H.R. McMaster: National Security, “Strategic Narcissism”, and the Mirror We Avoid
- Olga Nesterova
- 14 hours ago
- 5 min read
At a moment when global tensions are sharpening and domestic political dissonance is increasingly visible abroad, Asia Society convened a timely conversation in New York as it marks its 70th anniversary.
The session featured H.R. McMaster, former U.S. National Security Advisor, in discussion with Daniel R. Russel, former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. What unfolded was not a tidy policy seminar, but a revealing look at how strategy, personality, and performance intersect at the highest levels of power — and how easily the United States critiques abroad what it struggles to confront at home.
What a National Security Strategy is — and what it has become
Russel opened by asking a deceptively simple question: what is a National Security Strategy?
McMaster described it as a document meant to prevent war and preserve peace. When he helped draft the 2017 strategy, the goal was not aspirational language but integration — identifying concrete threats and aligning U.S. policy across military, economic, and diplomatic domains. Central to that effort was confronting China’s attempt to reshape global rules in favor of a communist governance model.
It was never meant to be a glossy pamphlet. The strategy, McMaster stressed, was an internal tool — a way to communicate seriousness to Congress, allies, and the American public at a moment when assumptions about China’s economic integration had proven misplaced.
The contrast with the current National Security Strategy could not have been sharper.
McMaster described more recent iterations as exercises in what he called “strategic narcissism” — documents that portray the world as Washington wishes it to be, rather than as it is. Today’s strategy has drifted into performance, pulled into partisanship and domestic political signaling rather than grounded threat assessment.
Performance, loyalty, and the presidency
When pressed on whether the strategy had effectively become an “America First manifesto,” McMaster acknowledged that the 2017 document deliberately reflected President Donald Trump’s language and instincts. Trump, he said, wanted ownership. Borders, burden-sharing, economic growth, and “peace through strength” were consistent themes — and Trump, ever the salesman, used performance as leverage in diplomacy.
That performative instinct, McMaster suggested, has only intensified. Deals are emphasized over durability. Optics sometimes outweigh outcomes.
Russel repeatedly attempted to pull the discussion back to first principles: the tension between deal-making and national security. McMaster conceded that economic incentives often crowd out strategic restraint, citing semiconductors, Russia, and Gulf states as examples where transactional logic intrudes on long-term security planning.
Trump, McMaster said, remains shaped by the 1970s — Vietnam, the energy crisis, hostage diplomacy — carrying a sense of grievance that advisers learn to activate. Flattery comes first. Then the promise of a “big deal.” Then grievance — “unfair treatment by NATO, Europe, China”. Finally, the alleged “weakness” of others.
On loyalty, McMaster was explicit. Loyalty, in his view, does not mean telling the president what he wants to hear. It means ensuring access to the best expertise — even at the cost of one’s own position.
“My job was to give President access to best expertise… I was at peace to be chewed up at this job, I was aware that my shelf life was limited.”
Asia, deterrence, and the danger of misreading weakness
The conversation pivoted eastward.
Asia, McMaster argued, is experiencing the aftershocks of a broader global competition. Authoritarian regimes — China, North Korea, Iran — are rewriting international norms to favor state-controlled economic systems. Russia’s invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022, he said, fit squarely into this pattern.
At the heart of China’s posture lies fear — fear of losing its monopoly on power. The Indo-Pacific, and Taiwan in particular, has become the proving ground.
The stakes, McMaster warned, are existential: sovereignty versus servitude.
Preventing war in the Indo-Pacific is paramount, he said, but deterrence must be credible. Accidental war, in his view, does not exist. Conflict emerges when aggressors calculate that costs will be low.
Russia perceived Ukraine as weak. History followed.
Ukraine, Syria, and Afghanistan, McMaster argued, are interconnected lessons. He suggested that the erosion of sustained Western resolve began before Ukraine — with Afghanistan — and later reverberated far beyond Europe, shaping calculations in the Middle East and emboldening adversaries elsewhere.
The solution, he returned to repeatedly, is deterrence through strength — military, economic, and allied.
China, Taiwan, and the illusion of control
McMaster expressed skepticism about high-level summits delivering meaningful results. Any visit between Trump and Xi Jinping, he suggested, would likely revolve around economic gestures rather than structural change.
He was blunt about the optics: any such meeting would be framed domestically in China as submission rather than parity. The room reacted audibly.
Taiwan, he emphasized, must continue preparing for its own defense. Deterrence only works if capability exists before a crisis.
“What if Ukraine had the capabilities in 2022?” he asked. “Putin would’ve not invaded.”
Looking ahead, McMaster warned that Beijing is watching political timelines closely. Pressure may come first through internal destabilization — “invasion by invitation” — then through economic quarantine, before any overt use of force. Surveillance, space, and information dominance are central to that strategy.
Russel raised the issue of psychological pressure on Taiwan — demoralization as a tool. McMaster agreed: extinguishing hope is often the precursor to control.
ONEST take: the mirror we avoid
What stayed with me most was not the diagnosis of China, but the limited attention given to internal self-assessment.
Much of what McMaster described about authoritarian messaging — constant assertions of strength, dismissive language toward critics, narrative discipline enforced from the top — increasingly echoes within the United States itself.
By “ugliness,” McMaster was referring to internal fighting and public dissonance — the visible fractures within a democratic system that adversaries often interpret as weakness.
Administration messaging today, by contrast, is relentlessly affirmative, dismissive of dissent, and framed in absolutist terms.
A White House press release issued on February 9, 2026, declared:
“Don’t Be a Panican. We’re Winning — and We’re Not Slowing Down.
Under President Donald J. Trump’s leadership, this Administration is smashing through the chaos and destruction left by Democrats… America is safer, stronger, richer, and more secure than at any point in decades.”
It is difficult not to notice the parallel.
We are exceptionally skilled at analyzing propaganda abroad — and remarkably resistant to seeing its contours at home. The danger is not imitation by intent, but erosion by habit: adopting the tone we claim to oppose, while insisting it is different because it is ours.
The decision point
Russel closed by underscoring that, ultimately, the responsibility rests with the commander in chief. Ambiguity about what triggers war is itself destabilizing.
McMaster invoked Korea as a historical lesson — a conflict shaped by miscalculation and assumptions that proved disastrously wrong.
The warning, implicit throughout the evening, was clear: deterrence fails when performance replaces clarity, when loyalty replaces truth, and when democracies stop practicing the self-correction they champion.
As Asia Society marks seven decades of fostering dialogue, this conversation served as both a strategic briefing and a quiet challenge — not only to understand the world as it is, but to confront the parts of ourselves reflected back in it.
ONEST thanks Asia Society for hosting this timely discussion and congratulates the institution on its 70th anniversary.