The Many Potential U.S. Military Escalations Under Donald Trump

The Strategic Culture Foundation has summarized in a new article a number of apparent military escalations by the United States around the world that are in the planning stages and have been reported by various media.

Lew Rockwell has correctly characterized the escalations as "an interventionist disaster. If this is the real Trump admin plan."

Here are the reports.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting the Trump administration may be attempting to form a NATO-type alliance in the Middle East with the U.S. and Israel stickhandling the alliance from the shadows:

The Trump administration is in talks with Arab allies about having them form a military alliance that would share intelligence with Israel to help counter their mutual foe, Iran, several Middle Eastern officials said.

The alliance would include countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that are avowed enemies of Israel, as well as Egypt and Jordan, which have longstanding peace treaties with Israel, five officials from Arab countries involved in the discussions said. Other Arab countries could also join the alliance.

For the Arab countries involved, the alliance would have a NATO-style mutual-defense component under which an attack on one member would be treated as an attack on all, though details are still being worked out, the officials said.

The U.S. would offer military and intelligence support to the alliance, beyond the kind of limited backing it has been providing to a Saudi-led coalition fighting Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, the officials said. But neither the U.S. nor Israel would be part of the mutual-defense pact.

“They’ve been asking diplomatic missions in Washington if we’d be willing to join this force that has an Israeli component,” one Arab diplomat said. “Israel’s role would likely be intelligence sharing, not training or boots on the ground. They’d provide intelligence and targets. That’s what the Israelis are good at.”

The Russian daily, Izvestia, reports the US plans to substantially increase its military presence in Iraq:

The newspaper cited its own sources in the U.S. Republican Party. The plans include a few thousand troops to arrive in Iraq in the coming months.

CNN reports:

 The Defense Department might propose that the US send conventional ground combat forces into northern Syria for the first time to speed up the fight against ISIS, CNN has learned.

"It's possible that you may see conventional forces hit the ground in Syria for some period of time," one defense official told CNN....

The move would significantly alter US military operations in Syria if approved and could put troops on the ground within weeks.

Until now, only small teams made up largely of Special Operations forces have operated in Syria, providing training and assistance to anti-ISIS opposition groups on the ground.
Conventional units operate in larger numbers and would require a more significant footprint of security protection both on the ground and in the air.

 The Military Times is reporting:

The Pentagon is developing proposals for sending an unspecified number of American military personnel into Syria, conventional ground forces who would augment the 500 combat advisers already there coordinating efforts to destroy the Islamic State... multiple U.S. Army sources indicated that about two thousand soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team soon may bolster other Army elements already in the region. Currently, about 1,800 paratroopers from the 2nd BCT are in Iraq participating in the U.S. military's train-and-advise mission. The 82nd Airborne Division is based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

Reuters reports:

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said on Thursday he needs several thousand more international troops in order to break a stalemate in the long war with Taliban insurgents, signaling the matter may soon be put before President Donald Trump.

So far, Trump has offered little clarity about whether he might approve more forces for Afghanistan, where some 8,400 U.S. troops remain more than 15 years after the Islamist Taliban government was toppled by U.S.-backed Afghan forces.

Got that? Potential military escalations in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan---with new U.S. combat troops on the ground. Plus: A Middle East NATO that would be run behind the scenes by the U.S. and Israel.

This is not what an "America First" foreign policy looks like.

This is the Empire in action with a new justification, nation building is out, but the same meddling in foreign affairs.

  -RW