Across multiple administrations since the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy has been misconceived, inconsistent, and poorly implemented. As a result, America and the free world have fallen behind their rivals in power and influence. Meanwhile, threats to security, freedom, and prosperity, including nuclear proliferation and jihadist terrorism, have grown. In BATTLEGROUNDS: The Fight to Defend the Free World, H.R. McMaster lays out a comprehensive indictment of a quarter century of flawed policies and strategies, told from his perspective as a soldier, commander, scholar, and national security advisor.

A central theme of the book is what he calls “Strategic Narcissism”—a mind-set that all too often leads  presidents and their advisors to craft policies based on wishful thinking and to define problems as one  may like them to be rather than to understand them on their own terms. Overcoming Strategic  Narcissism, McMaster argues, is critical to defending America and the free world from grave and  developing threats.

H.R. McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institution and Lecturer at Stanford University School of Business. He was the 26th Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. McMaster served as an active duty Army officer for thirty-four years after graduation from the United States Military Academy. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World and the award-winning Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam.