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On Wednesday, December 19, US President Donald Trump tweeted: “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.” He then reportedly ordered US troops to pull out of Syria as quickly as possible, with the US State Department also withdrawing all its personnel “within 24 hours.”
Mr. Trump’s surprise decision directly undercut his top security officials and diplomats. Only two days before, the US Special Representative for Syria James Jeffery had promised that the US commitment to Syria would not waiver. Jeffrey assured everyone that the United States would stay in Syria until three goals were met: ensuring the lasting defeat of the Islamic State, rolling back Iranian influence and achieving a political solution to the crisis. Mr. Trump’s generals, diplomats, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and just about everyone else in the American security establishment, appeared to be caught off guard and displeased by the announcement.
The Washington Post captured prevailing opinion on both the right and the left of the US political establishment with headlines of various op-eds including the following: “In a single tweet, Trump destroys US policy in the Middle East,” “Trump undermines his entire national security team on Syria,” “Trump’s surprise Syria pullout is a giant Christmas gift to our enemies,” and “Is Trump handing Putin a victory in Syria?” The Post’s own editorial was entitled “This is not the way to leave Syria.”
Leading Republican senators immediately voiced strong disagreement with the President’s decision, leading to a rare moment of bipartisan agreement as Democratic Party politicians likewise criticized the move. Just three months ago National Security Adviser John Bolton promised the United States would stay in Syria until Iranian forces left the country.
To understand the depth of Mr. Trump’s error, we need only consider which actors in the region stand to gain from the Americans’ hasty pullout. First and foremost is the Islamic State itself, which is not by any means fully defeated and still has, according to the Pentagon, tens of thousands of fighters still active in Syria and Iraq. The same Mr. Trump who so roundly criticized former president Obama for prematurely withdrawing troops from Iraq, only to have to return to fight the Islamic State, is now committing an even more obvious error. With Turkey waiting just over the border with its own Syrian jihadi proxies to attack America’s Kurdish and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) allies, who did almost all the anti-ISIS fighting in Syria, the resulting problems should be eminently predictable and clear.
The Washington Post pointed out the obvious in this respect, writing that “Until Wednesday, a prime talking point of senior national security officials was that ‘if we’ve learned one thing over the years, [the] enduring defeat of a group like this means you can’t just defeat their physical space and then leave,’ as the State Department’s special envoy for the global campaign against the Islamic State, Brett McGurk, put it last week. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said it another way in September: ‘Getting rid of the caliphate doesn’t mean you then blindly say, ‘Okay, we got rid of it,’ march out, and then wonder why the caliphate comes back.’”
Other winners from the US pullout include the Assad regime, Iran, Russia and Turkey – all very good American friends, as we all know. One might object that Turkey really is an American ally, but that would mean ignoring the rhetoric from Turkey for the last several years, Ankara’s efforts to ruin American sanctions on Iran before 2016, Turkey’s cultivation of jihadist forces in Syria, the crushing of democracy within Turkey, and a host of other recent anti-American initiatives from that country.
The losers from the pullout, meanwhile seem to be America’s most reliable allies in the region: Israel and the Kurds. The Israelis lose because the American withdrawal allows a resurgence of jihadi forces (either ISIS or Turkey’s al Qaeda proxies or both) and leaves Iran free to extend its presence throughout Syria, right up to the Israeli border, without any worries. The Kurdish forces in Syria likewise lose, as the Washington Post made clear: “The Syrian Kurdish forces, which have fought alongside the United States and played a crucial role in liberating most of eastern Syria from the jihadists, will be perhaps the foremost victims of Mr. Trump’s decision. Betrayed by Washington, they will now be subject to a military offensive by Turkey. The stab in the back will send an unforgettable message to all who are asked to cooperate with the United States in the fight against terrorism: Washington is an unreliable and dangerous partner.”
The precipitous US pullout appears to be such a monumental blunder that one must wonder what brought Mr. Trump to such folly. There were only 2,000 US special forces in Syria since only three years ago or so, so there was no popular domestic pressure to bring these troops home. Mr. Trump did have a phone call with Turkish President Erdogan the week before, however. In less than a week after the phone call, Mr. Trump not only announced the immediate pullout from Syria, but also said the US would sell Turkey the most advanced US Patriot missiles (even though Ankara says it is still buying the S400 missile system from Russia) and also keep looking at ways to extradite Fethulah Gulen, despite the Turks’ failure to provide any evidence warranting extradition.
What Mr. Trump got from the Turks in return for all this remains a mystery, making us all wonder if this is some strange, backwards version of “the Art of the Deal”.
David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He holds the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and is the author of numerous publications on the Kurds and the Middle East.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
Mr. Trump’s surprise decision directly undercut his top security officials and diplomats. Only two days before, the US Special Representative for Syria James Jeffery had promised that the US commitment to Syria would not waiver. Jeffrey assured everyone that the United States would stay in Syria until three goals were met: ensuring the lasting defeat of the Islamic State, rolling back Iranian influence and achieving a political solution to the crisis. Mr. Trump’s generals, diplomats, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and just about everyone else in the American security establishment, appeared to be caught off guard and displeased by the announcement.
The Washington Post captured prevailing opinion on both the right and the left of the US political establishment with headlines of various op-eds including the following: “In a single tweet, Trump destroys US policy in the Middle East,” “Trump undermines his entire national security team on Syria,” “Trump’s surprise Syria pullout is a giant Christmas gift to our enemies,” and “Is Trump handing Putin a victory in Syria?” The Post’s own editorial was entitled “This is not the way to leave Syria.”
Leading Republican senators immediately voiced strong disagreement with the President’s decision, leading to a rare moment of bipartisan agreement as Democratic Party politicians likewise criticized the move. Just three months ago National Security Adviser John Bolton promised the United States would stay in Syria until Iranian forces left the country.
To understand the depth of Mr. Trump’s error, we need only consider which actors in the region stand to gain from the Americans’ hasty pullout. First and foremost is the Islamic State itself, which is not by any means fully defeated and still has, according to the Pentagon, tens of thousands of fighters still active in Syria and Iraq. The same Mr. Trump who so roundly criticized former president Obama for prematurely withdrawing troops from Iraq, only to have to return to fight the Islamic State, is now committing an even more obvious error. With Turkey waiting just over the border with its own Syrian jihadi proxies to attack America’s Kurdish and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) allies, who did almost all the anti-ISIS fighting in Syria, the resulting problems should be eminently predictable and clear.
The Washington Post pointed out the obvious in this respect, writing that “Until Wednesday, a prime talking point of senior national security officials was that ‘if we’ve learned one thing over the years, [the] enduring defeat of a group like this means you can’t just defeat their physical space and then leave,’ as the State Department’s special envoy for the global campaign against the Islamic State, Brett McGurk, put it last week. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said it another way in September: ‘Getting rid of the caliphate doesn’t mean you then blindly say, ‘Okay, we got rid of it,’ march out, and then wonder why the caliphate comes back.’”
Other winners from the US pullout include the Assad regime, Iran, Russia and Turkey – all very good American friends, as we all know. One might object that Turkey really is an American ally, but that would mean ignoring the rhetoric from Turkey for the last several years, Ankara’s efforts to ruin American sanctions on Iran before 2016, Turkey’s cultivation of jihadist forces in Syria, the crushing of democracy within Turkey, and a host of other recent anti-American initiatives from that country.
The losers from the pullout, meanwhile seem to be America’s most reliable allies in the region: Israel and the Kurds. The Israelis lose because the American withdrawal allows a resurgence of jihadi forces (either ISIS or Turkey’s al Qaeda proxies or both) and leaves Iran free to extend its presence throughout Syria, right up to the Israeli border, without any worries. The Kurdish forces in Syria likewise lose, as the Washington Post made clear: “The Syrian Kurdish forces, which have fought alongside the United States and played a crucial role in liberating most of eastern Syria from the jihadists, will be perhaps the foremost victims of Mr. Trump’s decision. Betrayed by Washington, they will now be subject to a military offensive by Turkey. The stab in the back will send an unforgettable message to all who are asked to cooperate with the United States in the fight against terrorism: Washington is an unreliable and dangerous partner.”
The precipitous US pullout appears to be such a monumental blunder that one must wonder what brought Mr. Trump to such folly. There were only 2,000 US special forces in Syria since only three years ago or so, so there was no popular domestic pressure to bring these troops home. Mr. Trump did have a phone call with Turkish President Erdogan the week before, however. In less than a week after the phone call, Mr. Trump not only announced the immediate pullout from Syria, but also said the US would sell Turkey the most advanced US Patriot missiles (even though Ankara says it is still buying the S400 missile system from Russia) and also keep looking at ways to extradite Fethulah Gulen, despite the Turks’ failure to provide any evidence warranting extradition.
What Mr. Trump got from the Turks in return for all this remains a mystery, making us all wonder if this is some strange, backwards version of “the Art of the Deal”.
David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He holds the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and is the author of numerous publications on the Kurds and the Middle East.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
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