Trump’s Syria decision was essentially correct. Here’s how he can make the most of it.

Washington Post - opinion section ^ | 12/27/2018 | Robert S. Ford

[BenLurkin]

Many observers have asserted that the withdrawal gives victory in Syria to Russia, Iran and the Syrian government. That’s absurd. Bashar al-Assad’s regime already controls about two-thirds of Syria, including all of the major cities. The portion of Syria that U.S. forces control alongside their Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) allies is mostly either desert or drought-prone plains. The oil fields there produce high-sulfur, low-value crude, and production has long been diminishing. Oil revenue made up only about 5 percent of Syrian gross domestic product before the 2011 uprising, according to the International Monetary Fund. In sum, holding northeastern Syria would not have enabled Washington to leverage any important concessions from Damascus, Tehran or Moscow.

Stability, not a deeply embattled Syrian Kurdish autonomous zone, is the vital long-term U.S. interest in northeastern Syria. Turkey can accept with conditions the return of Syrian government forces into the area, as Russia and Iran want....

The United States’ erstwhile friends, the Syrian Kurds, have always allowed Damascus to keep its security keep its security offices open in northeastern Syria; the Kurds never closed that channel of communication. If anything, the Syrian Kurds prefer the deployment of Syrian government forces along the Turkish border to deter Ankara. Agile Russian diplomacy should be able to secure the deal for an orderly, perhaps gradual, deployment of those Syrian government forces into the region formerly controlled by the United States.

... Yaakov Amidror, a former chief of Israeli military intelligence, noted that the U.S. troops’ contribution against the Iranian forces in Syria was “marginal to zero.” If Iran tries to build a land bridge from Tehran to its allies in Lebanon, the Israeli Air Force is more than capable of interdicting those convoys.

[BenLurkin]

Robert S. Ford, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and Yale University, was U.S. ambassador to Syria from 2011 to 2014.

[Celerity]

Who is saying it’s right to leave a warzone if there is no oil now?

[BeauBo]

Sounds like just sour grapes about the oil fields - oh that’s just sour crude oil anyway.

“If anything, the Syrian Kurds prefer the deployment of Syrian government forces along the Turkish border to deter Ankara.”

That did not work very well for them in Afrin.

Leaving that territory to either Turkey or Assad would be a loss for the USA and our allies. Turkey supports the jihadis and Assad will let Iran run up to the Mediterranean and Israeli border.

There may be a plan to leave the Kurds in control East of the Euphrates, without 2,000 Americans there. I hope so.

[Migraine]

I liked this editorial.

It come from a man who knows the geopolitical situation in Syria, and who the players are, and has a fairly reliable sense of “what would happen, if...” And he concludes that very little would change as a result of our boots leaving.

I sense that Trump’s purposes have been realized, i.e., dealing a major hurt to ISIS, ergo, pull back and watch from just outside theater.

[wbarmy]

We are not leaving the war zone, we have plenty of troops right across the border in Iraq to deal with whatever needs to be dealt with.

We were not there for the oil, so we are not leaving because there is no oil.

And we should not have been in Syria in the first place. Obama was involving us in a civil war.

[glorgau]

> And we should not have been in Syria in the first place. Obama was involving us in a civil war.

Yep, that’s the bottom line.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks BenLurkin. It's so surprising that Erdogan's familiar and Khashoggi's former employer and Muslim Brotherhood supporters at the ComPost see it that way.