Douglas Macgregor

MacGregor argued that the military capability and pertinence of the Marines, along with Army's XVIII Airborne Corps, made them both "as relevant as the Army's horse cavalry in the 1930s".

Douglas Abbott MacGregor (born January 4, 1947) is a retired U.S. Army colonel, government official, author, consultant, and political commentator.

MacGregor was educated at the Wm. Penn Charter School in Philadelphia and at the Virginia Military Institute, and graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point with a BS in general engineering in 1976.

He received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in international relations in 1987.

MacGregor was the "squadron operations officer who essentially directed the Battle of 73 Easting" during the Gulf War.

Facing an Iraqi Republican Guard opponent, he was part of a contingent of 19 Abrams, 26 Bradley Fighting Vehicles and four M1064 mortar carriers through the sandstorm to the 73 Easting on February 26, 1991, and in a 23-minute battle destroyed almost 70 Iraqi armored vehicles with no U.S. casualties.

He was at the front center of the formation with Eagle Troop on the right and Ghost Troop on the left.

MacGregor designated Eagle Troop the main attack and positioned himself to its left.

Eagle Troop Scouts subsequently followed MacGregor's tank through a minefield during which his crew destroyed two enemy tanks.

As MacGregor was firing from the front line, he didn't "request artillery support or report events to superiors until the battle was virtually over, according to one of his superior officers", taking risks which "could have been criticized had the fight turned ugly".

MacGregor was "one of the Army's leading thinkers on innovation", according to journalist Thomas E. Ricks.

His 1997 book Breaking the Phalanx argued for radical reforms inside the Army.

He "became prominent inside the Army" when his book Breaking the Phalanx was published in 1997, arguing for radical reforms.

Breaking the Phalanx was rare in that an active duty military author was challenging the status quo with detailed reform proposals for the reorganization of U.S. Army ground forces.

The head of the Army, United States General Dennis Reimer, passed out copies of the book, but its reforms failed to win the support of the general officer corps.

It advocated that "the Army restructure itself into modularly organized, highly mobile, self-contained, combined arms teams that look extraordinarily like the Marine Corps' Air Ground Task Forces".

His article "Thoughts on Force Design in an Era of Shrinking Defense Budgets" was published in the Israeli Dado Center Journal.

Many of MacGregor's colleagues thought his unconventional thinking may have harmed his chances for promotion.

While an Army NTC official called him "the best war fighter the Army has got," colleagues of MacGregor were concerned that "the Army is showing it prefers generals who are good at bureaucratic gamesmanship to ones who can think innovatively on the battlefield," and some saw him as too blunt or arrogant.

Despite his top post-Gulf War NTC showing, his Army career was sidelined.

The summer of 1997 marked the third time the Army refused to put him in command of a combat brigade, "a virtual death warrant for his Army career, relegating him to staff jobs as a colonel for the remainder of his service".

He was a leader in an early tank battle in the Gulf War and was a top planner in the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

MacGregor was the top planner for General Wesley Clark, the military commander of NATO, for its 1999 intervention in Yugoslavia.

In the fall of 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who had read Breaking the Phalanx, insisted that General Tommy Franks and his planning staff meet with Colonel MacGregor on January 16–17, 2002 to discuss a concept for intervention in Iraq involving the use of an armored heavy force of roughly 50,000 troops in a no warning attack straight into Baghdad.

His thinking contributed to US strategy in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

After leaving the military in 2004, he became more politically active.

MacGregor left the Army in June 2004.

MacGregor is the vice president of Burke-MacGregor, LLC, a consulting firm based in Reston, Virginia.

In 2012, he challenged general James F. Amos' stance on the United States Marine Corps.

In 2014, he stated that U.S. Army is designed to benefit four-star generals, not brigade readiness.

MacGregor has appeared as a regular guest on Fox News, with at least 60 Fox weekday appearances from August 2017 to early 2022, including 48 on Tucker Carlson's show.

Carlson regularly praised MacGregor, describing him as "our first choice for foreign policy analysis" and "one of the people we trust to give us real information".

According to Media Matters for America, it was this which put MacGregor on the radar of President Donald Trump.

In May 2019, on the Carlson show, MacGregor urged Trump to replace senior national security officials, describing them as "part of this bipartisan globalist elite".

When John Bolton was removed from the White House in September 2019, MacGregor was one of five finalists under consideration for selection as President Trump's National Security Advisor.

In 2020, then-president Donald Trump proposed MacGregor as ambassador to Germany, but the Senate blocked the nomination.

On November 11, 2020, a Pentagon spokesperson announced that MacGregor had been hired to serve as Senior Advisor to the Acting Secretary of Defense, a post he held for less than three months.

Trump also appointed him to the board of the United States Military Academy, but the appointment was terminated by the incumbent president Joe Biden.

MacGregor regularly contributes to Fox News and has appeared on the Russian state-funded channel RT.

His commentary has been noted for disparaging Ukraine, immigrants and refugees.