The News
The US Department of Defense is preparing for a possible withdrawal of US troops from Syria, after President Donald Trump and other officials expressed interest in the idea.
The Pentagon is working on plans for a full withdrawal within 30, 60, or 90 days, NBC News reported.
“We’re not involved in Syria,” Trump told reporters last week. “Syria is its own mess. They got enough messes over there. They don’t need us involved.”
US troops first entered northeast Syria in 2014, and approximately 2,000 troops remain in the country to counter ISIS and build up local security forces.
SIGNALS
Trump has vowed to curtail overseas military presence
Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to end America’s conflicts overseas; he significantly reduced US troops in Syria in his first term, in 2019. The Trump administration will likely reevaluate the number of US troops in Iraq, which the Biden administration promised to reduce over the course of 2025. Some European officials suspect that troop withdrawals from Europe might be next, noting that several officials appointed to serve in Trump’s Pentagon have called for Europe to build up its own forces to at least partially replace the US presence in the region. Many of Trump’s key appointees, including Vice President J.D. Vance, are veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, Politico wrote, and emerged from their service skeptical of US interventionism.
Could Gaza drag the US back into the Middle East?
Donald Trump’s comments Tuesday about a potential takeover of Gaza mark Trump’s starkest departure from his campaign promises to end US foreign involvement since returning to office. A direct intervention “would fly in the face of Trump’s long-standing desire to disengage from foreign entanglements,” The Atlantic wrote. “It’s not a serious proposal,” a former US ambassador to Israel told The Wall Street Journal, arguing that “it would entail a massive cost in dollars and U.S. troops, with no support from key regional partners.” Trump has also suggested he might deploy US forces to take over Greenland, make Canada the 51st state, and seize the Panama Canal, although some experts believe these threats are no more than “bombast and bluster.”