Brett McGurk earns allied anger over Syria-Iraq withdrawal maneuvers

The leader of the Syrian Democratic Forces in northeastern Syria, Gen. Mazloum Abdi, has been particularly disheartened by McGurk’s actions under the Biden administration. Mazloum was instrumental to the United States-led effort to drive the Islamic State out of its Syrian strongholds. His kinship with America was forged in blood. But I’m told that on a recent visit to northern Syria, McGurk failed even to meet with Mazloum to discuss Biden’s withdrawal of support for U.S. economic development investments. Those efforts are supported by the U.S. intelligence community, the SDF, and affiliated Sunni Arab tribes in the area. Regardless, McGurk apparently deployed State Department diplomats to deliver the bad news to the general rather than do it himself in person. In the respect-oriented Kurdish culture, this could even be taken as offensive.

What’s odd here is that McGurk resigned from the Trump administration in protest over its plans to withdraw U.S. military forces from Syria. Why McGurk is now suddenly happy to support Biden’s similar withdrawal policy is not clear. While a Biden administration official suggested to Politico on Tuesday that the U.S. will retain forces in Syria, those forces will not serve much purpose if they do not provide cover for economic and political activity independent of Bashar Assad, Iran, and Russia. It’s not just about the investment and associated signal of long-term U.S. support to allies. Russia is aggressively pushing for control over the Syrian oil fields and Iraqi border transit points.

McGurk, however, is a proven political survivor. A senior Middle East hand for the Bush, Obama, Trump, and now Biden administrations, McGurk is renowned for his ability to find a role at the center of ideologically diverse administrations. Yet his critics say that this record is less a function of his Arabist skills and more a product of his penchant for D.C. political maneuvering. This maneuvering was the significant focus of Paul Wood’s less-than-favorable April profile of McGurk for Newlines magazine.

In that sense, a Syria withdrawal to match that from Iraq would at least allow McGurk to maneuver his way into some new friendships. Back in January, Al Monitor suggested that “his expected appointment will likely send a strong signal to Turkey and could complicate the Biden administration’s efforts to reset relations with the NATO ally.”

Perhaps no longer. McGurk’s treatment of America’s Syrian-Kurdish allies may win him VIP treatment by Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s reflexively Kurd-hostile regime.

Still, the issue of reliability extends to Iraq.

During McGurk’s visit to Baghdad less than two weeks ago, Al Arabiya’s Joseph Haboush noted that the Iraqi government said McGurk had discussed an imminent U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq. The Biden administration shamelessly denied this, even though we now know it to be the truth.

The Iraq withdrawal will certainly bolster McGurk’s credentials with the Democratic Party’s liberal wing. But it may not earn him new friends on the central political ground. Consider that China, now viewed by bipartisan majorities as the exigent challenge to U.S. international order in the 21st century, is moving quickly to dominate the Iraqi oil market amid America’s evacuation. Iran will be the most major beneficiary of Biden’s action.

McGurk’s reliable chirpiness should not be taken as a positive sign.

Back in 2011, McGurk praised the Obama administration’s withdrawal from Iraq as the “beginning” of a positive stable relationship between the U.S. and Iraq. That withdrawal was actually the quite predictable beginning of ISIS’s caliphate.

Whatever his political maneuvering skills, what now happens in Syria and Iraq seems set to define McGurk’s political future.