Syria Withdrawl & Afganistan Drawdown

[airboy]

The USA is withdrawing military support in Northern Syria.  It has also announced a troop drawdown in Afghanistan of 50% from 14,000 to 7,000 troops.  This seems to be a significant change in deployment and I'm hoping someone a lot more knowledgeable on the subject can explain the ramifications.

If this cannot be kept to a military perspective, it will have to be locked which is understandable.

From reading the Wall St. Journal and other sources it seems that the Turks are massing to hit the Kurdish forces in Northern Syria.  The USA is withdrawing all advisors after a vote by the Senate.

In Afghanistan, the Secretary of Defense stated that a troop level of 14,000 was not sufficient to defeat the Taliban, but the Taliban could not take the cities against US firepower - essentially a stalemate.  I have no idea if a 7,000 troop drawdown impacts this or not.

 

[Sir Slash]

I'm not a fan of U.S. involvement all over the world but I fear this won't end well at all and that the Army should keep it's maps of Syria and Afghanistan close at hand. I think they'll need them again soon.

[DoctorQuest]

Well, Putin likes the idea.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/world/europe/putin-trump-syria.html

[Centurion40]

IMHO, the Russians and Turks can have it all.  We need to become more independent of fossil fuels, and they all can kill each other as much as they'd like.  Just like the good ole 19th century!

[JasonPratt]

We can all agree that the most likely military result of these actions, will be one or two new CMANO Live modules, right?  ^-^

[airboy]

We can all agree that the most likely military result of these actions, will be one or two new CMANO Live modules, right?  ^-^

Depends, does CMANO do modules when no Western forces are involved?

[JasonPratt]

Oh yes; they've already done a new Iraqi/Iran war as I recall, and also a situation where Western power is simply secondary to a spat between Turkey and Russia.

The new Shifting Sands pack covers a number of Levantine Wars over Israel, sometimes involving Western powers directly and sometimes not.

[FarAway Sooner]

IMHO, the Russians and Turks can have it all.  We need to become more independent of fossil fuels, and they all can kill each other as much as they'd like.  Just like the good ole 19th century!

I agree with the American need for energy independence.  We've spent too many decades watering the sands of the Middle East with the blood of our men and women in uniform.   If we'd spent a fraction of that money on sensible energy policy (particularly with an emphasis on demand destruction and renewables of one sort or another), we'd have saved American lives and kept ourselves out of the snake pit that seems to be most of the modern Middle East.

That said, so long as the global economy is so dependent on petroleum, we'll still be extremely vulnerable economically to political turbulence in the Middle East.

I think the huge losers here are the Kurds.  I won't fool myself into ignoring their motives for doing so, but they've been about the only reliable allies we've had there for the last 17 years.  Throwing them under the bus now will send a horrific message to any other would-be allies that the US might seek out in the next 20 years.

[Pete Dero]

I think the huge losers here are the Kurds.  I won't fool myself into ignoring their motives for doing so, but they've been about the only reliable allies we've had there for the last 17 years.  Throwing them under the bus now will send a horrific message to any other would-be allies that the US might seek out in the next 20 years.

It is not the first time this happens to them.  After WWI they were promised an independent nation and this was blocked by Turkey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Kurds#After_World_War_I


Unbelievable if true :

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-call-turkish-leader-led-u-s-pullout-syria-n950886

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arranged the Dec. 14 call a day after he had unsuccessfully sought clarity from Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu about Erdogan's threats to launch a military operation against U.S.-backed Kurdish rebels in northeast Syria, where American forces are based.

Pompeo, Mattis and other members of the national security team prepared a list of talking points for Trump to tell Erdogan to back off, the officials said.
But the officials said Trump, who had previously accepted such advice and convinced the Turkish leader not to attack the Kurds and put U.S. troops at risk, ignored the script. Instead, the president sided with Erdogan.

The officials said the conversation set off a frantic, four-day scramble to convince the president either to reverse or delay the decision to give the military and Kurdish forces time to prepare for an orderly withdrawal. Trump, however, was unmoved, they said.

Bolton stressed, however, that the entire national security team agreed that victory over IS had to be enduring, which means more than taking away its territory.

Trump was not dissuaded, according to the officials, who said the president quickly capitulated by pledging to withdraw, shocking both Bolton and Erdogan.

Caught off guard, Erdogan cautioned Trump against a hasty withdrawal, according to one official. While Turkey has made incursions into Syria in the past, it does not have the necessary forces mobilized on the border to move in and hold the large swaths of northeastern Syria where U.S. troops are positioned, the official said.

The call ended with Trump repeating to Erdogan that the U.S. would pull out, but offering no specifics on how it would be done, the officials said.

[JasonPratt]

I'm wondering if Trump thinks withdrawing will buy political capital from both Turkey and Russia, despite throwing our Kurdish allies to the wolves, while also reducing expenditures enough to buy the wall?


....man, when even Edrogan is saying, "Dude, uh, thanks for withdrawing, but you, uh, I'm not that ready for you to, uh...."

"It's gonna be yuge! Believe me! I can pull out faster than anyone, I'm the best there is at it! I mean, don't believe Daniels, that's fake news, but between you and me--!"

[Jarhead0331]

In my opinion, ISIS will never be defeated by troops on the ground. True, It can be stifled and disrupted, but it will always be there, lurking, as long as there are those who are vulnerable to being influenced by religious extremism. ISIS represents an ideology, and it's long been proven that an ideology is damn near impossible to defeat through military means.

So what? US troops then need to be deployed in the Middle East, fighting and dying, permanently? Segments of our population have been staunchly opposed to the wars over there for nearly 18 years, but now that it's Trump pulling troops back, it's a terrible plan? A big part of the problem is that this country is being run by war lovers...Democrat and Republican.

One of the things, perhaps one of the only things, that ever really bothered me about the Mattis, Kelly, Dunford team is that they all strongly support COIN. This strategy hasn't worked, and against this ideology, I don't think it ever will.

When Trump was campaigning, he talked about not being in favor of regime change in Syria and disengaging against asad. I supported this. Let the Russians and the regime fight and kill IS extremists. Pre-Trump US policy is what destabilized the region in the first place, by attacking the regime and supporting a confusing web of rebel groups against the government rule. This in my view was a tremendous mistake.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, we never should have had troops in Syria in the first place.

[JasonPratt]

I think the point of standard COIN ops.... well, two points: (1) prevent the insurgency from growing into a rogue government in itself. (2) forestall insurgent operations outside its area of control. Obviously once goal (1) fails, then the rogue government must be opposed at that level using other strategies and tactics.

Can COIN ops in themselves simply eliminate the insurgency threat? Probably not? Not usually? Leaving other critiques aside, it's an objective fact that there aren't any Branch Davidian compounds springing up anymore. But that's a case of where the ideology itself has no conceptual flexibility to survive material defeat. The ideology of ISIS was developed by its proponents into a rather rigid set of legitimacy markers. Consequently there was (maybe still is) reason to believe that its conceptual power would fail with the failure of those markers. Whereas, on the other hand, their conceptual basis thrives on being left alone and thus being undefeated -- while also constantly trolling its enemies into attacking it. They can, and did, market a view where they religiously expected to win an apocalyptic set-piece battle, so they had a rationale and a motivation to goad their chief ideological enemies into that battle. Victory in that conventional war would be treated as evidence for their legitimacy and as a rationale for support, but so would smaller victories of defying their ideological enemies with ongoing strikes.

[ArizonaTank]

It ain't over til it's over.... Jan 6th WAPO, Bolton says we stay until ISIS is destroyed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/bolton-promises-no-troop-withdrawal-from-syria-until-isis-contained-kurds-safety-guaranteed/2019/01/06/ee219bba-11c5-11e9-b6ad-9cfd62dbb0a8_story.html?utm_term=.952ddfa10183

[JasonPratt]

No troop withdrawal until Kurds' safety is guaranteed == no troop withdrawal ever.

Unless by "guarantees" they mean bits of ink on paper which happen to form symbols representing the idea of a guarantee. SYRIA PINKY-SWEARS NOT TO GAS THE KURDS ANYMO----UH, NOT TO GAS THE KURDS THIS TI-----UH, NOT TO USE GAS ON THE KURDS!

[Sir Slash]

Well, who couldn't trust that? I think the troops will be out soon and take all the 'Red Lines' with them.