How Russia and its allies benefit from Trump’s Syria withdrawal

A complete US pull-out would remove Russia’s only military equal from the contest to shape Syria’s future

Russia will face less resistance as it pursues its goal: a settlement that returns the entire country to the control of President Assad

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Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rowhani. Photo: AFP

Published: 1:00pm, 8 Oct 2019Updated: 1:00pm, 8 Oct 2019

US President Donald Trump said his decision to shift US troops out of the path of a threatened Turkish military incursion in Syria will be regretted most by Russia and China. They “love to see us bogged down” in expensive military quagmires, he tweeted on Monday.

To some Russian and US analysts and officials, however, Moscow is likely to be a major beneficiary of the move.

A complete US pull-out would remove Russia’s only military equal from the contest to shape Syria’s future, according to Trump’s former envoy for combating Islamic State, Brett McGurk. He has argued since resigning his post in December that in place of the US, Moscow would then have to deal with Turkey, a weaker and more compliant regional player.

What’s more, with Syria’s Kurds no longer protected by the US, Russia will face less resistance as it tries to secure its main goal there – a political settlement that returns the entire country to the control of President Bashar al-Assad. Having swayed the course of the Syrian conflict, Russia is now in the throes of a return to its cold war days as a power in the Middle East.

More broadly, a White House decision to abandon the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Defence Force (SDF) – an ally that provided ground troops for the US-led fight to defeat Isis in Syria – risks deepening a narrative of American unreliability that began during the 2011 Arab spring. The US was widely seen in the region as having failed to give then Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a long-time ally, the support he needed to survive the protests.

Russia has since filled the vacuum, from Syria to Libya, even luring Turkey itself into taking a Russian S-400 missile-defence system in the face of US opposition.

“Bottom line: Trump tonight after one call with a foreign leader provided a gift to Russia, Iran, and Isis,” McGurk wrote in a tweet in the early hours of Monday morning, referring to Trump’s conversation with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.