Withdrawal symptoms

President Trump's foreign policy has grown more mysterious after his decision to pull American forces out of Syria and Afghanistan drove his defense secretary to resign this week. The President has been condemned by many in his own party who see the Syrian move in particular as a capitulation to the Assad-Iran-Russia axis and a new lease on life for the self-styled Islamic State. Trump claims to be satisfied with the extent to which Daesh has been degraded, and seems to think that what's left is a regional problem rather than a threat to the U.S. He strikes a characteristic note when he complains about a lack of gratitude shown for American efforts in the region, but his tweets and other comments leave unclear who exactly was to show gratitude and what form it was supposed to take, though it most likely has something to do with buying American products, accommodating Israel and increasing oil production, in no particular order.  The U.S. presence had the additional purpose, demonstrated by some punitive air raids, of holding Assad accountable for apparent war crimes, but that may no longer concern the President so much as the Syrian civil war winds down. He may actually have the pragmatic object of getting the troops out from in the middle of whatever reckoning may be impending for the Kurds, many Americans' favorite non-israeli Middle Westerners but doomed by geography, like 18th century Poland, to be divided among larger neighbors. Trump no doubt will be accused of abandoning both the Kurds and whatever liberal opposition survives in Syria, but perhaps he shouldn't be reproached so immediately for calculating the benefits to his own country of the expenditure of American resources more carefully than recent Republican regimes. Those same Republicans may bemoan a seeming concession of regional hegemony to the same Iranian regime that Trump himself hates so much, but it should not be impossible to argue that a stable Syria, while it will still suck for dissidents there, will be in everyone else's best interest. Could it be possible also that Trump has enough cynical intelligence to think that allowing Iran to improve its position will make his actual client states, Israel and Saudi Arabia, more conscious of their dependence on American power and thus more accommodating and, indeed, more grateful by whatever standard the President sets? All I can say for certain is that when the usual neocon suspects cry bloody murder over any President's foreign policy decisions, the rest of us shouldn't be in any hurry to join them.