This article examines the role of former National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster in the Trump administration. The article discusses four major roles performed by the APNSA - administrator, coordinator, counselor, agent - and asserts that McMaster served as a coordinator that failed to achieve a close relationship with the president. Probing the role and performance of President Trump's second APNSA underscores both the significance of a partly influential APNSA and apparent constraints in relation to what a president with a unconventional management style allowed him to do. Examining the importance of presidential management style on the role, power and influence of the APNSA will further our understanding of how, when, and under what conditions national security-level leaders make decisions.

This analysis uses case study methodology to further the understanding of the diversionary theory of war in specific cases. It employs a model consisting of five propositions that build upon existing qualitative research on diversionary war theory. The synthesised framework examines one possible case of American diversionary military actions: President Donald Trump ' s decision to launch missile strikes against Syrian airfields on 7 April 2017. The study tests the descriptive accuracy and further develops the diversionary theory of war, in essence, generally suggesting that empirical support for the diversionary logic in this case is mixed.

This article investigates why President Obama in 2011 ordered US air and naval forces to launch Operation Odyssey Dawn in Libya. The president's decision was the result of a combination of factors, including feelings of altruism, the legal basis for the operation, international support, domestic political constraints and the possibility to limit U.S. participation. The case study attempt to trace the process by which Obama came to the decision to use force in Libya by relying on a multitude of different sources, such as government reports, speeches and remarks, parliamentary records, media coverage, secondary sources.