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WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) – The Pentagon said on Friday that US President Donald Trump ordered most of the US military to leave Somalia in early 2021.
The decision was the latest in a series of troop withdrawal orders from the current US administration. The Pentagon announced last month that US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq would be cut to 2,500 in each country by mid-January 2021.
Such orders, which have been announced with increasing haste in recent months, not only seek to deliver on Trump’s promises during his tenure, but are an important component of the so-called “America First” policy, analysts say.
Still, accelerated US troop withdrawals, which suggest that Trump is determined to downgrade America’s involvement in distant wars while cementing his political legacy before his presidency ends, will face internal and external resistance on the one hand, and on the other. the other will leave even more. An overwhelming challenge for the next administration, according to experts.
TRUMP’S PROMISES
Analysts believe there are mainly three reasons behind Trump’s troop pullout push.
First, Trump has promised time and again “to get the United States out of costly foreign conflicts, bring American troops home, and ignore onerous commitments abroad,” according to a Foreign Affairs article published Tuesday.
In December 2018, the Trump administration announced that it had begun to return US troops home from Syria after claiming a victory in the fight against the militant group Islamic State.
In June this year, Trump told reporters at the White House that the number of US troops deployed to Germany would drop to 25,000 due to insufficient defense spending from Germany. Five months later, he ordered the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Calling Trump’s troop withdrawal orders “a central component of his ‘America First’ agenda,” the New York Times said in an article published Friday that “that appeal has particularly encouraged its populist voter base, many of them veterans who have grown weary of their role in long-standing wars. “
Second, most of the withdrawals were made to end what Trump called “never-ending wars” in which the country has become entangled, cut US spending on foreign aid and reduce the casualties of US soldiers.
For example, withdrawing from Somalia could be a decision made in part because of the increasing risk to US soldiers in the African country as their security, as the Brookings Institution noted in a November article, “is slowly but steadily deteriorating.” .
Third, as Trump faces the end of his presidency, the orders could be “political” and “have more to do with President Donald Trump’s legacy than concern for Americans,” the news magazine The Week said in an article published in late November.
RESISTANCE HOME, FOREIGN
Over time, US troop withdrawals ordered by the Trump administration have met with resistance at home and abroad. Those orders concerning the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan, in particular, have been strongly rejected not only by the federal government, but also by the Republican Party and senior US military officials.
Indeed, following the administration’s announcement of the withdrawal from Syria in 2018, Trump himself and administration officials said in 2019 that there was no timetable for the withdrawal. According to an article published in mid-November by the New York Times, “several hundred American soldiers remain stationed in Syria.”
Furthermore, among the US troops that would withdraw from Germany, nearly half will reposition themselves in other NATO countries such as Belgium and Italy, while the remainder will return to the United States with an initial rotational deployment back to Europe, the then secretary Defense Mark. Esper said in late July.
Furthermore, in the withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq, the Trump administration failed to garner support not only from its NATO allies, but also from top US military officials such as Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley and Republican members like Esper.
During an interview with US media organization NPR in October, Milley said he “was not going to engage in speculation” about a withdrawal schedule from Afghanistan that national security adviser Robert O’Brien had previously announced.
According to a CNN report in mid-November, Esper had sent a classified memo to the White House, warning that “the necessary conditions for withdrawal from Afghanistan had not been met.”
“Trump orders most US troops to leave Somalia. Impulsive and ill-considered orders will result in a bitter harvest for US national security interests,” Barry McCaffrey, a retired US Army general, tweeted Saturday.
A CNN article published Nov. 17 noted that Trump’s order on withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq “is the latest foreign policy move on a growing list in his final weeks in office that is meant to limit the president’s options. elected Joe Biden before taking office in January. “
Quoting Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, the article said Trump “is trying to put the Democrats in a tough spot.”
However, various media reports have shown that the Pentagon often “delayed” Trump’s orders. Final product
