I'm not sure there is really much to the story that the American military has defied Trump by keeping more troops in Syria than Trump supposedly authorized after ordering a pullback from the Turkish border in 2018:
Nameless bureaucrats who disagreed with Trump’s directive decided simply to undermine it, first by convincing him to leave behind a residual force and then by misleading “senior officials” about the actual number of U.S. troops left in the region, according to outgoing Ambassador Jim Jeffrey, the U.S. special envoy for Syria.
The story says we have 900 troops--much higher than the claimed formal limit.
I'm not sure there is any deception at all given that over a year ago the media reported we had a thousand troops in eastern Syria.
But aside from whether the story is accurate, there really is a grey area in counting.
In some theoretical location, if 500 troops are allowed and those are rotated, do you say that the time when there are 1000 is a violation of the order? Or do you only count the 500 formally engaged in the mission during the overlap?
And how long can the overlap last? Can troops preparing to leave continue to operate as incoming troops begin to operate?
Can troops pulled out but based just over the border line and not counted in the cap conduct missions from a position perhaps only 50 miles from their old position? How long can they operate before returning to their base outside the country? Are there limits to how often such missions can take place?
What about the presence of rapid reaction forces held outside of the area in question as a reserve? If those go in fairly frequently, are they part of the ceiling or not?
Is it a violation of a ceiling if 200 combat engineers are sent in for a month to improve a base or build a new one? Are they allowed to have an escort?
How do you count contractors? How many could be armed for base security?
Let's say a senior officer visits. Will they bring an escort? Can the escort man defensive positions while the usual contingent goes on other missions?
If a resupply mission to our troops or allied forces comes in, can it have an escort? That seems prudent. And again, what are the limits on their actions while they are in the area subject to a cap?
Also, what if you send troops in on a temporary training mission? Do they count? What are the limits on what can be done for "training."
And keep in mind that special operations forces are never counted. I noted this two years ago in this post. If the basic number of troops allowed is low, the presence of hundreds of special operations command forces can greatly expand the actual number on the ground.
Back in the Vietnam War, we took advantage of this grey area to inflate the number of troops we had in Europe to deter the Soviets from invading while we fought the war. Everybody counted whether coming or going.
I recall that when America in the 1980s was supporting the government of El Salvador with advisors in the field to fight communist insurgents, the American military used the grey area to keep more than the nominal number allowed in the field by Congress.
As an aside, the media focused on whether the advisors carried rifles--which was forbidden as advisors and not fighters--when their real weapon was a radio to call in aerial gunship fire on the enemy.
But I digress. As I can!
And when the surge in Iraq was being debated, I openly speculated on extending rotation overlaps to increase the number of forces in the field actually fighting.
The "Surge" itself was a large-scale example of the overlap concept that could not be extended. One reason I was worried about relying on the Surge offensive was that it was something that could not be maintained easily without a major effort and taking risks by having nothing left in reserve. We had to succeed during that massive overlap. It worked (with a major assist by the Awakening in which Sunni Arabs changed sides to fight al Qaeda in Iraq).
With all that in mind, actual troops on the ground can be much more than an official ceiling with no real defiance taking place. Check the definitions, I always say.
And while we have not decided just what we are willing to fight and die for in eastern Syria, eventually somebody has to make that decision before we have a mass casualty attack on our forces like the Beirut barracks or Mogadishu.
If that mass casualty event happens during the Biden administration and the military has fudged the numbers contrary to formal caps, you can be sure it will be treated as a virtual military coup rather than a joyous expression of military Resistance to the bad orange man.
