When it comes to Trump, nothing is clear
President Donald Trump is no longer just making history in every way once unimaginable. He’s rewriting it.
In 1979, Trump was busy finagling a zoning law variance out of New York City, allowing him to add 20 storeys to his flagship eponymous tower in downtown Manhattan. So maybe he was too preoccupied to notice the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, president Jimmy Carter’s subsequent decision to ban U.S. athletes from participating in the Moscow Olympics, and the decade of asymmetric combat horrors which followed before the Soviets beat a demoralized retreat from the quagmire of its own Vietnam. We know Trump doesn’t read. Neither books nor the briefing papers that come across his desk.
On Afghanistan, in particular, he appears to have taken crib notes instead from President Vladimir Putin, who — showing Trump how it’s done — has spent considerable time and energy reinventing the Soviet debacle with broad strokes of cockamamie history, resurrecting the invasion as nobly legitimate; not as per the geopolitical currency of 1979, to install a compliant Communist regime on a neighbouring country (the former compliant Communist regime in Kabul was teetering), but by the anti-terrorism-justifies-all metrics of post 9/11.
But of course Trump and Putin admire each other. What we don’t know yet for certain — maybe the Mueller investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election will shed actionable, impeachable light on whether there was any collusion with the Trump campaign — is how deeply entangled the two autocrats are, how cunningly Putin is pulling the strings and how deeply into Trump’s head he’s burrowed.
Enough, though, that Trump has embraced the Moscow revisionist view of Afghanistan, in one fell mouthful swoop discounting the West’s Cold War strategy, circa the ’80s, which was to drive the collapse of the Soviet Union, via the wedge of Afghan resistance to a mighty military power — by arming and supporting the mujahedeen, supplying them with surface-to-air Stinger missiles. That turned the tide in favour of the resistance.
But that’s not why the Soviet Union blew apart, which had far more to do with homeland corruption, a bloated economy that imploded when global oil prices tumbled, and the reform-minded policies which Mikhail Gorbachev adopted to scrape away at deep political and economic decay by decentralizing the Kremlin’s control.
In a cuckoo clock Jan. 2 televised rambling from the White House, following a Cabinet meeting, Trump handed Putin a couple of early Eastern Orthodox Christmas presents.
“Russia used to be the Soviet Union,” noted the president, which apparently is as far as his Russian history extends. “Afghanistan made it Russia because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan.”
No, that’s not why the Soviet Union went bust.
Or was Trump merely attempting to draw a cautionary parallel with the U.S. involve- ment in Afghanistan?
“The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia.” Bollocks. That is Putin’s gerrymandered backspin.
They were trying to first prop up and then replace their Communist lackey in Kabul, whilst undertaking a massive modernizing of Afghan society, which was bitterly resented, eventually igniting, after another decade of civil war, embers of the Taliban. “They were right to be there.” Jaw-dropping. An American president becoming the first occupant of the Oval Office to actually endorse the Soviet invasion.
“The problem is, it was a tough fight. And literally, they went bankrupt, they went into being called Russia again, as opposed to the Soviet Union. You know, a lot of these places you’re reading about now are no longer part of Russia because of Afghanistan.”
Trump’s ignorance is staggering. But what end game is he playing?
Already, before embarking on his surprise visit with U.S. troops in Iraq — Trump is a-scared of combat zones — the president had announced, apparently unilaterally, with no support from his generals or defence advisers, for the withdrawal of 2,000 troops from Syria in the mission against ISIS, as if that crushing of the Islamic militant’s caliphate is, wipe-hands, all done, completed, victorious, bye-bye. (The Centre for Strategic Studies says ISIS is far from obliterated, estimating up to 30,000 militants may still be in Syria and Iraq.)
As John Allen, retired fourstar Marines general and former special envoy to the U.S.led coalition against ISIS (appointed by president Barack Obama), wrote last week in the Washington Post: “The Islamic State is not defeated. It remains a local, regional and global threat, and notions to the contrary are misinformed. Though coalition efforts have successfully degraded the Islamic State’s core territories, the departure of U.S. forces leaves the door wide open for the group’s resurgence.”
Trump tweeted last week: “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”
Clear as mud, actually, when or how many of those Special Forces-led troops will come home, hailed as the “heroes” Trump called them. A whole lot of background-spinners have been busy trying to walk back the president’s declaration. One unidentified State Department official said: “Despite reports to the contrary and false narratives surrounding the Syria decision, we are not going anywhere.”
On Afghanistan, Trump vowed to cut the American deployment in half, withdrawing 7,000 troops, a move denounced as “immoral” by retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, former commander of U.S. forces and the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.
Trump has never given a damn about Afghanistan and campaigned on bugging out, though reluctantly dissuaded by wiser minds these past two years. But his defence secretary, James Mattis, resigned as of Jan. 1 (fired, claims Trump), in no small part because of disagreement over military strategies, including forsaking Syria and — after 17 years on the ground — Afghanistan.
Certainly, the Taliban have taken note of Trump’s remarks, in their usual rhetorical fashion. They countered with a taunting message on the 39th anniversary of the Soviet invasion, promising U.S. forces faced “humiliation” and “could learn a great deal” from the Soviets’ disaster.
Doubtless, the Taliban are even more heartened now, girding for a drag-out civil war (again) with Kabul, in the knowledge American presence will be slashed and the Afghan military (apart from their special forces) is not up to snuff in preventing a completely re-Talibanization of the country. Why even bother preparing for another spring offensive when the Yankee enemy is being yanked home?
Kabul wants to know: What the hell?
Most significantly, in real time, Trump’s drawdown decision has pretty much put the kibosh on the urgent peace talk mission by Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan reconciliation. Khalilzad had made some progress in the complicated undertaking, facilitating highlevel meetings between senior U.S. officials and Taliban representatives, as recently as last month, in Dubai.
“We should first sit with you, which means the U.S., then with the Afghans, and resolve the issues through political means,” said Khalilzad, who told Al Jazeera he was advised by the Taliban faction, which included the head of its political office and the chief of staff to supreme leader Mullah Akhundzada.
Meanwhile, Putin also pretends to be brokering peace, Russia-on-Taliban, but his genuine aim is to stymie NATO — his pitched enemy — by fuelling instability everywhere he turns.
With a pal — daresay, an acolyte — in the White House.
How is that not treason?