Payday for Putin

Or maybe Erdogan. We're pulling out of Syria (via Joe.My.God.):

The Wall Street Journal reports:

In an abrupt reversal, the U.S. military is preparing to withdraw its forces from northeastern Syria, people familiar with the matter said Wednesday, a move that throws the American strategy in the Middle East into turmoil.

U.S. officials began informing partners in northeastern Syria of their plans to begin immediately pulling American forces out of the region where they have been trying to wrap up the campaign against Islamic State, the people said.

The move follows a call last week between President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has threatened to launch an assault on America’s Kurdish partners in Syria.

This is what precipitated the move:

(Via this post from Cheryl Rofer at Balloon Juice, which goes on the give a good idea of the confusion this is causing among officials and pundits alike.)

My first reaction when I heard about this was "He's just handed Syria to Russia and Iran." I'm not the only one who thinks so. And Putin, of course, is delighted:

CNN's Alisyn Camerota announced that Putin is supporting Trump's announced and sudden withdrawal from Syria.

"This is happening right now during his end of the year news conference," Camerota said. "Russian President Vladimir Putin, says he agrees with President Trump's decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria and he adds that Trump is right about ISIS being defeated. Leaders of other countries disagree. CNN's Nathan Hodge is live in Moscow with more. Give us the headlines, Nathan."

"Alisyn, President Trump's decision that may have caused a lot of consternation for some, but it's an early Christmas president for Vladimir Putin, who is undergoing his annual ritual of his marathon interview session with the international press, and it's a chance to review his year on the world stage, and today he had big news to respond to with Trump's decision to pull troops from Syria. That's something the Russian government wanted to see, and Russian officials have been talking for a long time that the U.S. has no legal basis to be in Syria. . . .

"But this really does fulfill part of Putin's playbook wish list. Russia seems to be in the pole position in Syria, correct?" John Avlon said.

"That's right. Putin intervened in Syria to prop up the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2015 and turn the tide of the conflict in his favor. Russia, with the assistance, of course, of Iran, what Russia really wants to do and what it has been doing over the past months, is shaping outcomes in Syria, shaping what the peace will look like, and they are now the ones who are going to be the dominating factor here."

He's also left Turkey a free hand with the Kurds.

And here are some thoughts from Adam Silverman at Balloon Juice, who has, it seems, first-hand knowledge of what's Syria is all about.

Trump has just removed us as a force in the Middle East -- if this actually happens. (I'm more than a little ambivalent about our role as the world's policeman, but it strikes me that we've been pursuing a foreign policy since WWII that falls under the rubric Pax Americana, a successor to the Pax Britannica of the nineteenth century: to quote Teddy Roosevelt, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." We've managed to avoid a major conflagration, and while we haven't stopped wars, we've kept them within limits. Trump is throwing that all in the trash.)

MAGA!