Outlining Turkey’s agreement of an immediate 120-hour cease-fire in Syria on Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence claimed that President Trump has delivered a great deal for America, the Kurds, and Turkey.
Cease-fire sounds like a good thing, right?
Well, yes, normally. But I’m very skeptical here. Because this deal would appear to simply involve the Kurdish YPG withdrawing from the area of northern Syria that Turkey is presently trying to conquer. In that sense, it looks like American diplomacy has simply replaced Turkish tanks as the means to Turkey’s victory. The foundation of the deal would appear to rest on the United States being able to get the YPG to give up. And that raises an important question.
Namely, why, when the Trump administration has just abandoned them, would the YPG now listen to the U.S. and accept American demands that it surrender?
Yes, some YPG commanders will likely accept American inducements to withdraw, but others will not. They will rightly suspect that Turkey will not hold to the territorial markers that Pence says it has. Instead, they will suspect that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will engage in a slow-rolling encroachment further into Kurdish-controlled territory. They will certainly respond skeptically to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s assertion that Turkey will credibly investigate allegations of war crimes by its forces.
Regardless, the key here is that the U.S. is now agreeing to use its diplomatic and economic pressure against the Kurds rather than against Turkey. Note that Pence on Thursday pledged the U.S. will now withdraw planned sanctions against Turkey. That will allow Erdoğan to present this as an American submission to his grand authority.
I hope I’m wrong, but I suspect this deal makes the U.S. look chaotic and weak. Correspondingly, it also makes Russian President Vladimir Putin look strong.
