U.S. policy in Iraq, Syria tests boy-man Trump

The Sunni-Shia civil wars in Iraq and Syria are both nearing their end, and in both cases the Shias have won — thanks largely to American military help in Iraq’s case, and to a Russian military intervention in Syria.

Yet Russia and the United States are not allies in the Middle East. At least not yet.

For the moment U.S. policy follows the line laid down by Barack Obama, who was determined not to send American troops into another Middle Eastern war. Even as the Sunni extremists of Islamic State and the Nusra Front expanded their control in Syria and then seized much of Iraq, Obama restricted the U.S. intervention to training local troops and deploying American air power.

It worked well in Iraq. The Iraqi army’s troops are almost all Shia, and it is now in the final stages of reconquering Mosul, Islamic State’s capital in Iraq and an entirely Sunni city. Yet there have been no massacres of Sunnis, and only a handful of American casualties.

In Syria, Obama found local allies to wage a ground war against Islamic State: the Syrian Kurds, who are Sunni, but more interested in a separate Kurdish state than a Sunniruled Syria.

With U.S. training and air support, the Syrian Kurds are now closing in on Raqqa, Islamic State’s capital in Syria. Throughout, Obama avoided taking sides between Shias and Sunnis.

Obama even managed to maintain America’s traditional alliances with Saudi Arabia and Turkey despite the fact that those two countries, both ruled by devout Sunni regimes, were sending money and arms to the extremists of Islamic State and the Nusra Front. He successfully walked a fine line in the Middle East for six whole years.

It’s doubtful Donald Trump has the skill, knowledge and patience to walk that line. His instinct is to treat Iran as America’s most dangerous enemy in the Middle East. But Iran is Russia’s close ally in the Syrian war, and Trump’s instinct is also to get very close to Vladimir Putin.

There’s a similar problem with Turkey. On one hand, Turkey is an important NATO ally and it has now sent its army into Syria, ostensibly to help destroy Islamic State.

On the other hand, Turkey is ruled by the authoritarian and impulsive President Recep Tayyib Erdogan, a mini-Trump who sprays abuse at anybody who crosses him.

In 2015 Erdogan deliberately re-started a war against Turkey’s own Kurdish minority in order to attract right-wing votes and win a close election. Now he has sent the Turkish army into Syria to smash the embryonic state that the Syrian Kurds have been building across northern Syria. Those Syrian Kurds have been America’s closest allies against Islamic State.

Into the midst of all this vicious complexity wanders the boy-man Donald Trump, with his fullspectrum ignorance, short attentionspan and shorter temper. His appointee as national security adviser, retired general Michael Flynn, doubtless advised him to support Turkey’s ambitions, but then it was revealed that Flynn was in the pay of the Turkish government and he had to resign.

If Trump cosies up to the Russians instead, he will have to accept a close relationship with Assad’s brutal regime in Syria (no problem there) and also with Russia’s main ally in the Syrian war, Iran (potentially big problem there).

But various latent conflicts are likely to burst into flame as the big civil wars in Iraq and Syria stagger to an end. Trump will have to jump one way or another quite soon. Gwynne Dyer in an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.