Consequently, in the closing weeks of his 2020 re-election campaign, it would seem appropriate to consider whether or not he has lived up to this promise, how he has attempted to do so and if this effort has made the nation safer.
But as Americans vote this fall, Trump’s promise of a dramatic reduction in American troop presence abroad has not been achieved, nor has he dramatically shifted costs to U.S. allies. In fact, the Trump administration has increased U.S. defense spending in the last several years by nearly $140 billion, from $611 billion in 2016 to $750 billion in 2019, Foreign Affairs reported. When Trump settled into the Oval Office in January 2017, the United States had a little under 200,000 troops deployed overseas. Best estimates are that number has been reduced slightly, but this may largely reflect a difference in accounting. Since 2017, the Department of Defense has excluded troops deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria from its official reports, arguing that providing the number of troops in a combat theater violated operational security.
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