A Brief Tour of Trump's Wars
Where exactly does that leave us? Like Obama before him, and Bush before him, President Trump has opted for continuing, even escalating, America's war for the Greater Middle East. Long gone are the critiques of "stupid" interventions. As he announced a new mini-surge in Afghanistan, he did admit that his instinct had been to end America's longest war, but it wasn't an instinct that stood tall in the face of his war-fighting generals.
Now, after nearly a year in office, those instincts of his seem limited to whatever his generals tell him. An ever-so-brief tour of his wars suggests -- to give you a little preview of what's to come (should Americans even care) -- two things: first, that on the horizon is more of more of the same; second, that the result is likely to be, as it has largely been in these last years, some version of stalemate verging on defeat.
* Afghanistan is a true mess. Now entering its 17th year, the war in that infamous graveyard of empires has left the U.S. military short on answers.
Afghan Security Forces (ASF), the foundation of American "strategy" there, are being killed and wounded at an unsustainable rate. And all that sacrifice -- to the tune of perhaps 20,000 ASF casualties annually -- has delivered precious little in the way of stability. More Afghan provinces and districts are contested or under direct Taliban control today than at any time in these years of American intervention. Corruption is still endemic in the government and the military and few rural Afghans seem to consider the regime in Kabul legitimate.
It's all been so futile that it borders on the absurd. Without an indefinite influx of Western money, training, and logistical support, the Afghan government simply cannot hold out. Despite the efforts of hundreds of thousands of American troops and countless bureaucrats, Washington has never been able to deal with or alter the essential quandary that lies at the heart of the Afghan mission: the Taliban still counts on sanctuary in the tribal borderlands of Pakistan and so long as that's available -- and it seems it will be in perpetuity -- there is no way to militarily defeat them. Besides, the Taliban harbor no discernible transnational aspirations and most al-Qaeda operatives have long since left Afghanistan's mountains for other locales throughout the Greater Middle East.
Mr. Trump's generals and their troops on the ground have no answers to these confounding challenges. One thing is guaranteed: 3,000, or even 50,000 more troops won't break the stalemate, nor will loosing some of the last Vietnam-era B-52s to bomb the countryside. When I last surged into Afghanistan myself in 2011-2012, I was joined by more than 100,000 fellow Americans. It didn't matter. We achieved about as much as this current "strategy" will: stasis.
* Iraq is rarely in the headlines anymore, except maybe as an offshoot of America's anti-ISIS campaign in Syria. Nonetheless, with more than 5,200 U.S. troops on the ground (and don't forget the private contractors also in-country), you've not heard the last of Washington's 14-year-old campaign there. What exactly is the U.S. charter in Iraq these days anyway? To defeat ISIS? That's (mostly) done, in a conventional sense anyway. The so-called caliphate has fallen, though ISIS as a global brand is thriving. To stabilize the country in order to avoid ISIS 2.0 or block the growth and spread of well-armed Shia militias? Don't count on a few thousand troops succeeding where 150,000 servicemen failed at similar tasks the last time around.
Iraq remains divided and ultimately unstable. In the north, the Kurds want autonomy, which the Shia-dominated Baghdad regime will have none of. In the north and west, Sunnis, living in the rubble of their unreconstructed cities, remain distrustful of Baghdad. (A year after its "liberation" from ISIS, for instance, significant parts of Fallujah still lack water or electricity.) Unless they are somehow integrated more equitably into the Shia-controlled political heartland, they will predictably support the next iteration of Islamist extremists.
The only real winner in the Iraq War was Iran. A mostly friendly, Shia-heavy government in Baghdad suits Tehran just fine. In fact, by toppling Saddam Hussein, the United States all but ensured that Iran would gain increased regional influence. The bottom line is that Iraq has many challenges ahead and Washington doesn't have a hope in hell of meaningfully solving any of them.
How will Baghdad divide power between its various sects and factions? How will it demobilize and/or integrate those Shia militia units that checked ISIS's expansion in 2014-2015 into its military or will it? How much autonomy will President Haider al-Abadi allow the Kurds?
The all but perpetual American military presence in that country seems unlikely to help with any of Iraq's countless problems. And given that, like just about anyone else on this planet, Arabs don't take kindly to even the most minimalist of occupations, whatever they may officially be called, expect those U.S. troops to end up in someone's line of fire sooner or later. (Recent history suggests that sooner is more likely.)
* When it comes to Syria, can anyone articulate a coherent strategy in the devastated ruins of that country amid a byzantine network of factions, terror groups, and the once again ascendant government and military of Bashar al-Assad? It seems like another formula for certain disaster. Somehow, Syria makes even the situation in Iraq seem simple. Perhaps 2,000 U.S. troops are on the ground in north and southeast Syria. Getting in was the easy part, getting out may be all but impossible.
U.S.-sponsored, mainly Kurdish forces, backed by American air power and artillery, seized ISIS's self-proclaimed capital, Raqqa, and helped turn the militants of the Islamic State back into a guerilla force. Now what? Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Syrian President Assad, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the Iranians all loathe the Kurds and are none-too-keen to allow them any form of long-term autonomy. A tenuous stalemate has developed between Assad's army and his foreign backers on one side and the small U.S. force with its allied Kurdish fighters on the other. Sooner or later, however, it's a recipe for disaster as the possibilities of "accidental" conflict abound. The Trump team, like Obama's before them, appears to have no consistent vision for Syria's future. Can Assad stay in power? Does the U.S. even have a say in that question any longer? Assad, Putin, and Hezbollah appear to hold a far stronger hand in that country's six-year civil war.
In addition to yet more destruction, division, and chaos, it's unclear what the U.S. stands to achieve in Syria. Nevertheless, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and the Pentagon recently announced that, just as in Iraq, U.S. troops would stay in Syria after the final defeat of ISIS. On the subject, a Pentagon spokesperson was quite emphatic: "We are going to maintain our commitment on the ground as long as we need to, to support our partners and prevent the return of terrorist groups." In other words, the U.S. military will remain there until when exactly? Long enough for the civil war to end and liberal democracy to burst forth in the Syrian countryside?
That country is hardly a vital national security interest of the United States and the Trump team's plans seem as vague as they are foolish. Nonetheless, on the intervention goes and where it ends nobody knows. It's not, however, likely to end well.
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