The man to lead US president Donald Trump’s national security team is a military strategist who once served in Afghanistan as a corruption buster.
Trump announced on Monday that Gen. HR McMaster will serve as his next National Security Adviser (NSA).
HR McMaster is a decorated military official, having served in command positions during the Gulf War in the early 1990s and with the Central Command during the Iraq war in the early 2000s.
McMaster oversaw an anti-corruption task force in Afghanistan for Gen. David Petraeus that produced mixed results. Of late, he has focused on Army doctrine and modernization, relative back-waters within the service.
Trump announced his decision Monday seated alongside McMaster and gen. Keith Kellogg, the current acting security adviser, at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, where a day earlier he interviewed McMaster and several other candidates for the national security adviser post.
"He is a man of tremendous talent and tremendous experience," Trump said of McMaster. "I watched and read a lot over the last two days. He is highly respected by everybody in the military, and we're very honored to have him."
Michael Flynn, former U.S National Security Advisor was asked to resign last week amid allegations that he discussed U.S sanctions with a Russian official before Trump took office and then misrepresented the content of that conversation to U.S Vice President Pence and other administration officials.
The National Security Adviser is a member of the senior White House staff and serves as the chief in-house counselor to the president on national security issues. Traditionally the incumbent acts as a go-between US security agencies. The position does not require Senate confirmation.
McMaster will assume the position at a time of widespread security challenges to the US, including Russia’s alleged meddling in last year’s election and North Korea’s ballistic missile test this month.
McMaster is widely known as smart, intense and fiercely outspoken, qualities that have won him wide praise among his fellow officers — and have sometimes grated his superiors.