Turkey invaded Syria on
October 9, 2019 “to flush Kurds allied with the US out of northeastern Syria.”[1]
Strategically, Turkey wanted to distance the Kurds from Turkey so they could
not aid Kurdish separatists in Turkey should the latter rise up in attempting
to establish Kurdistan. U.S. President Don Trump, who had just cleared American
troops from northeastern Syria, had advanced knowledge from Turkish President
Recep Erdogan that he planned to invade the area once the American troops were
out. A rare bipartisan unity in Congress criticized the removal of American
troops and the president’s acquiescence on Turkey’s plan to attach the Kurds,
an American ally—a plan that could possibly give ISIS a toehold in the region.
Both the Congress and the president had their respective rationales, yet
neither side looked past the apparent dichotomy to arrive at a solution
consistent with the points made by both sides.
Backing up the arguments made
by the bipartisan critics in Congress, “Pentagon and State Department officials
had advised Trump against making the move, arguing a US presence is needed to
counter ISIS and keep Iran and Russia, both influential inside Syria, in check.”[2]
Rep. Ro Khanna asked why the president would not at least have asked for a
concession from Turkey. That the U.S. was turning its back on “allies who [had]
died fighting for a US cause” was also objectionable.[3]
Certainly some erosion of trust could be expected. Help the Americans on one of
their causes and the next administration may turn on you anyway. To put friends
in harm’s way and disavow any responsibility that goes with having received
help points to a deep character flaw. While less obvious than is the mentality
in preemptively invading another state, the U.S. President’s treatment of the
Kurds was also culpable (and the U.S. Government had also preemptively invaded
another state—Iraq).
President Trump’s rationale
stemmed from his opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the long,
senseless war that ensued. He pointed, moreover, to the eight trillion dollars spent
by the U.S. and all the dead and wounded American soldiers “fighting and
policing in the Middle East.”[4]
He had campaigned on getting out of such long, senseless wars whose benefits to
the U.S. do not justify the costs in lives and money. His solution in gradually
pulling out American forces involved leaving a power-void that could be
exploited or filled by adversaries. For example, ISIS could establish more of a
presence in northeastern Syria under Turkish occupation. The Syrian Democratic
Forces wrote that they were suspending military operations against ISIS in
northern Syria following the “Turkish aggression.”[5]
I submit that both the concerns
of the Congressional critics and President Trump could have been obviated had
the U.S., a major financial contributor to the United Nations, sponsored a
resolution in the Security Council for U.N. peacekeeping troops to replace the
American forces in northeastern Syria. A contingent coalition could have been
put together should Turkey have invaded anyway. American geopolitical interests
would have favored a peace-keeping force over a force that could enable the
spread of ISIS (like Turkey).
In general terms, the more the
world organization of countries can step into troubled areas in peace-keeping
roles, the less the world will have to rely on self-interested large countries,
such as the U.S., to act as a global policeman. A conflict of interest exists
in having one of the state-actors to be such a policeman because the temptation
will be to put the state-actor’s own strategic interests above peace-keeping. I contend elsewhere that even if the state does not indulge such a temptation, the conflict-of-interest arrangement, which includes such temptation, is inherently unethical because of the existence of the temptation, given human nature.[6] In
northeastern Syria, the U.S. was oriented to rooting out (and preventing) ISIS
more than keeping the peace. Even if the official American objective had been peace-keeping, the U.S. would have been tempted to attack new ISIS outposts. Especially in political realism (but also in neorealism), to assume that a state would not act in its own strategic interests is naive.
Had the U.S. pursued the U.N. option, the tension
between the Congressional critics and the administration could have been
avoided. This type of problem-resolution—a third way—is particularly beneficial
in cases in which both sides to a dispute have good points. I suspect the human
mind, whether from nature or nurture, goes to either-or dichotomies too
readily. The back-and-forth in a debate is supposed to come to the better
answer, but what if a third is even better?
[1] Nicole
Gaouette, “Republican
Anger at Trump Grows as Turkey Launches ‘Sickening’ Attack on US Allies,”
CNN.com, October 9, 2019 (accessed same day).
[2]
Ibid.
[3]
Ibid.
[4]
Ibid.
[5]
Ibid.
[6] Skip Worden, Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available at Amazon.
