Trump shocks military on troop pullouts
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s surprise tweet last week that he would pull all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by Christmas is not the only important military missionhemay abruptly shrink or end as Election Day nears.
Trumphas told senior advisers he also wants to see plans for withdrawing all U.S. forces in Somalia, despite warnings from senior military and counterterrorism officials that doing so would bolster the deadly alQaida affiliate there and cede strategic ground in Eastafrica tochinaandrussia.
The president sent mixed signals last month when he declared that U.S. forces “are out of Syria,” except to guard the region’s oil fields. His comments came on the day the Pentagon said it was sending Bradley Fighting Vehicles, more fighter jet patrols andabout100additional troops to northeast Syria after a Russian armored vehicle rammed a U.S. ground patrol there in August, injuring seven soldiers.
“We’re in all these different sites fighting in countries that nobody ever heard of, and it hurts us because we’re — you wear out your military,” Trump said last week in an interview with Fox Business. “And we have to be always prepared for China and Russia and these other places. We have to be prepared.”
But even senior military commanders have sought to distance themselves from their commander in chief’s troop withdrawal forecasts, which have caught them off guard. And critics say that in
seeking to fulfill a campaign pledge to bring U.S. troops home from “endless wars,” the president is exposing the country to even greater national security risks.
“There’s no strategy; there’s just electioneering,” said Kori Schake, who directs foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
Drastic demand
The latest head-snapping news on possible troop withdrawals came this week, when senior administration officials said Trump had told senior aides that he wanted to withdraw U.S. forces from Somalia, confirming an earlier report by Bloomberg News and add
ing further details.
One idea now under consideration would involve removing most or all ground troops from the country — including those who have been training and advising Somali forces — and ending strikes aimed at combating or degrading al-shabab, alQaida’s largest and most active global affiliate. Counterterrorismstrikes, droneuse, troop presence in nearby countries and targeting individual al-shabab members believed to be plotting terrorist attacks outside Somalia would apparently still be permitted.
The White House convened a small interagency meeting of senior officials late last week to discuss Trump’s demand for more drastic troop withdrawal options, according to three officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Officials involved in the discussion included Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they said, adding that no decisions had been made.
A Pentagon spokesman referredquestionsabout the deliberations to the White House National Security Council, where a spokesman declined to comment.
There are now about 700 U.S. troops in Somalia. Most are Special Operations forces stationed at a small number of bases across the country. Their missions in
clude training and advising Somali army and counterterrorism troops and conducting kill-or-capture raids against al-shabab.
In recent years, al-shabab, which U.S. intelligence analysts estimate has 5,000 to 10,000 fighters, has lost many of the cities and villages it once controlled. Despite facing a record number of U.S. drone strikes, the group has morphed into a more nimble and deadly organization, carrying out large-scale attacks against civilian and military targets across Somalia and neighboring countries.
“A withdrawal of U.S. forces fromsomaliawill give the Shabab a decisive strategic advantage in the conflict in Somalia and increase the terrorist threat in East Africa, including to Americans and American targets, significantly,” said Tricia Ba
con, a Somalia specialist at American University in Washington and a former State Department counterterrorism analyst.
Pullout pushback
Col. Christopherp. Karns, the chief spokesman for the military’s Africa Command, declined to comment on Trump’s push to withdraw troops from Somalia. Instead, Karns offered a defense for the current mission.
“U.S. Africa Command continues to train Somali forces, monitor al-shabab and disrupt and degrade a dangerous al-shabab terrorist network whose longterm ambitions include attacking the United States,” he said in a statement.
Karns also noted the Pentagon’s broader strategy to counter threats globally from Moscow and Beijing.
“When you look at global power competition in Africa, it is very much a place where China and Russia seek to be great and continue to prioritize activity, especially on the economic front,” he said.
The military’s pushback on large troop pullouts in Somalia came after Milley distanced himself from sudden and conflicting announcements from the White House last week on Afghan troop withdrawals.
With no warning to the Pentagon, Robert C. O’brien, the national security adviser, told an audience in Las Vegas last week that the United States would cut its troops in Afghanistan to 2,500 by early next year. That surprised Defense Department officials and top military commanders, who said theywere still operating under orders to reduce trooplevels to 4,500by later this fall.
Trump added to the confusion when he contradicted O’brien hours later and suggested via Twitter a timeline as early as Christmas to bring all troops home.
“We should have the small remaining number of our BRAVE Men and Women serving in Afghanistan home by Christmas!” he wrote.
Milley, wary of upsetting the good working relationship he has established with the president, nonetheless appeared to voice frustration with the accelerated timeline and the conflicting troop withdrawal messages. He did not criticize the commander in chief, but he discussed the national security adviser’s comments.
“I think that Robert O’brien or anyone else can speculate as they see fit,” Milley said in an interview with NPR on Sunday. “I’m going to engage in the rigorous analysis of the situation based on the conditions and the plans that I am aware of and my conversations with the president.”
With Election Day less than three weeks away, Pentagon officials are bracing to deal with the consequences of another possible presidential troop forecast.
“Howwill we mitigate the risk of withdrawing U.S. troops from these places?” said Seth G. Jones, the director of the transnational threats project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, awashington think tank. “I’m hearing crickets. That is not a recipe for a sound foreign policy.”