Esper ‘Concerned’ About Russian Influence in Egypt, Saudi Arabia – By Katie Bo Williams (Defense One) / Dec 11 2019
The defense secretary says Moscow’s other Mideast efforts worry him more than its growing presence in Syria.
Russia’s presence in Syria has grown since U.S. troops withdrew from the latter’s northeastern border region, Defense Secretary Mark Esper told lawmakers on Wednesday, but he’s more worried about Moscow’s burgeoning influence elsewhere.
“I’m concerned about Russia in other parts of the Middle East,” Esper said, naming Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and “other places.”
He noted that Russia’s influence in Syria has “expanded in the last month and a half,” but said that concerns him “not as much…because they’ve had a pretty solid footprint there for four or five years.”
Since President Trump ordered an abrupt U.S. pullback from the region in October, Russian forces have moved into Raqqa, the former de facto capital of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which U.S. and allied Kurdish forces reclaimed in 2017. In the days following Trump’s order, Russian troops also entered hastily evacuated U.S. bases and began patrolling the Syrian-Turkey border town of Manbij.
Several Democratic lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee pressed Esper on the Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy, which calls for the United States to prioritize competition with Russia and China over counterterrorism.
Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., suggested that allowing the Turkish incursion into northeastern Syria — and thereby clearing the way for Russia to replace the U.S. presence there — indicates that the administration has “abandoned” efforts to counter Moscow in the Middle East.
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