Small Wars Journal

Mattis: U.S. Troops Can’t Leave Syria Until U.N. Peace Talks Advance; Says President Trump’s Afghanistan Strategy is Drawing the Insurgents to the Negotiating Table

Wed, 08/29/2018 - 12:46am

Mattis: U.S. Troops Can’t Leave Syria Until U.N. Peace Talks Advance by Kevin Baron - Defense One

In March, President Donald Trump said that “very soon” he would bring U.S. troops home from Syria. Today, his defense secretary suggested any such drawdown remains far off.

In a rare Pentagon press conference, James Mattis said a drawdown must wait for more diplomatic progress toward a United Nations-negotiated peace in Geneva that deposes Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Yet Assad continues to consolidate his power against a dwindling rebel movement, aided by Russia and Iran, even as pockets of ISIS fighters stand their ground.

“We need the Geneva process, the U.N.-recognized process, to start making traction towards solving this war,” Mattis said on Tuesday. “It really comes down to finding a way of solving this problem of Assad’s making.”

Mattis spoke the day after Trump and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed Syria by phone. “Russia is called upon to act in a moderating manner on the Syrian government and prevent a further escalation,” said Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert…

Read on.

Downplaying Ghazni, Mattis Defends Trump’s Afghanistan Strategy by Katie Bo Williams - Defense One

Two weeks after the Taliban bloodied Afghan security forces in a five-day battle for a key eastern city, Defense Secretary James Mattis insisted that President Trump’s strategy is drawing the insurgents to the negotiating table and, ultimately, will allow the U.S. to bring an end to the country’s longest war.

A similar claim by the outgoing head of operations in that country, Gen. John “Mick” Nicholson, was met last week with skepticism.

Nicholson and Mattis argue that a successful three-day ceasefire in June and nascent efforts by the Taliban to participate in peace talks may mark a turning point in the 17-year-old war. Individual battles and other short term military ebbs and flows—even ones as fiercely contested as this month’s assault on Ghazni—are less important markers of progress, they say.

“There’s a lot more to this than purely traditional military ‘Who shot who, today,’” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday…

Read on.