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Let’s briefly review the US policy in Syria, which Trump now wants to abandon. 1. Even though Assad is the obvious cause of the civil war, the US decided early on that he had to stay, as a barrier to that old bogeyman, the Islamic radical
2. The FSA and other opposition forces, who wanted to overthrow Assad and almost succeeded, composed of the vital forces of a sophisticated Syrian society, were abandoned to their luck. Obama called them a motley group of doctors, students and shopkeepers
3. Instead the US allied itself with a terrorist group, the PKK. It alienated its only ally in the region, Turkey, and moved its forces to a narrow band of territory in the north. It gave the cire of Syria in a platter to Russia and Iran. The Assad question was thus solved
4. In the north the US was allied with a terrorist group in order to fight a second terrorist group. But while the former was extremely cohesive, the latter was by then a vague assemblage of disorganized groups
5. As the core of Isis dissolved, the US defined its adversary as anyone with Islamic radical gendencies, a definition that would assure the war would continue for centuries. Elsewhere Russia and Assad continued to massacre civilian populations
6. Idlib only survived because of Turkey’s intercession. Even Mogherini publicly thanked Turkey, her expressed nemesis, perhaps in the knowledge of what a catatrophe the destruction of Idlib would have been for Europe
7. That Turkey was able to stand up to Russia, materially and psychologically, surprised everyone. Putin publicly lambasted Erdogan, but the US military wanted a full break with Turkey and pushed on with its alliance with PKK. And that was where we were at when Trump etc
