Trump and the Two Thousand

Robert Hockett & Anna-Sara Malmgren's opinion piece was originally published on HAARETZ. To read on their website please click here.

“Donald Trump recently announced by Tweet that he would pull the last remaining US troops from northern Syria. This ‘decision’, if anything so unpremeditated can be called that, came with no prior warning to Mr. Trump’s cabinet, to his foreign policy or military teams, to the Congress, to other nations’ governments, to our allies in Syria – the Kurdish-led SDF – or even, it seems, to himself. As best as we can tell from the news accounts, Mr. Trump simply ‘gave’ northern Syria, as if he owned it, to Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan on a whim, as the two discussed Syria and other matters by telephone Thursday. He did this against the explicit advice of his Defense Secretary James Mattis, who has since resigned, and in full knowledge of Erdogan’s plans to launch a large-scale military operation against SDF’s Kurdish contingent (YPG and YPJ) east of the Euphrates.

It is a reckless and irresponsible move, that is almost certain to reinvigorate what remains of ISIS, enable Erdogan to take his brutal persecution of the Kurds further into Syria, and lead to chaos and destruction in what has for years been the most stable part of the country and a safe haven for refugees: the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria – better known as Rojava.

To our astonishment, many self-styled ‘progressives’ in the US have applauded Mr. Trump’s move. Through their post-9/11 filter it apparently represents a long-awaited rollback of American imperial involvements that grew especially pronounced during the Obama, Bush and late Clinton years (and that our less recent history is full of). More ‘moderately’ left-leaning Americans, for their part, have joined traditional conservatives in criticizing Trump for announcing that we will, in effect, be handing Syria to Russia and Iran.”