Donald Trump likes to portray himself as a figure of strength, and in some venues he carries it off: his loud and vulgar blustering can animate an arena filled with cheering supporters. In the real world, however, bluster goes only so far. Trump may be able to confine children in cages at our Southern border, but dealing with foreign dictators, he wilts. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the latest example.
My last blog had concluded:
Some readers may think that Trump’s toxic outreach to Ukraine and China is the New Low to end all New Lows. Perhaps. But that probably underestimates the capacity of our president to find new opportunities for misbehavior. Stay tuned.
Readers did not have to stay tuned for long and what they learned of was far worse than mere misbehavior: as the blog was posted, President Trump had already yielded to Erdogan in agreeing to remove all American troops from the Syrian border area to pave the way for Turkey to attack the Syrian Kurds. Trump’s action was indefensible. Indeed, it was the single most blatantly arrogant, morally bankrupt and strategically stupid action of his entire tenure in office.
The decision was blatantly arrogant because it was made impulsively in the course of a phone call with Erdogan without consulting with, or receiving advice from, a single national security official. It had all the forethought and planning of a cranky two year old dumping his bowl of porridge onto the floor.
The decision was morally bankrupt because it betrayed an ally with whom we had fought side by side and on whom we had relied heavily in defeating ISIS. It will result in the slaughter of thousands of casualties both civilian and military. The blood of the Kurds is on our hands.
The decision is strategically stupid because:
- It gained nothing. The troops who have been withdrawn were not under attack and were not suffering casualties.
- It will strengthen and rejuvenate ISIS which has lost the territory of its caliphate but still has thousands of members in the area. This will be particularly true if the Kurds are unable to continue to administer the prisons in which thousands of ISIS captives are being held and those captives are released or allowed to escape.
- It will convert instability into chaos and it will strengthen the hands of each of our adversaries in the Middle East: Syria, Iran, and especially Russia. (Fittingly, the Erdogan/Trump call was on Putin’s birthday and Trump’s Moscow pal could hardly have asked for a nicer present.)
- It made obvious to every ally or prospective ally in the Middle East and around the world that the United States is a partner that simply cannot be counted on.
Trump’s action was so grossly misguided that it drew immediate rebukes from Republicans on Capitol Hill, a group whose reactions usually range from vocal support to timid silence. Among others, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Ben Sasse, and Susan Collins weighed in, with Graham being the sharpest in his criticism:
Pray for our Kurdish allies who have been shamelessly abandoned by the Trump Administration. This move ensures the reemergence of ISIS.
Later, warming to the subject:
“If I hear the president say one more time, ‘I made a campaign promise to get out of Syria,’ I’m going to throw up.”
In the face of withering criticism, Trump’s defenses ranged from silly to pompously reckless. On the silly end was Trump’s observation that the Kurds had not been with us on D Day in World War II. On the pompously reckless end was his claim that having unleashed the Turks, he could restrain them with a tweeted threat: “If Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey.” In the same vein, Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin said on Sunday that he was ready “at a moments notice” to impose sanctions that could “destroy the Turkish economy.” Later the same day, Trump tweeted that he was working with Lindsey Graham and Democrats on “imposing powerful Sanctions on Turkey.” Of course, if you took Secretary Mnuchin’s statement at face value, you would have to wonder why any legislative action was necessary.
I doubt that crippling sanctions will be imposed on Turkey, or that, if they are, they will persuade Turkey to reverse course in Syria. Moreover, if severe sanctions are imposed, it will be Turkey’s turn to feel, with considerable justification, that it has been betrayed. Despite the denials from Trump, Secretary of State Pompeo, and others in the administration, Erdogan had every reason to believe that he had been given a green light to invade Turkey and to decimate the Kurdish forces. The signal accomplishment of Trump’s blunder will have been to betray and alienate two allies at once.
Trump has repeatedly insisted that he is following campaign promises to bring troops home from the Middle East. (“We are getting out of the endless wars. We have to do it.”) That insistence, however, rings quite hollow in light of the announcement, also last week, that we would be sending 1,800 troops to Saudi Arabia to bolster its defenses against Iran. That contribution came at the behest of another member of Trump’s coterie of dictators, Mohammed bin Salman. But what exactly those troops will be doing, and why they are needed, was left unclear. What is clear is the utter lack of any coherent strategy in the region.
The loudest voices in Congress protesting Trump’s Turkish debacle have come from Republicans. Although they have been joined by a number of Democrats on Capitol Hill, Democrats running for President have had relatively little to say. Elizabeth Warren did post a tweet:
Trump recklessly betrayed our Kurdish partners and cleared the way for Turkey’s invasion of Syria—reopening the door for ISIS and furthering a humanitarian crisis. We should bring our troops home, but we need to do so in a way that protects our security.
The second sentence of Warren’s tweet exposes the Democrats’ dilemma: they want to bring troops home as much or more than Trump does, but do they really have any idea about how to do it “in a way that protects our security”? And can they face up to the fact that it actually might not be in the interest of national security to bring any troops home any time soon? Foreign policy received very little attention in previous Democratic debates, but at the debate on Tuesday, it should be front and center.
A new low, indeed! An overwhelming tide may finally be turning against Donald Trump, due to his incomparable arrogance, ignorance, and short-sighted, self-centered malignant egotism and narcissism. He may have gone too far this time, even for many of his defenders in Congress, with his attempted bribery of Ukraine and total betrayal of the Kurds. Time for his opposition to fully seize the advantage and not let up, putting the focus on his foreign policy failures, as Doug suggests, before he can do more damage to our nation and the world.
I agree Bill but would not overlook Trump’s dismal failures on the domestic front. He lied to all the working people and did nothing of any substance to help lift them up. And he lied to all the rest of us by promising to “make America great again.” In fact, he’s made it worse, sowing division and stoking the flames of prejudice. It will take a lot of hard work and goodwill for our next president to repair the damage. So I would hammer Trump on both his foreign and domestic failures in office,
and there are many to choose from. Let’s just hope his opponent has what it takes to knock him off of his pedstal.
Of all your many excellent posts, Doug, I think this may be your best. It forcefully and eloquently outlines the lunacy of the President’s action and the dangers it poses. What is to stop betrayed and enraged Kurds from cutting down the fence and throwing open the gates containing the IS prisoners? With his callous thinking, the President replied, in effect, not a problem. “They’ll go to Europe. That’s where they want to go anyway.” My, my, doesn’t that make it all better?
Even worse than that prospect is the loss of our credibility as an ally. It has been in doubt ever since Vietnam, and this does nothing to improve it. You correctly point out the duplicity: no troops for the Kurds; troops for the Saudis. Perhaps it is Trump’s reward for the Saudis murdering a journalist, something Trump would dearly love to do but has not figured out how to accomplish yet. Our good friends the Saudis who contributed most of the hijackers on 9/11.
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