U.S. NSA McMaster continues staffing NSC with traditional GOP foreign policy experts

United States National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster has offered the post of senior director for South and Central Asia to Lisa Curtis, a conservative expert and senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, two White House officials confirmed.

Curtis is said to have accepted the offer and is going through the entry process now.

With this, McMaster has continued to fill out his national security staff with conservative foreign policy experts from the establishment think-tank world, preferring them to the military intelligence types favoured by his predecessor - retired Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the Washington Post reports.

McMaster decided to scuttle Flynn's choice for the post Brig. Gen. Robin Fontes, who is currently the defence attache at the U.S. embassy in New Delhi. The Pentagon had previously announced that Fontes was going to the NSC to take the senior director job, as she was offered the post by Flynn before his firing.

Curtis has been a leading voice on the GOP side of the South Asia expert community for decades, having worked at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as an advisor to the State Department during the George W. Bush administration and as an analyst with the CIA.

Officials also confirmed that Fiona Hill, a Brookings Institution scholar and traditional GOP Russia hawk, will be senior director for Russia and Europe, a newly combined directorate that brings both regions under one chain of command.

Originally, Flynn had selected Tim Shea, the defense intelligence officer for Eurasia at the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Replacements for both of those regional senior director roles are in the works, officials said.

Several other Flynn hires have also left since his departure, for a variety of reasons.