President Trump's abrupt decision last week to accede to Turkey's demand to enter northern Syria militarily and "secure" their border from Kurdish threats has forced a redeployment of all U.S. forces from northeast Syria. To no one's surprise, this rash decision has now unleashed the full spectrum of Middle Eastern furies.
- The suddenness of the announcement - by Twitter, of course - and the lack of apparent interagency coordination preceding the announcement was a shocking development. It left our allies on the ground bewildered and frightened, especially the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) - a loose coalition of Kurds, Christians, Yazidis and Arabs who have been instrumental in helping our Special Operations Forces roll back the ISIS territorial "Caliphate."
- It's hard to overstate the impact on the ground of what the Syrian Kurds and their partners had done to crush the Caliphate: they have literally been the "tip of the fighting spear;" and they've been supported by NATO, particularly the alliance's air and intelligence assets. All have been left shaking their heads at the U.S. decision.
- Former U.S. Ambassador Chris Hill outlined at least one downstream impact: he observed last week that when the U.S. needs help from friends in the years ahead to fight alongside our forces and (again) restore regional stability, "Who will sign up now to help?"
The real worry, however, and the most important strategic impact of the Trump decision, will be on ISIS itself; in short, the president has given this unbelievably cruel and dangerous movement a new lease to propagate their terror. Russia, Iran, and the murderous Syrian dictator Bashir al Assad, have all unquestionably benefited as U.S. forces depart. But the real winner will prove to be the jihadist narrative that fuels ISIS ideology.
- The size of ISIS and its magnetic appeal remains staggering, even acknowledging the defeat of the Caliphate: over 50,000 jihadists were estimated to be killed by the anti-ISIS coalition, but more than twice that number escaped capture; thousands more remained in prison camps guarded by Kurdish forces. Now even this minimal protection appears lost as a result of the Turkish invasion.
- ISIS leaders remain free, of course. And the jihadist narrative continues to resonate with disaffected youth regionally and globally, despite efforts to delegitimize the narrative by Muslim clerical leaders and western information campaigns.
Turkey does have an understandable worry about Kurdish threats; but the threat has long emanated from the PKK (the "Kurdistan Worker's Party"), a militant organization operating largely in Turkey's southeast; this radicalized group is easily distinguishable from the more moderate SDF which has helped defeat ISIS and, until last week, was instrumental in containing its rebirth.
- As an aside, the Turkish claim about security worries on their southern border is especially rich, given that the Turks for years allowed effective free passage over that border for tens of thousands of jihadists who became the fighting core of ISIS.
Bottom line: Trump's decision to withdraw U.S. forces from the Turkey/Syria border and pave the way for the Turkish military incursion is impossible to rationalize by any reasonable calculus of costs and benefits. The temporary "ceasefire" negotiated by Vice President Mike Pence adds nothing to the benefits ledger.
- Because the Trump-Erdogan understanding raises the risks to important U.S. regional allies, and to western Europe and the U.S. as ISIS again metastasizes, it may prove to be the most consequential foreign policy mistake of the Donald Trump presidency.
