Trump latest to sell out the Kurds, but his strategy is unclear

President Donald Trump found a new way to rile Washington this week. Late Sunday, the White House announced it would not impede an imminent Turkish invasion into northeastern Syria.

By Monday morning, my colleagues confirmed that the United States had begun withdrawing troops from the Syrian-Turkish border. It seemed the first phase of a possibly new and destabilizing military conflagration in war-ravaged Syria. By Monday evening, there were already reports of Turkish attacks on Syrian Kurdish positions.

The moves followed a Sunday phone call between Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose government considers the main Syrian Kurdish faction that fought the Islamic State to be as much of a danger as the Islamist militants themselves. That’s because of their direct ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, an outlawed separatist group in Turkey that’s designated as a terrorist organization by Washington and Ankara.

Erdogan and his government long resented the outsize influence of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the name of the coalition of Syrian Kurdish-led militias that was instrumental in rolling back the Islamic State, as well as the outside support they received from the United States and other European partners. No matter the thousands of lives lost by the SDF, Trump now appears to have given Erdogan what he’s wanted — an open invitation to weaken if not break Rojava (what Syrian Kurds call an enclave in northeastern Syria largely administered by the SDF).

A definitive U.S. withdrawal from northern Syria — or whatever it is that Trump championed in tweets Monday morning calling for an end to America’s “endless wars” — could have serious ramifications. If Turkey pursues a significant ground invasion, it would overrun SDF defenses, fracture their fighting forces, compel a possible exodus of Syrian Kurdish refugees toward Iraq (a country that’s hardly stable itself ), and, as many security analysts fear, create enough of a security vacuum to pave the way for the Islamic State’s resurgence.

For that reason, many Trump allies expressed outrage with his decision-making. Nikki Haley, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, tweeted that leaving the Syrian Kurds “to die is a big mistake.” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who has carried water for Trump on almost all other fronts, warned that a Turkish foray into Syria would provoke sanctions from Congress. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters that “a precipitous withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria would only benefit Russia, Iran” and the Syrian regime.

Trump predictably justified his actions with campaign talking points. He told reporters that he was following through on what he “got elected on” — in this instance, disentangling the United States from the Middle East’s intractable conflicts. He said it was the responsibility of other countries, including Turkey, to deal with what’s left behind. For good measure, he threatened Ankara with crippling economic sanctions if the Turks did anything “outside of what we think is humane.”

Whatever Trump thinks “inhumane” may mean, it was a far cry from the somewhat rambling remarks Trump made at a news conference a year ago hailing the United States’ Kurdish partners.

“We do get along great with the Kurds. We’re trying to help them a lot,” the president said then. “Don’t forget, that’s their territory. We have to help them. … They fought with us. They died with us. They died.”

Betraying the Kurds is, at this point, an American tradition. In the early 1970s, as a favor to the shah of Iran, the Nixon administration helped foment a Kurdish uprising in Iraq. But once Baghdad and Tehran mended fences in 1975, the United States turned its back on the insurrection, many of whose combatants were slaughtered or driven into exile. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush called on Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein. But the U.S. then stood by as Iraqi forces brutally crushed Kurdish and Iraqi Shiite rebellions.

We’ll see what script from history gets reread in the coming weeks. In early August, the United States and Turkey agreed to a “security mechanism” that led to Syrian Kurdish forces pulling back from near the Turkish border and dismantling some of their critical fortifications. The SDF now is even more vulnerable to a Turkish advance.

What distinguishes the current moment of Kurdish betrayal from earlier eras is perhaps its seeming strategic incoherence. On Monday morning, officials in the Pentagon and State Department voiced bewilderment over the president’s announcements; reports suggested that neither the SDF nor other U.S. coalition partners on the ground were warned of Trump’s decision.

Brett McGurk, Trump’s former top diplomat in the war against the Islamic State, savaged his ex-boss on Twitter. “The value of an American handshake is depreciating,” he said. “Trump today said we could ‘crush ISIS again’ if it regenerated. With who? What allies would sign up? Who would fight on his assurances?” Christine Moser, Vice President, Advertising; Justin Mock, Vice President, Finance and CFO; Bob Kinney, Vice President, Information Technology