President Trump’s decision last week to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria, and half the U.S. force currently in Afghanistan, was generally covered as a sign of mounting chaos in his administration: a president defying the counsel of his advisors, the disregard hammered home by the resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. The particulars of Mattis’ resignation letter added punch to his decision, laying out the ways in which he believes Donald Trump’s approach to defense and foreign policy departs from the mainstream beliefs advocated by the defense secretary.
The president’s decision to act precipitously on both fronts appears to carry real downsides for the United States. In Syria, it exposes the Kurdish fighters the U.S. has been backing to attacks by the Turks, who view them as terrorists. And in Afghanistan, the abrupt action seems to have undermined efforts to broker a peace with the Taliban. But much of the backlash to Trump’s actions, across the political spectrum and in opinion writing, has not only pointed to these specific harms, but has assumed that the president is acting in contravention of mainstream U.S. foreign policy. As suspect and ill-considered as Trump’s actions might be, and as disturbing is the possibility that he might have made them due to pressure from Vladimir Putin, these bipartisan assumptions are just as crazy.
How many Americans were aware that we have thousands of troops in Syria? Or that we still have 14,000 troops in Afghanistan? How is it that, if the U.S. withdraws from Syria, a NATO ally - Turkey - can be counted on to kill U.S. allies? How is it possible that we have occupied part of yet another country in the Middle East without a declaration of war? How is it that we’re still in Afghanistan, 17 years after 9/11, with the Taliban gaining strength in that country? Is it actually within any rational national interest to engage in perpetual warfare against ever-shifting and seemingly indestructible enemies in Middle Eastern countries already long-ravaged by violence and destruction? What, exactly, are the end goals, and are our policies actually achieving them?
But the kerfluffle around Trump’s moves on Syria and Afghanistan reveals a particular tragedy of our Trumpian moment: this man is so awful in and of himself that it is preventing us from re-examining the bad assumptions and self-defeating policies that have arguably contributed to his rise in the first place. This must be counted as one of the costs of this presidency: that we are distracted from discussions more fundamental than the horrors of this particular man. Instead, we now witness the obscene spectacle of a broad consensus that we had better just keep doing whatever we’ve been doing in Afghanistan and Syria, because Trump’s policy is even worse. Completely forestalled is any examination of whether what we’re doing in those counties makes any goddamned sense in the first place.
Much attention has been paid to Mattis’ references to a U.S. foreign policy based on alliances and partnerships, and how he has effectively called out Trump for abandoning this bedrock position of the U.S. But the idea of the U.S. placing itself at the center of systems of alliances meant to preserve world peace and U.S. security, which has been the case since the end of World War II, is hardly the whole story. Since 9/11, something fundamental has changed in U.S. foreign policy, as the U.S. has engaged in a series of wars and generalized violence across the Middle East that rests in dangerous contradiction with the idea that this country is all about alliances that preserve the peace. What I see in the coverage of Trump’s recent Syria/Afghanistan moves is a general impulse to conflate these two ideas: that in withdrawing from those countries, Trump is undermining our alliances and security. But being involved in active wars, and deciding whether to continue or end involvement in them, is an entirely different question from whether it’s in the national interest to have allies and security arrangements across the world.