Follow us on social

190930-d-sw162-2211-scaled

Report: Trump's post-election 'coup' was against his runaway generals

According to this exhaustive reporting, Trump's thwarted revenge scenario was not what you might think. It just didn't work.

Asia-Pacific

It turns out that Trump was planning a military "coup" in the last desperate weeks of his tenure, but not the kind you might think. According to Axios reporters Jonathan Swan and Zachary Basu, Trump did want to railroad his own military generals — by demanding they get all of their troops out of Afghanistan, as well as Germany, Africa, Iraq and Syria, too.

And, according to Swan and Basu's exhaustive reporting, the generals pushed back, thwarting Trump's plans to completely withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of the year. Instead he achieved only drawdown of only 2,500 personnel by January 15, leaving his successor to announce the a full withdrawal by Sept. 11 of this year. There was a modest drawdown in Iraq and a shifting of troops out of Somalia before Trump left, but a delay in plans to extract personnel from Germany resulted in Biden already reversing the orders, and the Syrian question has been left off the table completely.

The Axios article examines the timeline from Trump’s election loss and his swift firing of several top Pentagon officials, including DoD Secretary Mark Esper, who was replaced by Homeland Security official and former military officer Christopher Miller. Ret. Col. Doug Macgregor, a military iconoclast who made his fame in the first Persian Gulf War was brought in as a top advisor. Macgregor, a longtime critic of U.S. war policy and an advocate of pulling out of Afghanistan and other protracted operations overseas (and of the generals, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley), was seen as Trump’s interlocutor for executing his final demand, which was sidelining the generals.

And he was, as much as he could. According to Swan and Basu, Trump had trusted aide John McEntee hand Macgregor a list on Nov. 9 that said bluntly:

1. Get us out of Afghanistan.

2. Get us out of Iraq and Syria.

3. Complete the withdrawal from Germany.

4. Get us out of Africa.

“This is what he wants you to do,” McEntee told Macgregor, who responded that this must come in the form of an official presidential memorandum or acting Secretary Miller won’t have the authority to do any of it. He helped McEntee draft the memo. It was sent out, but as Swan and Basu describe in laborious detail, it got “lost” in translation. Days later a memo was signed by the lame duck president, but it was not the one Macgregor helped to draft. There was such a backlash in the Pentagon that by the time Miller and aides got through with Trump, he signed off on something much more tepid, including the smaller drawdown from Afghanistan by Jan. 15. 

“And with that, Trump folded on total withdrawal for the last time as president,” Swan and Basu write.

This is an important read, which also includes new speculation about whether Gen. Milley was actively working against the civilian leadership in the Pentagon during this period. Interestingly, while Trump was railing about “stop the steal” he wasn’t doing what everyone had accused him of doing on the military side: he wasn’t using Macgregor, Miller, et al., to stay in office. Rather, he seemed to believe that following through with his pledge to “end forever wars” would be the ultimate revenge against Esper, Milley, and Generals H.R. McMaster and Jim Mattis. Too bad he did not achieve this one post-election fantasy.


Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Vice President Mike Pence; President Donald J. Trump; Secretary of Defense Dr. Mark T. Esper; and Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, outgoing Chairman, render honors during an Armed Forces Welcome Ceremony as Army Gen. Mark A. Milley becomes the 20th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at Joint Base Myer – Henderson Hall, Va., Sept. 30, 2019. Milley takes the reigns from Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, the 19th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (DoD Photo by U.S. Army Sgt. James K. McCann)
Asia-Pacific
soft power
Top photo credit: Khody Akhavi/DALL-E

Debate: Slashing studies, research aid will doom US foreign policy

Washington Politics

This is one perspective in a Responsible Statecraft ‘debate’ over the value of federal aid for ‘soft power’ programs, including regional studies, think tanks, USAID, and academic exchanges. See a counterpoint by Christopher Mott, here.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has made clear it seeks to increase attention to what Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called an “Americas First” foreign policy.

keep readingShow less
hive mind
Top photo credit: Khody Akhavi/DALL-E

Debate: Federal funding fuels failing foreign policy hive mind

Washington Politics

This is one perspective in a Responsible Statecraft ‘debate’ over the value of federal aid for ‘soft power’ programs, including regional studies, think tanks, USAID, and academic exchanges. See a counterpoint by Adam Ratzlaff, here.


keep readingShow less
Alliance of Sahel States
Top photo credit: A man with his face and body painted, celebrating the Alliance of Sahel States, is seen at the Festival sur le Niger, also known as Segou'Art, as it occurs in the wake of Mali and its neighbours Niger and Burkina Faso leaving the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS), in Segou, Mali February 6, 2025. REUTERS/Aboubacar Traore

Bad timing for an African trade war

Africa

The decision by the military-led Alliance of Sahel States to impose a 0.5% import duty on goods from the nations of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has added a new twist in the rift plaguing the West African bloc.

The tariff, which exempts only humanitarian aid, threatens to upend free trade and provoke retaliation, effectively creating a trade war within the region at a time when Africa’s exports to the crucial U.S. market face new challenges.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.