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By APD writer Lu Jiafei
With the departure of polarizing former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, the young yet perilously adrift presidency of Donald Trump is expected by some to be more conventional.
Donald Trump and Steve Bannon
The upcoming new Afghanistan strategy could be the first indicator.
After huddling at Camp David with his national security team, Trump tweeted over the weekend that “Many decisions made, including on Afghanistan.”
Then on Sunday, the White House announced that Trump would give his first formal address to the nation as president on Monday night on “the path forward for America’s engagement in Afghanistan and South Asia.”
The Camp David meeting, where the decision on Afghanistan strategy was made, came on the same day of the ouster of Bannon, a populist firebrand that helped turn Trump’s unconventional campaign into a populist juggernaut. And Bannon’s exit could have an impact on the new Afghanistan strategy of the Trump administration.
The new Afghanistan strategy is almost three months overdue when Trump administration officials first expected him to decide on a path in May prior to the NATO summit in Brussels. Then Pentagon chief Jim Mattis promised to U.S. lawmakers in June that a decision would likely come in mid-July.
U.S. troops to Afghanistan
The delay was caused by a variety of reasons, among which resistance from Bannon and Trump himself towards sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, a proposal touted by U.S. military generals, played a crucial role.
Though serving as Trump’s political adviser in the past seven months, Bannon was deeply involved in national security debates, and was even temporarily designated by Trump as a member of the National Security Council’s (NSC) principals committee back in February.
Never shying away from criticizing “globalists” in the Trump administration, Bannon staunchly opposes U.S. military interventions abroad, putting himself at loggerheads with members of Trump Cabinet, including Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Trump’s national security adviser H.R. McMaster.
Bannon’s demotion from the NSC position in April did not prevent him from attending NSC meetings and debating in front of Trump foreign policies.
As Trump was still mulling over his Afghanistan strategy, Bannon reportedly told others that sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan would be “a slippery slope to the nation building” that Trump ran against during the presidential campaign.
Bannon’s aversion to increasing U.S. troops level in Afghanistan was displayed weeks ago when he reportedly requested Erik Prince, the founder of the private military company Blackwater Worldwide to come up with a proposal to rely on contractors rather than U.S. troops in Afghanistan as a counter to Mattis’ proposal of sending more U.S. troops.
According to The New York Times, though Mattis rejected Prince’s proposals, defense officials said they did not underestimate Bannon’s influence “as a link to, and an advocate for, Trump’s populist political base.”
As the White House announced Bannon’s ouster on Friday, it was soon revealed that Trump Cabinet members, mainly Vice President Mike Pence and McMaster, who were in favor of increasing U.S. troops level in Afghanistan, rehearsed their pitch prior to Camp David meeting in a last-minute bid to persuade Trump to go conventionally in the 16-year-old war in Afghanistan.
Also, Politico cited sources as saying that though Prince was previously scheduled to attend the meeting at Camp David, he was blocked from attending at the last minute by McMaster.
Though the unveiling of Trump administration’s Afghanistan strategy is still one day away, it is safe to say that this time conventional way of sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan is more likely to prevail, especially after Pentagon chief Mattis, an advocate for sending more troops, said after the meeting at Camp David that he was satisfied with how the Trump administration formulated its new Afghanistan strategy.
Lu Jiafei, researcher of APD Institute. After spending one year in Palestine covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict between 2013 and 2014, Lu moved to Washington, D.C. and covered the 2016 U.S. presidential election till the very end of Donald Trump’s upset victory. He is a political contributor to APD.
(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
