From Reagan to Obama, presidents have left office with ‘strategic regret’ − will leaving troops in Iraq and Syria be Biden or Trump’s?

• U.S. presidents often leave the White House expressing “strategic regret” over perceived foreign policy failures.
• Lyndon Johnson was haunted by the Vietnam War.
• Bill Clinton regretted the failed intervention in Somalia and how the “Black Hawk Down” incident contributed to his administration’s inaction over the Rwandan genocide.
• Barack Obama said the Libyan intervention was “the worst mistake” of his presidency.

Another Beirut?

• The Middle East has entered a volatile period.
• The threat to U.S. personnel in the region takes the form of both the Islamic State group, which is intent on hitting Western targets, and the increased risk from a network of Iran-linked militants seeking to avenge what they see as U.S. complicity in Israel’s siege of Gaza.
• If any mass-casualty attack on U.S. forces were to occur, the occupant of the White House would face two conditions that have left departing presidents experiencing strategic regret: the loss of American lives on their watch and the prospect of being drawn into a widening war.

• Today’s situation in Iraq and Syria is eerily similar in many ways to the circumstances Reagan faced in Beirut, but potentially far more dangerous.
• Like Lebanon then, U.S. troops are in Iraq and Syria for secondary, as opposed to primary, security objectives.
• According to a recent Pentagon report, that threat remains exceedingly weak today for the United States.
• While Reagan was unaware of the high exposure of U.S. Marines in 1983, the danger U.S. troops face today in Iraq and Syria is abundantly clear.
• The Jordan attack aside, U.S. service members have already suffered significant injuries from missiles, including dozens of traumatic brain injuries.

Fueling hubris

Some might consider this concern about “another Beirut” overblown. After all, proxy attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria have dropped since the attack in Jordan in late January, giving the impression that deterrence is now working after big U.S. retaliatory strikes in February.

• The 1983 Marine Corps barracks bombing was preceded a few months earlier by a smaller, yet still deadly, bombing at the U.S. embassy in Beirut.
• In the lull that followed the embassy attack, Reagan officials didn’t pursue a strategically smart rethink of U.S. policy or consider troop reductions.
• In short, lulls in violence like today in Iraq and Syria can fuel hubris and provide a dangerous sense of false security and a determination to stay the course.
• As research shows, “see, I told you so” is a powerful rhetorical tool in circumstances like this.

The ghosts of history

• But anything too large risks inviting the kind of response that could lead to lasting and devastating outcomes.
• Imagine, for example, a scenario in which a U.S. president is provoked into striking Iran following repeated attacks by Tehran’s proxies on U.S. troops.
• The result would be an expansion of – and further U.S. involvement in – the Middle East conflict.
• Their experiences and the ghosts of history serve as a warning when it comes to U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq now.

Charles Walldorf received funding from Charles Koch Foundation.

Charles Walldorf is a Visiting Fellow, Defense Priorities