Into the vacuum

Establishment Democrats and neocon Republicans agree that the President has done a bad thing by  withdrawing U.S. troops from northern Syria and leaving the Kurds, longtime American favorites in the Middle East, to assault from Turkey. As usual, the Kurds are the hard-luck story of the region, having no enclaves of wealth or power abroad, but only pundits and politicians to promote their cause. Their claim to nationhood is no less compelling than those of other peoples, but the imperial moment when a Kurdish state could have been created passed without action, and indigenous sovereignty in Syria, Turkey and Iraq will concede nothing to the Kurds on principle. The Kurds' only hope down the line is for the sort of existential war that would carve a Kurdish enclave from one or more of those nations by force, and even that probably would mean ethnic cleansing for the Kurds in the victorious nation or nations. It may be unfair, but what price fairness? Meanwhile, those mourning in advance for the Kurds of northern Syria also bemoan the likelihood of Russia acquiring more influence in the region as a broker between their Syrian friends and their Turkish neighbors. As usual, Donald Trump is blamed whenever Russia's geopolitical prestige appears to improve, but all his latest move shows is that his zone of economic competition with Russia isn't as expansive as others' zone of ideological competition. Some would have us take alarm anytime Russia appears to benefit from some Trumpian decision, as if 21st geopolitics operates on zero-sum principles, according to which any Russian gain means harm to the U.S. Where exactly is the harm to the U.S. in leaving Russia to sort out the Syrian mess? Syria is already a Russian client state, and there never was a realistic chance of it becoming an American client. Is Russia better positioned to harm American interests now? Some certainly will argue that it is, but they presume that Russia's mere existence as a geopolitically competitive "authoritarian" regime is a threat to the U.S. It may be a threat to American businesses and maybe even entire sectors of the U.S. economy, but Russia's potential to harm the American people depends on a lot of variables and is less than automatic. To some Americans, of course, the power to harm is harm, while the necessity of dealing respectfully with other powers, regardless of their forms or styles of government, remains an insult to those who see themselves as almost the only free people on Earth. Those Americans who aren't as invested in one way or another in global hegemony or dominance of any particular part of the wider world will be less panicked by recent developments. There are plenty of reasons to oppose President Trump, but this story isn't really one of them. Meanwhile, if the Russians really want to take more responsibility for the region, let them face the likely consequences....