A small step in the right direction

Trump today ordered some economic sanctions on Turkey, with more to come soon, to pressure that country to relent from its invasion of Syria.  This is the first concrete action anyone in the West has taken to help the embattled Syrian Kurds -- Congress has been considering imposing sanctions too, but it's now five days since the beginning of the invasion and they have not acted; and most other countries are just issuing verbal condemnations, as useless as "thoughts and prayers".  So, I give Trump credit where it is due.  Such credit must be limited, however, since it was Trump's own precipitous and ill-advised troop withdrawal that allowed Turkish president Erdoğan to launch the invasion in the first place.

The Syrian Kurdish leadership had already taken action on its own to fend off devastation in the wake of the American betrayal -- by forging a quick alliance with the Asad regime.  This means the Kurds will get the support of Syria's regular national army, while the regime will get the chance to re-establish its rule over the northeast, a major region which has been out of its control for years.  Even the Syrian army is not a match for Turkey's forces, but it is supported by Russia, and will at least be able to resist the Turks more effectively than the Kurds could alone.

This alliance is a setback for US policy, since the US opposes the Asad regime.  However, I've long believed that an Asad victory is the least-bad plausible way for the Syrian civil war to end.  It isn't a good option -- the regime is hideously brutal -- but this is Syria we're talking about, and there aren't any really good options (I discussed Syria's complex demographics and internal tensions here).  The Asad regime does, at least, have a track record of protecting religious minorities from persecution by the Sunni majority.  Aside from the Kurds -- who are interested only in liberating their own region, not in ruling all of Syria -- most of the forces opposing the regime are Sunni extremists of various stripes, whose victory would portend vicious persecution and perhaps genocide of other religions and sects.

So there is some chance that the Kurds will be able to save themselves, and that the seven-year-old Syrian civil war will move a little closer to its end.  But at least several dozen (and probably far more) people have already been killed by the Turkish attack, and there have been reports of escapes of Dâ'ish (ISIL) prisoners held by the Kurds.  And the Kurdish region will certainly lose its quasi-independence, since the Asad regime will have its army in place to assert control if the Turks withdraw.

This could have been avoided if Trump had paid attention to his advisers and military leaders and not abandoned the Kurds in the first place.  Our job as Americans, next year, will be to elect a president who can manage foreign policy competently.  The rest of the world cannot afford to have an entity as powerful as the US operate by random blundering like this.

Update (Tuesday):  Some European countries have imposed an arms embargo on Turkey.  The US Congress is still dithering around and appears to be getting distracted from sanctions by talk of a meaningless joint resolution verbally reprimanding Trump.

[Image at top:  Homs, Syria's third-largest city, showing the destruction inflicted by years of civil war.  See also the video here.]