Week by week, country by country, the Pentagon is quietly seizing more control over warfighting decisions, sending hundreds more troops to war with little public debate and seeking greater authority to battle extremists across the Middle East and Africa.
Last week it was Somalia, where US President Donald Trump gave the US military more authority to conduct offensive airstrikes on al-Qaeda-linked militants.
This week it could be Yemen, where military leaders want to provide more help for the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) battle against Iranian-backed rebels.
Key decisions on Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan are looming, from ending troop number limits to loosening rules that guide commanders in the field.
The changes in Trump’s first two months in office underscore his willingness to let the Pentagon manage its own day-to-day combat.
Under the administration of former US president Barack Obama, military leaders chafed about micromanagement that included commanders needing approval for routine tactical decisions about targets and personnel moves.
However, delegating more authority to the Pentagon — and combat decisions to lower-level officers — carries its own military and political risks. Casualties, of civilians and US service members, might be the biggest.
The deepening involvement in counterinsurgency battles, from the street-by-street battles being fought in Iraq right now to clandestine raids in Yemen and elsewhere, increases the chances of US troops dying.
Such tragedies could raise the ire of the US public and create political trouble with the US Congress at a time when the Trump administration is trying to finish off the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq and Syria and broaden efforts against similarly inspired groups.
Similarly, allowing lower-level commanders to make more timely airstrike decisions in densely populated areas like the streets of Mosul, Iraq, can result in more civilian deaths.
The US military already is investigating several bombings in Mosul last month that witnesses say killed at least 100 people.
It is also considering new tactics amid evidence suggesting extremists are smuggling civilians into buildings and then baiting coalition forces into attacking.
Alice Hunt Friend, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, cited yet another concern: Military operations becoming “divorced from overall foreign policy” could make both civilian leaders and the military vulnerable to runaway events.
“Political leaders can lose control of military campaigns,” she said.
However, top military leaders say they need to be able to act quicker against US enemies, and they have been staunchly supported by Trump, who has promised to pursue extremists more aggressively and echoed the view of Pentagon leaders that the Obama administration’s tight control limited effectiveness.
Explaining his request for more leeway in Somalia against al-Shabaab militants, US General Thomas Waldhauser, head of US Africa Command, told Congress last month that more flexibility and “timeliness” in decisionmaking process was necessary.
Approved by Trump on Wednesday, it was hardly the first military expansion. The US Department of Defense has quietly doubled the number of US forces in Syria. It has moved military advisers closer to front lines in Iraq. It has publicly made the case for more troops in Afghanistan.
The White House is tentatively scheduled this week to discuss providing intelligence, refueling and other assistance to the UAE as it fights Houthi rebels in Yemen, according to officials who were not authorized to speak about confidential meetings.
Some changes are happening with little fanfare. While there is limited US appetite for large-scale deployments in Iraq and Syria, additions are coming incrementally, in the hundreds of forces, not the thousands.
The result might be confusing for the public. Trump has not eliminated Obama’s troop number limits. Thus, the caps of 503 for Syria and 5,262 for Iraq are still in effect. However, the military is ignoring them with White House approval and using a loophole to categorize deployments as temporary.
For example, several hundred marines and soldiers were recently sent to Syria to assist US-backed Syrian forces, including in the fight to retake Raqqa. All were deemed temporary, so they did not count against the cap. On Friday, the Pentagon said that officially there are 5,262 US troops in Iraq even as officials privately acknowledge at least a couple thousand more there.
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