The Washington Beltway War Party is in full mobilization against President Donald Trump. At least three of its members have issued complaints about Trump’s military policies, basically claiming that if Trump serves another four years, it’ll be all over for America’s alliances and the military. Michèle Flournoy, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy under the Obama Administration and who has made no secret of her ambition to be Secretary of Defense in a Biden Administration, is eager to “undo” the “damage” that Trump has supposedly done to the U.S. alliances. “Unless we have a new leadership that our allies believe they can count on, I don’t believe our alliances can survive another four years of what they’ve just experienced,” Flournoy said in an interview on Sept. 8, reported Bloomberg. Regardless of whether she serves in a Biden Administration, Flournoy said she would advise him to “make repairing these relationships a central focus right upfront.”
Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army who has made a second career out of scaremongering about the supposed Russian threat, spoke similarly during a video event with Defense One website. He attacked Trump’s plan to pull 12,000 troops out of Germany (some of them will, as is known, end up in Poland, which is not an improvement, but Hodges apparently did not complain about that), calling it a political move that will fizzle out over time. He complained that the decision is about punishing Germany over not paying 2% of its GDP on defense and undermines confidence in the U.S. commitment to the Alliance. Hodges also claimed that the U.S. military is “ill-equipped to deal with a serious threat from Russia,” even though Russian defense spending is roughly 6-7% of that of all of NATO, including the U.S., combined.
A third member of the War Party, retired Adm. James Stavridis, a former commander of NATO, lashed out at Trump’s plan to draw down the U.S. troop presence in Iraq by 2,200 troops. “Winners: Islamic State, Iran, Russia and Syria. Losers: America’s allies. And, of course, the people of Iraq, who will slip further under Iranian control,” Stavridis concluded in a commentary published by Bloomberg. “All with no significant savings in money or lives. Not a very good bargain, especially for an administration that prides itself on the art of those international deals.”
