Liu Muzi: Using withdrawal of troops to exchange votes, is Trump's move reliable?
Author: Liu Muzi is a researcher at the Asia-Pacific think tank
Source: Million Village News Agency
WeChat platform editor: Zhou Yue
After the diagnosis of the new crown, US President Trump did not have the slightest intention of calming down, and in order to boost the election, he even thought of Afghanistan, which is thousands of miles away.
△ On October 7, Trump announced on Twitter: "We should let the small number of brave soldiers who are serving in Afghanistan go home before Christmas!" ”
As soon as the tweet came out, it shocked four people, which not only added variables to the ongoing Afghan peace talks, but also cast a shadow on the long-term stability and peace of the Situation in Afghanistan.
Shocked the withdrawal rhetoric of the four seats
In an interview with Fox Business Channel, Trump said the U.S. war in Afghanistan has been going on for 19 years. He said the United States has been withdrawing U.S. troops in Afghanistan, which has now been reduced to 4,000, and they will all withdraw by the end of this year.
"I want our army to go home because you know what, our troops are all over the world," he said. We're fighting in these different places, in countries that no one has ever heard of. It will hurt us because the military is constantly depleted, and we must always be prepared for China, Russia and elsewhere. We have to be prepared, and maybe North Korea. ”
Surprisingly, a few hours before Trump made his withdrawal, U.S. National Security Adviser O'Brien had just given a speech in Las Vegas, saying that "the current U.S. presence in Afghanistan is less than 5,000 and will be reduced to 2,500 early next year."
Trump's remarks surprised the US political and military circles. Multiple U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they knew nothing about the new deadline Trump mentioned. The military has also consistently said that counterterrorism forces will remain in Afghanistan for a period of time to deal with the threat of al-Qaida and the Islamic State.
Trump, who "tweeted the state", also did not seem to communicate with allies before the tweet. NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg was asked on Oct. 8 about Trump's remarks, not to say whether he had received a new deadline notice. He said NATO and all allies would coordinate their efforts "to make decisions based on the circumstances on the ground, because we believe it is extremely important to remain committed to afghanistan's future." The coalition should collectively decide to leave together "in due course" in accordance with the security situation on the ground.
In contrast to the surprise of all parties, the Taliban warmly welcomed Trump's withdrawal remarks, and Taliban spokesman Zabiula Mujahid believed that this was a positive development in the implementation of the Taliban-US peace agreement. In addition, so far, the Afghan presidential office has been tight-lipped about Trump's remarks and is reluctant to take a stand.
There are many withdrawal processes involved
△ On February 29, the Trump administration signed a historic agreement with the Taliban that would require the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by mid-2021 at the latest in exchange for the Taliban's security commitments and its peace talks with the Afghan government.
Under the agreement, the Afghan government should release 5,000 Taliban detainees, while the Taliban guaranteed the release of 1,000 detained government personnel. But the process of exchanging detainees between the two sides has been interrupted several times, and the dialogue that was supposed to start in March was once shelved.
On September 12, with the support of the United States, the Afghan government and the Taliban resumed peace talks based on the agreement between the United States and the Taliban in February. At present, the negotiating team is holding peace talks in Doha, Qatar, but progress has been very slow. Because the Afghan government and the Taliban have not yet ceased fire or formally signed an agreement to reduce violence, the military power of the United States has become particularly important in the peace talks process.
At this time, the hasty announcement of the deadline for the withdrawal of troops is undoubtedly a knife behind the Afghan government. And Trump's intention to issue the withdrawal news is also obvious - all in the service of the election.
The Trump administration has been widely criticized for its improper handling of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the United States has lost 210,000 lives due to the new crown epidemic, and Trump himself has recently been diagnosed and has to go to the hospital for treatment. At this juncture, the release of the withdrawal tweet is undoubtedly to divert public attention and use the topic of withdrawal to inject a shot in the arm for the election.
So, is this shot of cardiotonic effective? In fact, it may act mediocrely.
David Gordon, director of policy planning at the State Department during the George W. Bush administration, said that while polls show that most Americans want U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, the public doesn't seem to be very concerned about the withdrawal, given that U.S. troops have recently suffered nearly zero casualties abroad.
In addition, looking at Trump's previous withdrawals, it can even be found that the degree of completion is not high. Trump promised to "end" U.S. wars abroad during his re-election campaign, promising to withdraw troops from conflict zones such as Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, but those withdrawals were often abandoned, overturned or only partially completed.
In October 2019, Trump ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Syria, after which he was persuaded by the military to keep some of its troops in Syria on the grounds that they would protect the oil facilities there. Now, the size of the U.S. military there is about half the size of the U.S. military that once supported the Kurdish forces in northern Syria.
△ U.S. troops in Afghanistan
In July, Trump announced that he would withdraw nearly 12,000 soldiers from Germany to punish Germany for its policy differences. But senior U.S. military officials have made it clear that it will take years to redeploy such a number of troops, and Congress is scrutinizing the order. In addition, after the assassination of Iranian General Sulaimani in January this year, the United States sent 10,000 new AMERICAN troops to the Gulf region. The increase or decrease offsets, and the number of US troops stationed abroad is really insignificant.
Dempsey, an assistant senior fellow in the Military, Veterans and Social Program at the Center for New American Security, said the U.S. Department of Defense will wait for the outcome of the presidential election before making a large-scale troop move. "I think the lesson we should all learn for four years is that the president's understanding of power, other than his penchant for expanding twitter's reach, is nowhere else," he said. We're used to this kind of behavior to win the media's attention, and after 48 hours no one will talk about it. ”
Will the full withdrawal of troops be achieved?
It's easy to tweet about a total withdrawal by Christmas, but when put into action, it's not only militarily unfeasible, but also lacks political strategy and vision.
From a military point of view, the withdrawal is not simply the withdrawal of soldiers, but also involves a series of sensitive equipment, contractors and a series of other issues, and the withdrawal of all US troops in Afghanistan before Christmas is not feasible.
U.S. military experts say it is impossible to withdraw 5,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and dismantle U.S. military headquarters by the end of this year. They argue that the president's announcement is intended to divert media attention from reports of COVID-19, which the U.S. Department of Defense will not follow before the Nov. 3 U.S. election.
△ On November 28, 2019, Trump delivered a speech at the US military base in Afghanistan.
Gen. Frank Mackenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, said in an interview with NBC in September: "What we need to see is that the Taliban will not allow al-Qaida to be stationed there, and that has not yet satisfied me." "MacKenzie and other military officials also said that the withdrawal must be carried out responsibly, and that speeding up the withdrawal process will prevent sensitive and critical U.S. military equipment from successfully withdrawing from Afghanistan." We don't leave anything behind for others to deal with us at some point and a place. So it's actually a huge logistical job, and it's still going on. ”
From a practical point of view, it will take far more than two months to dismantle a 19-year-long military presence. Jason Dempsey, a former U.S. infantry officer who served in Afghanistan, said: "This is ridiculous, it simply cannot happen, we can ostensibly withdraw the troops, but there are still a large number of contractors stationed." We need a force headquarters to oversee the closure and withdrawal of facilities in Afghanistan. ”
From a political point of view, unilaterally accelerating the withdrawal process is undoubtedly ceding the bargaining chips to the Taliban, greatly reducing the voice of the Afghan government, and is not conducive to the long-term stability of the situation in Afghanistan.
Abdullah Abdullah, chairman of the Afghan High Level for National Reconciliation, said the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan "prematurely" would have a negative impact on the war-torn country. Speaking at a think tank event in India's capital, New Delhi, Abdullah said: "We need a little time to digest it. Of course, one day Afghanistan will be able to rely on itself, but if the time is not ripe, it will have negative consequences. ”
Afghan media believe that Trump's withdrawal proposal will add additional resistance to the already slow-moving peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Without U.S. military support, the Afghan government will lose its strong bargaining chips, and the Taliban may therefore show a tougher stance on issues such as prisoner release and sanctions.
At the same time, the statement was warmly welcomed by the Taliban. If Trump does act in this way, it will undoubtedly be a huge victory for the Taliban for 19 years, because the Taliban have long defined the war as a war against foreign aggression. Ashley Jackson, director of the Armed Services Research Center at the Overseas Development Institute, said: "It is not surprising that Trump announced the withdrawal of troops before Christmas and the Taliban welcomed it. They've been fighting for 19 years, the last bargaining chip in U.S. negotiations with the Taliban, and Trump intends to give it up for free. ”
It is difficult to say how much this sudden withdrawal will contribute to Trump's election, but it is certain that the peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban will be more uncertain, and it will be more difficult for Afghanistan to achieve a "brilliant thousand suns".
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