US President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw American troops from almost all of Syria, clearing the way for a Turkish offensive against the Kurds, is an unconscionable betrayal of a strategic ally. One would expect such disloyalty from a fascist or otherwise dictatorial regime. And yet, today, it is the United States—a global leader with supposedly high ideals—that has emerged as the world’s perfidious empire.
Trump’s cavalier abandonment of the Kurds—America’s most loyal and effective allies in the war against the Islamic State, who until last week shared military outposts with US soldiers—is but the latest in a long series of devastating betrayals by his administration. He set the tone for his presidency by withdrawing the US from the Paris climate agreement, shamelessly placing the financial interests of America’s fossil-fuel tycoons above the existential interest of the rest of humanity.
Trump also renounced the Iran nuclear deal and reinstated sanctions, even though Iran had complied with the agreement’s obligations (and continued to do so for another year). Even America’s European allies are not safe: not only has Trump repeatedly lashed out at NATO allies; his administration is now imposing trade sanctions on up to US$7.5 billion worth of European Union goods. The US would, Trump recently boasted, undoubtedly win a trade war with the EU.
Europe also stands to lose from Trump’s abandonment of the Kurds. If, in the ongoing chaos, the thousands of IS prisoners held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces escape—as some already have—America’s estranged European allies will suffer. Yet Trump is unconcerned. ‘Well, they are going to be escaping to Europe, that’s where they want to go’, he remarked casually at a press conference. ‘They want to go back to their homes.’
Read the article by Shlomo Ben-Ami in The Strategist.