RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/turkey-and-the-kurds-its-more-complicated-than-you-think/

We are grateful for the Kurds’ help, and we should try to help them in return. But no one wants to risk war with Turkey.

O n Monday, President Trump announced that a contingent of fewer than 100 U.S. troops in Syria was being moved away from Kurdish-held territory on the border of Turkey. The move effectively green-lighted military operations by Turkey against the Kurds, which have now commenced.

Some U.S. military officials went public with complaints about being “blindsided.” The policy cannot have been a surprise, though. The president has made no secret that he wants out of Syria, where we now have about 1,000 troops (down from over 2,000 last year). More broadly, he wants our forces out of the Middle East. He ran on that position. I’ve argued against his “endless wars” tropes, but his stance is popular. As for Syria specifically, many of the president’s advisers think we should stay, but he has not been persuaded.

The president’s announcement of the redeployment of the Syrian troops came on the heels of a phone conversation with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This, obviously, was a mistake, giving the appearance (and not for the first time) that Trump is taking cues from Ankara’s Islamist strongman. As has become rote, the inevitable criticism was followed by head-scratching tweets: The president vows to “totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey,” which “I’ve done before” (huh?), if Turkey takes any actions “that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits.” We can only sigh and say it will be interesting to see how the president backs up these haughty threats now that Erdogan has begun his invasion.

All that said, the president at least has a cogent position that is consistent with the Constitution and public opinion. He wants U.S. forces out of a conflict in which America’s interests have never been clear, and for which Congress has never approved military intervention. I find that sensible — no surprise, given that I have opposed intervention in Syria from the start (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). The stridency of the counterarguments is matched only by their selectiveness in reciting relevant facts.

I thus respectfully dissent from our National Review editorial.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-jacksonian-syria-withdrawal-11570487847

Under investigation for impeachment he may be, but President Trump can still shake the world with his tweets. Explaining his decision to pull U.S. troops away from the Turkish-Syrian border at the cost of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, and open the way for Turkish forces to create what Ankara calls a “safety zone,” President Trump tweeted early Monday that “it is time for us to get out of these ridiculous Endless Wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home.”

Hitting the caps-lock button, Mr. Trump went on to restate one of his bedrock beliefs, and a cornerstone of Jacksonian foreign-policy thinking: “WE WILL ONLY FIGHT WHERE IT IS TO OUR BENEFIT, AND ONLY FIGHT TO WIN.” As for concerns that a U.S. withdrawal would allow Islamic State to re-form, Mr. Trump was dismissive. “We are 7000 miles away and will crush ISIS again if they come anywhere near us!”

Criticism of Mr. Trump’s withdrawal decision has been intense, with prominent supporters like Sen. Lindsey Graham and former officials like Nikki Haley joining longtime opponents of the White House. Much of that criticism is justified, and the erratic nature of Trump-era policy making, as well as the often-unpredictable policy mix that results, are undercutting American prestige and influence in much of the world. But not all of the problems dogging the Trump administration Middle East policy are caused by Mr. Trump’s sometimes idiosyncratic views or policy-making style. As two other news stories from the Middle East last week make clear, the American position in the region is an odd mix of dominance and impotence that makes good policy making hard—and that makes the task of building domestic support for smart policy even harder.

The first development is a success story that underlines how dominant the U.S. has become: Fearing U.S. sanctions, China National Petroleum Corp. has abandoned plans for a multibillion-dollar investment in Iran’s South Pars gas field. This is part of a broader Chinese retreat from Iran in the face of American pressure; the Middle Kingdom isn’t yet ready to challenge the U.S. in the Middle East.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/why-syria-pullout-makes-sense-kenneth-r-timmerman/

Washington is awash with dire predictions following President Trump’s “surprise” announcement late Sunday night to pull out the remaining 500 or so U.S. advisors currently in northern Syria.

But as the President tweeted on Monday morning, he was elected to end our “ridiculous endless wars,” which are costing us huge amounts in blood and treasure. Continued U.S. entanglement, according to Trump, can only make Russia and China happy.

So which is it: is the President endangering the United States and our allies by pulling out of Syria? Betraying our allies, the Kurds? Or is he defending America’s national interest?

I have spent a lot of time with the Kurds on the ground, especially in northern Iraq, along the Iranian border. I have also met with Kurdish peshmerga generals in Iraq, as well as the overall Iraqi commander, in charge of the fight against ISIS in Mosul.

That battle is over. And contrary to how MSNBC has been misquoting Sen. Lindsay Graham all day, the United States has indeed utterly defeated the ISIS caliphate.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/us-foreign-policy-iran-keep-it-steady-and-cool/

And keep pumping that American oil and gas.

Expect more desperate Iranian efforts to prompt a U.S. military response in the Persian Gulf. Trump’s sanctions have cut off 90 percent of Iran’s oil revenues. Soon Tehran’s shattered economy will be followed by more pent-up domestic unrest of the sort that Barack Obama ignored in 2009, when he felt that the continued viability of the murderous theocracy fed his bizarre dreams of enhancing a new Shiite, Persian hegemony to counterbalance the Sunni Arabs.

In contrast, America’s newfound role as the largest gas and oil producer in the world has not only lessened the importance of imported oil, whether from enemies such as Iran and Venezuela, or purported friends like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies. In a weird way, it has also turned the last half-century of oil politics upside down.

Tensions in the Gulf now help as much as hurt the United States. America is soon slated also to become the world’s largest exporter of gas and oil. Any increased costs for importing overseas oil will be offset by greater profits from American exports.

There are five general principles that should guide Trump in isolating Iran.

First, Iran desperately needs a military confrontation of some sort — preferably short of an all-out war. Their rationale behind missile and drone attacks is to get Trump out of office by 2021, to unite a factionalizing Iranian public around heroic resistance to the Great Satan or a lesser Satan in Tel Aviv, and to create enough chaos that some outside party might step in to save Iran from what otherwise would probably be an inevitable death spiral. They yearn for a return of Kerry-ism, or the chance that America’s naïve coastal elites will return to power and virtue-signal away whatever Tehran wants.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/proceed-with-caution-on-a-defense-pact-with-israel-11569538318

For all their longstanding defense ties, Israel and the U.S. have no mutual defense treaty. In the weeks before Israel’s Sept. 17 elections President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both spoke favorably of negotiating one. Whether they were serious or simply wanted to bolster Mr. Netanyahu’s political support is unclear. In any case, a few observations are in order.

The U.S. is party to various kinds of defense treaties. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is the most far-reaching. The treaty states that “an armed attack against one [ally] . . . shall be considered an attack against them all.” Other bilateral U.S. defense treaties create lesser obligations—to consult about threats, to recognize that an attack on one would endanger peace and safety of the other, to meet common dangers in accordance with one’s own constitutional processes.

American and Israeli officials have long refrained from negotiating a mutual defense treaty because it was judged unnecessary and potentially harmful to both countries. Israelis worried mainly about their own freedom of action; they didn’t want to have to ask U.S. permission before taking steps to defend their state. U.S. officials didn’t want to have to grant or deny such permission—or to “own” Israeli military operations.

Sometimes U.S. officials have been pleased when Israel took tough and risky military actions—against Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981, against terrorist leaders or operatives during the Second Intifada, and against Syria’s nuclear reactor in 2007. The U.S. could disavow any responsibility but, if the actions succeeded, benefit nonetheless.

In a crisis, the help the U.S. would give Israel (or Israel would give the U.S.) wouldn’t likely increase as a result of a mutual defense treaty. Historically, such assistance has been provided out of national interest, not legal obligation.

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/463077-will-us-iranian-miscalculation-bring-war

In the escalating, multi-dimensional conflict between Washington and Tehran, the growing risk of armed conflict centers around the same danger that plagues international relations in general: miscalculation.

President Donald Trump may believe that in sanctioning Iran’s central bank and sending more U.S. troops to the region in response to the recent suspected Iranian attack on Saudi oil facilities, he’s sending a clear message to Tehran.

But Iran’s leaders may not hear it. Instead, they may think that they can push the envelope of military action further – in light of Trump’s insistence that he doesn’t want war, his failure to respond militarily to Iran’s attack on a U.S. drone in June, his earlier empty threats of military action against Iran and North Korea, and decades of U.S. reluctance to respond forcefully to Iranian and other provocations.

The danger, of course, is that Tehran will push too far, and Trump will feel compelled to take military action, which could escalate quickly into a tit-for-tat of exchanges that lead to all-out war.

Miscalculation. It’s the danger that JFK sought to avoid as he exchanged messages with Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that George H.W. Bush sought to avoid when he signaled Saddam Hussein during the Persian Gulf War that Saddam’s use of chemical or biological weapons would mean the end of his regime.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019

The dismissal of John Bolton as US National Security Adviser brings back to the surface my continuing doubts about Donald Trump. Not that he is infinitely preferable to any likely Democrat challenger. Indeed, I am relieved that he won the presidency against the truly appalling Hillary Clinton.

The Mueller witch hunt was truly a long running farce, based on entirely false premise. The collusion with Putin narrative was always absurd and easily refuted by actions, pursued with vigour, by the Trump administration. We only have to cite missile defence for Poland, the supply of anti-tank weaponry to Ukraine for use against Russian-backed forces, the accelerated facilitation of oil and gas exploration in the United States, the large increase in the defence budget and the Trump Administration’s withdrawal from a nuclear arms limitation treaty with Russia,  to expose the absurdity of the notion that Trump is in Putin’s pocket.

In practical terms, Trump has been more robust in his dealings with our adversaries. He understands the use of power and has shown more willingness to confront both Iran and China. By and large, he has been more steadfast in the defence of allies. His use of the term, “America First” is sometimes seen as a throwback to the old isolationism of the 1930’s. But apart from his reluctance to become or stay involved in civil wars, for example Afghanistan, which short of outright colonial rule, is an unwinnable mess, alliance security is an integral element of what he sees as America’s national interest.

There are those who will contrast Trump’s reluctance to go to war with Bolton supposedly itching to go to war at the drop of a hat. This is nonsense. Both men are alike in understanding that, in this day and age, the main purpose of military power is to deter aggression and minimise miscalculation by potential adversaries. But I suspect that Bolton’s resignation underlines an essential difference between Ronald “Peace Through Strength” Reagan and Donald Trump.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14902/us-adversaries-nothing-to-fear-from-the-white

This [shooting down a US Navy drone] was a clear-cut act of provocation against the US in violation of international law, one that required a firm and decisive response from the White House.

Yet, having initially threatened to respond militarily, Mr Trump then changed his mind, thereby allowing the Iranians off the hook.

With Mr Trump’s focus firmly fixed on winning re-election in next year’s presidential election contest, the Iranian regime has probably concluded that the White House is determined to avoid all forms of overseas military intervention at any cost.

The result is that Iran — and other adversaries of the US, such as China, North Korea, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba and the Taliban — now may feel even more emboldened to continue their provocative actions in the Gulf and elsewhere, knowing that, so long as Mr Trump is in the White House, they do not have to fear they will be subjected to military retribution from Washington.

For all US President Donald Trump’s bluster that the US military is “locked and loaded”, the reality is that the White House has absolutely no interest in launching military action against Iran in retaliation for its involvement in the devastating attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure. It is a decision doubtless not lost on Iran.

On the contrary, for all Mr. Trump’s machismo posturing, the most the President can be expected to do is intensify the sanctions regime against Tehran, a move that is unlikely to strike fear into the hearts of Iran’s battle-hardened veterans of its Revolutionary Guard.

Indeed, the President’s disinclination to confront Iran over its increasingly aggressive conduct towards the US and its allies in the region appears only to have emboldened the ayatollahs to even greater acts of provocation, such as last weekend’s attacks on Saudi Arabia’s Khurais oil field and the Abqaiq oil processing facility, which resulted in the Saudis losing nearly 50 per cent of the country’s oil processing capacity and for a while sparked a sharp jump in oil prices.