In the modern history of presidential transitions, there has never been an effort by a departing president to consciously undermine an arriving president’s foreign policy agenda – until now. Reports were rife two decades ago about the departing Clinton national security team sophomorically sabotaging computers and keyboards, to complicate the Bush43 team’s initial days in the West Wing. But that was harmless on the larger strategic stage.
- In the last several weeks, however, we have witnessed at least two instances where the Trump White House has announced actions or green-lighted others’ steps, not to burnish late-term achievements for the history books, but to deliberately complicate and perhaps kill selected Biden national security goals.
- The normal expectation for transitions is to keep the ride smooth for all parties, recognizing the inherent dangers in underlaps in key positions, and hence in security policy execution. But for this transition? The bumps and stomach-churning moves by the president resemble “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” in Disneyland’s Magic Kingdom. But there is nothing fun or magic about where both issues are now heading.
Let’s turn first to the move by Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller just before Thanksgiving, announcing U.S. troop reductions overseas.
- Miller and his team briefed the media on U.S. force levels in Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan. On Iraq, Miller announced a reduction of 500 troops, down to 2500; regarding Somalia, on background, his defense team suggested a major redeployment of the 700 troops there now; and most significantly, for Afghanistan, on Trump’s orders, Miller said that U.S. troop strength will be cut in half by January, from 5000 to 2500.
- The Iraq announcement was a marginal adjustment, particularly given the apparently (unannounced) decision to keep close to 1000 U.S. troops in eastern Syria, to prevent an ISIS resurgence; and even the Somalia moves, clarified by the president last Friday night, evidently will involve redeployments within the region (to Kenya, Djibouti), not removal from the theater; if so, this can help buttress U.S. allies in the fight against al Shabab and other extremists.
- But it was the Afghan decision that roiled the U.S. military leadership and will unnecessarily complicate a Biden effort to broker a peace deal with the Taliban.
- In light of the Taliban’s wave of recent attacks against government forces and the end-game negotiations that are still underway, the slashing of U.S. troop levels (with no coordination with NATO allies) is a decision that’s impossible to rationalize.
- Biden has never championed large military footprints in Afghanistan; he opposed Obama’s surge, for example, and has consistently argued for a counter-terrorism strategy, not one focused on counter-insurgency or nation-building. He’s also pushed talks with the Afghan government and the Taliban as the only solution to this “forever war.” In this context, he and Trump were surprisingly aligned.
- But with the Taliban accelerating attacks even as peace talks got underway, Trump also accelerated U.S. withdrawals; losses by the government in key towns/villages mounted. The worry? Any leverage the U.S. and the Afghan government might have with the Taliban in the end-game negotiations will quickly disappear. And Biden of course will be left with starkly reduced options. Launch a new U.S.-led counter-offensive? Militarily unlikely. Add more forces after January 20th? Politically impossible.
- The result? To fulfill a 2016 campaign pledge, Trump is leaving a new president with few choices other than to witness the return of a Taliban government in Kabul, with all the attendant pre-9/11 nightmares that implies.
- As COL(Ret) Jim Golby summarized last week in The Atlantic magazine, “Trump seems intent on making the path forward in Afghanistan as difficult for Biden - and thus for American troops on the ground - as he possibly can.”
Trump’s actions on Iran are even more unsettling. The news reports on the targeted assassination of Iran’s preeminent nuclear scientist, Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, paint a fascinating story of a complex operation, undoubtedly undertaken at least indirectly by Mossad and pushed by Bibi Netanyahu. It also seems clear that Trump gave his approval: Pompeo’s recent visit to Israel, to include a stop with Mossad, leaves little doubt we green-lighted.
- But why do this? There’s general agreement that removing Fakhrizadeh has an inconsequential impact on Iran’s nuclear program. It’s also common knowledge that the nuclear deal (JCPOA) was anathema to Bibi and an object of scorn to Trump – largely because Obama viewed it as one of his signal achievements.
- Netanyahu clearly saw a window of opportunity before January 20th, not just to delay a return to a nuclear deal that he saw as irretrievably flawed, but to kill it altogether. That he might be able to influence Iran’s elections in June, to help usher in a hard-liner to replace president Rouhani, would be an added bonus.
- Biden faced a herculean task to begin with in trying again to corral Iran’s nuclear program; Fakhrizadeh’s death makes that even harder. Of course, that’s exactly what Bibi and Trump desire.
Bottom line: these late-in-term moves by the White House are game-changers that unnecessarily raise geopolitical risk. They do more than merely complicate Biden’s agenda; they undermine U.S. security during a delicate transition period and immediately thereafter when security risks were already at dangerous levels.
- Despite some foreign policy successes during his term, especially in the Middle East, these late Trump decisions will inevitably color historians’ assessments of his four years; and they will suggest to the rest of the world a leadership transition model against which we would routinely rail. It’s a sad and dangerous ending, to four years of “Wild Rides.”
