Will Trump Agree To the Pentagon's Permanent War
By Gareth Porter, www.middleeasteye.net
May 14th, 2017
Photo: A US soldier mans a weapon at the tailgate aboard the helicopter
carrying US Defence Secretary James Mattis as he arrives at Resolute Support
headquarters in the Afghan capital Kabul on April 24, 2017. (AFP)
If Trump approves expected proposals for the three countries, the US ground
combat role in the region will be extended for years to come
The two top national security officials in the Trump administration -
Secretary of Defence James Mattis and national security adviser HR McMaster
- are trying to secure long-term US ground and air combat roles in the three
long-running wars in the greater Middle East - Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
Proposals for each of the three countries are still being developed, and
there is no consensus, even between Mattis and McMaster, on the details of
the plans. They will be submitted to Trump separately, with the plan for
Afghanistan coming sometime before a NATO summit in Brussels on 25 May.
But if this power play succeeds in one or more of the three, it could
guarantee the extension of permanent US ground combat in the greater Middle
East for many years to come - and would represent a culmination of the
"generational war" first announced by the George W Bush administration.
'Open-ended commitment'
It remains to be seen whether President Donald Trump will approve the
proposals that Mattis and McMaster have pushed in recent weeks.
Judging from his position during the campaign and his recent remarks, Trump
may well baulk at the plans now being pushed by his advisers.
The plans for the three countries now being developed within the Trump
administration encompass long-term stationing of troops, access to bases and
the authority to wage war in these three countries.
These are the primordial interest of the Pentagon and the US military
leadership, and they have pursued those interests more successfully in the
Middle East than anywhere else on the globe.
US military officials aren't talking about "permanent" stationing of troops
and bases in these countries, referring instead to the "open-ended
commitment" of troops. But they clearly want precisely that in all three.
Shifting timetables
The George W Bush administration and the Barack Obama administration both
denied officially that they sought "permanent bases" in Iraq and
Afghanistan, respectively. But the subtext in both cases told a different
story.
A Defense Department official testifying before Congress at the time
admitted that the term had no real meaning, because the Pentagon had never
defined it officially.
In fact, at the beginning of the negotiations with Iraq on the US military
presence in 2008, the US sought access to bases in Iraq without any time
limit. But the al-Maliki government rebuffed that demand and the US was
forced to agree to withdraw all combat forces in a strict timetable.
In December 2011, US soldiers wave at their comrades as they cross the
border between Iraq and Kuwait on the last US military convoy carrying
troops from Iraq marking the end of the presence of US army in Iraq (AFP)
In December 2011, US soldiers wave at their comrades as they cross the
border between Iraq and Kuwait on the last US military convoy carrying
troops from Iraq marking the end of the presence of US army in Iraq (AFP)
Despite efforts by the Pentagon and the military brass, including Gen David
Petraeus, to get the Obama administration to renegotiate the deal with the
Iraqi government to allow tens of thousands of combat troops to stay in the
country, the Iraqis refused US demands for immunity from prosecution in
Iraq, and the US had to withdraw all its troops.
Reversing withdrawals
Now the regional context has shifted dramatically in favour of the US
military's ambitions. On one hand, the war against Islamic State (IS) is
coming to a climax in both Iraq and Syria, and the Iraq government
recognises the need for more US troops to ensure that it can't rise again;
and in Syria, the division of the country into zones of control that depend
on foreign powers is an overriding fact.
Meanwhile in Afghanistan, growing Taliban power and control across the
country is being cited as the rationale for a proposal to reverse the
withdrawals of US and NATO troops in recent years and to allow a limited
return by US forces to combat.
Now that Islamic State forces are being pushed out of Mosul, both the Trump
administration and the Iraqi government are beginning to focus on how to
ensure that the terrorists do not return.
They are now negotiating on an agreement that would station US forces in
Iraq indefinitely. And the troops would not be there merely to defeat IS,
but to carry out what the war bureaucracies call "stabilisation operations"
- getting involved in building local political and military institutions.
Plans for Syria
The question of what to do about Syria is apparently the subject of
in-fighting between Mattis and the Pentagon, on one hand, and McMaster, on
the other.
The initial plan for the defeat of IS in Syria, submitted to Trump in
February, called for an increase in the size of US ground forces beyond the
present level of 1,000.
As part of one plan, US ground troops would lead Sunni Arab troops to
destroy IS in Syria rather than relying on Kurdish forces to do the job
But a group of officers who have worked closely with Gen Petraeus on Iraq
and Afghanistan, which includes McMaster, has been pushing a much more
ambitious plan, in which thousands - and perhaps many thousands - of US
ground troops would lead a coalition of Sunni Arab troops to destroy Islamic
State's forces in Syria rather than relying on Kurdish forces to do the job.
Both the original plan and the one advanced by McMaster for Syria would also
involve US troops in "stabilisation operations" for many years across a wide
expanse of eastern Syria that would require large numbers of troops for many
years.
Both in its reliance on Sunni Arab allies and in its envisioning a large US
military zone of control in Syria, the plan bears striking resemblance to
the one developed for Hillary Clinton by the Center for New American
Security when she was viewed as the president-in-waiting.
Reversing Obama's Afghanistan policy
The Pentagon proposal on Afghanistan, which had not been formally submitted
by Mattis as of this week, calls for increasing the present level of 8,400
US troops in Afghanistan by 1,500 to 5,000, both to train Afghan forces and
to fight the Taliban. It also calls for resuming full-scale US air strikes
against the Taliban. Both policy shifts would reverse decisions made by the
Obama administration.
The US and NATO were not able to pressure the Taliban to negotiate with the
government even when they had more than 100,000 troops in the country
Five past US commanders in Afghanistan, including Petraeus, have publicly
caIled for the US to commit itself to an "enduring partnership" with the
Afghan government. That means, according to their joint statement, ending
the practice of periodic reassessments as the basis for determining whether
the US should continue to be involved militarily in the war, an idea that is
likely part of the package now being formulated by Mattis.
But the problem with such a plan is that the US military and its Afghan
client government have now been trying to suppress the Taliban for 16 years.
The longer they have tried, the stronger the Taliban have become. The US and
NATO were not able to pressure the Taliban to negotiate with the government
even when they had more than 100,000 troops in the country.
Committing the US to endless war in Afghanistan would only reinforce the
corruption, abuses of power and culture of impunity that Gen Stanley A
McChystal acknowledged in 2009 were the primary obstacles to reducing
support for the Taliban. Only the knowledge that the US will let the Afghans
themselves determine the country's future could shock the political elite
sufficiently to change its ways.
Most political and national security elites as well as the corporate news
media support the push to formalise a permanent US presence in Afghanistan,
despite the fact that national polls indicate that it is the most unpopular
war in US history with 80 percent of those surveyed in a CNN poll in 2013
opposing its continuation.
Beltway brawl?
There are signs that Trump may reject at least the plans for Afghanistan and
Syria. Only days after his approval of the missile strike on a
Russian-Syrian airbase, Trump told Fox Business in an interview, "We're not
going into Syria."
And White House spokesman Sean Spicer seemed to suggest this week that Trump
was not enamoured with the plan to spend many more years trying to
"transform" Afghanistan. "There is a difference between Afghanistan proper
and our effort to defeat ISIS," Spicer said
Despite Trump's love for the military brass, the process of deciding on the
series of new initiatives aimed at committing the US more deeply to three
wars in the greater Middle East is bound to pose conflicts between the
political interests of the White House and the institutional interests of
the Pentagon and military leaders.
