What America’s Allies Really Think About Trump’s Syria Decision
There was a time when the withdrawal of roughly 50 American Special Forces from a couple of outposts in a remote part of Syria wouldn’t have generated a wave of angst across the world about the United States unceremoniously dumping its allies and terminating the international system it has led for more than 70 years.
That time is decidedly not now.
When I recently asked a European official about the fate of the Syrian Kurds, who, after that U.S. retreat in October, came under Turkish assault, the official referenced President Donald Trump’s contention that the fighting had “nothing to do with” the United States. In just over a week, the violence left hundreds of Kurdish fighters and civilians dead; more than 100,000 people displaced; the near defeat of the Islamic State in jeopardy; and Turkey, Russia, and the Iranian-backed Syrian government carving up territory vacated by the Kurds and the Americans.
The same official noted that Syrian Kurdish forces have been partners in the U.S.-led multinational military campaign against the Islamic State, and that “what happens [in Syria] is being called ‘other people’s business’ even though ‘other people’s business’ will affect in all likelihood America’s European allies.” Then the official posed the fundamental question raised by the U.S. position, one that will linger over the gathering of anti-ISIS coalition members in Washington, D.C., this week: “What does that mean for our confidence that in a time of crisis or challenge we will have the backing of our American allies?” (The official, like several others in this article, asked to speak about the situation in Syria on condition of anonymity.) “It’s too early to say how this will play out. It will depend on whether the risks can be curtailed. But it’s a question that is the writing on the wall right now.”
The president of France doesn’t think it’s too early to address that question, and the answer is earth-shattering for Europe. In an extraordinary interview with The Economist during the upheaval in Syria, Emmanuel Macron stated that when Trump tells him and other European leaders “‘It’s your neighborhood, not mine’ … we must hear what he’s saying,” which is, essentially, “‘I am no longer prepared to pay for and guarantee a security system for them,’ and so just ‘wake up.’”
Another official with a U.S.-allied government described Trump’s “green light to Turkey to invade Kurdish territory” as a “kind of betrayal.”
“Allies and partners worry that decreasing U.S. leadership and influence around the
