The Middle East is a perennially fractious region. And the combatants are as familiar with each other’s motivations and capabilities as, well, Cain was with Abel’s.
This is why the maneuvers afoot in Syria are only playing out according to script. This includes Russia proving itself a far more reliable ally than the United States.
Specifically, the United States is poised to betray the Kurds. If it does, the United States would reinforce its post-WWII reputation for betraying leaders of Third-World countries when the going gets tough (see Shah of Iran, Marcos of the Philippines, Duvalier of Haiti, and Mubarak of Egypt to name just a few).
Hell, the United States has become so unreliable that even the leaders of developed countries are openly questioning the worth of their alliances.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday she was right to say a year ago that Europe could no longer rely on the United States to impose order on the world, and that it needed to take matters close to home into its own hands.
‘We can’t rely on the superpower of the United States,’ Merkel told a news conference in Berlin.
(Reuters, July 20, 2018)
This is just one of the oxymoronic ways Trump is trying to Make America Great Again.
By contrast, Russia is seizing every opportunity to reinforce its post-USSR reputation for standing by leaders of Third-World countries, come hell or high water (no matter how many they slaughter). Its support for Syrian strongman Bashir al-Assad is a case in point. (The shifting alliances this portends could prove seismic on the geopolitical scale.)
Alas, it appears the Kurds never bothered to read the script. Only this explains why they were “shocked, shocked” on Sunday when the White House announced Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from territories the Kurds control in northeastern Syria. For, if the United States follows through, the Kurds would only be the latest in a long list of allies it betrayed.
The withdrawal was described by the main Kurdish-led group as a ‘stab in the back’, and critics say it could facilitate an IS resurgence and leave Kurdish forces at risk of being attacked by Turkey, which regards them as terrorists.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said his aim is to combat Kurdish fighters in the border area and set up a ‘safe zone’ for up to two million of the more than 3.6 million Syrian refugees currently living in Turkey.
(BBC, October 7, 2019)
Given media reports, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Turkey has been lying in wait to do to the Kurds what the Germans did to the Jews. Except that Turkey is telegraphing its intent to act pursuant not just to its own national security but to regional security.
The NATO allies agreed in August to establish a zone in northeast Syria along the Turkish border. Turkey says the United States moved too slowly to set up the zone. It has repeatedly warned of starting an offensive on its own into northeast Syria.
(Reuters, October 7, 2019)
Frankly, given this failure of its NATO allies, Turkey would be forgiven for moving to set up this zone by any means necessary. This, despite Trump tweeting as if it would be acting irrationally and contrary to NATO’s interests:
Blah, blah, blah.
In fact, thanks to none other than Kim Jong-un, Erdogan knows that Trump is far more bark than bite. No doubt you recall that his infamous threats to rain down fire and fury on North Korea turned out to be even more idle than his infamous boasts about being a “stable genius.” Besides, Erdogan probably knows he can call Trump’s bluff with just three words: Trump Tower Istanbul.
In any event, Erdogan effectively sidelined Trump by getting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s blessing to pursue his declared aim. Putin, of course, is the “godfather” to Syrian President Bashir al-Assad. As such, he has more say in what happens on Syrian territory these days than Assad himself.
Meanwhile, Turkey has given NATO more reasons to kick it out of their military alliance than Russia had given the G8 to kick it out of their economic group. Therefore, any unilateral incursion into Syria, coming on the heels of its defiant purchase of a Russian surface-to-air missile system, should seal Turkey’s fate in this respect.
But I cannot overstate that no regional combatant should be surprised by these latest developments. After all, even the Kurds had good reason to fear US betrayal and Turkish incursion.
The U.S. has now betrayed the Kurds a minimum of eight times over the past 100 years. The reasons for this are straightforward.
The Kurds are an ethnic group of about 40 million people centered at the intersection of Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. Many naturally want their own state. The four countries in which they live naturally do not want that to happen.
(The Intercept, October 7, 2019)
This is why their brothers insisted on an autonomous region in a de facto partitioned Iraq as the bounty for helping the Americans defeat the Baathists, al-Qaeda, and ISIS.
Apropos of which, even I presaged these unfolding developments in “The Shotgun Convention of Sunni, Shias, and Kurds to Frame an Iraqi Constitution,” August, 22, 2005, “Time to Partition Iraq? No Sh#+,” March 31, 2015, and “Iraqi Kurdistan Declares Independence,” September 29, 2017. The last of these includes the following:
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Reports are that Turkey and Iran fear Kurdish minorities in their respective countries feeling emboldened to do there what Kurds are doing in Iraq. Never mind that a Kurdish state could do for Kurds in the diaspora what Israel did for Jews.
Turkey has the region’s largest Kurdish population. Its authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, clearly fears their restiveness. But this is why he should be encouraging their repatriation to Kurdistan, no?
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That said, just as Russia and major European powers are ignoring Trump to effectuate the Iran Nuclear deal, they should ignore him to effectuate that safe zone in Syria. They should coordinate with
- Iraqi Kurds to prepare for the assimilation of (most if not all) Kurds in Turkey, Syria, and Iran;
- regional nations to ensure safe passage of these Kurds to “Iraqi Kurdistan” – their “Promised Land”; and
- key UN and NATO members to create and protect a safe zone for the repatriation of (most if not all) Syrian refugees in Turkey.
In so many respects, Trump’s foreign policy seems designed to irk military allies and trading partners alike. But, as solutions to insoluble problems go, this seems the best of all possible solutions. Besides, despite mobilizing his military, Erdogan would probably welcome this political off ramp.
Finally, regarding the “maybe” in my title, Trump has threatened to do all kinds of things, only to backtrack after backlash. So don’t be surprised if this “useful idiot” – in his “great and unmatched wisdom” – does the same in this case, especially given that Fox News, the source of all his wisdom, is leading the backlash over his decision to withdraw troops from Syria.
Not to mention that members of his national security team might follow the precedent former Defense Secretary James Mattis set:
Mattis declined to carry out orders from President Trump or otherwise limited his options in various attempts to prevent tensions with North Korea, Iran and Syria from escalating, The New Yorker reported Monday, the latest account of Trump’s own officials trying to check his worst instincts. …
A former senior national security official told The New Yorker, ‘We prevented a lot of bad things from happening.’
(The Hill, April 29, 2019)
Given current conditions on the ground in Syria, withdrawing US troops would be one of those bad things to prevent from happening.
Note: China has been lying in wait to do – on a far grander scale – in Taiwan what Turkey was lying in wait to do in Syria. What’s more, China telegraphed its intent earlier this year, which I duly noted in “China Lays Claim to Taiwan…,” January 3, 2019. Therefore, it behooves Taiwan to be on guard. Because it might be only a matter of time before Trump gives Chinese President Xi Jinping the same green light he gave Erdogan.
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