The Trump administration is sending odd signals to America’s adversaries.
When the Trump administration isn’t dismantling the network of trade relationships that knit the post–Cold War world together and fomenting destabilizing tensions between America and its allies in Europe and Asia, it seems to be disintegrating the American military deterrent.
Last Thursday, amid the global panic over Trump’s proposed tariff regime, word came down that the National Security Council was undergoing a personnel purge. “We’re always going to let go of people — people we don’t like or people that take advantage of [us] or people that may have loyalties to someone else,” Trump told reporters, which appeared to confirm early reports that the activist Laura Loomer helped to convince Trump that his NSA harbored the remnants of the reviled “neocon” wreckers and deviationists. Citing “U.S. officials,” the New York Times subsequently confirmed the basis for the ouster of General Timothy D. Haugh, former head of U.S. Cyber Command, among other key figures.
Along with some more consistent members of the Republican conference in Congress, Fox News Channel national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin expresses due alarm:
It does not, however, appear as though this reshuffling is part of a campaign to maximize the lethality of the American military. As the Pentagon prepares to “assume risk in other theaters,” per a memo that previews a U.S. pivot away from anti-terror operations targeting groups that only pose a threat to America’s allies in Europe and Asia, America is preparing for a dramatic drawdown of active-duty forces.
“The Army is quietly considering a sweeping reduction of up to 90,000 active-duty troops,” a Military.com report read:
Internal discussions are exploring trimming the force to between 360,000 and 420,000 troops — down from its current level of roughly 450,000. The potential cuts would mark one of the most dramatic force reductions in years, as military planners aim to reshape the Army from a blunt conventional force into what they hope could be a more agile, specialized instrument better suited for future conflicts.
These are odd signals to send America’s adversaries. They run counter to the messages Trump has sought to convey to China via an executive order outlining a massive and necessary naval buildup and to Iran through the deployment of Navy and air assets to the Middle East. The drawdown in concert with the global trade war makes sense only if we conclude that the administration is beholden to a highly ideological school of thought that presupposes the hegemonic obligations America assumed after the fall of the Berlin Wall are a curse.
Within this blinkered framework, shrinking America’s ability to stand up and support the sustained projection of power abroad is an “America First” policy. Charles Lindbergh would surely approve.