Turning Syria over to Russia ..Trump's long standing desire

Update: 10/17/19
Trump's desire to leave Syria to the Russians date to his campaign and is a thread throughout his presidency.  The Kurds, our point of the speer against ISIS, our ally, he has now abandoned and they will be seeking protection from the Turkish invasion to which Trump gave a greenlight.  Here is a column that I posted in December 2016 referring to his position in September 2016 when he was a candidate.  The 10/17/19 "ceasefire" did not change the outcome; it only delayed it 5 days and left Russia in the driver's seat.

The heartbreak of the humanitarian disaster in Aleppo has created a great deal of finger pointing. Many wish Pres. Obama had not decided to have taken a hands off position. . However, the puzzle is what Donald Trump would have done differently and what he will decide to do when he takes office. He indicated in the campaign he would have done even less, leaving the country's civil war to Russia and Assad. Those two were the perpetrators and deserve universal condemnation. The irony may be that by the time he takes office, facts on the ground will have already made any decision by him moot. The winners, Russia and Assad, will have become the reality. Barack Obama, justly or unjustly, will have a blot on his legacy for being the enabler by his decision to ignore the crossing of the red line he himself painted several years ago.

To see this in a larger context going forward, what is going to be Don Trump's relationship with Russia? Will he also abandon the Ukraine, the Baltic states to Russian stealth takeover? Will he lead NATO into an eclipse by not evoking military and political protection of the Baltics who are members of NATO? Will he recognize Russian takeover of eastern Ukraine and the de facto annexation of the Crimea? Will he see Russia as a threat to the US, in spite of the US intelligence agencies verifying their interference in our elections, or Vladimir Putin as a friend and mentor to him personally?

To take clues of where he had been in the campaign as a way to predict the future, it is possible that he will support Russia's foreign policy, and would have supported it in Syria, too.

This is a partial reposting of a blog I authored September 8 and it was written even before Trump tapped the President of Exxon who had received a medal of friendship from Vladimir Putin to be our new Secretary of State.

"Donald Trump in the recent "Commander in Chief" forum called Vladimir Putin a better leader than President Obama.  That bromance between Trump and Putin is more than just a matter of flattery and egos.  It has real repercussions for future conduct of foreign policy if Trump is elected. Trump supports foreign policies that dovetail neatly with Russia's,, excusing the Russian grab of the Crimea, going along with the stealth invasion of Eastern Ukraine, calling NATO obsolete as a military defense alliance, and fuzzy about whether Russia's ally Assad in Syria must go. None of those policies are in America's or our allies' interests."

In fact, if Pres. Obama's leadership in the region is regarded by his critics as "weak", Donald Trump's leaving the field to Russia in areas of conflict in Europe, would be even weaker, and hardly is a way to make "America Great again" as a world leader. Instead, it helps make Russia great again.

http://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2016/09/trumps-foreign-policy-make-russia-great.html

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/vice-presidential-debate-putin-mike-pence-donald-trump-229147

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/28/politics/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-quotes/

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-exclusive-idUSKCN12P2PZ

Going rogue

https://www.yahoo.com/news/mitch-mcconnell-trump-syria-turkey-kurds-181642374.html
10/16/19: Nancy Pelosi to Donald Trump: "all roads with you lead to Putin"

It is a rare day in US politics when both the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel, a Republican, and Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of House, ia Democrat, are on the same page...opposing Trump's pulling US forces from our Kurdish colleagues in northern Syria. This is not the first time there has been overwhelming bi-partisan agreement and that was Congress' appropriation to supplying military aid to Ukraine. Both are national security questions, but Ukraine is entangled in Trump's domestic political support since it has to do with Russia and his bromance with foreign policy goals of Russa and Putin. Russia is seen as a support group for Trump's elections in 2016 and 2020 balanced with concerns for possible Russian involving NATO in a conflict. Aid to non-NATO Ukraine is popular among both parties to stop Russia before they get the idea they have an open road to take over the Baltics, NATO members. Trump has already stated he did not care much for the mutual defense of the Baltics by NATO. Syria is another situation: there is no conflict among GOP Senators about the Syrian conflict because it involves ISIS. They understand the repercussions of Trump's singular policy of letting Turkey wipe out our Kurdish allies. It would unleash ISIS again to re-emerge as terrorists, and maybe reestablish the lands they once controlled as a Caliphate. Perhaps the GOP and devoted GOP supporters are beginning to realize that their President has gone rogue, out of control of even their party leaders, and ignoring the firestorm he has sparked.in even defying them. After the issue had been discussed, leading to the resignation of Gen. Mattis, who could not support leaving the Kurds high and dry without US air support and supplies and special forces skills. In a spur of a nighttime call with Turkey's President Erdogan, Trump ordered the withdrawal and standdown of US troops without any further consultation with anyone, Pentagon, Senate .. Erdogan a near dictator of Turkey, is rumored to running into opposition in his own homeland and may be needing to rally Turks around the flag . We must remember, too, that Turkey has a frightening record of conducting ethnic cleansing, destroying ethnic Armenians. The Kurds are right to fear any movement of Turkish troops will result in ethnic cleansing of Kurds, who Turkey considers terrorists, not US allies.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/16/trumps-syria-expected-condemned-house-vote/3992184002/?csp=chromepush

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/11/military-officers-trump/598360/?fbclid=IwAR30A4lhDWJpW47rziJErAVCFNH21ZC_B9NbEgQaPV4lZCkS1AgIpuThW80

So what's wrong with Trump using military aid to shake down Ukraine?

Updated October 5, 2019 and revision.

A version of this was published in Winter Park Times as Whose side is Trump on anyway?  10/11/19
https://winterparktimes.com/opinion/columnists/whose-side-is-trump-on-anyway/

So what is wrong with withholding military aid from a foreign country to get them to do your bidding? President  Donald Trump asks. If it serves our national interests, no problem. If it does not, what then?  Late last month a whistleblower stepped forward to complain that Trump's use of withholding military aid to Ukraine was for Trump's own self-serving political benefit. The second whistleblower coming forth it appears has the first-hand knowledge of Trump's pressuring the Ukrainian government.  With the late September White House release of a memorandum of a telephone call on July 25 between Trump and the newly elected president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky,  it was revealed Trump tied denial and granting of military aid to promote his personal domestic political advantage in his campaign for reelection in 2020.  The week before the call Trump had frozen the military aid. President Zelensky said he was ready to get the aid needed to fight a hot war with Russia within their borders.  Donald Trump immediately replied," I have some favors to ask, though.." Those favors Trump asked included finding evidence Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in 2016 elections and for Ukraine to provide dirt on Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son's business dealings in Ukraine. Trump viewed Joe Biden as his most likely challenger for his re-election in 2020.   The result was that the House of Representatives with Democrats in the majority opened a formal impeachment inquiry to see if there was cause to impeach President Trump for compromising US  national security by seeking dirt from a foreign leader on a political rival for his own domestic political benefit. In depositions in the House committees, just resigned US envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, provided a series of emailed conversations with fellow US diplomats that verified  withholding military aid and an invitation for Zelensky to  visit the White House were used as sticks and carrots  to get  a reluctant  Zelensky to reopen a previously dead-end investigations into Hunter Biden's business dealings with a Ukraine energy company. Trump also asked Ukraine to open an investigation to blame themselves for foreign interference in the US 2016 election instead of Russia. The Senate Intelligence committee chair released their findings that it was indeed Russia, not Ukraine, that did the meddling in 2016.https://www.cbsnews.com/news/senate-intelligence-committee-report-on-2016-russian-election-interference-offers-roadmap-for-2020-meddling/

 None of this happens in a vacuum. A reason Trump may be  did not care much if Ukraine was weakened for lack of military aid  fits into Trump's questionable  bromance with Russia's President Vladimir Putin and his seeming support of Putin's foreign policy goals  of expansion into their former  Eastern European USSR satellites,  most of whom were protected by a mutual defense treaty by virtue of their membership in NATO. One member gets attacked, and all come to its defense.  Stopping Russia in Ukraine upfront would prevent another war from spreading to the rest of Europe.  Ukraine is not a  NATO member, but its western leaning government is dependent on US aid since Russia took over Crimea and conducted hot warfare to grab  Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. 13,000  Ukrainians had already died in the conflict.  As the result of Russia's interference in the 2016 elections exposed by US intelligence agencies and a special counsel investigation, western democracies and the US  had slapped economic sanctions on Russia that hurt their economy and Putin's oligarch pals.  Rarely have both political parties been unanimous about anything, but Congress has had a full bi-partisan agreement that it is in US security interests to help Ukraine fight off the Russians and they had approved and funded military aid.   From his 2016  campaign and into his administration, Trump had tried to weaken NATO. He called NATO's mutual defense mission obsolete. He threatened to withdraw using the European lack of promised funding as an excuse. He has also tried to lift sanctions on Russia and has sought to get Russia off the hook for their active measures to help him get elected in 2016 and shift blame to Ukraine. This would provide Trump with an excuse to end Russian sanctions. This summer Trump diverted money allocated by Congress for improving NATO's defense to funds to build his wall. He froze funding to Ukraine for anti-tank weapons to use in this latest shakedown and extortion of Ukraine.  This begs the question: Whose side is Trump on, anyway.

___________________________________________________________________

Trump helps Russia be great again again. Trump gave  green light to Turkey to invade northern Syria to hit the Kurds .  The winner: Russia

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a29365548/trump-ukraine-texts-diplomats-smoking-gun/    /Writer calls Trump's attempts John leCarre meets the Marx Brothers and the

evidence a smoking arsenal.  It puts things in perspective in a way only humor can do.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/trump-declines-to-affirm-natos-article-5/528129/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/07/21/donald-trump-cast-doubt-on-the-baltics-involvement-in-nato-heres-what-they-actually-do/

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-defense/2018/07/12/trump-meets-with-afghanistan-war-partners-277146    

      and threatens to pull out of NATO

https://www.yahoo.com/news/pentagon-officials-deemed-withholding-of-aid-to-ukraine-was-illegal-090046566.html

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/03/politics/chairs-on-volker/index.html

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trumps-ukraine-call-transcript-read-the-document

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/04/767080125/texts-show-top-u-s-diplomat-in-ukraine-concerned-over-possible-quid-pro-quo

...the newly released emails presented by Kurt Volkertale.https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/03/politics/chairs-on-volker/index.html Pay attention to page 9 and 10.

History and timelines of sanctions against Russia for Ukraine incursions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during_the_Ukrainian_crisis

https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/09/25/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-us-aid-package-to-ukraine-that-trump-delayed/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/01/barrs-probing-australia-great-britain-italy-suggest-conspiratorial-focus/

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/26/us/politics/whistle-blower-complaint.html

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/25/us/politics/trump-ukraine-transcript.html

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-admin-approves-sale-anti-tank-weapons-ukraine/story?id=65989898

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-01/state-department-backs-39-million-javelin-package-for-ukraine

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-invention-of-the-conspiracy-theory-on-biden-and-ukraine?fbclid=IwAR0ZOA6Tk1BZ7xVOyLJgRpxrGvUlkx8S

https://www.rferl.org/a/death-toll-up-to-13-000-in-ukraine-conflict-says-un-rights-office/29791647.html

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/senate-intelligence-committee-report-on-2016-russian-election-interference-offers-roadmap-for-2020-meddling/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/03/may-ukrainian-oligarch-said-giuliani-was-orchestrating-clear-conspiracy-against-biden/

http://www.npr.org/2017/06/02/531269090/trump-administration-made-secret-efforts-to-ease-russia-sanction

http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/29/politics/russia-sanctions-announced-by-white-house/index.html

Observing Veterans Day with more prospects of wounded warriors

Observance of Veterans Day November 11 should serve as a reminder that there is a human cost to combat. On Memorial Day last May, we honored those who died. On Veterans Day we honor those who came home, including the wounded. There are those who advocate more robust military combat to stop our current threat, ISIS. Are we, the American public, ready to add another war to the list of those generating veterans and seeing  the heartbreaking  images again on TV  of wounded warriors returning home?

The US finds our forces again in Iraq, continuing in Afghanistan, and now making raids into Syria, albeit in a reduced numbers and very limited combat roles. Reality has begun to set in: more US dead and wounded can be expected.

That the American public is “war weary” is a given. Almost no politician on the left and right is advocating an Iraq style invasion and occupation. No wonder. Over six thousand US troops have returned in body bags and caskets since 2003. But the numbers who died are only a small part of the total casualties, thanks to modern battle field medicine saving lives that would in the past have been lost. Those wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq total over 18,000. Some estimate a million. What we have to show for it is war without end, the rise of ISIS and resurgence of the Taliban and post conflict governments that have failed to stop either.

A political firestorm erupted with the announcement that the Obama administration is sending fifty more special forces have been added to the estimated 3500 US troops in northern Iraq and the 10000 forces in Afghanistan.  Politicians are quick to opine whether there are too many or too few or they are jeering at broken promises and blaming premature withdrawal or parsing the definition of boots on the ground and combat, while providing no alternatives that have not failed in the past.

The only hope to limit mission creep is to bring an end to the conflicts that threaten our own security before there is no other Iraq style alternative left. Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations on recent Morning Joe (November 2)and Fareed Zakaria’s CNN GPS (November 1)  advocates realistic goals regarding Syria and Iraq, understanding that we neither have allies within Syria we can train nor the will for extensive combat ourselves to defeat ISIS there or to overthrow Assad.  Instead, we need to buy time to get Sunni tribes and Kurds in northern Iraq strong enough to stop the advance of ISIS and to reach a realization among combatants that further violence is futile. At that point a political solution of dividing Syria into ethnic enclaves might work. His approach appears to be the administration strategy.

 The hope is that while every combatant group that has its own agenda, many of Syria’s neighbors also fear an ISIS/Al Qaeda dominated Sunni control of the region. We should be applauding the US diplomatic initiative to seek a political solution in Syria, including Secretary of State John Kerry’s negotiations that involve Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kurds and the sending of more US special ops to help what effective allies we have.

For more, see prior  posts of 10/19/15, Why military intervention does not work;  6/14/15, Time to Dust Off Joe Biden’s plan?; 5/9/15, Musings on differences between Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day

A version of this was published in the www.skyhidailynews.com  November 5, 6 ,2015

Fareed Zakaria brings a different view  and makes the parallel between the Obama policy and US mission creep in Viet Nam.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-dangers-of-incrementalism/2015/11/05/22aad1de-83f9-11e5-9afb-0c971f713d0c_story.html

http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/security-military/us-military-casualty-statistics-costs-war-iraq-afghanistan-post-911

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccaruiz/2013/11/04/report-a-million-veterans-injured-in-iraq-afghanistan-wars/

Iraq air strikes: too little, too late or will it work?

President Obama, the reluctant warrior, showed flexibility in using military force when US interests and overwhelming humanitarian needs were at stake and he authorized air strikes against ISIS in northern Iraq.  His critics, the same who had urged him to take more military action in nearly every crisis, are left to whine that he does not have a consistent overall foreign policy. News flash:  He does.  The more pertinent questions should be is this action too little, too late, or will it work?  

First, does President Obama even have a foreign policy?  Yes.  It is just not the one hawks like, but it is one for which he was elected.  The list:  Avoid more ground wars and withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan.  Use diplomatic engagement and other means to forward American interests, provide humanitarian aid, or to protect national security, with military engagement a last resort.  Bring in neighbors, allies, and others.  Promote self-governance that is inclusive, effective, and no springboard for terrorists to attack the West.  Much of this was restated in his interview with Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times on August 8.

Are Obama’s strategy and tactics consistent with that policy?  Obama did not wait for a slaughter to happen first as President Clinton did in Bosnia.  Instead, he used military action to head off ethnic cleansing of minority Christians, Kurds, and others. He has involved the UK and France to deliver humanitarian aid.

Should he have intervened in Syria to cripple ISIS’s rise?  If the US had supplied weapons to Syrian rebels, they most likely would have found their way to ISIS, which was also a major part of the rebel force. Sometimes no action is wiser than action.

He is pressuring Baghdad regime change to promote an inclusive and effective Baghdad.  It is a work in progress. Prime Minister al-Maliki had laid the seeds for ISIS when he became a Shia despot, persecuting and excluding Sunnis from government.  The result: ISIS was welcomed by Sunni villages and Sunni members of the Iraq military, enabling the rapid advance nearly to the gates of Baghdad.

Obama has forsworn a ground war while he was decisive in ordering air strikes.  The old truism, air strikes alone do not win wars, holds water if there are no boots on the ground to fight.  Air superiority has worked before when there were other armed forces fighting the ground war.  In the early 1990s in Bosnia and in Kosovo, President Clinton belatedly authorized US airpower through NATO to give support to Muslims fighting the Bosnian Serbs and Serbian Kosovars, bent on establishing a greater Serbia cleansed of Muslims.  It resulted in a diplomatic resolution.

The Kurds are the best fighters in Iraq.  With US weapons, training, and air support, the plan is for Kurds to get time to gather strength and slow down ISIS’s advance to Baghdad, giving an opportunity for Baghdad to get its act and resolve together and fight its own war.

A version of this blog appears as a column in the August 14, 15 various editions of the www.skyhidailynews.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/09/opinion/president-obama-thomas-l-friedman-iraq-and-world-affairs.html?emc=eta1&_r=0

--