How Obama’s team set up Trump’s Syrian dilemma
The problem is the US relying on the Kurds destabilized the region. Supporting them and ruining other relationships just does not seem to be worth it at a strategic level. And I would not be surprised if a few ODAs remain to advise the Kurds. After all they are in over a hundred nations all the time as it is.
***Over the last few days, a host of former Obama officials have been repeating this story [that the US pull-out was insane], which is highly misleading, to say the least. Rice and her colleagues would have us believe that Team Obama created a highly effective plan for stabilizing the Middle East by working through groups like the YPG, and Trump, mercurial and impulsive, is throwing it all away by seeking a rapprochement with Ankara. That’s nonsense.
In fact, the close relationship with the YPG was a quick fix that bequeathed to Trump profound strategic dilemmas. Trump inherited from Obama a dysfunctional strategy for countering ISIS, one that ensured ever-greater turmoil in the region and placed American forces in an impossible position.
To be sure, the YPG are good fighters, and the American soldiers who have fought alongside them hold them in very high esteem. But the decision to make them the primary ally for defeating ISIS came at a hidden cost: the alienation of one of America’s closest allies. The YPG is the Syrian wing of the PKK, the Kurdish separatist group in Turkey.
Designated as a terrorist group by the State Department, the PKK has prosecuted a long war against the Turkish Republic, resulting in the death of some 40,000 people.
The Turks beseeched the Obama administration not to align with their sworn enemy, but the Obamaians told them, in effect, to sit down and shut up. Why? The American relationship with the YPG was a direct outgrowth of the greatest blunder of the Obama administration: the effort to reach a strategic accommodation with Iran.
So, no, Trump is not betraying the YPG. He is seeking to restore balance to American foreign policy.
The YPG knew from the *beginning that its relationship with Washington was temporary and transactional. It didn’t fight as a favor to the United States.
America armed, trained, equipped and funded the YPG. We gave it strong military support, including aerial bombardment, which allowed it to vanquish all foes in its neighborhood. Thanks to this assistance, the power, influence and territorial reach of the group expanded beyond its wildest dreams. In the meantime, America also held Turkey at bay.
The YPG benefited enormously from the effort, and the Turkish-American relationship suffered in equal measure. To paraphrase Susan Rice, this was a bats- -t crazy way to solve the ISIS challenge. If she and her Team Obama colleagues want to blame anyone for this mess, they might consider looking in the mirror.