An untrustworthy friend
There’s comfort to be found in the bipartisan outrage aimed at President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to abandon an ally by withdrawing troops from northern Syria.
In this time of compromised values and blind tribalism, it is reassuring that an American moral compass still exists on at least some issues. It isn’t often that U.S. Reps. Antonio Delgado and Elise Stefanik, Democrat and Republican, respectively, can agree — never mind U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, the progressive lightning rod from Minnesota, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Trump apologist from South Carolina.
But those four were in the crowd that stepped forward to rebuke the president’s Monday announcement, and for good reason: The move is a violation of the principles for which American foreign policy must stand.
Those principles aren’t complicated. Most are the based on maxims we were taught as children, including this: A country, like a person, should be good for its word and loyal to its friends.
Mr. Trump’s plan threatens the Kurds, a persecuted ethnic group and a crucial partner in America’s fight against ISIS. U.S. troops have protected Kurdish fighters from leaders and armies that wish to do them harm, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom Mr. Trump has now invited to the White House.
Mr. Erdogan wants to expel Kurdish forces from a negotiated safe zone along his country’s border with Syria, and Mr. Trump has declared, in effect, that the U.S. will get out of the way, despite assurances long made to the contrary.
In accommodating Mr. Erdogan, Mr. Trump is siding with a dictator over an ally that lost 11,000 soldiers in the fight against ISIS, and which trusted the U.S. to honor its word.
It is true that, to the extent he mentioned foreign policy at all during the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump voiced skepticism toward the foreign policy consensus, and he promised to withdraw American troops from messy battle zones. On the latter point, we’re not unsympathetic.
But there’s a right way to accomplish the goal and a wrong way. The former would involve taking thoughtful and deliberate steps while maintaining regional stability and security. The wrong way is what Mr. Trump did: an erratic and unexpected move that threatens the slaughter of loyal friends and also — perhaps not incidentally — strengthens Russian inf luence in the process.
One other not-so-minor point: The Kurds are holding thousands of captured ISIS fighters nobody else wants. Where will those prisoners go when American troops leave? It ’s a question Mr. Trump doesn’t seem to have considered. Details have never been his thing. He wants results without the effort that must precede them.
Ultimately, this is about something bigger than the conf lict in Syria. It ’s about whether the U.S. will be seen as a credible moral leader, true to its word and trustworthy.
Mr. Trump is willing to blithely walk away from allies. In a dangerous world, a friend like that will have enemies, certainly, and will soon find itself without friends.