The View from Right Field

President Trump Can Tweet But Can He Actually Do Things?

There is so much going on that it is sometimes hard to comment on things on a timely basis.  For example, I only yesterday read that President Trump tweeted, the day before the Vice Presidential debate:

“We should have the small remaining number of our BRAVE Men and Women serving in Afghanistan home by Christmas!”

Wow.  That would be a big deal – if it happens.  Which is the thing, of course.  VOA (i.e., Voice of America) reported the next day that “[s]pokespersons for Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees military operations in the Middle East, declined to comment and referred VOA to the White House.”  Also, Secretary Esper did not answer questions about a speeded-up withdrawal from Afghanistan during a press conference the day after the President’s tweet.  In fact, per VOA, “[o]ne military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told VOA the president’s tweet was the “first word” anyone had seen about an accelerated withdrawal timeline in Afghanistan ….” 

Trump vs. Biden: A Question of the Lesser of Two Evils – On Steroids

What do you do when you don’t like either candidate for President?  When, in fact, you think both candidates will leave the country worse off by the time they leave office? 

Well, the first thing you do is hope you are wrong.  I have supported candidates because l thought their policies would make the country better off.  Sometimes that has happened and sometimes it hasn’t.  Sometimes the policies didn’t work like I thought they would.  Other times the candidates didn’t do what they said they were going to do.  You can never be sure.  But you have to decide what to do in an election on some basis, and the only thing you can do is to look at what each candidate is likely to do and go from there.

Leaving Afghanistan – This Time It’s Probably for Real

Last weekend, negotiators for the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement which, if implemented, will result in some US forces leaving Afghanistan this year and the rest next year.  I had a few comments, but instead of writing a long post on the agreement and whether it is good or not, etc., I’m just going to list those comments:

1. While some reports called this a “peace agreement,” peace seems unlikely.  The only way there is going to be “peace,” in the sense of no fighting, is if the Taliban wins – and that would not be a peace worth the name.

Is This the Afghanistan Bug-Out I Have Been Worried About?

While he was in Afghanistan for Thanksgiving last week, Donald Trump said that peace talks would resume with the Taliban.  But, as normal for President Trump, things about the resumption of talks are a little unclear.  According to The Wall Street Journal, President Trump said:

“The Taliban wants to make a deal – we’ll see if they make a deal.  If they do they do, and if they don’t they don’t.  That’s fine.”

The Washington Post quoted the President as saying:

“The Taliban wants to make a deal and we’re meeting with them and we’re saying it has to be a cease-fire and they didn’t want to do a cease-fire, and now they do want to do a cease-fire.  I believe it’ll probably work out that way.”

Is Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Going to Turn Out Good?

No, I don’t really think that President Trump’s foreign policy is going to work – or that it will turn out well.  Janan Ganesh, in the Financial Times, however, comes up with one way President Trump’s foreign policy may work out:

“The world resented American omnipresence before it complained about American dereliction.  Inadvertently, Donald Trump is forcing the end of this ambivalence.  The more the US president unwinds his country’s external commitments, the more other nations see the resultant damage to the global commons. … Countries with historic qualms about US power are going through a chastening education in life without it.

The perverse result: an America First president could bequeath his successor a world that is keener on US leadership than it was before. …

John Bolton Is Leaving. It is Too Bad.

I was very disappointed to see that National Security Advisor John Bolton either was fired or resigned.  Donald Trump’s tweets indicated it was the former (here and here).  Mr. Bolton’s tweet, at @AmbJohnBolton, indicated it was the latter.  I will leave it to you to decide who is more trustworthy.  I know who I believe.

I have not always agreed with John Bolton’s views on various foreign policy questions, but at least he knew about foreign policy and had an approach to foreign policy that he had thought through.  It is unclear to me if President Trump has either.

Ryan Crocker on the United States’s Middle East Policy – and More

On Thursday evening, Ryan Crocker and Danielle Pletka spoke to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs on “How Effective Is America’s Middle East Strategy.”¹  Mr. Crocker has been ambassador to, in alphabetical order, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Syria.  He has also served in Iran, Qatar, and Egypt.  He has been named a Career Ambassador and has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  Ms. Pletka is Senior Vice President, Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, at the American Enterprise Institute.

Among the things former Ambassador Crocker said (I will also include some things Ms. Pletka said):²

In response to the question what the Trump administration’s Middle East strategy is, former Ambassador Crocker said, “You’re asking the wrong guy.”  He said there is no strategy.  He cannot connect the dots of the various individual things the Administration is doing into a policy and strategy.

Are We Bugging Out of Afghanistan?

According to news reports, United States and Taliban negotiators have agreed on two key points of a settlement in Afghanistan: (i) the United States will withdraw its forces from Afghanistan; and (ii) the Taliban will ensure that no international terrorist attacks are made from Afghanistan.  U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad told local media in Afghanistan said that the U.S. and the Taliban had agreed in principle on two important points, and Taliban sources said what the points were.  Still to come, though, are the details on these two points, as well as agreements on two other issues the United States has raised: (iii) direct negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government; and (iv) a comprehensive ceasefire, neither of which the Taliban has been willing to agree to. 

Predictably, observers such as David Rohde at The New Yorker were excited.  Mr. Rohde said:

“The news sparked surprise – and applause – from American diplomats who have tried and failed to negotiate with the Taliban in the past.  ‘I think this is the beginning of a credible process for the first time in ten years,’ Dan Feldman, who served as the Obama Administration’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told me.

Donald Trump. Barack Obama. James Mattis. Syria and Afghanistan.

Donald Trump has unilaterally, and apparently without consultation with our local allies, decided to pull all of our forces out of Syria, where they were helping local Kurdish forces fight ISIS.  And to do so almost immediately.  We are doing this, President Trump says, because ISIS has been defeated in Syria, but then people say lots of things 

There are also reports that President Trump has decided to cut our presence in Afghanistan by up to half and, once again, to do so quickly.  This will take a little longer because Afghanistan is a NATO fight and we have to do some consultation with our NATO allies before pulling our troops out – unlike Syria where we can leave our Kurdish allies high and dry and tough luck on them.

Is Afghanistan Ever Going to “Get Better”?

In December, I wrote a post, “Afghanistan: It Seems to be Getting Better,” which now looks as ill-timed as a January prediction that the stock market wouldn’t go down.  Since my post, the Taliban has launched attacks all over Afghanistan.  In the last ten days of January, three attacks in Kabul killed more than 130 people.  “Getting Better”?  “Back into the Quagmire” some would say.

Donald Trump has reversed Barack Obama’s reduction in our forces in Afghanistan, yet things seem to be getting worse.  We had over 100,000 troops in Afghanistan under President Obama.  Why do we think the 15,000 troops we have there now (with 1,000 more going), up from 8,400 when President Obama left office, will succeed when so many more didn’t before?

Several reasons, maybe.  First, of course, is that 2018 is not 2009.  Things are different now than they were then, and maybe the number of troops we need is different.  Second, Afghanistan is not the country it was in 2009.  Maybe it can do more for itself as long as we know better how to help them.  Third, this time we haven’t pre-set a date for when we are going to leave.  The date we leave is the date the job gets done.