Abandoning Syrian Kurds Will Derail Trump’s Agenda

Michael Rubin | American Enterprise Institute

President-elect Donald Trump plans to hit the ground running. National security adviser-designee Mike Waltz is rapidly assembling the White House national security team. Secretary of State-designate Marco Rubio should breeze through confirmation. Entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are already identifying ways to cut wasteful spending and unnecessary programs.

Trump knows he has only two years to achieve much of his agenda; by 2027, the next campaign cycle will begin. Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’s veepstakes highlighted likely Democratic frontrunners, and numerous Republicans are waiting in the wings: Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Rubio, and Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA), among others.

Trump has so far shown more discipline than during his first term; he sidesteps distractions and many of the internecine political fights that hampered his first-term agenda. As he prepares for office, though, he and Vance appear headed for a decision that could derail the entirety of Trump’s second term: the abandonment of Syria’s Kurds in the face of Turkish aggression.

Both Trump and Vance are prepared to pull the plug on the U.S. deployment in northeastern Syria. Trump almost did so during his first term, only to pull back at the last minute. The more isolationist faction among Trump’s supporters looks at Syrian Kurds more symbolically than strategically. For the “MAGA” base, the Syrian Kurds represent both U.S. involvement in “forever wars” and investment in local conflicts that distract the United States from core interests.

They are wrong on both counts. The Kurdish presence prevents a forever war by stopping an Islamic State revival and by blocking Iran’s ability to ship weapons westward and Turkey’s desire to do so southward. The Kurds do not want the Americans to defend them; they want the Americans to enable them to defend themselves. In short, the Kurds are the perfect MAGA allies because they happily do the heavy lifting that so many European states avoid in corollary situations.

Pulling the approximately 2,000 U.S. forces from northeastern Syria will create a cascade of events that will dominate headlines and distract from the Trump agenda. In short, the rushed Syria withdrawal will be for Trump what the botched Afghanistan evacuation was for President Joe Biden. Americans are likely to die as Turkish-supported militias and Islamic State terrorists seek to capitalize politically on the American flight.

Trump may admire Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a strongman with whom he can do business, but he fails to understand that Erdogan’s desire to humiliate the West is greater than the value he places on friendship with Trump. The president-elect may see Erdogan as a conduit through which he needs to work on issues ranging from Russia and Ukraine to Israel and Gaza, but should Syrian Kurdistan descend into chaos, then the resulting mess will consume the presidency during the short time Trump has.

A collapse of Kurdish authority in northeastern Syria will mean entrusting tens of thousands of Islamic State militants to Turks and their proxies, many of whom sympathize ideologically. It will be the Mosul prison escape times 100, with every subsequent attack by a reinvigorated Islamic State blamed on Trump.

The effects of a Turkish slaughter of Kurds, consolidation of radicalism across Syria, and revival of Islamic State terrorism will also end Vance’s presidential hopes before they ever begin.

The tragedy of Biden’s Afghanistan debacle was it did not need to occur as it did. America could have ended the Afghanistan war with competence. The problem was not withdrawal, but rather Biden’s desire to appease his progressive base above U.S. national security. Trump should make America great again, not rush into a Biden-like debacle.

Michael Rubin is a former Pentagon official whose major research areas are the Middle East, Turkey, Iran and diplomacy. He is author of “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes” (Encounter, 2014). He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute AEI. His major research area is the Middle East, with special focus on Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Kurdish society.

The article first published at aei.org

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