US President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union touched on a number of international issues, including North Korea and the battle to defeat ISIS, but he didn’t offer any specifics and barely mentioned Russia or China.
Direct reference to Pakistan, a key partner in the war on terror, which Trump recently said would be subject to a reduction in US aid, was also omitted from the speech.
Here’s what he did include:
ISIS
One of Trump’s major foreign policy successes, he says, is a decisive victory against ISIS, which until recently held swathes of territory, alongside major population centers in Iraq and Syria.
“Last year, I also pledged that we would work with our allies to extinguish ISIS from the face of the Earth,” he said Tuesday.
“One year later, I am proud to report that the coalition to defeat ISIS has liberated almost 100 percent of the territory once held by these killers in Iraq and Syria. But there is much more work to be done. We will continue our fight until ISIS is defeated.”
The defeat of ISIS has been a long time coming, and most of the anti-ISIS campaign took place under the Obama administration, CNN’s national security analyst Peter Bergen said at the end of last year, but the Trump national security team helped to hasten its defeat.
Opinion: No, Trump didn’t defeat ISIS
Guantanamo
Trump signed a new executive order Tuesday to keep open the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and opened the door to sending new prisoners there.
The decision is a major reversal of his predecessor President Barack Obama’s policy. Obama, failed to close the controversial high-security detention facility in his eight years in office despite campaign pledges to do so.
“Today I’m keeping another promise. I just signed an order directing Secretary Mattis… to reexamine our military detention policy and to keep open the detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay,” Trump said in his speech Tuesday.
“I am also asking the Congress to ensure that, in the fight against ISIS and al-Qa’ida, we continue to have all necessary power to detain terrorists — wherever we chase them down.”
“Terrorists who do things like place bombs in civilian hospitals are evil. When possible, we annihilate them. When necessary, we must be able to detain and question them. But we must be clear: Terrorists are not merely criminals. They are unlawful enemy combatants. And when captured overseas, they should be treated like the terrorists they are.
