It was a sight to make the American military’s blood boil.
The white, blue, and red Russian flags were replacing the Stars and Stripes over an abandoned U.S. base in northern Syria, its U.S.-taxpayer-funded airstrip now servicing Russian helicopters.
“Today in Syria: Russia takes control of main U.S. military facility abandoned earlier this week by American forces on Trump’s orders,” tweeted Brett McGurk, former U.S. counter-ISIS envoy, in disgust. “This area is south of Kobani and went to Russia under the Putin-Erdogan deal. Russia now also owns the airstrip we built.”
During President Trump’s Oct. 6 phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump appeared to greenlight the Turkish invasion of northern Syria by agreeing to withdraw about 50 U.S. troops from the border region. In the days following, the seemingly impulsive capitulation drew howls of protests from even some of Trump’s most ardent supporters.
“He’s not listening to his advisers,” Sen. Lindsey Graham told CNN. “He’s making the biggest mistake of his presidency.”
The decision, which Trump touted as an “amazing, incredible outcome” that was only possible because he “went somewhat unconventional,” was roundly derided as a betrayal of the Kurds. It was also called a gift to Russia, Syria, and Iran and a blunder that would give the Islamic State, which still has thousands of fighters in Syria, a new lease on life.
Two months later, you don’t hear as much about Syria in the news, mainly because the worst-case predictions failed to come true.
Trump upended the chessboard in Syria, creating momentary havoc. Still, as the dust settles, the U.S. alliance with the Kurds has survived, joint operations against ISIS have resumed, coalition partners have hung tight, and 1,000 U.S. troops have been withdrawn.
Chalk some of that up to the ingenuity of U.S. military commanders who have an uncanny knack for turning Trump’s spur-of-the-moment policy pronouncements into a workable strategy.
By appealing to Trump’s business instincts, the Pentagon was able to convince him to swap out mechanized units for special operations forces, ostensibly to guard oil fields, but also to pursue ISIS.
As much as the administration pushed back on the idea that the U.S. president gave Erdogan his blessing for establishing a buffer zone in Syria, it was clear Trump was unhappy with the Pentagon’s plan.
The United States had been working with the Turkish military to establish joint patrols in the northern border regions to ensure that Kurdish YPG fighters, which Erdogan views as terrorists, did not threaten Turkey.
But that did not accomplish Turkey’s primary goal: clearing a large area of Syria for the resettlement of up to a million refugees who fled to Turkey over the years.
Trump was sympathetic to Turkey’s refugee problem, and he also bristled at the idea of using U.S troops as a sort of cop-on-the-beat to keep the peace.
“We’re policing. We’re not fighting, we’re policing. We’re not a police force,” Trump said in defense of his decision the day after his Erdogan call.
“We don’t have to defend the borders between Turkey and Syria,” Trump said at a rally in Tupelo, Mississippi, last month. “They’ve been fighting for a thousand years.”
By mid-November, Gen. Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the Kurdish forces in Syria, had reconciled to the new reality and said his forces would continue to guard ISIS prisoners and fight ISIS alongside U.S. troops.
“With the Americans, we started a project together. We are partners,” Abadi told a CBS news correspondent. “Once this job is done, they can leave. We don’t want the Americans to stay here for 400 years,” but he added, “If the Americans break their promise again, the trust will be gone forever.”
Then in the week before Thanksgiving, the U.S.-led counter-ISIS coalition announced the resumption of large-scale operations against ISIS, conducted in conjunction with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in Deir ez-Zor province, where ISIS was regrouping.
A coalition press release said multiple ISIS fighters were killed or wounded and said the “repositioning of Coalition troops to eastern Syria” had led only to “a brief pause” in operations against ISIS.
At the same time, Vice President Mike Pence made an unannounced visit to Iraq to bring Thanksgiving greetings to the 5,000 or so U.S. troops based in Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
Pence was there to shore up U.S. relations with the Kurds, which have been strained by the Turkish incursion into Syria.
But Pence said when he met with Iraqi Kurdistan President Nechirvan Barzani, he did not sense any lingering bad feelings.
“I don’t think there was any confusion now among the leadership here in the Kurdish region that President Trump’s commitment to our allies here in Iraq, as well as to those in the Syrian Defense Forces, the Kurdish forces who fought alongside us, is unchanging,” Pence said. “I could tell, in speaking to President Barzani and his team, that they know the American people are with them.”
Still, it’s hard to make the case that things are better in Syria.
The brutal regime of Bashar Assad continues to murder its people, Russia is still bombing hospitals in violation of international law, and heavy fighting continues in the 20-mile-wide border zone invaded by Turkey, despite a ceasefire brokered by Pence last month. And according to the United Nations, more than 200,000 Syrians have been displaced by the invasion.
And while the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi during a U.S. commando raid was “a significant blow,” it will not likely end the ISIS threat, according to an assessment by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency.
The DIA assessment, quoted in the latest quarterly report to Congress by the Pentagon’s lead inspector general, concludes ISIS is “postured to withstand” Baghdadi’s death and says ISIS has “exploited the Turkish incursion and subsequent drawdown of U.S. troops to reconstitute capabilities and resources within Syria and strengthen its ability to plan attacks abroad.”
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner‘s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter, “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.
