Far from effecting the overtly promised removal of the Russian sanctions and unable to stop his own government from cracking down on the oligarchs, I think Donald Trump is desperate at this point to produce a deliverable to Vladimir Putin. It’s not a good look:
Trump’s desire for a rapid withdrawal [from Syria] faced unanimous opposition from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Pentagon, the State Department and the intelligence community, all of which argued that keeping the 2,000 U.S. soldiers currently in Syria is key to ensuring the Islamic State does not reconstitute itself.
But as they huddled in the Situation Room, the president was vocal and vehement in insisting that the withdrawal be completed quickly if not immediately, according to five administration officials briefed on Tuesday’s White House meeting of Trump and his top aides…
…Documents presented to the president included several pages of possibilities for staying in, but only a brief description of an option for full withdrawal that emphasized significant risks and downsides, including the likelihood that Iran and Russia would take advantage of a U.S. vacuum.
Ultimately, Trump chose that option anyway.
Two days ago, I wrote about my discomfort with watching a president who wants to end a military conflict getting pushback from the national security establishment. In other circumstances, I’d take the president’s side and fight for him like a cornered wolverine. But this is not a normal situation, and Trump isn’t a representative of withdrawal on the merits. He owes Putin, obviously, and he basically promised him Syria during the campaign. I think Putin is tired of holding his fire and he wants to be able to show some benefit to his decision to intervene in our election, especially now that Mueller is closing in, his oligarchs are getting their assets frozen and their laptops and cell phones seized at our airports.
There’s obviously an argument that can be made for taking our troops out of Syria, or out of the Middle East in general. But Trump isn’t making those arguments. I am not going to give him the benefit of the doubt on this. He’s not a peacenik. He’s not worried about the cost in dollars or lives of staying or going. He doesn’t have the power to overrule a veto-proof majority in Congress in favor of sanctions and he doesn’t have the balls to stand up to the national security establishment, the United Kingdom and our western allies and sit out the expulsion of Russian diplomats and the sanctioning of Kremlin-connected oligarchs. But, as commander-in-chief, he has the power to hand over Syria to Putin.
So, that’s what he’s going to do.
It couldn’t be more obvious that Trump’s Syrian freakout is in response to the US wiping out the Russian attack on US/SDF forces near Deir al-Zor.
Somebody must have gotten quite an earful from Putin.
He has to pull them out because otherwise they’ll be cut off when he declares war on Iran and Iraq turns against us.
Daesh isn’t relevant anymore. The US troops are serving to prop up the leftist Kurds there. No doubt Putin and Trump, as the world leaders of neofascism, are eager to have them hung out to dry as well.
“…my discomfort with watching a president who wants to end a military conflict getting pushback from the national security establishment. In other circumstances, I’d take the president’s side and fight for him like a cornered wolverine.”
I think you should go with your initial impulse. Let Putin have Syria. Already Russia is feeling the quagmire there. Two years ago, Putin declared victory and ordered a pullout of Russian forces, but found out that he could not do it without risking the collapse of his Syrian clients. Trump may be withdrawing from Syria for the wrong reasons, but it is clearly the right decision. Just because Russia is stuck there doesn’t mean we have to be too.
Maybe. The Russians have not demonstrated a lot of competence (but the US has).
On the other hand – does it push Turkey towards Russia? This is not something we should want to see.
I think the U.S. staying in Syria pushes Turkey towards Russia more than leaving would. The U.S.’s main allies on the ground in Syria are the various Kurdish militias that Turkey is trying to wipe out.
On the other hand, most of what is pushing Turkey towards Russia has little to do with Syria, and more to do with being anti-NATO and their governments’ similar authoritarian tendencies. Turkey and Russia are on opposite sides of the Syrian conflict, although the factions that both Turkey and Russia are favoring are both anti-Kurd.
not to be vulgar about the pushing the Turks to Russia, but … NO FUCKING WAY.
400 years of history there. ALL of generating heat and fire between Turkey (Ottoman, Republican, Islamic) and Russia (Imperial, Socialist, Dictatorial).
Both the Russians and the Turks have LONG memories (especially the Turks) and neither will back down.
This is not to say the Turks will remain OUR allies. They are perfectly happy to go their own way.
good example of how it’s not just USA that has trouble finding a coherent policy.
Erdogan might make nice with Russia for a while, but that’s just to remind USA and NATO of his independence. He’s not going to forget Turkey’s long term interest, or that the Russians are keeping Assad in power when Turkey wants Assad out.
I think that sentence you quoted,is about right. A pullout could give ISiS a chance to resestablish them selves. And given Turkeys dislike for the Kurds could simply eliminate them. I doubt most give a shit about Syria. In this circumstance I would go with the experts we hire to figure this stuff out. Besides, who can trust Trump? He may well be a traitor.
Given what the Turks did to the Armenians, yeh, eliminating the Kurds would be right up their alley.
Turkish government will definitely try to get something out of the the conflict though.
I don’t particularly care if Trump gifts Syria to Putin, he had it anyway before the war. What I care about is that it will fuck over the Kurds, the only Muslims in the whole region who are worth a damn as allies, and in Northern Syria, who are actually building something at least somewhat admirable politically.
That makes me incredibly angry.
This!!!
The idea that Trump is acting to help Putin has to have occurred to our Pentagon and intelligence services, as well as McCain and Lindsay Graham.
So now what?
Where is a rogue CIA agent able to funnel money and weapons to a US-friendly militia when you need one?
Is the militia in the US or Syria?
Yes.
I suppose that’s true, but it takes skillful maneuvering to get around the largest and most determined bureaucracy in the world. Trump has no ability to do that or people who can do it for him. Pompeo and Bolton will themselves fight him (behind his back), because they’ll see it as giving Syria not to Putin but to Khamenei.
The military and intelligence communities have so many ways of defeating a president’s plans if they don’t want to go along. Trump will be fooled into thinking he won by a photo op demonstrating that he “kept his promise” that actually leaves everything as it was. (Something like what happened when he wanted to “punish” Assad for the chemical weapons use and the military staged a dramatic but meaningless air raid to make him feel tough.)
Hopefull yit will do some good for the Kurds. I can’t see much else that can be accomplished either way or anything the US could do other than to take in four or five million refugees, which obviously isn’t going to happen.
If Trump thinks that implementing the Russian oligarch sanctions can be offset by gifting Syria to Putin he’s about to get his head cut off.
You say that as if it would be a bad thing.
Please. There is no reason to keep troops in Syria. Right now in Syria there’s Russia, Assad, Syrians that tried to remove Assad, Turkey, ISIS, Iraq, Iran, Kurds, Israel has drops some bombs, and God only knows who else. What are we to do? Pick a side and fight to the death for what. We should be getting all the factions to the table to figure out what comes next but, we don’t have a State Dept. or someone at the UN to work a peace process.
Not only do we not have an effective State Department or UN representatives, we have a President whose only interest in “…getting all the factions to the table to figure out what comes next…” would be to cut a bunch of maximally evil confiscations of Syrian oil for his and Putin’s favorite corporate oligarchs. Hell, he probably hasn’t arranged to gain the leverage to accomplish even that. What a negotiator!
So we can be certain that your best case recommendation will not be taken here. To Orange Mussolini, a just peace is for suckers.
I want the foreign occupying powers out of Syria. Yet Trump is doing nothing that will actually establish this happen and set forth a plan to make happen except for random drone strikes on ISIS. All he’s doing is allowing Assad the butcher to continue bombing, torturing, and massacring his people; Turkey carves out their own enclave and colonizes that part of Syria; Russia props up their client. And millions remain in diaspora because they cannot return. That’s not peace. It’s not anti-war. And we will be back in the region when ISIS inevitably regains a foothold because the epicenter of the violence remains in power.
. . .
with your finish?
Preventing the latter is (whether validly or not!), by all accounts, the reason for the unanimous opposition to Trump’s rapid-withdrawal plan from his military/national-security officials/advisers.
Also too, what does “the epicenter of the violence remains in power” mean? That an “epicenter of the violence” could be, much less “remain[] in power” seems an odd concept.
The epicenter of the violence is the regime. The one who launched another chemical attack today. There can be no peace until he and his regime are removed. I don’t know the best way to do that — I’m not a foreign policy advisor and don’t pretend to be.
There can be no peace until he and his regime are removed.
Everyone here remembers that Assad/Syria is a Russian client state, right? Just like Central America has been ours for decades. The arrogance here is breathtaking. Are we really going to let the Saudis run our foreign policy?
I don’t care about the Saudi regime or their geopolitical concerns. Why are you? They’re going to oppose their own people rising up as they repress Bahrain and Yemen, and I hope they fall, too.
Haven’t the Saudis been running our foreign policy since the 70s?
What has the US done in that region since 1979 that warrants any sort of confidence that the US is actually “helping” (if you can even define that term)?
I hope it will work out for the Russians as well as when Russia “gifted” Afghanistan to the US.
Time to shutdown the war machine and rebuild our infrastructure back home.
“The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor.” T.E. Lawrence
That framing is terrible and will continue to repeat mistakes we keep making. What you’re proposing is paleocon nationalism which isn’t anti-war but a “it’s their problem” as they’re murdered by fascist governments.
I’m not even saying to launch the cruise missiles. But stop propping up dictators for “stability”. The CIA was not just there to arm some rebels. They intervened to stop the flow of weapons which might have made it possible to overthrow Assad. When you say “get out”, that means ending these arms embargoes.
It is already a second time that Trump seems to be so favorable to Russia in Syria, and then bah… — a chemical attack by presumably (Russia supported) Assad, and then a punitive strike. Next time Trump announces that he is at peace with surmised Putin’s interest, wait for an escalation?