Pentagon prepares new military options for Trump

WASHINGTON: He wants to frantically bomb the Islamic State group and has slammed White House micromanagement of America’s warfighting generals, but President- elect Donald Trump has offered few specifics about what his Pentagon will look like.

While Obama administration officials, who cede control of US foreign policy at noon Friday, say they did everything possible to destroy IS, senior military commanders are now drawing up fresh plans.

These could potentially see more US troops being sent to the Middle East and have the Pentagon taking a more aggressive stance in other key areas, which include countering growing Iranian regional influence.

During his campaign, Trump said he would ‘bomb the shit’ out of IS and claimed to have a secret plan to quickly defeat the group.

He gave no details, but later said he will convene his top generals and “give them a simple instruction: They will have 30 days to submit to the Oval Office a plan for defeating” IS.

An early indication of a break from Obama policy came last week at the confirmation hearing for incoming Pentagon chief James Mattis, a retired Marine general who has garnered broad cross-party support and will likely be one of the first of Trump’s cabinet to be sworn in.

He said an ongoing push toward Raqa, the IS group’s main stronghold in Syria and the capital of its supposed caliphate, “needs to be reviewed and perhaps energised on a more aggressive timeline.”

A key question is whether America will arm Syrian Kurdish forces to lead the fight – a move sure to infuriate ally Turkey, which considers the Kurdish fighters terrorists – or whether the United States should send in more combat troops.

A US defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that senior planners are readying a slew of options for the president and Mattis to weigh.

“If the proper resources – including arms – cannot be distributed to the partners who are actually going to fight going into and around Raqa, then another option would be to put coalition or US folks somewhere on the ground to be able to leverage that kind of combat power or direction of combat resources,” the official said.

Potential Syria plans could include adding one or more US fighting brigade, each of which has thousands of troops.

Currently, only about 500 US troops are in Syria, mostly special operations forces working behind the front lines to train local Kurdish and Syrian Arab fighters.

“Having more US troops would be one way that you can offset not having the ability to properly arm and resource the ( local forces), that would be an option,” the official said. — AFP