Much to say about H.R. McMaster's reply to me and others in @ForeignAffairs, but one thing is that McMaster wholly invents the notion that I claimed that a restrained United States could cause "the cessation of Iran's proxy wars."
My essay never mentions Iranian proxy wars. Here is what it says about Iran: foreignaffairs.com/articles/afgha…
This issue speaks to McMaster's larger misinterpretation of my argument. I claim that a U.S. military pullback will reduce threats to the United States less by changing others' behavior (though that will happen) than by narrowing how the United States defines threats to itself.
So had I addressed Iranian proxy wars, I would have said that Iranian proxy wars do not threaten the United States and are no justification for continuing America's military presence and wars in the region, regardless of whether a U.S. pullback would curtail Iranian misbehavior.
It is a pity that McMaster, in his piece, tells advocates of restraint that they need to learn "strategic empathy" yet fails to interpret their argument adequately, even to the point of wholly inventing a claim of mine.
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