What Does China Want?

Speaker: LTG (Ret.) H. R. McMaster (Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Former National Security Advisor of the United States)

Date: 23 April 2021

Speaker Session Summary

SMA hosted a speaker session with LTG (Ret.) H. R. McMaster (Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Former National Security Advisor of the United States) as a part of its SMA INSS/PRISM Speaker Series.

LTG McMaster described the current geopolitical competition between Western countries and China as a competition between open democracies and closed authoritarian states. He believes that in this competition, democracies are currently at a disadvantage to closed authoritarian societies because of self-inflicted wounds, including a belief that the world will naturally liberalize and that true authoritarian countries will not be able to gain popularity with civilian populations. The assumption that authoritarian countries cannot compete with democracies was described bt LTG McMaster as strategic narcissism, which can be countered by increases in strategic empathy, a reexamination of US leaders’ perceptions of the world, and a realization that the US is in a great power competition (GPC). 

Part of this new understanding is recognizing the hypocrisies between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders’ narratives and their actions. Among these hypocrisies are 1) preaching rule of law and committing ethnic genocide against its Uighur population and 2) claiming to support multinational organizations while trying to subvert them against their purpose. Furthermore, the West’s current disadvantage to China can be traced back to two misconceptions: 1) that China’s aggressiveness is based on US-China tensions and 2) that by being non-aggressive, the West can avoid conflict with China. LTG McMaster argued that European countries must take a stronger stance with China and that all Western countries should coordinate sanctions in response to China’s aggressive behavior in the information environment (IE) and its human rights violations. Also, the USG can turn its freedom of speech, which China views as a weakness, into a strength by targeting Chinese foreign exchange students, in particular. He concluded by stating that the US should be optimistic about its ability to compete more efficiently and effectively with China in the future because of how well the US’s governmental system has survived despite the COVID-19 pandemic, civil unrest, and a highly polarized political election. 

Speaker Session Recording

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Briefing Materials

Biography:

H.R. McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is also the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. 

Upon graduation from the US Military Academy in 1984, McMaster served as a commissioned officer in the US Army for thirty-four years. He retired as a lieutenant general in June 2018 after serving as the twenty-fifth Assistant to the US President for National Security Affairs. From 2014 to 2017, McMaster designed the future army as the director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center and the deputy commanding general, futures, 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. He has commanded organizations in wartime including the Combined Joint Inter-Agency Task Force—Shafafiyat in Kabul, Afghanistan, from 2010 to 2012; the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq from 2005 to 2006; and Eagle Troop, Second Armored Cavalry Regiment in Operation Desert Storm from 1990 to 1991. McMaster also served overseas as advisor to the most senior commanders in the Middle East, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

McMaster holds a PhD in military history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was an assistant professor of history at the US Military Academy. He is author of the bestselling books 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. In August 2024, McMaster released his most recent book, At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House. His many essays, articles, and book reviews on leadership, history, and the future of warfare have appeared in The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, National Review, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

McMaster is the host of Battlegrounds: Vital Perspectives on Today’s Challenges and is a regular on GoodFellows, both produced by the Hoover Institution. He is a Distinguished University Fellow at Arizona State University (https://www.hoover.org/profiles/h-r-mcmaster).

The SMA INSS/PRISM Speaker Series description and list of the other sessions in this series can be downloaded here.