Will Trump Really Be the One to End Our Forever Wars?
ANDREW BACEVICH ESSAY
Will Trump Really Be the One to End Our Forever Wars?
November 28, 2020
7 Commentson Will Trump Really Be the One to End Our Forever Wars?
Partial withdrawals are reportedly soon to be underway in Afghanistan, Iraq,
and Somalia as Donald Trump tries to make good on a promise at the eleventh
hour of his presidency.
President Donald Trump and U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Michael Howard, commander of
Joint Force Headquarters. [U.S. Secretary of Defense / CC BY 2.0]
By Andrew Bacevich / TomDispatch
Let's open up and sing, and ring the bells out
Ding-dong! the merry-oh sing it high, sing it low
Let them know the wicked witch is dead!
Within establishment circles, Donald Trump's failure to win re-election has
prompted merry singing and bell-ringing galore. If you read the New York
Times or watch MSNBC, the song featured in the 1939 movie The Wizard of
Oznicely captures the mood of the moment.
As a consequence, expectations for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to put
America back on the path to the Emerald City after a dispiriting four-year
detour are sky high. The new administration will defeat Covid-19, restore
prosperity, vanquish racism, reform education, expand healthcare coverage,
tackle climate change, and provide an effective and humane solution to the
problem of undocumented migrants. Oh, and Biden will also return the United
States to its accustomed position of global leadership. And save America's
soul to boot.
So we are told.
That these expectations are deemed even faintly credible qualifies as
passing strange. After all, the outcome of the 2020 presidential election
turned less on competing approaches to governance than on the character of
the incumbent. It wasn't Joe Biden as principled standard-bearer of
enlightened twenty-first-century liberalism who prevailed. It was Joe Biden,
a retread centrist pol who emerged as the last line of defense shielding
America and the world from four more years of Donald Trump.
So the balloting definitively resolved only a single question: by 80 million
to 74 million votes, a margin of six million, Americans signaled their
desire to terminate Trump's lease on the White House. Yet even if
repudiating the president, voters hardly repudiated Trumpism. Republicans
actually gained seats in the House of Representatives and appear likely to
retain control of the Senate.
On November 3rd, a twofold transfer of power commenced. A rapt public has
fixed its attention on the first of those transfers: Biden's succession to
the presidency (and Trump's desperate resistance to the inevitable outcome).
But a second, hardly less important transfer of power is also occurring.
Once it became clear that Trump was not going to win a second term, control
of the Republican Party began reverting from the president to Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The implications of that shift are immense,
as Biden, himself a longtime member of the Senate, no doubt appreciates.
Consider this telling anecdote from former President Barack Obama's just
published memoir. Obama had tasked then-Vice President Biden with cajoling
McConnell into supporting a piece of legislation favored by the
administration. After Biden made his pitch, the hyper-partisan McConnell
dourly replied, "You must be under the mistaken impression that I care." End
of negotiation.
Perhaps the Democrats will miraculously win both Senate seats in Georgia's
January runoff elections and so consign McConnell to the status of minority
leader. If they don't, let us not labor under the mistaken impression that
he'll support Biden's efforts to defeat Covid-19, restore prosperity,
vanquish racism, reform education, expand healthcare coverage, tackle
climate change, or provide an effective and humane solution to the problem
of undocumented migrants.
It's a given that McConnell isn't any more interested in saving souls than
he is in passing legislation favored by Democrats. That leaves restoring
American global leadership as the sole remaining arena where President Biden
might elicit from a McConnell-controlled GOP something other than
unremitting obstructionism.
And that, in turn, brings us face to face with the issue Democrats and
Republicans alike would prefer to ignore: the U.S. penchant for war. Since
the end of the Cold War and especially since the terror attacks of 9/11,
successive administrations have relied on armed force to assert, affirm, or
at least shore up America's claim to global leadership. The results have not
been pretty. A series of needless and badly mismanaged wars have contributed
appreciably - more even than Donald Trump's zany ineptitude - to the growing
perception that the United States is now a declining power. That perception
is not without validity. Over the past two decades, wars have depleted
America's strength and undermined its global influence.
So, as the U.S. embarks on the post-Trump era, what are the prospects that a
deeply divided government presiding over a deeply divided polity will come
to a more reasoned and prudent attitude toward war? A lot hinges on whether
Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell can agree on an answer to that question.
An Unexpected Gift for "Sleepy Joe"
As his inevitable exit from the White House approaches, President Trump
himself may be forcing the issue.
One of the distinctive attributes of our 45th president is that he never
seemed terribly interested in actually tending to the duties of his office.
He does not, in fact, possess a work ethic in any traditional sense. He
prefers to swagger and strut rather than deliberate and decide. Once it
became clear that he wasn't going to win a second term, he visibly gave up
even the pretense of governing. Today, he golfs, tweets, and rails.
According to news reports, he no longer even bothers to set aside time for
the daily presidential intelligence briefing.
As the clock runs out, however, certain Trumpian impulses remain in play.
The war in Afghanistan, now in its 19th year, offers a notable example. In
2001, President George W. Bush ordered U.S. forces to invade the country,
but prematurely turned his attention to a bigger and more disastrous
misadventure in Iraq. Barack Obama inherited the Afghanistan War, promised
to win it, and ordered a large-scale surge in the U.S. troop presence there.
Yet the conflict stubbornly dragged on through his two terms. As for
candidate Trump, during campaign 2016, he vowed to end it once and for all.
In office, however, he never managed to pull the plug - until now, that is.
Soon after losing the election, the president ousted several senior Pentagon
civilians, including Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, and replaced them (for
a couple of months anyway) with loyalists sharing his oft-stated commitment
to "ending endless wars." Within days of taking office, new Acting Secretary
of Defense Christopher Miller issued a letter to the troops, signaling his
own commitment to that task.
"We are not a people of perpetual war," he wrote, describing endless war as
"the antithesis of everything for which we stand and for which our ancestors
fought." The time for accepting the inevitable had now arrived. "All wars
must end," he continued, adding that trying harder was not going to produce
a better outcome. "We gave it our all," he concluded. "Now, it's time to
come home."
Miller avoided using terms like victory or defeat, success or failure, and
did not specify an actual timetable for a full-scale withdrawal. Yet Trump
had already made his intentions clear: he wanted all U.S. troops out of
Afghanistan by the end of the year and preferably by Christmas. Having
forgotten or punted on innumerable other promises, Trump appeared determined
to make good on this one. It's likely, in fact, that Miller's primary -
perhaps only - charge during his abbreviated tour of duty as Pentagon chief
is to enable Trump to claim success in terminating at least one war.
So during this peculiar betwixt-and-between moment of ours, with one
administration packing its bags and the next one trying to get its bearings,
a question of immense significance to the future course of American
statecraft presents itself: Will the United States at long last ring down
the curtain on the most endless of its endless wars? Or, under the guise of
seeking a "responsible end," will it pursue the irresponsible course of
prolonging a demonstrably futile enterprise through another presidency?
As Miller will soon discover, if he hasn't already, his generals don't
concur with the commander-in-chief's determination to "come home." Whether
in Afghanistan or Somalia, Iraq, Syria, or Europe, they have demonstrated
great skill in foiling his occasional gestures aimed at reducing the U.S.
military's overseas profile.
The available evidence suggests that Joe Biden's views align with those of
the generals. True, the conduct and legacy of recent wars played next to no
role in deciding the outcome of the 2020 presidential election (suggesting
that many Americans have made their peace with endless war). Still, given
expectations that anyone aspiring to high office these days must stake out a
position on every conceivable issue and promise something for everyone,
candidate Biden spelled out his intentions regarding Afghanistan.
Basically, he wants to have it both ways. So he is on record insisting that
"these 'forever wars' have to end," while simultaneously proposing to
maintain a contingent of American troops in Afghanistan to "take out
terrorist groups who are going to continue to emerge." In other words, Biden
proposes to declare that the longest war in U.S. history has ended, while
simultaneously underwriting its perpetuation.
Such a prospect will find favor with the generals, members of the foreign
policy establishment, and media hawks. Yet hanging on in Afghanistan (or
other active theaters of war) will contribute nothing to Biden's larger
promise to "build back better." Indeed, the staggering expenses that
accompany protracted wars will undermine his prospects of making good on his
domestic reform agenda. It's the dilemma that Lyndon Johnson faced in the
mid-1960s: You can have your Great Society, Mr. President, or you can have
your war in Vietnam, but you can't have both.
Biden will face an analogous problem. Put simply, his stated position on
Afghanistan is at odds with the larger aspirations of his presidency.
At Long Last an Exit Strategy?
As a practical matter, the odds of Trump actually ending the U.S. military
presence in Afghanistan between now and his departure from office are nil.
The logistical challenges are daunting, especially given that the pick-up
team now running the Pentagon is made up of something other than all-stars.
And the generals will surely drag their feet, while mobilizing allies not
just in the punditocracy but in the Republican Party itself.
As a practical matter, Acting Secretary Miller has already bowed to reality.
The definition of success now is, it seems, to cut the force there roughly
in half, from 4,500 to 2,500, by Inauguration Day, with the remainder of
U.S. troops supposedly coming out of Afghanistan by May 2021 (months after
both Trump and Miller will be out of a job).
So call it Operation Half a Loaf. But half is better than none. Even if
Trump won't succeed in reducing U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan to zero,
I'm rooting for him anyway. As, indeed, Joe Biden should be - because if
Trump makes headway in shutting down America's war there, Biden will be
among the principal beneficiaries.
Whatever his actual motives, Trump has cracked open a previously shut door
to an exit strategy. Through that door lies the opportunity of turning the
page on a disastrous era of American statecraft dominated by a misplaced
obsession with events in the Greater Middle East.
Twin convictions shaped basic U.S. policy during this period: the first was
that the United States has vital interests at stake in this region, even in
utterly remote parts of it like Afghanistan; the second, that the United
States can best advance those interests by amassing and employing military
power. The first of those convictions turned out to be wildly misplaced, the
second tragically wrong-headed. Yet pursuant to those very mistaken beliefs,
successive administrations have flung away lives, treasure, and influence
with complete abandon. The American people have gained less than nothing in
return. In fact, in terms of where taxpayer dollars were invested, they've
lost their shirts.
Acting Secretary Miller's charge to the troops plainly acknowledges a bitter
truth to which too few members of the Washington establishment have been
willing to admit: the time to move on from this misguided project is now. To
the extent that Donald Trump's lame-duck administration begins the process
of extricating the United States from Afghanistan, he will demonstrate the
feasibility of doing so elsewhere as well. Tired arguments for staying the
course could then lose their persuasive power.
Doubtless, after all these disastrous years, there will be negative
consequences to leaving Afghanistan. Ill-considered and mismanaged wars
inevitably yield poisonous fruit. There will be further bills to pay. Still,
ending the U.S. war there will establish a precedent for ending our military
involvement in Iraq, Syria, and Somalia as well. Terminating direct U.S.
military involvement across the Greater Middle East and much of Africa will
create an opportunity to reconfigure U.S. policy in a world that has changed
dramatically since the United States recklessly embarked upon its crusade to
transform great swathes of the Islamic world.
Biden himself should welcome such an opportunity. Admittedly, Mitch
McConnell, no longer fully subservient to President Trump, predicts that
withdrawing from Afghanistan will produce an outcome "reminiscent of the
humiliating American departure from Saigon in 1975." In reality, of course,
failure in Vietnam stemmed not from the decision to leave, but from an
erroneous conviction that it was incumbent upon Americans to decide the
destiny of the Vietnamese people. The big mistake occurred not in 1975 when
American troops finally departed, but a decade earlier when President
Johnson decided that it was incumbent upon the United States to Americanize
the war.
As Americans learned in Vietnam, the only way to end a war gone wrong is to
leave the field of battle. If that describes Trump's intentions in
Afghanistan, then we may finally have some reason to be grateful for his
service to our nation. With time, Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell might even
come to see the wisdom of doing so.
And then, of course, they can bicker about the shortest path to the Emerald
City.
Andrew Bacevich
Andrew Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular, is president of the Quincy Institute
for Responsible Statecraft.
