Trump team looks to box in Biden on foreign policy by lighting too many 'fires' to put ... - 0 views
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President Donald Trump's order of a further withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and Iraq is the latest foreign policy move on a growing list in his final weeks in office that are meant to limit President-elect Joe Biden's options before he takes office in January.
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It is contemplating new terrorist designations in Yemen that could complicate efforts to broker peace.
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it has rushed through authorization of a massive arms sale that could alter the balance of power in the Middle East.
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The Trump team has prepared legally required transition memos describing policy challenges, but there are no discussions about actions they could take or pause.
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The Trump team's refusal to work with the incoming team stands in stark contrast with the conduct of previous administrations during transitions.
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It's a strategy that radically breaks with past practice, could raise national security risks and will surely compound challenges for the Biden team
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that the difference between Trump and Biden isn't a matter of the end goal, such as a departure from Afghanistan or a nuclear-free Iran, but simply a matter of how each leader wants to get there.
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Other analysts say that damaging Biden's options might come second to a more important goal for Trump, who has floated the idea of running again in 2024.
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A second official tells CNN their goal is to set so many fires that it will be hard for the Biden administration to put them all out.
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the US will withdraw 2,500 more troops from both Afghanistan and Iraq by January 15, 2021, five days before Biden takes office.There are currently about 4,500 US troops in Afghanistan and 3,000 in Iraq.
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"The price for leaving too soon or in an uncoordinated way could be very high. Afghanistan risks becoming once again a platform for international terrorists to plan and organize attacks on our homelands. And ISIS could rebuild in Afghanistan the terror caliphate it lost in Syria and Iraq,"
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"We're not going to see in two months a total withdrawal from Afghanistan ... so some of this is just symbolism. ... Joe Biden can come into the White House in 2021 and put those troops back in."
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China hawks in the Trump administration believe there are actions they can take now that will box Biden in, one administration official said. Steps include sanctions and trade restrictions on Chinese companies and government entities that officials believe will be politically impossible for the President-elect to undo. Axios first reported these moves.
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Now the White House is building a wall of sanctions meant to prevent that from happening, creating new penalties linked to Iran's human rights abuses, its support for organizations such as Hezbollah and its ballistic missile program -- activities Iran is unlikely to stop.
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Trump has floated the idea of a military strike on Iran but was dissuaded, according to The New York Times.
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More visible are the administration's efforts to stymie Biden's pledge to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump rejected in 2018.
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For Tehran, a central condition of rejoining the nuclear pact would be to benefit from the economic relief the deal promised but didn't deliver because of Trump's maximum pressure campaign.
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They argue that in contrast, Biden's approach will be effective because he will work with partners to create what China fears most: an international united front against Beijing. That's something Biden allies say Trump has been unable to do. If Trump levies extra sanctions, the penalties will simply provide Biden with additional leverage, they say.
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The web of new measures "will make it more difficult for Joe Biden to lift these sanctions and persuade companies and banks to return to Iran, especially when any sanctions lifted by Biden could be restored by a Republican president in 2025,"
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under Trump, Iran has become closer to, not farther from, being able to create a nuclear weapon and that many Democrats will feel it is worth the political cost to return to the international deal meant to prevent that.
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This month, the Trump administration authorized $23 billion in advanced weaponry sales to the United Arab Emirates that could alter the balance of power in the Middle East -- a deal the Biden team has expressed reservations about. The authorization came less than two months after the UAE joined a US-brokered agreement to normalize relations with Israel.
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"That was something the UAE very much wanted the Trump administration to do before leaving office, and they did it very quickly and they notified even a much bigger potential package than what had been expected,
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Trump's top diplomat, Mike Pompeo, is expected this week to pay the first visit by a US secretary of state to an Israeli West Bank settlement, capping an administration approach that has bucked traditional US policy and international consensus.
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The President-elect is unlikely to change other norm-shattering steps by the Trump administration, including moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Dunne said. "They're just going to leave them," she said. "You're not going to undo everything."
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For months, Pompeo has been pushing to designate Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels as terrorists despite pushback from State Department and United Nations officials. He may soon be successful, two State Department officials tell CNN, and if so, the move could handicap Biden's ability to develop his own policy in Yemen, because rolling back a terrorist designation is not easy, the officials said.