Judah Grunstein
There are any number of defensible arguments in support of President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northeastern Syria. It is safe to assume that Trump didn’t consider any of them. Instead, Trump seems to have acted as ever on impulse, out of a misguided sense that his instinct is a better guide than strategic planning and historical literacy. His decision reveals not an infallible instinct but a failure to understand three core elements of American power: assurance, deterrence and leverage.
To begin with the theoretical arguments in support of withdrawing from northeastern Syria, first and foremost, the U.S. has no essential national interests at stake there. The U.S. deployment that began in late 2015 accomplished a number of valuable goals inexpensively, including militarily defeating the Islamic State, and keeping Syrian, Russian and Iranian-aligned forces out of the area. But the presence of American troops there and the partnership on the ground with Syrian Kurdish militias were ad hoc arrangements that were never meant to be more than temporary. After the defeat of the Islamic State on the battlefield, the many problematic aspects of America’s partnership with Syrian Kurds—namely the ideology of their most potent militia, the YPG; its ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK; and the perceived security threat the YPG poses to Turkey—took on newfound significance.
Nevertheless, given the volatility of the situation on the ground and the power vacuum that U.S. forces would leave in their wake, all these arguments presupposed a measured withdrawal in proper order at the appropriate time. In this way, security assurances could be provided to both America’s erstwhile Kurdish partners and its NATO treaty ally, Turkey; the gains against the Islamic State preserved; and Syrian and Russian forces prevented from entering the area.
Instead, Trump’s impetuous decision was devoid of any planning process, leaving not only America’s partners and European allies in the dark, but also most of his own administration, including the U.S. military. That is in part a damning indictment of U.S. and European policy planners, since Trump has signaled his desire to leave Syria since at least December 2018. In finally and abruptly doing so, he has set in motion a chain reaction that has undone in a week most if not all of the objectives that had been achieved over five years, while exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in the area and doing enormous damage to America’s regional standing.
As is often the case, Trump’s misguided faith in his own instincts blinded him to the true sources of American power, starting with its ability to assure allies and deter adversaries. Assuring allies of the U.S. commitment to their defense is the cornerstone of America’s global network of security alliances and partnerships, which functions as a force multiplier for the U.S. military and a readily available pool of potential coalition partners. For obvious reasons, allies that don’t trust the U.S. to be there when it counts will begin making other arrangements for their own security. They will also be more circumspect when it comes to participating in American-led military operations.
Over the course of his presidency, Trump has already been a one-man wrecking crew undermining the trust U.S. allies and partners place in Washington, from his transactional approach to security alliances to his use of national security justifications to impose trade tariffs. Trump’s apologists have long argued that despite his iconoclastic pronouncements, his administration’s working policies toward America’s alliances have not changed.
But the cavalier manner in which Trump betrayed the trust not only of America’s Kurdish partners in Syria, but also its European allies participating in the U.S.-led coalition there, will make America’s allies and partners think twice about how much faith they should put into U.S. security assurances moving forward. That will almost certainly prove costly the next time the U.S. needs their help to achieve its military objectives.
Trump’s impetuous decision was devoid of any planning process, leaving not only America’s partners and European allies in the dark, but also most of his own administration.Trump’s decision also undermines the U.S. ability to deter adversaries, or in this case a treaty ally, from actions that Washington opposes. U.S. deterrence depends on a number of conditions, including not only the ability and willingness to act militarily in order to uphold clearly defined objectives, but also the perception by the actor to be deterred that all of these conditions apply. When they do, the presence of a mere 50 U.S. special operations forces on the Syrian border can effectively deter an incursion by thousands of Turkish and Turkish-aligned forces.
If any of them fails, so too does U.S. deterrence. By redeploying those U.S. forces away from the border in the face of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s threats, Trump has raised valid questions about how willing he is to use force to defend America’s red lines. And by failing to clearly define those red lines, he has introduced uncertainty that heightens the risk of an adversary’s miscalculation leading to conflict.
Rightly or wrongly, Trump’s decision to call off punitive strikes against Iran for downing a U.S. drone in June had already given the impression that he is a paper tiger. His actions of the past week heighten the incentives for other adversaries to bet against or at least test his resolve, further weakening America’s ability to achieve its objectives without resorting to the use of military force.
Finally, Trump’s determination to pull out of Syria regardless of the consequences demonstrates his failure to understand the use of military leverage to achieve political objectives. Since the start of Syria’s civil war, U.S. policy regarding the conflict has been a litany of tragic errors, half-measures, false starts and missed opportunities. At the same time, the U.S. has managed to avoid becoming entangled in an exceedingly complex and treacherous conflict. The military deployment to northeastern Syria is in many ways a microcosm of this broader narrative. Despite long-term complications and with a limited military presence, the U.S. has nevertheless been able to achieve surprisingly substantial objectives. But the key payoff, besides rolling back the Islamic State, remained ahead: leveraging the U.S. military presence for a say in determining the final political resolution of the conflict.
To be clear, this was never going to allow Washington to dictate outcomes. But it would have perhaps provided enough clout for the U.S. to gain meaningful concessions. Trump unilaterally squandered that leverage, allowing Syrian and Russian forces to enter an area that had until now been off limits to them, with nothing to show for it in return. The same dynamic was on display in September when, after having torpedoed a tentative deal with the Taliban that would have conditioned U.S. troop reductions on security guarantees and other concessions, Trump refused to rule out going through with the drawdown anyway. The clear message for the Taliban in Afghanistan, as well as for Iran, North Korea and Venezuela, is to wait Trump out until he loses patience, declares victory and caves.
As always, Trump’s latest crisis is entirely self-made. In fact, he has benefited from a remarkable run of benign international circumstances that only make the prospects of his handling a real crisis even more worrisome. Until now, the damage Trump had done to America’s alliances and global standing was largely theoretical and probably remediable, though with great effort, by his eventual successor. The fallout from this past week’s debacle is more concrete and could prove to be more lasting.
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