McMaster: Flynn Indictment Is Not Impeding Our Work on the NSC
RUSH EXCERPT:
BAIER: "It’s a dangerous world and you look around the world and there are a ton of hot spots. The next question is politically sensitive but you said everything was open when we started this thing. Does an event like the indictment of your predecessor carry some form of policy or security impact? Do foreign allies get rattled by it, do adversaries get embolden by it, does it constrain the Trump Administration foreign policy?"
McMASTER: "I see no evidence of the investigation in any way impeding the important work that we are doing, so what we are endeavoring to do is to regain our strategic focus and so what the president asked us to do in the national Security Council is involve responsibilities back to departments who have to execute policies and we have done that and with all the time that we have saved, tactical details, we have established a very strong foundation, foundation of strategy clearly articulated objectives for the national security challenges we are facing. One of those challenges is Russia and what we are endeavoring to do with Russia is three things. We need to counter Russia’s destabilizing behavior that we saw really grow significantly in the last several years, right, you can go back to now service attacks Gastonia, 2007, invasion of Georgia, 2008, invasion of Ukraine, the intervention on the side of the Assad regime in Syria and go on and on, disturbing pattern and then, of course, you have the subversion of democracies broadly in the west, Europe has suffered in particular from this.
"You saw Russian hands in the Catalonia referendum, you’re starting to see Russia active in Mexico well in advance of the Mexican election, so what we have been focused on is the three things we have to do with Russia, hybrid warfare, new generation warfare where they attempt to use sophisticated strategy of subversion, but really disinformation and propaganda to polarize communities and effect our confidence.
"I gave this talk about strategic confidence, it’s really an element of that. Part of reclaiming our strategic confidence is having confidence in what unifies us as Americans and so it would be great if every time we talk about what divides us, we also at least give equal time to what — to what units us as Americans, so we want to confront Russia’s destabilizing behavior. It wouldn’t be anybody’s interest to have a large-scale conflict with Russia and the third thing what we need to do is find areas of cooperation with Russia, so Russia policies are focused."
BAIER: "You don’t think that counterparts around the world were rattled from yesterday?"
McMASTER: "I don’t think so, we are in close contact. The national security adviser support group that we have."
[Laughter]
