I’m taking a break from heavy blogging but I’m not dead, and so I have some preliminary thoughts about Donald Trump’s announcement today that the US is pulling its forces out of Syria (or is going to pull them out of Syria, or considering pulling them out of Syria, or something–the Trump administration, like Syria, is a land of contrasts).
- This is the right thing to do (maybe “right outcome” is a better way to put it) though it is almost certainly being done for the wrong reasons and probably in the wrong way (see below, and also see Mitchell Plitnick at LobeLog, who I think does a very good job of expressing this sentiment). US forces have no legal right to be in Syria in the first place. Congress didn’t vote on the deployment, and while we’ve gotten to the point where we just let the president do whatever the hell he likes when it comes to war-making, it’s not supposed to be that way under the Constitution and it’s incredibly dangerous that we (well, mostly Congress) allowed it to get to this point. And I know we make fun of “international law” around here a fair bit, but the United States waves it around like a club when it serves our interests. Setting a good example by actually following it every once in a while wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
- Also too, the administration has no coherent long-term mission for those soldiers–or at least not one it can talk about openly. Right now they’re supposedly there to help the Syrian Democratic Forces finish off ISIS. Later they’ll be there to make sure ISIS doesn’t come back. That’s about 6 months, maybe a year. After that, what’s the mission? Of course we know what the mission really is, and it has nothing to do with ISIS. Those soldiers are squatting in eastern Syria because having them there increases the potential for a war with Iran. Removing them should therefore lower that potential a bit, which is good.
- Pulling US forces out of Syria might also force Turkey, Russia, and Iran to face up to the fact that they all disagree on what to do in Syria in ways large and small. Now that they don’t all have opposition to the US driving their respective Syria policies, those disagreements are likely to emerge. And since those disagreements are hampering efforts to finally end the civil war, confronting them would probably be a good thing.
- In making his announcement Trump said that ISIS has been completely defeated in Syria. It hasn’t been. I don’t offer that as a judgment on this decision one way or the other. It just hasn’t been. It’s not a serious threat anymore, but it’s still there. Trump could’ve made this announcement three months ago because very little has changed in that time as far as ISIS’s status.
- Yes, the Kurds are screwed, and yes, as a human being the possible onset of another Turkish ethnic cleansing campaign in northern Syria is appalling to me. But if the US must stay in Syria to protect the Kurds, why mustn’t it invade Myanmar to protect the Rohingya, or Iran to protect the Bahai, or Ukraine to protect the Roma, or Sri Lanka to protect Muslims and Tamils, or…well, you get the idea. Yeah, we’re already in Syria, but we’ve got no more right to be there than any of those other places.
- The Kurds were always going to be screwed in precisely this way. The only question was timing. This is the 1991 Kurdish uprising in Iraq all over again. We rallied the Kurds, encouraged them to rebel against Saddam Hussein, and then abandoned them when Hussein retaliated. Here we encouraged the YPG to fight ISIS for us, no doubt with promises of protection against Turkey and the Syrian government, and we’re abandoning them at our earliest convenience. This is just what the US does. And I would be stunned if the Kurds couldn’t see this move coming, especially since Trump has repeatedly threatened to do it. I can’t blame people for being upset about this part of the story, but it was inevitable.
- I don’t know what YPG leadership is doing right now but me personally, I would be on the phone with Bashar al-Assad. It’s the only move they have left to protect them from Turkey, and it’s a move they absolutely must make even if this troop withdrawal doesn’t actually happen (see below). And no Kurd should ever again believe a word the US government tells him or her. If the CIA shows up offering weapons and support if you just do this one teensy favor for America, run screaming in the other direction.
- It looks actually as though Trump’s announcement delayed Turkish plans to invade, which buys the YPG/PYD time to have some critical talks with both Assad’s government and the Russians.
- I’m not blaming the Kurds for accepting US aid back in the really dark days of the war. I’m not even blaming them for jumping on board with the “be our proxies against ISIS” plan when the US made the offer. The Kurds haven’t been purely heroic in this conflict, but they’re obviously the good guys here compared with ISIS. And they’re the ones getting screwed. I feel bad for them. I understand the anger people have over this, because it is a betrayal of an ally. Not just any ally but an ally that the US coaxed into the fight in the first place that, as it turns out, probably would have been better off staying out of it. But I am absolutely, 100 percent convinced that we were going to betray them anyway, and moreover I’m convinced that the Turkish government knew it. I just can’t subscribe to the theory that the US troop presence was saving the Kurds from ethnic cleansing. We did nothing in Afrin and assuming Turkey had invaded Rojava in the coming days we wouldn’t have done anything about that either. Hell, the fact that Trump made this announcement today should stand as proof that he wasn’t ever going to use US troops to defend the Kurds from a Turkish offensive.
- Also feeling screwed here, probably, is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who wanted the US to permanently occupy Syria in order to keep Iran in check. My heart breaks for him. That said, if Netanyahu decides to act aggressively now to counter Iranian influence in his near abroad, that would definitely be a very bad thing.
- Likewise, if the Kurds turn to Assad now, as seems to me to be the only play they have to make, it increases the chances of a Turkey-Syria war breaking out. I don’t think Turkey would take it that far but the possibility is there. This is not an argument for leaving US troops in Syria. It is an argument for not withdrawing them on the spur of the moment because the President was suddenly feeling it today for whatever reason. A managed withdrawal would be the right thing to do. We might still get something like that, as the withdrawal isn’t happening tomorrow (see below), though I doubt it.
- European governments would do well to get on the horn with the YPG ASAP to talk about all the ISIS prisoners–many of them foreign fighters–the Syrian Democratic Forces have been rounding up. Because if the Turks do start attacking Rojava, I’m not sure what’s stopping the SDF from dropping all of those guys off at the Turkish border and telling them to go nuts. I suppose some of them might try to go back south and rejoin their comrades, but I have to believe that at least some would enter Turkey and maybe try to make their way back into Europe.
- Does this decision suggest that Trump doesn’t really care about confronting Iran as much as his advisers do? I guess–nobody could possibly care more about confronting Iran than John Bolton–but I think framing it this way gives Trump far too much credit for being able to consider all the ramifications of his decisions.
- Trump made this decision after talking on the phone with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Because that’s what he does. Since Trump has no grounding in the facts of any given policy and has no real tether to objective reality in general, he listens to whoever’s in his face at that moment and then reacts impulsively to whatever he just heard. It remains exceedingly dangerous to have somebody like that running a country with a military arsenal that could destroy human civilization with the push of a few buttons.
- The reason we know Trump made this decision impulsively after talking with Erdoğan is that it contradicts what nearly every senior figure in his national security team has been saying, as recently as earlier this week. He caught everybody in his own administration by surprise with this announcement.
- If Trump made this decision as part of a deal with Erdoğan to get off of Mohammad bin Salman’s back about the Jamal Khashoggi killing, then hoo boy, we are in for a rough next couple of years. If every time MBS fucks up–which seems to be at the rate of about once every two months these days–Trump is going to bend over backwards to cover his ass, that’s pretty grim. This is what I meant about “the wrong reasons” above.
- You’re going to hear a lot of Very Serious People talk about how Trump just gave away all the leverage the US had to influence postwar Syria. What they won’t say is that the US had next to no leverage before this, so it’s not giving up very much.
- You think Bolton can stay after this? I do. He’s a notorious bureaucratic ass kisser, despite the unhinged warmonger he portrays himself to be to the public.
Finally, I’m not actually sure this withdrawal is going to happen. I’m not predicting it won’t, but this reads like a catch to me:
If there’s anybody inside the Trump administration on the national security side above the mid-level staffer range who agrees with this decision I’d be stunned. And all the people who disagree with it could very well try to gaslight Trump about ISIS’s imminent threat 60 days from now. Meanwhile they can unleash Netanyahu to try to talk Trump out of it. Would they be able to pull it off? I don’t know. But I know they could. That possibility exists and isn’t terribly small. And what if Trump just, you know, changes his mind? It’s been known to happen. So I’ll believe this withdrawal is actually taking place when I see it.
The Foreign Exchanges Companion 
No boots on the ground.
Well, aside from the foreword air controllers to coordinate airstrikes.
And obviously our special forces advisers to the Kurds don’t count.
What do you mean pull out? ISIS would rejuvenate in the power vacuum if we left.
Mission accomplished!
This is kind of messed up, dude. I’m 100% in favor of withdrawing anti-ISIS forces but the troops serving as a deterrent to Turkey aren’t fighting in the war, they’re preventing it from escalating into something even worse. The U.S. has no right to actively intervene to prevent an ethnic cleansing, so we’re therefore morally obligated to actively remove the only obstacle to one? Also, the point about how “they never should have accepted American help in the first place” is pretty shortsighted considering they were pinned down by ISIS and out of alternatives. I’ve heard tankies open their rants about how the (((Kurds))) are a threat to glorious Syrian unity with similar sentiments. Leaving Rojava high and dry, without first negotiating an agreement with Turkey and the Syrian government, is directly endangering the safety and security of millions. I say this with the understanding that the U.S. military acts to the detriment of pretty much every other area it’s stationed in. This rare and extremely volatile situation is one where immediate withdrawal actually exacerbates the conflict rather than easing tensions.
p.s. They might start a war with Iran anyway, these people don’t live in a reality-based community.
p.p.s. This was a canny move by Trump to make his opposition expose themselves as pro-war zealots so he can pretend to be anti-establishment. Our best and brightest once again find themselves outmaneuvered by the stupidest man alive.
I do understand this sentiment, but we were never going to prevent Turkey from doing what they’re about to do in Rojava. We didn’t prevent it in Afrin and we weren’t going to do it here. We just weren’t. The United States isn’t going to choose the YPG over a NATO ally under any president, and this president isn’t going to choose the Kurds over Erdogan, especially if it involves helping Mohammad bin Salman. The US presence in eastern Syria was not an obstacle to ethnic cleansing. They weren’t deterring Turkey, which has been making actual preparations to invade for more than a week now despite knowing full well that the US was not only there but set up along the border. If you want to argue that Erdogan was bluffing, OK, but I don’t know how you square that with the fact that they actually went ahead and did it in Afrin.
Afrin didn’t have any significant U.S. presence. But even if we grant you that Erdogan was always going to do this, that the American army deterred nothing and that the only reason he hadn’t gone full aggro against Rojava until now was that he had other stuff to take care of, this still seems like a highly abrupt and disruptive move by Trump. Last I checked, Erdogan’s stated intention for the new offensive was specifically the area around Manbij, i.e. west of the Euphrates. He was flexing his muscles, seeing what chunks he could snap off, and maybe the Americans would have even let him take it, as a form of appeasement. Whatever tactics he used to bamboozle Trump (missile purchases, Khashoggi/MBS leverage, asking politely) it appears that he’s won way more than anyone expected possible. The U.S. brass and the PYD are genuinely shocked. Now, one might argue that the PYD especially should have been preparing for this moment far in advance, but I think that just emphases that absolutely nobody imagined it could get this dire this fast. Before, the worst case scenario for a Turkish invasion was Erdogan pushing forward with the U.S. in continual retreat, but this sudden and unplanned withdrawal invites an attack from all sides. This applies even if you think it was always going to end badly. If the U.S. Army has never attempted to and, in fact, would never even think to suppress Turkey’s ambitions in northern Syria, Trump’s political calculation may still result in the worst of all the available bad outcomes.
Of course it’s an abrupt and disruptive move, that’s how Trump operates. But it’s incorrect to say that Erdogan hasn’t been talking about invading Rojava. He’s been complaining about Manbij but the Turkish military and FSA have been prepping an attack east of the Euphrates for at least the last couple of weeks. This was going to happen either way.