by Daniel Barge
What the fuck is Trump up to in Syria? No matter what way I look at US policy in this tragic and tortured country, it still looks like a dog's dinner or a big, steaming pile of turds.
OK, the previous policy of supporting the Kurds was pretty stupid too, but at least it had some consistency—a bit like cold vomit. Now, however, it just looks like the immediate aftereffects of dysentery. It really looks like someone in the State Department shat the bed when they put this on Trump's desk to sign off on.
So, to break it down, the US had managed to use the Kurds to carve out an enclave in the North East of Syria that could be used for leverage over the Assad regime, or to slow down Russian dominance of the entire Middle East. It was awkward that this also happened to piss off long-standing NATO ally Turkey, but that could maybe have been managed. Or maybe not. But at least it looked like a plan of sorts.
Then Trump had a word with the Turks and agreed to pull US military advisers out of a zone 30 miles deep all along the Syria-Turkey border. WTF was that supposed to be?
The Turks took it as permission to invade and set up their own buffer zone to isolate their Kurdish population from the armed and dangerous Kurds on the Syrian side. They also thought it allowed them to do a bit of ethnic cleansing and move in people of their own choosing, mainly Sunni Arabs.
Then, two days after that kicked off, Trump, after hearing the shrill cries of US media whining about the Kurds being America's "greatest ally," he sends his VP to go and arrange a half-baked cease fire and to tell Erdogan that he's ethnically cleansing the Kurds too fast...or something.
Meanwhile the Syrian army, with the agreement of the Kurds, who now understandably feel abandoned, have moved up to the border in a lot of places. This means that a lot of key sites in the former US-Kurdish enclave, even ones that are not near the Turkish border are now being occupied by the Syrians.
So, Trump's move has basically achieved nothing that strengthens America's hand in the Middle East. Instead it has "achieved" the following:
Everything Trump has done points in this direction, which raises the questions: Is this Trump's goal all along? and Why doesn't he just, straight up, pull out all the US troops from Syria?
Once again we are left wondering whether Trump is a 4D chess master or a blundering boomer wading through the accumulated debris of decades of geopolitical mistakes.
Either way the logic of the situation in the region is that America should never have gone in there in the first place. I hope you own shares in the military industrial complex, as those are the only people who have benefited from this shit show.
OK, the previous policy of supporting the Kurds was pretty stupid too, but at least it had some consistency—a bit like cold vomit. Now, however, it just looks like the immediate aftereffects of dysentery. It really looks like someone in the State Department shat the bed when they put this on Trump's desk to sign off on.
So, to break it down, the US had managed to use the Kurds to carve out an enclave in the North East of Syria that could be used for leverage over the Assad regime, or to slow down Russian dominance of the entire Middle East. It was awkward that this also happened to piss off long-standing NATO ally Turkey, but that could maybe have been managed. Or maybe not. But at least it looked like a plan of sorts.
Then Trump had a word with the Turks and agreed to pull US military advisers out of a zone 30 miles deep all along the Syria-Turkey border. WTF was that supposed to be?
The Turks took it as permission to invade and set up their own buffer zone to isolate their Kurdish population from the armed and dangerous Kurds on the Syrian side. They also thought it allowed them to do a bit of ethnic cleansing and move in people of their own choosing, mainly Sunni Arabs.
Then, two days after that kicked off, Trump, after hearing the shrill cries of US media whining about the Kurds being America's "greatest ally," he sends his VP to go and arrange a half-baked cease fire and to tell Erdogan that he's ethnically cleansing the Kurds too fast...or something.
Meanwhile the Syrian army, with the agreement of the Kurds, who now understandably feel abandoned, have moved up to the border in a lot of places. This means that a lot of key sites in the former US-Kurdish enclave, even ones that are not near the Turkish border are now being occupied by the Syrians.
So, Trump's move has basically achieved nothing that strengthens America's hand in the Middle East. Instead it has "achieved" the following:
- It has betrayed and alienated the Kurds and demonstrated that America is an unreliable ally.
- It has allowed the Turks to occupy parts of Syria, but has also prevented them from setting up a secure buffer zone, so that they are even more pissed off at the US than before.
- It has allowed Assad to take over much of the US-Kurd enclave, basically throwing away US leverage.
Everything Trump has done points in this direction, which raises the questions: Is this Trump's goal all along? and Why doesn't he just, straight up, pull out all the US troops from Syria?
Once again we are left wondering whether Trump is a 4D chess master or a blundering boomer wading through the accumulated debris of decades of geopolitical mistakes.
Either way the logic of the situation in the region is that America should never have gone in there in the first place. I hope you own shares in the military industrial complex, as those are the only people who have benefited from this shit show.
