On October 15, the National Review published a review of General H.R. McMaster’s new book Battlegounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World. Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig discusses the book’s primary contention, that US foreign policy has too often fallen into “strategic narcissism.” A better foreign policy would begin with “strategic empathy,” or seeing our adversaries “as they really are.”
It is only by first understanding our adversaries that we can begin to formulate effective strategies for dealing with them.