Why Trump was right to pull out of Syria

Here is an opinion piece from The Guardian that looks at the Trump decision with regards to Syria and the Kurds at the strategic level, not the emotional level. The administration has been advising the Syrian Kurds to work with Assad (the elected leader of Syria). The US never promised to give them a state. The US simply has no vital national security interest to remain in Syria. We don't even have a legal basis to be there.

Donald Trump is right to extricate the US from Syria. American troops have no strategic reason to be in that country. If they stayed any longer they would only be sucked in deeper – if they tried to impose a sort of peace, they would be attacked by all sides. The outside world has no dog in the Turkish-Kurd fight.

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[As I said at the tme] As in any intervention, narratives evolve and alliances are formed. Most foolish was the encouragement and aid offered since 2015 to rebels in the Syrian civil war fighting against Bashar al-Assad – a war which David Cameron was inexplicably eager to have the UK join. As northern Iraq descended into chaos and the Kurds were emboldened to increase their pressure on Turkey, Syria became the venue for a nightmare three-way conflict. Throughout it, the US backed the Kurds.

The two most recent presidents, Barack Obama and Trump, came to office firmly in favour of withdrawing from the region. But the US’s military-industrial complex proved too powerful for them. Trump has been particularly emphatic about this, but his unpredictability and aggressive rhetoric has muddied his intentions. He has played hard and soft with Iran, tried to leave Afghanistan but not dared to do so, and now leaves the Kurds in the lurch.

When the outside world was united against Islamic State, a degree of strategic clarity was possible. Now Isis has, more or less, been bombed to pieces and older feuds have resurfaced. Trump has had enough. His desertion of the Kurds and his licence to Turkey to invade Syria must rank high in the annals of diplomatic treachery – but for realpolitik they are hard to fault.
Read the entire article at the link.