ANALYSIS Trump’s sudden call to jilt Kurds puts U.S. allies in fog
President Donald Trump’s surprise acquiescence to a Turkish incursion into northern Syria this week has shaken U.S. allies, and not just because it was a betrayal of a loyal partner. What alarmed them even more was his sheer unpredictability.
His inconsistent and rapidly shifting positions in the Middle East have injected a new element of chaos into an already volatile region and have left allies guessing where the United States stands and for how long.
Previous American policymakers were clear about their intentions, said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a former Iraqi national security adviser.
“This guy is all emotional,” he said. “It is unpredictable.”
The uncertainties only compound simmering worries about the durability of the U.S. commitment to the Middle East.
U.S. presidents have been promising for almost 15 years to reduce the country’s presence in the region, unnerving partners such as Israel and the Persian Gulf monarchs that rely on U.S. protection. But few American leaders have ever made and disclosed major foreign policy decisions with the speed and seeming improvisation that Trump does.
His decision to get out of the way of the Turkish incursion was apparently made on the spur of the moment during a phone call with the Turkish president, surprising many of his advisers. It opened the door to a fierce Turkish assault on the U.S.-backed militia led by the Syrian Kurds, which was key to the ground battle to retake territory captured by the Islamic State group. Attacking the Kurds, in turn, risks an Islamic State comeback.
This was just the latest in a series of flipflops in U.S. policy in the region, including two in Syria this year alone. In December, Trump promised to withdraw the entire contingent of about 2,000 U.S. forces there. But he later changed his mind, withdrawing about half.
He has repeatedly warned that the United States was “locked and loaded” for military action against Iran. But when Iran shot down an American surveillance drone this summer, Trump reversed himself in the final minutes to call off a planned missile strike.
Then last month, he denounced Iran for orchestrating an attack on Saudi oil facilities but declined to take military action.
Critics say that Trump’s zigzagging policies have emboldened regional foes, unnerved U.S. partners, and invited Russia and various regional players to seek to exert their influence.
“It is chaos,” said Michael Stephens, a scholar of the region at the Royal United Services Institute in London. “The region is in chaos because the hegemonic power does not seem to know what it wants to do, and so nobody else does.”
The presence of U.S. troops in northern Syria had helped to preserve the area as a safe haven for the Kurdish-led militia that has been Washington’s most critical ally on the ground in the fight against the Islamic State. Now that Kurdish-led militia is acting as jailers for thousands of Islamic State fighters.
The leaders of neighboring Turkey, which has battled Kurdish separatists at home for decades, saw the Syrian Kurdish militia as a threat and talked openly of a cross-border campaign to crush it — if only the U.S. troops got out of the way.
But despite the warnings about a U.S. interest in protecting its loyal Kurdish allies and in containing the Islamic State prisoners, Trump this week portrayed the plights of the Kurds as someone else’s problem. Referring to the Turks and Kurds as “natural enemies,” he said, “It is time now for others in the region, some of great wealth, to protect their own country.”
America’s enemies, some analysts say, may also be taking note.
“If you are someone that is a rival on the other side — you’re Iranian, Russian, Turkish, ISIS, Hezbollah — you understand that this is the time for gain,” argued Shimrit Meir, columnist for Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot. “This is the hour. Because when the president of the United States is going all the way, saying ‘I hate military interference in the Middle East, and this is why I was elected, to stop this’ — then it’s not rocket science for the Iranians to understand that they have a lot of room for maneuver.”