“He [McMaster] will probably end up being allied with Mattis… as opposed to the White House clique,” former US Department of Defense senior analyst Chuck Spinney said.
Spinney suggested that McMaster would join Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in opposing efforts by Trump and his top political strategist Steve Bannon to launch a new detente era with Russia.
University of Northern Ohio Assistant Professor of History Robert Waters agreed with the view that McMaster, unlike Flynn, was unlikely to seriously challenge or question deep-seated false assessments and casual assumptions held by senior US intelligence officials, especially about Russia.
“It was sad to lose General Flynn, who had the courage to stand up to President [Barack] Obama and was fired for doing it,” he said.
“The press and left joined hands with the intelligence establishment to destroy the career of a man [Flynn] who planned to shake it up and get rid of the people whose work helped produce… failures,” Waters stated.
Flynn wanted to hold the US intelligence establishment accountable for its long record of failed policy assessments since the collapse of communism but had been prevented from getting the chance to do so, Waters pointed out.
“It is remarkable, after all the mistakes that the US intelligence services have made in the last 30 years and all the criticism they have taken from the press and the Left, that now they are being protected from serious assessment,” he said.
McMaster enjoys the strong support of arch Republican hawk Senator John McCain and US neoconservatives, especially William Kristol and Robert Kagan, the husband of former Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland.
