President Trump Is Considering Cutting U.S. Diplomatic Staff By 30% To 50% In Iraq And Afghanistan

The Chancellery Building at the US Embassy in Baghdad. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

Robbie Gramer, Business Insider/Foreign Policy: Trump is reportedly considering another major shift to prepare for competition with Russia and China

* Under President Donald Trump, the US has reemphasized great-power competition, shifting focus to rivalries with Russia and China.
* In what may be the latest sign of that shift, the Trump administration is reportedly considering moving diplomatic personal out of Iraq and Afghanistan, where Washington has focused for much of the past 20 years.

President Donald Trump's administration is considering reducing its diplomatic footprint in Afghanistan as part of a broader effort to extricate the United States from its costly and deadly 18-year conflict, US officials tell Foreign Policy.

The State Department is preparing to cut by half the number of US diplomats posted in Kabul in 2020, according to three US officials familiar with internal deliberations. It may also advance plans to reduce the number of diplomats posted to the US Embassy in Iraq as Washington winds down its war footing in the Middle East and South Asia to prepare for what it calls an era of "great-power competition" with China and Russia.

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WNU Editor: If this happens it will signal to everyone that the U.S. is shifting away from Iraq and Afghanistan .... which is not surprising since President Trump has been talking about doing this for the past three years.