![]() 5 In addition, Secretary Mattis has requested authorization to give greater military assistance to the Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen. 4 His administration also discreetly escalated the American air campaign against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in early March. Yemen: Trump authorized a botched special operations raid in late January that left a Navy SEAL and several civilians dead.Beyond overseeing ongoing military campaigns in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, Trump has authorized or threatened force on numerous occasions in or against a number of countries since taking office: The dangers inherent in President Trump’s reliance on military force have become clear over the course of his first 100 days in office. With no clear foreign policy approach in sight, an erratic commander in chief has put the United States in a strategically dangerous position without precedent. Taken together, President Trump’s impulsive attitude toward the use of force and his demotion of diplomacy significantly increase the chances that the United States or its allies will be drawn into armed conflict by accident or miscalculation. As a result, Trump has failed to articulate coherent reasons for his decisions to use force-not even in his head-spinning policy reversal in Syria-leaving his national security team unable to speak with one clear public voice on these decisions.Īt the same time, President Trump has failed to nominate or appoint the officials necessary to run the State Department and much of the Pentagon, preferring instead to hand difficult diplomatic tasks to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mercurial in nature and largely ignorant when it comes to complex foreign policy issues, President Trump does not appear to have any method at all to govern the use of force and lacks a clearly articulated end goal for the use of force. Making this situation worse is the president himself. 2 In crisis situations, he will be faced with a stark choice between using military force or backing down. Having chosen to buy more ammunition rather than fully fund the Department of State-something his own secretary of defense, James Mattis, advised against when he served as the commander of American forces in the Middle East-Trump is painting America into a dangerous corner. foreign policy failure this century has been due to insufficient military power. President Trump’s reliance on military force at the literal expense of America’s other foreign policy tools is bad policy. State Department funding by more than one-quarter to help pay for a $54 billion increase in military spending. Moreover, his administration’s proposed “hard-power budget” cuts U.S. From a botched special operations raid in Yemen to a cruise missile strike against an Assad-regime airfield in Syria, Trump has proven more than willing to order America’s armed forces into action. During his first 100 days in office, it has become clear that President Donald Trump views military force as his primary-if not only-foreign policy tool.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |