“That’s an eternity.”The Defense Department has submitted the plan to the National Security Council for approval by other agencies. Still, eliminating the State Department authority might make little difference in practice, said Joshua A. Geltzer, who was senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council during the Obama administration. Either way, he said, if the State Department wanted to stop airstrikes in Somalia and the Pentagon wanted to keep going, the dispute would be resolved in a meeting of top leaders convened by Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster. Photo“The question of whether to allow a veto has been a source of tension before,” Mr. Geltzer said of the State Department authority. Mr. Trump has already approved declaring much of Somalia an “area of active hostilities,” a designation for places where war zone targeting rules apply, under an Obama-era system for such operations that Mr. Trump has since replaced.

Source: New York Times December 10, 2017 15:56 UTC