Will Trump’s overseas troop withdrawals help him — or will they even matter?
In theory, deploying and/or withdrawing U.S. military forces abroad is all about this country’s national security. In practice, however, politics is always close by. And in this election year, both President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are taking credit for troop decisions.
Biden’s campaign claim that he was in charge of withdrawing 150,000 U.S. service members from Iraq in 2011 is what Mark Twain would call “a stretcher.” Trump made reducing foreign military involvements a major campaign pledge in 2016. He has reduced the number of U.S. troops in all three major Mideast military engagements — Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, though not totally. And he did call off a military strike on Iran last year that could have ignited larger conflict.
The political connection is no coincidence in history either. Woodrow Wilson took the presidential oath for a second term in 1917. Twenty-nine days later, he took America into World War I.
As he was quietly ramping up the military and helping embattled Britain, Franklin Roosevelt ran successfully for a third term in 1940 vowing no U.S. involvement in World War II. The next year, Pearl Harbor changed his mind.
Harry Truman had no choice about responding to North Korea’s invasion of the South in 1950. But the resulting unpopularity of that combat quagmire played a major part in his decision not to seek reelection.
Likewise, Dwight Eisenhower’s 1952 campaign vow to end the fighting played a major role in his victory. The Korean War has never technically ended, but an armistice halted the fighting six months after he entered the White House.
Ike was an Army officer in both world wars, the second one as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. So he knew the dangers of foreign military forays. When France sought U.S. intervention help in 1954 for its troops encircled by communist rebels at Dien Bien Phu in what became North Vietnam, Eisenhower declined.
Same when Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt to reclaim the Suez Canal. That crisis began in late October 1956. Oh, look: Voting on Eisenhower’s reelection was Nov. 6.
Shortly after taking office in 1961, John F. Kennedy sent U.S. military advisers into South Vietnam. Quaintly, at first they were not permitted to shoot back at communist guerrillas. His Democratic successor, Lyndon Johnson, at one point had a half-million American military service members there.
That added to the war’s bitter unpopularity, which forced Johnson to abort any 1968 reelection thoughts. By the way, if you think the country is starkly divided now, take a time machine back to the riots, assassinations and bombings of those days.
Which brings us to Barack Obama and Biden. And Iraq and Libya. In March of 2011, Nobel Peace Prize-winner Obama joined European allies bombing Libya to help rebels seeking to oust Moammar Gadhafi. The dictator was killed by a mob. But the intervention also produced a lawless state now popular as a training ground for terrorists infiltrating Africa, and a bloody struggle point for other Mideastern countries seeking influence in that oil-rich land.
In 2006, the George W. Bush administration signed an agreement keeping U.S. troops in strife-torn Iraq through 2011, with the idea it would be renewed. Would you believe Obama decided to seek reelection in 2012? So Obama made feeble efforts to extend the troops, then assigned his vice president the task of overseeing the drawdown.
Biden, who as influential chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had supported George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion, now recalls: “I made sure the president turned to me and said, ‘Joe, get our combat troops out of Iraq.’ I was responsible for getting 150,000 combat troops out of Iraq.” And the Obama-Biden ticket was reelected.
Biden does not mention these days that Obama later sent U.S. forces back into Iraq, nor does the ex-vice president go into the ensuing bloody years of ISIS that filled that military vacuum.
Along comes Trump, a neophyte politician who struck resonant notes in 2015-16 across the heartland with vows to end U.S. involvement in perpetual wars and to crush ISIS. He unleashed the military from Obama’s rules of engagement to do that under Defense Secretary James Mattis.
But in late 2018, Mattis resigned when Trump sought to pull all U.S. forces out of Syria. Last week, the Pentagon announced U.S. troops in Iraq would drop to 3,000 this month from 5,200.
Under a February agreement with the Taliban, the Trump administration committed to withdrawing all American forces from Afghanistan by next April, as long as the Taliban reduced violence there. Its attacks have actually increased in recent months.
As happened in the Vietnam War, America’s well-intentioned political patience cannot match the fighting endurance of insurgents. So, the U.S. drawdown continues anyway, with troop strength in Afghanistan expected to fall from 8,600 now to 4,500 in coming weeks. That’s the fewest stationed there since the earliest days of the Afghan War, which begins its 20th year on Oct. 7.
Traditionally, foreign affairs do not play decisive roles in American presidential elections. Still, in addition to the troop moves Trump in recent days has brokered economic normalization between Serbia and Kosovo and surprising diplomatic recognitions of Israel by two Arab countries.
Despite widespread media indifference to his moves, and with only seven weeks to go, Trump will seek to break political tradition once again by arguing this is one more of his election promises fulfilled. It’s true. It just may not matter.
This story was originally published September 15, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Will Trump’s overseas troop withdrawals help him — or will they even matter?."