Trump’s Reversal on Afghanistan

After many months of deliberations, President Trump has finally made an announcement about his administration’s strategy regarding Afghanistan and the stationing of U.S. troops there, which has been ongoing for the past 16 years. Indeed, the Afghanistan War has been America’s longest conflict and one of its bloodiest of modern times, with more than 2,400 U.S. troops killed and at least 20,000 injured. Contractor, aide and journalist deaths number more than 3,900. Most astonishing of all, between Iraq and Afghanistan, no less than 970,000 U.S. veterans have filed disability claims against the U.S. government (many for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD]) that when all are paid out may cost the government as much as $2 trillion.

It’s against this backdrop that Trump has said he would like to commit 4,000 new U.S. troops to Afghanistan, bringing the total number in that nation to over 12,000, although this does not come close to the 100,000+ peak figure under ex-President Obama in 2010. Unfortunately, despite the long occupation of many parts of the Central Asian nation and myriad lives expended (Afghani deaths alone number nearly 100,000), the U.S. has little to show for its efforts.

In fact, the Taliban, which the U.S. declared war on shortly after the terror attacks of 9/11, has gained ground recently and now holds more of the country than they have at any time since the U.S. forced them from their central governing role in 2001. The current Afghani administration of President Ashraf Ghani holds roughly 67 percent of the country, a figure which is falling continuously as the Taliban have resurged in recent years.

Given these statistics and knowing that President Trump questioned the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan many, many times on the campaign trail, it’s difficult to know why he’s essentially reversed his earlier positions and now wants to commit more U.S. forces to the country instead of less. Could the generals and military men in his cabinet have something to do with this thinking?

It’s known that Trump’s new National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster has personal experience in Afghanistan, having led a task force there in 2010. Trump’s Secretary of Defense, Marine Corps General James Mattis, led the most extensive Marine assault from a ship in his military branch’s history in the Afghan province of Kandahar in 2001. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Joe Dunford, who’s Trump’s top military advisor, was a commanding general in Afghanistan as recently as 2013. And Trump’s new Chief of Staff, retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, lost his son, First Lieutenant Robert Kelly, to a land mine in Afghanistan in 2010. Shortly after that incident, Kelly declared that the U.S.’s war against its “ruthless enemies” would “go on for years, if not decades,” before the scourge of terrorism could be finally eliminated.

Beyond this short list of those military men who are in theory Trump’s allies are others like Arizona Senator John McCain, who decidedly are not. McCain, who’s Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has great sway over the Pentagon’s $600 billion military budget. It’s said that McCain has never heard about an armed conflict he didn’t want the United States to enter into or at least influence; it’s likely that Trump’s anti-interventionist stances on the campaign trail in 2016 helped bring the two men into open conflict shortly before the presidential election.

Trump railed against the expense of overseas involvement in speeches like the one he gave at the National Press Club last April. In the past, Trump tweeted statements like “Let’s get out of Afghanistan. Our troops are being killed by the Afghanis we train, and we waste billions there. Nonsense! Rebuild the U.S.A.” Even as recently as the day he announced his new Afghan policy, Trump admitted, “My original instinct was to pull out. And historically, I like following my instincts.”

But the core of the argument for recommitting to Afghanistan is twofold. First, in theory, the aim is to deny the Taliban, al-Qaeda and now ISIS a “safe haven” from which to operate and train, as Osama bin Laden had the luxury of doing prior to September 2001. The problem with this thinking, however, is that Afghani territory is vast, and trying to win back the full 33 percent of the country the government doesn’t control may be unrealistic. Another problem with the “safe haven” denial theory is that when the Taliban are attacked currently, many of them quickly retreat over the border to neighboring Pakistan. This is a problem Trump addressed specifically in his announcement.

“Today, 20 U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations are active in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the highest concentration in any region anywhere in the world,” stated Trump. “For its part, Pakistan often gives safe haven to agents of chaos, violence and terror. The threat is worse because Pakistan and [neighboring] India are two nuclear-armed states whose tense relations threaten to spiral into conflict. And that could happen… In Afghanistan and Pakistan, America’s interests are clear. We must stop the resurgence of safe havens that enable terrorists to threaten America.”

But Trump also called attention to the fact that Pakistan has been less than an ideal partner in the U.S. war against the Taliban. “The next pillar of our new strategy is to change the approach in how to deal with Pakistan,” vowed the president. “We can no longer be silent about Pakistan’s safe havens for terrorist organizations, the Taliban and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond. Pakistan has much to gain from partnering with our effort in Afghanistan. It has much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals and terrorists.”

Trump blasted the fact that Pakistan has harbored the Taliban, just as it harbored Osama bin Laden, who Navy SEALs killed in Abbottabad in the country in 2011 (less than a mile from Pakistan’s most prestigious military academy, no less). “The Pakistani people have suffered greatly from terrorism and extremism… But Pakistan has also sheltered the same organizations that try every single day to kill our people. We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we’re fighting,” Trump noted. “That will have to change. And that will change immediately. No partnership can survive a country’s harboring of militants and terrorists who target U.S. service members and officials. It’s time for Pakistan to demonstrate its commitment to civilization, to order and to peace.”

Trump also pledged to cudgel U.S. ally India into bolstering America’s efforts to bring Pakistan — India’s traditional enemy — into line. “Another critical part of the South Asia strategy for America is to further develop its strategic partnership with India, the world’s largest democracy and a key security and economic partner of the United States. We appreciate India’s important contributions to stability in Afghanistan, but India makes billions of dollars in trade with the United States, and we want them to help us more with Afghanistan, especially in the area of economic assistance and development.”

The prominent mentioning of both South Asian countries in his speech differentiates Trump’s approach from that of, say, former President Obama, who seemed more than happy to reward Pakistan with aid money even as he operated lethal drone missions targeting the Taliban in that country, to the supreme annoyance of the Pakistani government.

Whether Trump’s seeming decision to now withhold some of this aid will pay greater dividends remains to be seen. It should be borne in mind, however, that as Trump reiterated, both Pakistan and India are nuclear-armed states, and isolating either of them or clearly favoring one over the other could have unforeseen consequences. Another factor making the future uncertain is an ongoing conflict between India and China on the border of those two countries that’s daily threatening to grow more intense.

There are many analysts who say that the U.S.’s position in Afghanistan is at a stalemate; despite the expenditure of over a trillion dollars and the deployment of the most modernized fighting army in the world, the U.S. has effectively been held at bay by a ragtag bunch of glorified warlords commanding armies of fighters that look like something out of a 19th-century daguerreotype. Many have primitive weapons, no modern fighting vehicles, no body armor and few, if any, communication tools.

For some observers, Trump’s statements that he won’t rule out a negotiated settlement that may allow the Taliban to share some power in a future Afghan government is a tacit admission that he’s willing to accept an “honorable loss,” rather than an unconditional victory, as his endgame. In this way, some experts see echoes of former President Richard Nixon, whose “secret plan to end the war in Vietnam” resulted in the brokerage of an alleged “peace with honor” with that nation and the withdrawal of American troops.

Of course, a full withdrawal of U.S. troops may not be in the cards for Afghanistan. It’s worth recalling that the U.S. has had 30,000+ soldiers stationed in South Korea (albeit in a mostly non-combatant role) for the past 64 years, so a 16-year stretch in Afghanistan may look something like a brief intermission by comparison to enlightened watchers of geopolitics.


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