluded to this already.
It's really important to try to insulatepolicymaking processes from what
can distract you from your purpose andin particular,
partisan political considerations.

(13:24):
Because Lyndon Johnson really, hey,
he saw Vietnam principallyas a danger to his goals.
Of getting elected in 1964 andpassing the Great Society in 65.
And what he didn't want to do is entertainany option that might jeopardize really
support from constituencies on whichthat domestic agenda depended.

(13:46):
So I'll just stop there.
I wanted to provide an illustration forus maybe now to have a conversation about,
you know,how do we invigorate the study of history.
And I'd like to just ask you what yourthoughts are on the overall subject as
well as any reaction to that intro.

>> Stephen Kotkin (14:02):
That's great, General.
If only we all had that yellowpad in front of us every day.
We need to put that in the Hooverlibrary and archives and
get it up digitized on the website.
Taking more time, having clear goals,multiple options,
making explicit those assumptions, andinsulating from the partisan politics.

(14:24):
The irony of Johnson, of course,
is everything was subordinated topartisan politics in decision making,
in foreign policy, and it didn'twork because he gave up running for
reelection in the end preciselybecause of some of the decision
making that you cover in yourdereliction of duty books.

(14:45):
So you think you're doing one thing, but
you're doing the opposite in this perverseand unintended consequences kind of way.
Talk a little bit for us about thedifference between strategic and tactical,
not just on the military battlefieldwhere it's really, really critical,
but also in this policy formation,decision making process.

(15:06):
You alluded to taking more time,taking, having a clear goal.
So I can already see a differentiationimplicit there in strategic and tactical.
Make that explicit for us,following your own prescription.

>> HR McMaster (15:20):
Okay, well, you know, first of all,
it's important to really just have in yourown mind a working definition of strategy.
Right.Everybody wants a strategy for
everything now.
Right?You want to buy a car?
Well, I need a strategy to buy a car.
You know, and, and, and, and our colleagueHugh Strahan, one of the greatest,
I think, military historians of his,of his generation, if not the greatest,

(15:40):
you know, he kind of took the mantle,I think, from Michael Howard in terms of
just the most accomplished andinsightful military historian.
He said that the meeting ofstrategy has become banal, right?
Because everybody wants strategy foreverything.
I think what differentiates strategyfrom a plan is the complexity of
the environment.
And competition,opposition, rivals, right?

(16:04):
Because what that does is it creates adegree of uncertainty that that means you
can't just have a plan like tobuild a bridge or something, right?
That you know that there are goingto be unforeseen occurrences,
circumstances you'regonna have to react to.
And so therefore you have to kindof elevate your perspective and,
and come up with just a broaderconcept that does what, you know,

(16:27):
the army taught me when I wasa lieutenant on the definition of
strategy is a strategy is ends,ways and means.
Beginning with what you wantto achieve in the ends,
then the ways are very important.
How you have to answer the question,how do we get to that objective?
And then you can determine from thatthe means that are necessary for

(16:47):
you to be able to, you know, integrateall elements of national power and
efforts of like minded partners toaccomplish the overall objective.
And I think that's kind of the essenceof strategic competence is your ability,
you know, to, to actually understandcomplex problems, to visualize, right.
How you get from where you are today tothe accomplishment of your, of your ends.

(17:11):
And what happens a lot of times, Steven,is that like if there's not a strategy,
people substitute tactics for
the strategy and they tend tothen centralized decision making.
When I first got into the job asNational Security Advisor, I said, hey,
please give me a list ofall of the authorities and
decisions that have been centralizedat the White House level,

(17:32):
the president's level,away from the departments and agencies.
The list was, was really long,and made no sense to me.
Like anytime, we're gonna sail navalvessels through the South China Sea,
you had to get permission.
I'm like, hey, last time I checked,China doesn't own the ocean.
Why are we doing that?
You know, or we can only have three Apachehelicopters in Syria at any one time.

(17:57):
Well, why is that?
Why is that?
You know, so, so
I think what both of those examplesreflect is that we did not have a strategy
in place to deny China's claim thatthey own the South China Sea, right?
We didn't have a strategy in placeto accelerate the defeat of isis,
ensure the enduring defeat of isis, andthen have some kind of a vision about

(18:21):
how we could incentivize over timea resolution of the Syrian civil war.
And so if you don't have a strategy forthat, then what you do is you begin to
centralize decisions becauseyou want control, right?
If you have a good strategy in place,
a good strategy should help make you feelcomfortable with relinquishing control.
And allow you to supporting organizations,

(18:44):
departments, agencies,support to the president
to take initiative andto implement that strategy.

>> Stephen Kotkin (18:57):
Empowering others.
Why appoint good people if youdon't empower them to do their job?

>> HR McMaster (19:02):
Exactly.

>> Stephen Kotkin (19:05):
Talk a little bit about sometimes what I call junk history.
So it's clear that some,some of us don't know enough of history.
Yeah, that's of course, on US Educators.
When we complain that people don'tknow history, it's not their fault,
it's our fault.
To be better educators,to make it more interesting,

(19:25):
to show its relevance in their decisionmaking, in their own strategies.
I see a lot of history thatI would call junk history.
And sometimes the junk history is worsethan complete ignorance of history.
So for example, in the case of China,
there was an historical theorythat we did this with Germany,

(19:47):
we did this with Japan,we did it with South Korea and Taiwan.
So we know how to do this.
That is to say, if you engage andthey liberalize their economy,
they can also begin to approachthe kind of politics of
a classical constitutionalorder with rule of law.

(20:10):
And see, we know this playbookfrom those other cases.
The problem is that playbook didn't applyto the Eurasian landmass empires who
had a different history.
The case of China, the case of Russia,the case of Iran, right?
For them, they predatethe existence of the United States
by at least the millennium and in somecases in the China case, more than that.

(20:34):
And they have their own sense of howinternational order should look and
what their trajectory might be.
And so we had an historical playbookthat we were applying, but it wasn't
the history that I myself would havechosen for the Eurasian land mass empires.
And also when we have all the analogiesat hand, Munich, Vietnam,

(20:56):
and I could go on, you know this well,when people throw these analogies around.
So talk a little bit not just aboutignorance of history, but about the junk
history that either people got wrong orthey're applying in the wrong cases.

>> HR McMaster (21:13):
Right, junk history.
Or you might say drunk history.
I don't know if you've ever seen thatComedy Central show Drunk History where
they typically have grad studentsin history over, imbibe and
then give their, give their version ofthe, the Napoleonic wars or something.
I mean, it's, it's, it's pretty amusing.
But hey,
fortunately, a lot of people don't need toget drunk to give us that drunk history.

(21:36):
[LAUGH] That's right.
That's right.
So I really, I really like, you know,David Hackett Fisher's book, you know,
on, on, on on how history canhelp you inform decision making.
Because it's so comprehensive,it's kind of dense.
You know, it's not really accessible for,you know, for just general readers.
But, but, but I think he.
He did a very good job of laying out,you know, the application of history,

(21:59):
the importance of thinking in time andreasoning by historical analogy, but
also pointing out the.
The deficiencies.
And, of course, Margaret McMillan'smuch more accessible book,
short book called Dangerous Gamesis also very good.
There are some other, like, monographs,like, I forget the author's name, darn it.
I think it was a Columbia historyprofessor called Analogies at War about

(22:20):
the Vietnam War and the overuse ofthe Munich analogy and so forth.
So there's a good literature out there,which is actually,
I think a great course to teach, you know,in grad school is, you know, the what.
What.What Michael Howard called in this great
essay, which I always assign towhatever class I teach, the Use and
Abuse of Military History,which gets to this point as well.

(22:42):
So you're right.
I mean, there are many people who misuse,abuse history,
make the wrong historical analogies.
Especially, I experienced this, andStephen, in Iraq and Afghanistan,
with, the failed efforts to kindof build institutions there and
to transition into a form of governance,to replace kind of the authoritarian,

(23:04):
the theocratic dictatorship in Afghanistanor the Bath party dictatorship in Iraq.
And I led a couple of efforts which,again,
I think are illustrative ofthe importance of history to.
To try to correct someof those deficiencies.
One of those was to.
To help rewrite the campaign planduring the surge in Iraq in 2007.

(23:27):
And.
And I brought, you know,an interdisciplinary effort together.
Stephen Biddle, who is one ofthe most accomplished, you know, so
social scientists,who thinks clearly about war.
I mean, he's.
I kind of liken him to Dr. Spock.
Everything he says is logical.
You know, he's a great thinker.
But then we brought a historian namedToby Dodge, who, you might know,

(23:48):
who is a historian of Iraq and specializedin institutional history in Iraq,
which was very important to understand,really, you know,
how to help the Iraqis establish,you know, effective governance.
For example, or rule of law, and torebuild these institutions that have been
really kind of destroyed by Saddam becausethey were turned into his purpose,

(24:10):
and reflected his megalomania andbrutality.
So yeah, I think that understandingthe full complexity is what's important.
People, of course, they grasp for facile,
analogies to oftentimes shop around forthe history that will support.
Yes, that will support their,you know, what they want to do.

(24:32):
And that's always dangerous.
Right.It's like a pilot shopping for weather.
You know, hey, if the weather's bad,you don't want to fly, you know, and, and,
and soI think we have to be on guard about this.
But this is what we couldteach students too, right?
Is, Is, you know,how to reason by historical analogy while,
while being cognizant of the potentialpitfalls of doing so and provide them

(24:52):
with examples and then help them,help them identify their own examples.
As Michael Howard called it,the use and abuse of history.
But I'd love to hearyour thoughts on this.
How do you think about what history canand can't do or shouldn't try to do?

>> Stephen Kotkin (25:08):
I think it's really important to practice
the scientific method.
I mean, that sounds banal andit's a cliche, but for me,
the scientific method is activelyseeking evidence that disproves
your hypothesis,that disproves what you want to believe,
that disproves that you'resure what is right.

(25:31):
And so it might well be that youdon't find evidence that disproves
what you want to believe,and therefore it is true.
But if you're not actively seekingevidence to contradict your hypothesis or
your cherished beliefs, really yourconvictions, what you want to be true.

(25:51):
If you're not actively doing that,you're not seeking the scientific method.
So if you go out there proactivelytrying to disprove yourself,
you get to a much better place.
Now, it may well be thatthe evidence is contradictory,
the evidence is hard to read,the evidence is insufficient.

(26:14):
It's not always the case that we havea preponderance of evidence on all
the questions that are before us.
You talked about humility, andit's really important, for
sure, history teaching humility.
But I think this proactive seekingof evidence that might be contrary
to our hunch or to our cherished beliefs,that's something that I found.

(26:37):
I didn't have that when I was young.
I was quite eager to prove whatit is that I wanted to be true.
And it took me some time in a PhDstudent to develop this and
to carry that forward, butit's been with me ever since.
And I really feel that if we do that,at a minimum, we go really far.

>> HR McMaster (27:00):
I'd like to give an example of your work on this.
Your book Uncivil Society challengedwhat had become the conventional wisdom,
right, about the collapse of,of dictatorships in Eastern Europe,
the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Right.And, and a lot of that was,
you know, had, had become kind of,you know, the, the, the foundation for

(27:22):
the way we viewed the world andthe post Cold War world.
Right.And, and so I, I, I, you know, I,
I think that's just sucha great point is to, you know,
don't accept the conventional wisdom.
Sometimes you can guard against that bythink, bringing people in with different
perspectives, you know, consulting others,asking them to, you know, murder Board or
the Red Team, you know, whatever,whatever you're working on.

>> Stephen Kotkin (27:45):
Explain a little bit for our viewers what Red Team,
the con we don't always practice Red Teamin academia or what a murder Board is.
Tell us a little bit moreabout those practices.

>> HR McMaster (27:55):
So a Red Team would be that, you know,
you subject whatever you think your,your plan is or
the assumptions that underpin your plan toothers who would view them skeptically.
Oftentimes a Red Team is, is, you know,
looks at the same challenge you're facingfrom the perspective of your adversary.
Right.And, and so there's,
there's a good literature on,on this, but I think a book that is,

(28:18):
that is really important to, to,to kind of red teaming yourself or
giving, you know, entertain theperspective of others is called A Sense of
the Enemy by our colleague and a visitingfellow here named Zachary Shore.

>> Stephen Kotkin (28:32):
Yes, >> HR McMaster
his other book called Blunder,why Smart People Make Bad Decisions.
And what he does is in each of thosechapters, he tells us is historical
vignette up front that illuminates thiscognitive trap that you could fall into.

(28:54):
And so I think it's also important to, tounderstand, you know, this is, you know,
you understand like, what you don't knowabout a situation or what might be, like,
unknowable about it, you know, and,and, and, you know, I'm thinking of,
of when I interviewed General Goodpaster,who I think is, you know,
kind of one of the unsung heroes ofthe post Cold or Post World War II period,

(29:18):
a really clear thinker from a strategicperspective, became President Eisenhower's
right Hand man in establishing theEisenhower National Security Council and
then later becamesuperintendent of West Point.
Took a demotion after he was the supremeally commander Europe because West Point
was having difficulty integrating womenand they needed somebody of his stature,
just a fantastic guy.

(29:38):
But I interviewed him on,on the Vietnam book.
He said they didn't knowwhat they didn't know.
Talking about Robert McNamara and others.
And I think again, you know,as you've already highlighted, you know,
it's study history should give you a senseof humility whenever you think you know
the answer.
You know, and, and there's some greatexamples of military history, right, of,

(29:59):
of military officers who thoughtthey had the, the, the answer.
And, and you know,I'm thinking about the French army
offensive in 1917 that breaks the army andends in mutiny, right.
Whenever you have a generalwho says I have the solution,
you should start looking for the exit.
Problems are always more complex than we'd like them to be.

(30:21):
But you know, you don't always havefull information in real time.
Historians, we look back at our cases and
we have a lot of information frommany different points of view.
Decision makers in the moment andespecially people looking forward,
hoping for some strategic decision thathas positive consequences not just today,

(30:44):
but evolving over time.
There's a lot of uncertainty thatyou're dealing with in those moments.
You know, Henry Kissinger insome ways made a career out of
discussing the difficulty ofdecision making under uncertainty.
You can't avoid the decision,the problems are immediate,
you can't have the full information.

(31:05):
So how did, whether on the battlefield,life or death decisions right in, in the,
in the White House where the decisionsare not always immediate life and
death, but can be.
How does one deal with the uncertaintystuff that you're mentioning?
Not just failing to understandwhat we don't know, but

(31:26):
lacking critical data and input, butyou can't wait for it to come in.

>> HR McMaster (31:33):
Well, this is, this is a really great topic.
Thank you for raising it.
Because I do think that, you know, know tobe effective as a military commander in
particular, you have to, you haveto be comfortable with uncertainty.
And I think when militarycommanders get into,
into difficulties is when they wantcertainty before they make a decision.
And that's a recipe for losingthe initiative for delaying decisions.

(31:54):
Carl von Clausewitz, you know,
who all of us washed up generals haveto quote as frequently as possible.
He's actually brilliant.
He said, having taken into considerationeverything that you can learn about
a situation, you must march boldlyforth into the shadows of uncertainty.
And I think what has gotten us off trackoftentimes, as we're developing future

(32:15):
force capabilities, is we make theassumption that emerging technologies have
shifted war fundamentally from the realmof uncertainty to the realm of certainty.
This was the problem associated with kindof strategic bombing, theory in the 1920s.
It was the problem associated withthe orthodoxy of the revolution in
military affairs in the 1990s, [LAUGH]which was, in a lot of ways, I think,

(32:37):
a setup for the difficulties that weencountered in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And it's coming back.
This is what I called an essay years ago,the Vampire Fallacy,
because you can't kill it.
And now it's AI-related [LAUGH]technologies and supercomputing that
really, really this time is gonnashift war into the realm of certainty.

(32:57):
And then once you make that assumption,right, war's gonna be certain.
Well, guess what's mostimportant after that?
Well, then you better, you're gonna havethe perfect plan, perfect information,
perfect plan.
If you have the perfect plan, what youwant to do is centralize authority.
You don't want anybodydoing their own stuff,
that you want them toexecute that perfect plan.
And then if you'recentralizing all of that,

(33:18):
what's most important is synchronization,not initiative.
And you can see how you can createa culture also that expects certainty.
And then you now have a culturaldeficiency in your military.
You've been optimized for certainty.
It's a disaster.
So this is, I'm thinking of RobertDoughty's great book The Breaking Point
on Sedan, and then also The Seeds ofDisaster, kind of a companion volume where

(33:43):
he compares and contrasts Frenchdoctrine and German doctrine in 1940.
And the fundamental assumption wasthe French commanders would be what they
called at the handle ofthe fan in these bunkers.
Because, hey, the telegraph andwire communications,
it shifted more to the realm of certainty.
[LAUGH] So we've been down this path somuch, and this is where I think

(34:07):
history can help inform us in a waythat helps us avoid pitfalls, right?
I'll give you a couple other examples.
I think studying battle is reallyimportant so you understand the nature of
battle, because that hasn't reallychanged a whole heck of a lot.
I mean, John Keegan in the book The Faceof Battle, which I love this book,
because it shows the importance ofwhat Sir Michael Howard advocated,

(34:30):
which is studying warfare in width, right?
It says warfare in width,depth and context.
And so this is warfare across,I think it was like five centuries,
wasn't it, Stephen?
I think five centuries or four centuriesin the same geographic spot in Belgium.
And then he explores how technologyevolved the character of warfare.

(34:51):
But in the end, and there's a greatparagraph in the end of the Face of
Battle where it says whatbattles have in common is human.
The struggle of men andof course, women now,
struggling to reconcile their instinct forself-preservation with the achievement of
some aim over which othersare trying to kill him.
And then he says,what battle ultimately is, is.
It's aimed at the disintegrationof human groups.

(35:14):
I read that when I was a lieutenant,and you know what I thought?
I'm gonna make sure my humangroup never disintegrates.
And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna buildconfidence as a bulwark against fear and
disintegration.
And whereas you might focus on specifictactics, techniques, knowledge, skills and
abilities of soldiers as you're training,I always had that in mind.

(35:34):
I'm instilling confidence to make sure wecan disintegrate our enemies in battle,
but they can't disintegrate us.
And so it's those kinds of conclusionsthat shape your thinking that I think
are so important associatedwith the study of history.
Otherwise you would do what youwould do as a junior officer, right?
You would do your gunnery andmaneuver exercises and training,

(35:56):
but you wouldn't have that context ofwhat are we really trying to achieve.

>> Stephen Kotkin (36:02):
We often focus on territory, territorial gains and losses.
You're talking about the will to fight andthe capacity to fight and maintaining
one's own and attacking the enemy'swill to fight and capacity to fight.
There's a lot of stuff in there.
There's the decision making loop andmany other aspects that are important.

(36:25):
But fundamentally, whether you loseterritory or you hold territory,
you have to hold your will andcapacity to fight,
and you have to disintegratethe opponent's will and capacity to fight.
That's sorta what the nub ofthe gist of what you're getting.

>> HR McMaster (36:40):
Absolutely, which is like continuity in war, right?
And so Carl Becker, one of my favoritehistorians, who had that great essay,
Every Man a Historian,he said that memory of past and
anticipation of future shouldwalk hand in hand in a happy way.
And I think what happens oftentimeswas when you neglect continuity,

(37:02):
you focus exclusively on change.
And I don't think it was the changesin technology that created problems for
us in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It was neglect of continuities inthe nature of war, war's political and
human dimensions.

>> Stephen Kotkin (37:17):
Yeah, we're getting some really good questions in
the chat here about whetherwars are winnable anymore and
how we go about fighting and winning wars.
People are talking aboutthe experiences that you had firsthand,
Afghanistan and Iraq.

(37:39):
Explain to us a little bit about thenature of war and your understanding of
victory as well as winning the peace,not only winning the war.
Really big subject, butI can't think of a better guy.

>> HR McMaster (37:52):
Well, I think we had these fundamentally flawed assumptions
about the nature of those wars.
And again, and I've writtenabout this in Battlegrounds and
in The War With Ourselves, but that theseflawed assumptions about the nature of
the post-Cold War world were a setup,I think,
for the difficulties in Iraq andAfghanistan.
And those assumptions were that,hey, an arc of history.

(38:12):
It guaranteed the privacy of our free and
open societies over closedauthoritarian systems.
That great power competitionwas a relic of the past.
But then most importantly, that ourtechnological military prowess, as
demonstrated in the Gulf War, would makefuture wars fast, cheap and efficient.
And we would essentially be able to takewhat I would call the George Costanza

(38:33):
approach to war andjust leave on a high note.
And so we forgot that, hey,
the consolidation of gains has neverbeen an optional phase in war.
You don't have to do the consolidation ofgains if you're doing a military raid,
which is a military operationof limited purpose,
short duration and planned withdrawal.
But if it's a war, you've got to get toa sustainable political outcome consistent

(38:55):
with what brought you intothat war to begin with.
There's a great book on this by anotherone of our colleagues, Nadia Shadlow,
called War and the Art of Governance.
And I recommend that last chapter foranybody who wants to
understand the failure to consolidategains in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What I saw in both wars, close up inboth wars was nobody wanted to do it.

(39:17):
It was the consolidation of gains.
Some historians knew it had to be done.
A guy named Conrad Crane,who's a fantastic military historian,
put out this pamphlet in 2003right before we invaded Iraq.
And he was like, hey, United States Army,you're gonna have to do all these tasks.
This is what you've had to do in Panama,Dominican Republic,
I would give any example,Civil War reconstruction.

(39:39):
You always have had to do this,but nobody wanted to do it again.
To your point earlier, Stephen,
in large measure because we learnedthe wrong lessons from Vietnam.
One of the lessons and from the Gulf War.
The lesson from Vietnam was we'renot gonna do that anymore, right?
We're just gonna leave when it's done.
General Tommy Franks, after the invasion,Iraq, he went around to every unit.

(39:59):
He was saying, take as much riskgetting out as you did coming in.
So what happened, I believe,is that both these wars were winnable.
I mean, we haven't lost yet in Iraq still.
I mean, that's still up for,you know, we'll see how that goes.
But you know, I think the short termapproach to what were long term problems
in both places lengthened those wars andmade them more costly.

(40:21):
And, and so I've written more aboutthis in other places to explain that,
that kind of interpretation, but it wasmainly based on, I think that that war,
let's just take Iraq for example.

>> Stephen Kotkin (40:32):
Yes, >> HR McMaster
Ignorance of what it wouldtake to consolidate.
I think this was willfulignorance in a lot of ways.
Right.We're just not going to do that and
we're going to havethe State Department do it.
Well, hey,there's no State Department cavalry.
They don't exist.
They never existed, right?
Then we went from into, into denial.
I had the opportunity to write manymemos for the Central Command commander,

(40:57):
General Abizaid,who also used to have Hoover affiliation.
Fantastic guy.
To Secretary Rosefeld, hey,we got an insurgency here.
He's like, no, don't say the I word.
Don't say insurgency.
You know, and, and sowe had this denial period.
And then we had a period wherein that period of denial we
just wanted to get the hell out.
And then finally we had an adaptationperiod as a sectarian civil war had

(41:20):
morphed onto the,an insurgency that had coalesced and get,
and, and, and gotten stronger.
So, I mean, I could go on about this.
Then we won.
I think we won that war, Stephen.
You know, andI know it's kind of maybe predictable for
somebody who was involved emotionally and,you know, lost 63 of my,
of our cavalry troopers in, in,in combat in Iraq to say we won.

(41:42):
But I, I'll tell you, Stephen, in 2010,Baghdad was safer than, you know,
any major U.S. city andthe insurgency was defeated.
And then what happened is wedisengaged not only militarily but
diplomatically as the Iranians pulleda fast one through the election to Maliki,

(42:04):
who then put back intoplace sectarian policy.
I could go on.
I'll just say consolidation ofgains was neglected both places.
And as a result, you know, we took a shortterm approach to long term problem sets
and those wars got longer and more costly.
And then our will was diminished becausethe American people lost confidence.

(42:24):
And I think our presidential leaders too.
I mean, I don't think what the Americanpeople need to know about a war is why,
why did you know what is at stake and,and what is a strategy that will
deliver a favorable outcome atan acceptable cost and risk?
And I think our presidential leadersdid a poor job of explaining that in

(42:45):
both those wars.
People are asking about not just the consolidation of gains once
you're in the war, but the rationale forgoing into the war in the first place.
In other words, once you're in 100% clear,you gotta be in to win.

(43:08):
You're not in a war to lose a war,or else you're irresponsible.
But should you go in in the first place?
How do we make thosedecisions as a republic?
One of the key points you broughtup at the outset, you know,
giving the President multiple options,right?
And so, and you lived by thatwhen you were in that office, and

(43:31):
we can see it in your bookAt War with Ourselves.
From the time that you were in there,you tell quite a number of stories of
setting up a process for multiple options,and then the president who's
elected makes the decision andothers get in line and implement, right?
That's really important understanding.

(43:51):
But what about the decision forwar in the first place?

>> HR McMaster (43:55):
Well, this is a great question.
Again, history here, invaluable, right.
As Hustron andother historians have pointed out,
wars oftentimes turn into anotherwhole different kind of war, right?
I mean, they don't end the waythat they started oftentimes.
And that's because of the interactivenature of war, right?
War's political, war's human, war'suncertain because it is what Clausewitz

(44:18):
called the continuousinteraction of opposites,
which means there's no such thingas linear progress in war ever.
And so at the outset of a war orwhen you're making a decision whether or
not to use military force andto enter into a war or an armed conflict,
you have to consider that the futurecourse of events depends not just on us,

(44:39):
but on enemies who have authorshipover the future as well.
And so I think that's kind ofa macro level observation.
But then you should try to, as best as youcan to identify the long term costs and
potential long term costs and risks.
This was the problem in Vietnam andI wrote about this pretty extensively in
Dereliction Duty is,is that there was a tendency just to take,

(45:01):
really consider each,each step up the ladder.
And for, for Lyndon Johnson,in retrospect, it looks like, well,
I guess he really wanted to get us intothat, that to become an American war.
No, he, he wanted the opposite, but, butbecause he was unwilling to entertain
the potential long term costs andconsequences.
He never really considered them and,and, and, and, and

(45:22):
wanted to continue to avoidmaking a tough decision.
So, you know, I think what's importantto highlight is not only the risk and
cost of action, but the risk and cost ofinaction, but also to recommend that.
Recognize, you're gonna make mistakes,right?
And you might go againstwhatever your doctrine was.
I mean, heck, you know,we had, we had drawn the, the,

(45:44):
the Korean peninsula was outside ofour sphere of vital interest that we
had identified just a year earlier,before the June 1950 invasion.
We had withdrawn all of our troops becausewe thought it wasn't that important to us.
But President Truman had a different idea,and thank God for
everybody who lives south of the 38thparallel that he had that idea.

(46:08):
Whoever thought we were gonnago to war in Afghanistan, right?
I mean, our, our, our, you know, ourtrack record as, as Secretary Bob Gates
has pointed out in predicting the nextwar is perfect because it's zero,
you know, and so, so again, you know,this is where I think, you know,
as you face these kinds of decisionsabout whether or not to go to war.

(46:28):
And this is where Secretary Rice,our director here at Hoover,
has great insights becauseof the post 911 period.
You know, the key is to try to anticipate,you know, what are the long term costs and
consequences and to always balancethe risk of action, which you ought to be
clear eyed about as best you canwith the risk and cost of inaction.

>> Stephen Kotkin (46:48):
Yeah, that's the hardest one.

>> HR McMaster (46:50):
Well, and this is another book.
Another book.Another book is, is,
is Don Kagan's book on, on the Originsof War and Prospects for Peace.
Great.On this topic, I think.

>> Stephen Kotkin (47:03):
Yes, yes.
This is now becoming like a PhD seminar orreading list.
700 pages a week here.

>> HR McMaster (47:14):
You know, Don Higginbotham was one of my advisors at USC Chapel Hill,
you know, and after I took the writtenexam, he said, Congratulations, H.R.
you now know more historythan you will ever know.
And I think that's true.

>> Stephen Kotkin (47:30):
Well, sometimes, sometimes we forget things we knew, but
it's important to learn them in the firstplace because you don't forget that we're
getting a lot of good questions aboutUkraine, Russia and some about China.
So in the time we have remaining,
you could maybe apply someof your analytical acumen,

(47:53):
your historical background notto where we were on Russia,
Ukraine, butwhere we could be or should be.
We have some really consequentialdecisions in the administration right now.
You know, the players personally on this,you're in, in contact with some of them.
Give us a little bit on your analysis ofRussia, Ukraine policy, wise options for

(48:19):
the president, and then if we have time,we'll do the China piece in conclusion.

>> HR McMaster (48:25):
Okay, I'll, I'll do Russia really fast because I want you to,
I want to hear what you think about this.
And, and
anybody who's on this webinar should wantto hear more from you on it than me.
And, and so I would just say thatwe made some big mistakes on,
on not being able to deter Russia'sattack in the first place.
Those were based on flawedassumptions about what drives and
constrains Vladimir Putin.
Again, this is an argument forstrategic empathy.

(48:47):
You know, multiple presidents all throughPresident Biden, maybe President Trump
again believe that Putin just reallyneeds his security concerns allayed.
And they don't recognize the degree towhich he is obsessed with restoring Russia
to national greatness.
And by doing so, really by pursuing somesort of a restoration revanchist agenda
associated with restoring the Russianempire to a certain degree, or at least

(49:09):
creating servile relationships amongcountries that would fall into his sphere
of influence and he wants to extinguishUkrainian sovereignty as part of that.
So if you understand the nature of theproblems that we're mentioning about and
you make your assumptions explicit,I think the assumption is Putin won't stop
until he is stopped, until he'sconvinced that he's losing the war.
And the way to convince him that he'slosing the war is to impose greater costs

(49:33):
on an economy that's failing, butalso to communicate long term support for
Ukraine, maybe in connection with a longterm low interest loan that could allow
the Ukrainians to buy weapons from us,know and expand our, our industrial base.
In terms of this framework that I offered,what should the objective be?
It should be a, a free, sovereign,secure Ukraine, whatever you can

(49:54):
salvage of Ukraine out of a, a ceasefireand agreement that can defend itself.
Right.And can get on the path to restoring its,
its sovereignty and its prosperity.
And, and of course,
there are risks associated withthis that you have to mitigate.
But I mean,that's the way I think about it.
And, and I'd love to hear what you think,what you think,
and maybe also about the future of Russia,because,

(50:15):
Steven, you've got that great essay onthe five alternative futures for Russia.

>> Stephen Kotkin (50:22):
Yeah.
I think it's important tounderstand what you're saying is
Putin is playing for the win.
He doesn't want to draw.
He's not playing for a draw.
He's playing fornot just territory in Ukraine,
some of which he doesn't even control yet,but
subordination of Kyiv to himselfto Moscow to the Kremlin,

(50:45):
and then eviction of US power from Europe,or
certainly the extensionof US power post 91,
when the former Soviet satellites orrepublics begged to join
the Western alliance andwe agreed to accept them in Toronto.
He's playing for keeps.
He wants to win, not to draw.

(51:06):
Ukraine should have been andis now playing for a draw.
They for a while were playing fora win, but
that was sort of beyondthe circumstances in my view.
And I was arguing that threeyears ago we needed a draw and
a draw was a very good outcome forUkraine.
Sort of like the Korean Peninsulathat you were alluding to,

(51:30):
where whatever territory Ukraine cancontrol, they should control it fully,
not partially,which is what Putin is trying to impose.
And it should be reconstructedin a modernist fashion,
not rebuilding the stuff that was there,the early 20th
century economy that was bequeathedto Ukraine from the Soviet Union.

(51:54):
So playing fora draw is a version of a win for Ukraine.
But getting that across was reallydifficult during the heady days of
planning this offensive andthat offensive.
So now the game is gettingPutin to accept that draw,
to make him climb down from playing forall marbles here, playing for the win.

(52:18):
And he'll do that ifhis regime is at stake.
However many soldiers heloses on the battlefield,
he'll just send more to their deaths.
However many points we shave off his gdp,
he'll impose austerity on other people,not on himself and his elites.

(52:41):
His pain point is political.
It's about the survival ofhis regime politically.
And so if that is put at riskboth covertly and overtly, and
his attention is clear thatit's either agree to withdraw
on terms that are more favorableto Ukraine than the ones

(53:03):
he's demanding now, orrisk losing your regime.
It's 100% clear to me he is goingto take regime survival over that.
We have not applied thatpolitical pressure.
We've said it was escalatory.
We've applied the pressureon the battlefield.
A war of attrition.

(53:24):
A larger country againsta smaller country and
a larger country that doesn'tcare about loss of life.
That's a hard war of attrition againsta country like Russia is hard for
anybody, despite Ukraine's courage andingenuity.
We've applied it in the economic sphere,but not as well on the price of oil,

(53:44):
which is the most significantpain point by far for him.
Nor can we successfully blockadeEurasia to prohibit smuggling and
third parties and cutouts deliveringall sorts of contraband for
his war effort,let alone directly from China.

(54:05):
But we've been playingin the economic space,
we've been playing in the military space,we've been ramping up the pressure, and
in the political space, the pressurehas been minimal or next to nothing.
Now, of course, he took a reallybig political blow in Syria and
you were advocating movement onthe Syrian front for some time.

(54:25):
That was not us,that was really Turkey and
other aspects in the Middleeast involving Israel.
But you could see where that wasa really big blow to him, the Syria one.
Again, not something we did, butsomething we can benefit from.
And there are other points ofvulnerability that you know well from,

(54:47):
from being on the inside.
So that's what I see the move goingforward as far as the future of Russia,
very briefly, our goal should be a freeand democratic Russia ultimately, but
that's going to be very hard to do sinceit really hasn't been the norm there.
So in the meantime, we need a Russiathat may be nationalistic but

(55:11):
retrenches from aggression abroad.
Not because they love Ukraine orany of their other neighbors, but
because they fear the cost forRussia of an aggressive policy abroad.
So they're Russian patriots who wantto pull back for the sake of Russia.
And that's our constituencythat we have to play to.

(55:33):
They may not be Thomas Jefferson,they may not share our values,
they may in fact despise America,but they understand American power.
They understand the self defeatingtrajectory of Russia currently.
And so deconflating Russian elites andthe Putin regime,
peeling off patriotic Russianswho again may not be favorably

(55:56):
disposed towards Ukraine,no altruism, but are hurting for
Russia and therefore think thatthe war is hurting Russia and
should be stopped in the drawthat's more favorable to Ukraine.
So that's how I see ourstrategic options there.
I'm not sure I've been getting throughwith that message very successfully now

(56:19):
for the three years, but I've beenpretty consistent on that message.

>> HR McMaster (56:24):
Well, I hope you get through.
I mean, it's a critical moment.
Thanks, Steven.
That's awesome, it's great.

>> Stephen Kotkin (56:29):
It's a great conversation.
We'll have to reserve the China piece forthe next one.
Although people can go online andon YouTube and all of your amazing
podcasts with all sorts of reallyhigh level policymakers and
discussions of China and not onlyChina on the Battlegrounds podcast

(56:49):
as well as the other Hoover programming onChina with rich on our YouTube channel.
But I'd like to thank the audience forthe excellent questions.
And of course,I'd like to thank our general for
the lucidity andthe learning that he displayed.
A lifelong learner,he's referring to books and

(57:11):
concepts he's absorbed recently,not just when he was a student.
And that's a really big lesson for
everybody to learn that you're not donewith learning when you're in college, but
it's a lifelong process andyou should never stop.
I'm going to, at this point,turn it back to our host, Stephen.

>> HR McMaster (57:31):
I'm in the best learning environment because I get to learn from
amazing scholars like you.
Thank you so much forthe opportunity to be with you.

>> Stephen Kotkin (57:37):
It's mutual, sir, and we'll do more.

>> Eryn Tillman (57:42):
Thank you. >> Stephen Kotkin
Thank you, Steve, and thank you,
HR we really appreciate your time.
This recording will be available on theHoover event webpage in the next three to
four days, and
that is also where you can find each ofthe individual webinars for this series.
The events team will include a linkto that chat that you can find, and
we really encourage you to visitthe series webpage to sign up for

(58:05):
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subscribe to our RAInewsletter to receive updates.
Upcoming Events thank you again forjoining and have a great day.