Despite lobbying from the Administration, America’s allies are declining to fill in the gap that will be left in Syria after American troops withdraw:
As the deadline approaches for the withdrawal of U.S. forces fighting the Islamic State in Syria, America’s closest European allies have turned down a Trump administration request to fill the gap with their own troops, according to U.S. and foreign officials.
Allies have “unanimously” told the United States that they “won’t stay if you pull out,” a senior administration official said. France and Britain are the only other countries with troops on the ground in the U.S.-led coalition battling the Islamic State.
Along with the United States, they have provided training, supplies, logistics and intelligence for the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish-dominated group that has done most of the fighting. U.S., French and British forces also operate heavy artillery and conduct the airstrikes that have been decisive against the militants.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said last week that he was mystified by Trump’s policy. On Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said that “there is no prospect of British forces replacing the Americans” in Syria.
European refusal to stay unless President Trump reverses at least part of his troop withdrawal order is one of several factors that U.S. military officials, lawmakers and senior administration officials have said should make Trump think again.
Their concerns coincide with the administration’s failure, so far, to reach an agreement with Turkey not to attack the SDF, which it says is a terrorist group. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that the Turkish military, massed at the border, is prepared to move into northeast Syria once the Americans leave.
One of the principal requests the administration has made of the allies — including Germany, which has no forces in Syria — is to form an “observer” force to patrol a 20-mile-wide “safe zone” on the Syrian side of the border, separating Turkey from the Syrian Kurds.
Officials in Ankara said Turkey’s defense minister, Hulusi Akar, and its military chief of staff will travel to Washington on Thursday to discuss Syria and other regional matters with acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan.
For its part, the SDF has appealed for Western nations to keep a force of up to 1,500 in northeast Syria to coordinate air support and back its efforts to hold militants and other adversaries at bay. In anticipation of the departure of some 2,000 U.S. troops, the Kurds are negotiating with both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Russia, his primary foreign backer along with Iran.
Russia, meanwhile, has proposed that Assad’s forces simply be allowed to take over the entire area now controlled by the United States and its allies. “No one, including the Kurds and the Turks, thinks the regime coming into the northeast is a good idea,” the senior administration official said.
Trump has long complained that his own top aides and the military were blocking his determination to exit Syria once the Islamic State was defeated. In December, he said that the goal had been achieved and that U.S. troops were leaving “now,” after which Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned. Trump subsequently agreed that the departure would be “deliberate and orderly.” The military is planning a full withdrawal by the end of April
But while national security adviser John Bolton, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), and others have told allies that some American troops may remain, those reassurances have not filtered up to the level of a presidential order to the Pentagon.
“I won’t talk to what Sen. Graham or NSA Bolton would like,” a defense official said in an email. “Gen. Votel has been very clear that we are currently focused on executing a full withdrawal from Syria at the order of the president.” Gen. Joseph Votel is the head of the U.S. Central Command in overall charge of U.S. forces in the Middle East.
U.S. and foreign officials spoke on the condition of anonymity about the sensitive and ongoing diplomatic discussions and military operations.
This reaction from American allies is hardly surprising. For the better part of the past two years, President Trump has spent a considerable amount of time driving a wedge between the United States and its traditional allies in Europe and also calling into question the integrity and resolve of the American commitment to the NATO alliance. He has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accords, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the nuclear deal with Iran, and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, one of the hallmarks of the end of the Cold War. In addition to the fact that all of these moves and miscues clearly benefit only one man and one motion, they have already sent a message to America’s allies that the United States can’t necessarily be trusted on to stand by its allies. It’s only natural, then, that those same allies would suddenly become less eager to go along with requests from the United States that, in an earlier era. In other words, reactions like this from the Europeans are only natural given the past two years and yet another example of how the United States is already paying the price for the President’s foolish abandonment of traditional allies and cozying up to dictators.
In addition to this, of course, there’s the fact that the Europeans aren’t exactly stupid. They can see as plainly as the rest of us the risks of putting troops on the ground in the middle of a civil war that has more sides than anyone can count, consisting of so-called “moderate” rebels who allegedly don’t ascribe to jihadist views, the more radical jihadists fighters that include ISIS and associated groups on one side and the Syrians, Russians, Iranians, and Hezbollah on the other. Putting a force into the middle of all that constitutes a risk that no sane leader should be willing to accept. Additionally, the situation on the ground is complicated by the participation of the Kurds, who in the end care more about consolidating their power over the land they control than they do about toppling Assad, even if that means provoking conflict with Turkey. Finally, the Europeans are likely reading the Trump Administration’s decision to pull out as an admission on the part of the United States that the battle in Syria is essentially over. Given that, why should they risk their own men and women on a mission the United States is abandoning?
