Colin H. Kahl is associate professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and a strategic consultant at the Penn-Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. From October 2014 to January 2017, he was deputy assistant to President Obama and national security adviser to Vice President Biden, and from February 2009 to December 2011, he was deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East at the Pentagon.

In the few short months since he became president, Donald Trump has made clear that his No. 1 foreign policy priority is to “demolish and destroy” Islamic terrorism. Just a week after taking office, Trump visited the Pentagon to task his generals to develop a comprehensive plan to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), saying with characteristic confidence: “I think it’s going to be very successful.”

In charting a new course to combat terrorism across the greater Middle East, Trump has both embraced and rejected elements of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama approaches—but he has done so in an almost perfectly dysfunctional way. He has escalated U.S. military actions, while remaining diplomatically aloof from festering conflicts and de-emphasizing non-military instruments of American power. The result, so far, is a kind of bizarro-Goldilocks approach: not hot enough, not cold enough—just wrong. Left uncorrected, the emerging Trump doctrine will result in more war, but few sustainable gains against terrorism emanating from the world's most dangerous region.


In framing the terrorist challenge, Trump has taken a page out of Bush’s playbook. Like his Republican predecessor, Trump has embraced rhetoric suggesting an existential civilizational clash between the United States and Islamic extremists. After 9/11, Bush declared a “global war on terrorism” in which the United States would aggressively confront the alliance between “Islamic radicalism” and “evil” states like Iraq and Iran. Similarly, in Trump’s inaugural address, he declared his administration would “unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth.” Trump has also defined “radical Islam” in an incredibly expansive way, encompassing not only Sunni jihadists like ISIS and al Qaeda, but also the Shia Islamic Republic of Iran. But, tellingly, Trump has done so without Bush’s caveat that extremists pervert “the peaceful teachings of Islam.” Last year, Trump stated bluntly: “Islam hates us” and said it was “very hard” to separate Islam from radical Islam, “because you don’t know who’s who.”

Like Bush, Trump also seems enamored with massive demonstrations of American military might. Despite Trump’s complicated history with the Iraq war, he is clearly attracted to the “shock and awe” approach of the 2003 invasion and the military escalation embodied by the 2007 “surge.” No phrase better encapsulates this than Trump’s campaign promise to “bomb the shit” out of ISIS. And it is reflected in the ease with which he has embraced military escalation during his first few months in office—with almost no public debate.

At the same time, Trump seems to reject Bush-era faith in the transformative potential of military force. Trump wants to kill terrorists (and possibly their families), and he has warned state sponsors of terrorism like Iran that they are “playing with fire.” But he claims to reject the notion of regime change. Although Trump’s past statements suggest he was initially sympathetic to both the Iraq and Libya interventions, he argued as a candidate that the United States “tore up what institutions they had and then were surprised at what we unleashed. Civil war, religious fanaticism, thousands of Americans [killed]...Many trillions of dollars were lost as a result. The vacuum was created that ISIS would fill. Iran, too, would rush in and fill that void.”

And while Trump has consistently stated his desire to crush America’s terrorist enemies, he has no apparent interest in picking up the pieces. Trump has described the Middle East as “one big, fat quagmire.” He believes the responsibility for rebuilding shattered countries should fall on regional and local actors, and the United States should “[get] out of the nation-building business.” In an “America first” world, these are simply not burdens the United States should bear.

A surface-level comparison suggests a lot of similarities with Obama’s approach. Obama carried out a relentless campaign against terrorist networks, as demonstrated by the special operations raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, the decimation of core al Qaeda in Pakistan, the expansive U.S. drone campaign against other high-value terrorists, and more than 16,000 airstrikes against ISIS. Obama was also reticent about regime change, with one exception: Libya, where a civilian protection mission morphed into toppling Muammar Qaddafi’s regime. Obama eventually came to see it as his biggest mistake. Obama regularly emphasized the need to do more “nation-building at home” and less abroad. And he championed an “indirect approach” that worked by, with, and through coalition partners and local allies on the ground rather than having large numbers of U.S. forces enmeshed in murky conflicts.

And yet, Trump’s divergences with Obama are becoming increasingly clear. During the campaign, Trump railed against Obama for being too cautious, too squeamish and too transparent about troop deployments. Last April, for example, Trump told a Connecticut crowd:

“We’re gonna beat ISIS very, very quickly folks. It’s gonna be fast. I have a great plan...They ask, ‘What is it?’ Well, I’d rather not say. I’d rather be unpredictable.

“I don’t want to be like Barack Obama where he announced a few months ago we are sending 50 soldiers, our finest, to Iraq and Syria. Why do you announce that? Why do you tell the enemy that your sending people over there and they now have a target on their backs?”

Trump has consistently pledged to pick up the pace of military actions against terrorist networks, even if it increases risks to civilians, and he has promised to keep his plans “secret.”

So far, Trump seems to be keeping his promises.

An initial draft of the Pentagon review Trump requested in January has since been submitted and internally discussed at the White House. And while no strategy change has been formally decided or announced, and important parts of the campaign in Iraq and Syria remain consistent with what Trump inherited, several shifts appear to already be underway.

Trump appears to be deploying more forces, and moving those already in the field closer to the fight. The number of U.S. forces in northern Syria has doubled in the past month, with 400 Marines and Army rangers joining the 500 U.S. special operations forces deployed by Obama (and reports suggest the Pentagon may request even more forces soon to support the assault on ISIS’s capital Raqqa). Meanwhile, in Iraq, hundreds of U.S. soldiers have been sent to reinforce the assault on ISIS in Mosul, with many more waiting in the wings in Kuwait. And reports indicate that American military advisers in Iraq are getting much closer to the front lines.

Beyond deepening U.S. involvement in established war zones, Trump has also signed off on expanded authorities for conducting military operations outside these areas, loosening Obama-era rules intended to protect innocent civilians. Under Obama, strikes against terrorists outside “areas of active hostilities” in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan were subject to significant constraints and White House oversight. To take action, the Pentagon had to demonstrate that an individual (or network of individuals) represented a “continuing and imminent threat” to the United States, the intelligence had to confirm the target and there had to be “near certainty” that no civilians would be killed by the strike.

Trump has already taken action to unshackle the military from these rules. During the same Jan. 25 dinner in which Trump greenlit the disastrous Jan. 29 special operations forces raid in Yemen, the president also agreed to a proposal made by Defense Secretary James Mattis to declare large areas of Yemen active areas of hostilities. This gives the U.S. military much greater latitude to conduct operations against al Qaeda’s local affiliate, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), without checking back with the White House before each strike. Operations in Yemen will continue to be governed by the laws of war, as they are in Iraq and Syria, but the U.S. military will be able to target a much larger range of individuals, the threshold for actionable intelligence will be lower and the acceptable level of collateral damage will be higher. As a result, the Trump administration has already carried out 70 airstrikes in Yemen, nearly double the number the Obama administration conducted in all of 2016. (Trump has reportedly granted a similar expansion of authorities for Somalia, and may also be asked to consider doing so for Libya.)

Finally, the Trump administration has taken steps to scale back transparency. Although some information has trickled out about recent troop deployments, the Pentagon said last week that it will no longer “routinely announce or confirm information about the capabilities, force numbers, locations or movement of forces in or out of Iraq and Syria.”

In the near term, Trump’s approach may kill more terrorists and achieve tactical gains. But its single-minded emphasis on military escalation carries with it real dangers that could produce strategic defeat.

First, Trump’s approach is already significantly increasing the risks to innocent civilians caught up in America’s expanding military campaign. According to the non-governmental organization Airwars, the number of alleged civilian deaths from U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria has increased dramatically since Trump took office. In just one strike in Mosul last month, at least 100 (and perhaps as many as 200) Iraqi civilians may have perished.

https://airwars.org/data/



General Joseph Votel, the commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East, has insisted that this is not a result of changes in American “rules of engagement,” but rather a consequence of the intensifying U.S.-backed military campaigns to take Mosul and Raqqa. Defense officials have confirmed, however, that U.S. forces at lower levels of command have been delegated the authority to call in airstrikes—and with more American troops closer to the fight, that means more strikes. Despite the great care the U.S. military takes to avoid collateral damage, dropping more bombs in dense urban environments like Mosul and Raqqa inevitably means more civilians will die.

Furthermore, as the list of countries considered areas of active hostilities grows beyond Iraq and Syria, we can expect civilian casualties to rise in places like Yemen and Somalia as well. The Jan. 29 Yemen raid that resulted in the death of a U.S. Navy SEAL, for example, also allegedly left more than a dozen civilians dead, including several children.

Beyond the moral implications, a surge in civilian casualties could undermine the efficacy of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign. The United States has benefited from the notion that, unlike ISIS and al Qaeda, it does not wantonly kill innocents. That perception could now be put in jeopardy. As Hussam Essa, a founder of an organization that monitors violence in Raqqa, told the Washington Post: “People used to feel safe when the American planes were in the sky, because they knew they didn’t hit civilians. They were only afraid of the Russian and regime planes. But now they are very afraid of the American airstrikes.” If sentiments like this become widespread, it could shift the sympathies of local residents back in the direction of jihadists, complicating the liberation of ISIS’s remaining strongholds and increasing prospects for the re-emergence of extremism in the aftermath.

Second, Trump’s “shoot first” approach appears to have no accompanying civilian elements. Trump’s proposal to cut the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development budgets by nearly a third shows that he places little value on diplomacy and foreign assistance. Not surprisingly, the Trump administration has said nothing about how it intends to complement an escalating military campaign across the Middle East with non-military action.

The 2003 Iraq war and 2011 Libya interventions may have revealed the folly of U.S.-imposed regime change, but they also demonstrated the dangers of not having a coherent diplomatic and stabilization plan to sustain the gains from successful military campaigns. Obama was keenly aware of this problem (indeed, the failure in Libya made him more aware). Consequently, his approach in Syria and Yemen sought to carefully calibrate U.S. military actions to avoid sinking into a quagmire, while pursuing diplomatic settlements and rallying the world to provide humanitarian assistance to ease the suffering. In Iraq, moreover, Obama held off intervening against ISIS until there was a political agreement to remove the noxious former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. And, as the methodical U.S.-led campaign to dismantle the Islamic State progressed, the Obama administration conducted extensive “day after” planning and fundraising for stabilization and reconstruction in liberated Iraqi cities.

Yet, despite these hard lessons, it is not clear if Trump has a strategy that incorporates any “non-kinetic” dimensions. This is a big mistake. In Iraq, for example, ISIS 2.0 is likely to rise like a phoenix from the ashes unless the administration has a plan to work with the international community to help rebuild liberated cities, assist in demobilizing and reintegrating Shia militias, and work with Iraqis to manage the sectarian and Arab-Kurd tensions that will inevitably resurface once ISIS is expelled.

Similarly, in Syria, there is little hope of sustainably vanquishing ISIS or al Qaeda unless a political formula is found to end the Syrian war. The Trump administration has signaled that the United States will no longer insist on President Bashar al-Assad’s departure. Trump also says he wants to cooperate with Assad’s backers in Moscow to combat ISIS and al Qaeda. Fine. But the administration has been silent on how it might seek to diplomatically leverage these concessions—and mobilize possible assistance to rebuild the country—to help produce a meaningful ceasefire and eventual political settlement.

In Yemen, the Trump administration is contemplating a double escalation: a wider campaign against AQAP and more military assistance to the Saudi and Emirati coalition waging war against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. Yet, here too, the administration lacks any supporting diplomatic or assistance plan. Providing more help to U.S. allies, and putting more pressure on Iranian-backed adversaries, may generate useful leverage. But the administration has no apparent strategy to cash in on this opportunity to force both sides of Yemen’s civil war to agree to a power-sharing deal. Nor does it appear to have a humanitarian plan to mitigate the possibility that a U.S.-backed escalation could jeopardize the already tenuous flow of food into the country, potentially triggering a famine that kills millions of Yemenis.

Last but not least, accelerating the U.S. military campaign across the Middle East risks outpacing the efforts and capabilities of local actors to take ownership over the fight, potentially resulting in deepening U.S. involvement with no exit strategy—the exact opposite of what Trump claims he wants. Because the United States has the finest fighting forces in the world, there is always the temptation to substitute U.S. troops for less capable partners on the ground. Doing so may accelerate tactical victories against ISIS or other jihadists, but it will leave American G.I.’s holding the bag—and bearing the burden.

The risk of mission creep is compounded by Trump’s penchant for secrecy regarding how U.S. military forces are being deployed. The lack of transparency guts public accountability at the very time when more U.S. forces are being put in harm’s way, risking ever-expanding commitments with no real public debate.

The only sustainable outcomes in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere are ones in which local forces prove willing and able to hold and govern the areas U.S. forces help liberate from jihadist control. For that reason, the scope and scale of U.S. military operations must constantly be adjusted so U.S. actions do not get too far out in front. Avoiding mission creep takes patience and a degree of U.S. restraint—neither of which is a Trump hallmark. It also requires being straight with the American people about the nature of U.S. involvement.

Barely two-and-a-half months into the new administration, Trump’s approach to combating jihadist terrorism across the Middle East seems to represent the worst of all worlds: just enough swagger and military escalation to guarantee ever deepening involvement without a holistic strategy to sustain military gains and create conditions for the United States to eventually extricate itself. As a result, a president that promised fewer entanglements could find himself sinking deeper and deeper into Middle Eastern quicksand, squandering blood and treasure and inciting regional blowback with no end in sight. That's not what the American people signed up for. And it is not a path to sustainably defeat America’s enemies.

In 2014, during a trip to Asia, Obama was asked by reporters on Air Force One to encapsulate his foreign policy doctrine. The president responded: “Don’t do stupid shit.” Obama was roundly criticized by both the Washington foreign policy establishment and the anti-establishment Trump for being too cautious in using force and too reticent in projecting American power in the Middle East. Yet, overcorrecting by abandoning military caution while jettisoning diplomacy and other non-military tools, as Trump appears to be doing, is not the answer. After all, “doing stupid shit” is not a great doctrine, either.