Secretary of State Rex Tillerson worked to advance the U.S. relationship with India throughout the first year of the Trump administration. The South Asian republic, the world's most populous democracy and one of its fastest-growing economies, was a natural ally the United States. Tillerson felt strongly that America needed to fortify its alliances and block rivals, chief among them China, from taking advantage of any gaps or friction between the United States and its strategic partners. To that end, he believed that if the United States strengthened its transpacific alliance with India, Japan, and Australia, with open trade and shipping routes, it could keep China at bay.
In October 2017, Tillerson telegraphed the administration's hopes for the region and India in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and then jetted to New Delhi to discuss the alliance in person with Prime Minister Narendra Modi: Tillerson was immediately impressed by Modi. The prime minister was a serious person, an experienced deal maker who was motivated by the prospects of a strategic partnership with the United States. Modi was candid with Tillerson about his challenges. He was operating in a tough neighborhood. On one border was Pakistan, India's greatest threat, and on another was China which had been trying to partner with Pakistan. To the north was Afghanistan, which was ravaged by war, highly unstable, and vulnerable to Russia and other countries. As he considered allies for India, Modi had options. He was inclined to deal with the United States, but if things ever went sour, Russia was knocking on his door.
The second week of November, President Trump took his first trip to Asia, a five-country, ten-day journey that concluded in the Philippines, where he attended a global summit of leaders. On November 13, Trump sat down with Modi in Manila on the sidelines of the summit. Tillerson had high hopes for the meeting - even though, back at the White House, Trump was known to have affected an Indian accent to imitate Modi, a sign of disrespect for the prime minister.
As with most of his foreign leader meetings, Trump had been briefed but didn't appear to have retained the material and instead tried to wing it. He took a hard right turn into a nitpicky complaint about trade imbalances. Modi tried to refocus on the threats India faced from Afghanistan, China, and Pakistan. His mention of Afghanistan led Trump off into a lengthy tangent about how stupid it had been for the United States to maintain its military presence in Afghanistan for so many years. When Modi mentioned his concern about China's ambitions and aggression in the region, Trump revealed a stunning ignorance about geography.
"It's not like you've got China on your border," Trump said, seeming to dismiss the threat to India.
Modi's eyes bulged out in surprise. Aides noticed him giving a sidelong glance at Tillerson, who accompanied Trump as part of the U.S. delegation. The Indian prime minister considered Tillerson among the best-versed Americans on the region's security challenges, and together they had been plotting a new partnership. Tillerson's eyes flashed open wide at Trump's comment, but he quickly put his hand to his brow, appearing to the Indian delegation to attempt not to offend the president as well as to signal to Modi that he knew this statement was nuts.
Trump did not appear to notice their silent exchange. He just kept rolling, droning on about-unrelated topics. Modi tried to keep the conversation an elevated plane, hoping to follow the path Tillerson had laid out for them in the previous weeks to work together to protect India and fend off China's Belt and Road Initiative. But each time Modi tried to get Trump to engage on the substance of U.S.-India relations, the American president veered off on another non sequitur about trade deficits and the endless war in Afghanistan. Those who witnessed the meeting that day in Manila were disheartened. Modi's expression gradually shifted, from shock and concern to resignation.
"I think he left that meeting and said, 'This is not a serious man, I cannot count on this man as a partner,' " one Trump aide recalled. After that meeting, "the Indians took a step back" in their diplomatic relations with the United States.
The meeting with Modi was a major setback not only for U.S.-India relations but also for the administration's hopes of checkmating China in the region. The meeting came at a time when Tillerson's influence with Trump was growing simply because the president had tired of others in his orbit. In preparation for the Asia trip, John Kelly asked Tillerson if he could add another duty to his already-full portfolio: Could he give Trump his national security briefings on the road?
This request was odd. Briefing the president was normally the responsibility of the national security adviser. Tillerson asked Kelly why.
"He doesn't want to see McMaster," Kelly responded.
The signs of Trump's fraying patience for H. R. McMaster had been painfully obvious throughout the fall. McMaster's loyal staff hated to admit it, but they knew this relationship was no longer working.
A military intellectual and policy maestro, McMaster was widely respected in Washington's foreign policy establishment and on Capitol Hill, but he did not easily fit into Trump's orbit. This much was evident right away. In his first town-hall meeting of the National Security Council staff after being appointed in February 2017, McMaster emphasized that as a nonpartisan army officer he did not vote. He wanted the professional staff to know that he valued their input, but his admonition about voting unwittingly sent a message to Trump, who demanded political loyalty from everyone in his administration.
McMaster lived by paperwork and process. He believed his duty was to give the president information so that he could make the best decisions, and then to help carry out the commander in chief's will. But his briefings to Trump were academic and detail-oriented, and the two men's stylistic differences inspired epic clashes.
McMaster had difficulty holding the president's attention. Trump, meanwhile, would get annoyed with what he considered McMaster's lecturing style. The president felt his national security adviser was always determined to try to "teach me something." Indeed, Trump constantly shifted and grumbled when staff were trying to bring him up to speed on a topic, immediately threatened by the notion that his knowledge wasn't sufficient if he needed experts. As the president repeatedly told Kelly when he proposed a subject briefing: "I don't want to talk to anyone. I know more than they do. I know better than anybody else."
McMaster came across as a tank commander in his bearing and didn't seem able to change gears to the far more politically cautious mode of White House hedging and dodging. He had a barking kind of voice, which had reliably conveyed strength and directness in his previous world. But it proved to be a pitch Trump disliked instantly, as if it were a piercing dog whistle.
Some mornings, Trump would come down to the Oval Office and see the President's Daily Brief on his schedule, followed by a meeting with the national security adviser, and complain. "I'm not fucking doing that," he told aides. "I'm not talking with McMaster for an hour. Are you kidding me?" Instead, the president would step into his private dining room, turn on the television, and summon National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin, or commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to come over and keep him company.
In March, McMaster was in the Oval Office briefing Trump on the visit of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, a favorite foil for the president. Trump got so impatient that he stood up and walked into an adjoining bathroom, left the door ajar, and instructed McMaster to raise his voice and keep talking. It was unclear if the strange scene was a reflection of Trump's feelings about McMaster or Merkel or both.
McMaster felt it was his duty to speak truth to his commander, to notify the president of critically important issues, and even to highlight bad news and the cons of a particular strategy Trump was considering. That's how McMaster had always spoken to his wartime commanders, when he was reporting from the battlefield: "Things have gone to hell, sir. Here's how bad it is." But Trump's intelligence briefers downplayed or withheld new developments regarding Russia's election interference or cyber intrusions, so as not to agitate the commander in chief. When they left a key piece of information out of the verbal President's Daily Brief, McMaster would later raise it directly with Trump, only to become a punching bag for the president when he inevitably blew up. The routine frustrated McMaster.
Part of McMaster's process entailed providing Trump with written briefing documents on each big decision, with detailed descriptions of the risks and possible rewards. He had tried to be concise from the get-go, boiling the material down to three pages, but McMaster and his team almost immediately realized the president wasn't reading any of briefing books, or even the concise three-page version. Staff secretary Rob Porter would synthesize the memos in a one-page cover letter, written in prose the president might find easier to digest. As one of Trump's confidants said, "I call the president the two-minute man. The president has patience for a half page." But McMaster understandably resented the fact that Trump was reading Porter's version of CliffsNotes. Porter and Reince Priebus suggested an alternative approach: McMaster could deliver verbal briefings to Trump. Nothing in writing.
"Everyone agreed we needed to stop giving the president paper to read," one former National Security Council staffer recalled. "H.R. was uncomfortable with this. McMaster kept saying, 'How are we not going to give the president any papers?' "
McMaster and his deputies were mindful of history and fearful of failing to document a risk or of missing an important alarm. Preside George W. Bush had faced withering criticism when it was discovered that in the summer of 2001 he had been briefed on intelligence suggesting Osama bin Laden planned to orchestrate terror attacks using airplanes. Bush had actually received briefing books on this, but the intelligence did not prompt any corrective action. Eliminating briefing books for the president seemed to tempt disaster. McMaster came up with yet another plan that the staff put into full effect in September: note cards with bulleted factoids.
Other top officials in the White House saw McMaster and some of his top deputies as overly suspicious. They fretted about the national security adviser's standing with the president and fought at times with others in the building, including Keith Kellogg, another army lieutenant general who served as the chief of staff on the NSC but was loyal to Trump above all.
By the time of the November trip to Asia, Trump was openly mocking McMaster. When McMaster arrived in his office for a briefing, Trump would puff up his chest, sit up straight in his chair, and fake shout like a boot camp drill sergeant. In his play, he pretended to be McMaster. "I'm your national security adviser, General McMaster, sir!" Trump would say, trying to amuse the others in the room. "I'm here to give you your briefing, sir!"
Then Trump would ridicule McMaster further by describing the topic of the day and deploying a series of large, complex phrases to indicate how boring McMaster's briefing was going to be. The National Security Council staff were deeply disturbed by Trump's treatment of their boss. "The president doesn't fire people," said one of McMaster's aides. "He just tortures them until they're willing to quit." The cruelty also was uncomfortable for Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Kelly, and other advisers to watch. Kelly was weary of McMaster's inability to take the hint that Trump was done listening. One day in the fall, Trump was meeting with a group of his advisers in the Oval Office, and Kelly decided the president was growing more obstinate on an issue and it was time for the gathering to break up.
"Thank you very much," Kelly said. "Everyone can leave now."
McMaster moved closer to. the Resolute Desk and said, "Mr. President, I'd like to keep talking to you. I have a few more things."
Kelly did not take kindly to McMaster disobeying his order. The chief of staff stood nose to nose with the national security adviser and decreed, "I said the meeting was over."
Here was a four-star marine general and a three-star army general nearly coming to blows in front of the president of the United States. Trump loved it, later telling another adviser that he was impressed by Kelly's willingness to confront McMaster and the sheer machismo he exuded. "This guy is an animal," the president remarked, complimenting Kelly. That the president's narrow bandwidth might have been the root cause of the disagreement didn't seem to cross his mind.
On the Asia trip, both Tillerson and McMaster hopped into the president's vehicle in succession to give Trump his morning update before the motorcade took off for its appointed meetings. But as McMaster spoke, Trump frowned, turned his back, and interrupted him midsentence to ask Tillerson a question. It was a not-very-gentle cue for Tillerson to take over the role of updating the president on the key facts he needed to know. Tillerson engaged in a little small talk, then returned to tee up the debates Trump would tackle in his meetings that day.
"As H.R. was saying, Mr. President," Tillerson began, a sign of respect and deference to the national security adviser at an otherwise painful moment. Tillerson didn't always agree with McMaster on style or process, but he told aides the man was selfless and dedicated to the mission.
McMaster had occasional disagreements with Trump, such as over the long-term strategy in Afghanistan and the Iran nuclear agreement. Unlike several other senior advisers, though, he genuinely tried to help implement the president's wishes. Rather than impose his own agenda, McMaster generally sought to curate the opinions of the relevant administration officials and present a range of options to Trump.
"Sometimes you have very forceful differences of opinion among the president's senior advisers," Senator Tom Cotton, a McMaster ally, said at the time. "H.R. is indispensable in helping the president hear all those viewpoints and have the information he needs, and framed in time for the president to make a decision."
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley added, "When we're in those meetings, he's all about getting options on the table for the president."
Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig "A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America" (2019)
