Trump’s withdrawal from northern Syria is a foreign policy masterstroke
Here is a good article from American Greatness. It is a Realpolitik view of foreign policy.
resident Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Northern Syria is a brilliant strategic move that simultaneously achieves all of our major objectives in the region.
Perhaps because it has been so long since America had a coherent foreign policy strategy, the political establishment is aghast at the president’s action, predicting all manner of calamitous consequences. The same “experts,” however, have been responsible for the myriad foreign policy disasters that have befallen this country over the past two decades, so their discomfiture should be taken with a rather small grain of salt.
In one deft move that doesn’t put a single American life at risk, President Trump achieved a regional solution to ISIS, undermined Iran’s capacity for foreign aggression, and disentangled the United States from an alliance of convenience that threatened to create major diplomatic headaches down the road.
Contrary to claims that withdrawing American special forces from Northern Syria will enable ISIS to resurrect itself, for instance, the arrangement with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan merely shifts responsibility for the few remaining ISIS fighters onto Turkey.
The successful operation to take out ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi only makes it even less likely that the terrorist group will reemerge.
While the president deserves credit for implementing an aggressive military strategy that allowed U.S. and Kurdish forces to utterly destroy the Islamic caliphate, he also deserves credit for recognizing that the nature of the mission has now fundamentally changed. Rather than deploying American troops to the opposite side of the world to babysit the Kurds as they guard thousands of captured ISIS fighters—many of them European citizens whose home countries refuse to take responsibility for them—Turkey will now take over the role of guarding ISIS prisoners in its own backyard.
Humanitarian concerns are not vital interests. Border disputes between Turks and Kurds are not a vital US interest.
What are vital US interests:
- preserving the lives of US military personnel
- achieving a regional solution to ISIL
- undermining Iran's capacity for assisting Hezbollah
- disentanglement from a long term commitment with the Kurds as that will only cause more headaches down the road.
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Originally Posted by Crepitus
