World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

President Trump announced today that he was lifting the sanctions against Turkey because he believes that the “cease-fire” brokered by Vice-President Trump and Turkish President Erdogan was “permanent”. In his remarks he thanked Turkey and Syria for taking control over the swathe of territory once held by the US and its allies, the Kurds. Interestingly, he did not mention Russia once in his remarks, although the Russians are clearly the most important guarantor of the “cease-fire” because the Turks and the Syrians would be at each other’s throats without the mediating influence of the Russians. I have placed the phrase “cease-fire” in quotations marks because it is not a cease-fire, but actually a surrender. The US has given up strategic territory and betrayed its allies without getting anything in return from Russia, Turkey, Iran, and Syria–all of whom have benefited tremendously from the US withdrawal. President Trump did admit that some US troops would stay in Syria to protect the oil fields, but his statement was curiously ominous: “We’ve secured the oil, and, therefore, a small number of U.S. troops will remain in the area where they have the oil.  And we’re going to be protecting it, and we’ll be deciding what we’re going to do with it in the future.” I suspect that the Syrians will insist that the oil in their territory is theirs and will not allow the US to appropriate the oil for any reason.