Nothing gets a tyrant’s blood pumping like a clean opportunity to wipe out large swaths of the opposition. At its heart autocratic rule is lazy. Instead of having to come up with ideas and sell populations on vision and it’s necessary details, the dictator merely has to excel at intrigue and deceit, weathering and eliminating the enemies he makes in the process. Purges and pogroms are much easier than election cycles and debates. Common sense dictates vulnerable democracies make the going easier for would be strong men because the opposition ties a hand behind their back by adhering to established rules and restrictions the usurper never gave a thought to obeying. Honor and decency are most always liabilities when confronting those with neither.
History is filled with examples of the right men doing the right thing at exactly the wrong time… and ending up a footnote in the storyline of a monster’s rise to absolute power. Today, while it is not hard to find tyrants no matter what part of the globe your eye wonders toward, Turkey is noteworthy because of its membership in NATO, presumably an alliance existing to protect democratic nations from encroachments ordered by unbound autocrats like Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s increasingly undemocratic President.
Surreality is now the watch word, as America First disdain targets “unfair” elected European leaders bent on taking advantage of our good graces, while simultaneously making common cause with an autocrat not at all interested in processes he views primarily as impediments to his top priority… consolidating and increasing his own fortunes. As Erdogan rises, Turkey’s Kurds, the country’s largest minority, stand to suffer most. Their very existence long labeled a threat to national security, Erdogan sees his fortunes tied to persecuting Kurdish interests as a unifying theme he can use to distract from his systematic attacks on what’s left of Turkish democracy. Of course, neither Donald Trump or the wretched core he owes his political survival to know a Kurd from Adam. More importantly, neither cares anything about the dangers they face at the hands of his “great friend” Erdogan, who it seems can call directly anytime and chat despite the fact that Turkey supports the very ISIL elements the US has 2000 men stationed in Syria to help destroy!
Trump’s outlook is always minute-to-minute, a rabid survey based more on visceral impulse than any coherent strategic paradigm. The more complicated the scenario, the less his determination to adequately understand it. Human rights concerns certainly don’t encroach on his vapid obtuseness because… what’s in it for him? Yet and still, remember, he has campaign pledges to keep. Forty years after Jimmy Carter learned how hard promising to make human rights a guiding principle of US policy could make geopolitical life, we have a Chief Executive who doesn’t give the subject even a first thought. Ignorance is more than bliss, it’s a constant of this Administration.
There is no killing field in the world flowing deeper red than Turkey’s neighbor, Syria. It is where the Arab Spring morphed into Hell’s winter and nobody has been spared. Russia and Iran have backed embattled dictator Bashar al Assad’s savage efforts to remain in power since the start, a relentless assault by any means necessary, including gas, to put down an uprising that would have succeeded long ago had his benefactors not backed him to the hilt regardless of atrocity. As the country was carved into military spheres of influence, the failing nation-state’s small Kurdish population were ceded their own turf and defended it with militias formidable enough to prove invaluable to American efforts to defeat ISIL, an ugly mutation of Iraq’s endless conflict. But this is the land of the enemy of my enemy, and an ISIL caliphate, while the preponderant bipartisan boogie man of US politics, represented to Erdogan an attractive thorn in the side of Kurdish ambitions. Thus, Turkey, in direct conflict with stated American national interests, has remained a steady ISIL patron.
Does Trump even understand this? Not likely, and Erdogan certainly isn’t going to be the one to explain it to him, not after the President gift wrapped him the best holiday gift he could ask for, hasty withdrawal of the US contingent from Syria. Doing so fully betrays the Syrian Kurds, who have been primarily responsible for “wiping out” -Trump’s term as he constantly crows about it as his unparalleled feat of leadership – a burgeoning Islamic caliphate. A recklessly paced US withdrawal will leave Kurdish territory in Syria sandwiched between remaining elements of ISIL, who Turkey will quickly move to revitalize, and Turkish forces with no problem crossing the border to destroy its enemy. No good deed goes unpunished more than one done for the most ungrateful being on Earth, who we saw fit to elect President.
Of course, those who DO understand its full implications, most notably now former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, recognize the move for the unfettered idiocy it conveys. Our credibility as an ally is a cumulative continuum that defines our status as leader of the free world. Trump cares not a fig about either; his is a soulless existence dedicated to minute-to-minute tallies of who are “fair” to him and, thus, his “great friends.” America First is allies last, treating them with the same degree of fickleness Trump is notorious for, and the calamity is difficult to overstate. US global leadership is now officially past tense.
The President stayed at the White House for Christmas because even he can appreciate how bad the optics of daily rounds with the PGA’s finest at Doral would be in the face of a government shutdown he alone made happen . He apparently became stir crazy enough to overcome his fright of visiting Middle East war zones and headed to Iraq, a decision no doubt as hasty as his determination to leave Syria. Speaking to troops at al-Assad Air Base, Trump incredibly criticized their chain of command, except of course himself, for dallying on his Syria order. He then unintentionally fingered his assertion that up to 30,000 remaining ISIL fighters were figments of US government and the UN’s imaginations as just another of his constant stream of lies by justifying our continued presence in Iraq as necessary to monitor the supposedly decimated group’s status. That metric will surely immediately begin to rise as his soulmate Erdogan moves swiftly to reinvigorate ISIL’s efforts to erase Syrian Kurds.
The attractiveness of Trumpism to its supporters has always rested on the same deadly sin that makes vibrant democracy so loathsome to authoritarians… common laziness. World leadership is hard complicated work that requires often thankless sacrifice; who needs it?! Who cares if Kurdish regulars died fighting a common enemy, in that part of the world its catch as catch can; America First offers nothing more than relationships of convenience, and we’ll decide when they are no longer practical. One ally is as expendable as the next. Moreover, it’s none of our affair how other people are mistreated; business is business. Besides, who’s really keeping track? Surely nobody when we were being played for chumps and paying all the freight.
The frightful legacy of the Trump Presidency promises many damaging elements, none worse than our tarnished reputation as a reliable ally. The day other nations fully reject us as anything other than the reflection of our petty and self-consumed current President, we will be grievously wounded and adrift in world then infinitely more dangerous than in October of 2016. In the meantime, most Americans won’t care at all as Kurds in Syria fight for their survival in the wake of breathtaking betrayal by one man, who surely won’t give it a passing thought. They will join countless others on an ever growing list of those who learned the hard way relying on Donald Trump is a very bad situation that he will always make worse. BC