Donald Trump’s mixed message sent to both sides of Syrian border

Donald Trump’s thinking out loud has proved rather conservative.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Picture: AP

Is there a method to Donald Trump’s madness? Forty-eight hours of late-night statements, unexpected policy twists and a flurry of tweeting have ensured that no one really knows what America’s Middle East strategy looks like.

Has the US abandoned the YPG, the leftist Kurdish militia that runs a strip of northeast Syria and was its ally against Islamic State? Yes, the US President said on Sunday — the Turks were about to attack and he was withdrawing US troops. But wait: no, he tweeted on Wednesday AEDT: these are “special people, wonderful fighters”.

What about Turkey, which has pledged to grind the YPG into dust? Does the US stand behind Ankara?

“Our relationship with Turkey, a NATO and trading partner, has been very good,” Trump’s Twitter feed informed us on Wednesday. Yet a day before he had threatened to “totally destroy and obliterate the economy of Turkey” if it did anything “off limits”.

It is hard to disagree with Mr Trump’s many critics who say he is fundamentally weakening trust in American global leadership.

The odd thing, though, is that the end result of Mr Trump’s thinking out loud has proved rather conservative. Since he came to office, he has not launched any new wars, or abandoned any of the US’s key historical positions.

For all his anti-NATO bluster, the US is still paying its way. His security operatives maintain their responsibility for such wars as he did inherit, continuing to fight the Taliban, and pouring stabilisation money into eastern Syria.

Mr Trump has had furious rows with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but he is right to say that Turkey remains a NATO ally, and alliances are meant to transcend individual differences. The EU also has reason to dislike Mr Erdogan but there is universal consensus that Turkey should ­remain inside the tent rather than be ejected to who knows what end.

The YPG, meanwhile, has played a smart political game, as well as a brave military one, in how it has sought recognition for its de facto autonomy.

The short answer to the initial question is that it is too soon to say whether the Kurds have or have not been abandoned.

Mr Erdogan may yet decide on a full-scale invasion.

A closer reading of Mr Trump’s ­initial statement, though, suggests that might not be wise. He was widely interpreted as telling the Kurds that if Turkey invaded, they were on their own. That, really, is a statement of the obvious: US forces were never going to fight for the Kurdish state, let alone against a NATO ally. What he was telling Mr Erdogan was that if he ­invaded, Turkey was on its own too.

What Mr Trump was saying was if he did invade, he would have to deal with Kurdish guerrilla warfare, ISIS prisoners and hundreds of thousands of displaced people, without help. As a tweet might have it: “Good luck with that.”

The Times