It is typical of Trump to announce the most important policies and decisions on Twitter. It is for this very same reason he’s being criticized for destroying the U.S.’s 300-year-old political traditions.
This is not the only political tradition he is destroying anyway. Trump is a great example of how a president can be effective in the U.S.’s deeply rooted foreign policies and strategies. In fact, Trump is bringing the U.S.’s policies and strategies, which were once thought as historic and unchanging by many to a much more realistic place. He makes things more humane, although those policies are not humane all the time. Thus, the postmodern character our dear friend Yusuf Kaplan mentioned in his column yesterday brings us closer to making sense of the contemporary world. However, of course, it is not enough to understand everything, just as no theory alone can be enough to make sense of everything. It is clear that today’s international relations are not emblematic of a unipolar or bipolar world order. Most of the time, a country’s internal democratic dynamics constitute the greatest threats to that country’s foreign policy and prevent it from following a consistent foreign policy without any disruptions.
Especially in a country such as the U.S. where the separation of powers is not only limited to the legislature, executive and judiciary branches but also encompass the business world, families, occupational groups, non-governmental organizations, press and lobbying activities all impact the country’s foreign policy, which is open to all kinds of influences.
That is why one should not attribute only one political position to the U.S. and expect that it will follow the same trajectory forever.
Actually, the U.S.’s policies in the Middle East, from the perspective of the U.S.’s interests are policies that do not fit into any kind of rational framework. Nothing threatens the U.S. more than its own policies. The U.S.’s invasion of Iraq might seem like a profitable business from the outside, but when we consider its results, we realize the consequences of an operation which only brought profit to some arms lobbies and forced Americans and the country’s national assets in general to pay huge amounts of debts.
The U.S.’s Israel policies are not in the interest of the U.S. either. These policies antagonize the people of the Middle East for the sake of Israel and they will eventually cause the U.S. to lose in the region.
There are people in the U.S. who look at all of this and at times invite the country to self-reflect. However, the dominant and influential opinion is usually that of those who don’t abstain from dragging a superpower to pursue short-term benefits. Because, in today’s conjuncture, their opinions are more influential since they are more organized, and they are more accustomed to the mechanisms that shape U.S. policies.
Interestingly enough, the mechanisms which shape U.S. policies are not outside the reach of anyone. Anyone who wants to be a part of these mechanisms can easily find a way in for themselves and this actually makes the U.S. a more changeable and dynamic country. There are some advantages for this dynamism and probably the will that built the U.S. probably was willing to overlook its weaknesses and disadvantages only for the sake of this dynamism.
In the end, whoever decided the U.S.’s current policies in Syria did not take into account the U.S.’s long-term interests and did not act in accordance with that. Especially, whoever diverted the U.S. in its fight against a terrorist group, Daesh, to form an alliance with another terrorist organization, the YPG or PYD, is not a friend of the U.S. On the contrary, it is a mindset that will eventually bog down the U.S.
At the end of the day, there is a country which allies itself with a terrorist group in its fight against another terrorist group, which goes against its ally of 70 years, NATO member Turkey, and which risks the danger of becoming a malicious country in everyone’s eyes, despite all the efforts it made in Syria, all the expenditures and all time spent. Again, at the end of the day, when one asks what will the U.S. gain from such a policy? The answer is nothing other than utter failure.
In this perspective, the decision to withdraw from Syria announced by Trump on twitter reflects the rational decision to own-up to one’s faults. In fact, as he mentioned in his following tweets, what made Trump make this decision is his previous ideas about this matter. From this perspective, at least Trump has a consistent approach regarding the Syria issue. From the beginning, he has been approaching this issue by questioning what is his country looking for in Syria or even in the Middle East?
This approach is, in fact, the exact opposite of the dominant paradigm in the U.S. Even though the reflection of this new paradigm are different in Israel and Palestine issue, this approach can reshape the course of the foreign policy for the U.S. and it seems that it will be more accepted by the American people.
Another dimension of the issue is the fact that the U.S. has already started to lose its demeanor and attitude of acting like a superpower. No one would have objected if it had used its superpower status by joining an international coalition against a dictator who massacres his own people and by working sincerely to ensure human rights in the country and by putting an end to the massacres.
Moreover, an operation which would remain within those borders and which would become successful in all these objectives would earn the respect of the whole world and therefore the U.S.’s superpower status would have been reaffirmed. However, after entering Syria, the U.S. found itself in a complete mess by deviating from its initial aim as it started to fight a murderous organization like Daesh which was dangled before it (by some force or other or even by itself for different purposes). It is indeed true that a fault confessed is half redressed and the U.S. will owe Turkey and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a lot for helping them make this decision. The operation Turkey is determined to carry out East of Euphrates, has without a shred of doubt, proven to be essential for the U.S. to recognize its own realities.
