National Security

Lessons From The Hoover Policy Boot Camp

Contributing Scholar: H. R. McMaster

Strategic Competence

In an age where authoritarian powers actively coordinate their aggression, the United States must develop specific and strategic plans of action to prevent conflict and restore credible deterrence and hard power.

Up Next Iran & Terrorism

Action, Inaction, and Incompetence

Comment

Published February 21, 2025

Former National Security Advisor and Senior Hoover Fellow, Gen. HR McMaster, demonstrates how strategic incompetence - marked by unrealistic assumptions and misunderstanding of adversaries - has led to harmful patterns of both misguided action and dangerous inaction in American foreign policy. From Afghanistan to Ukraine, policymakers often see the risks of action while failing to recognize how inaction and the perception of weakness invite aggression -- where passive responses and strategic hesitation emboldened adversaries. To overcome this pattern, the United States must adopt a more rigorous strategic framework that balances the risks of both action and inaction, challenges implicit assumptions, and recognizes that adversaries respond to strength rather than accommodation. Failure to develop such necessary strategic competence carries a price often "paid in blood."

H.R. McMaster is a retired Lietenant General in the United States Army, former National Security Advisor, and the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is also the host of Battlegrounds: Vital Perspectives on Today’s Challenges and is a regular on GoodFellows, both produced by the Hoover Institution.

Check out more from H.R. McMaster:

Watch or listen to H.R. McMaster's discussion with Secretary of National Defense of the Philippines, Gilberto Teodoro on Battlegrounds here.
Watch or listen to H.R. McMaster on Goodfellows "Vibe Shifts: Enter Trump, Exit Biden, the Politics of Fires, “Silly Walking and Flying Eagles” here.
Watch H.R. McMaster's interview on BBC Newsnight with Andrew Marr here.

The opinions expressed in this video are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Hoover Institution or Stanford University. © 2025 by the Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University.