From Ukraine to Syria, is America’s ‘beacon’ dimming?
Responding to the withering and bipartisan criticism he faced over his spur-of-the-moment decision to pull U.S. forces from northern Syria and leave the Kurdish fighters the U.S. had partnered with against ISIS to fend for themselves, President Donald Trump chose not to mollify, but to double down.
“Turkey, Europe, Syria, Iran, Russia and the Kurds will now have to figure the situation out” without the United States, the president tweeted defiantly.
A day earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had informed Mr. Trump by phone call that his country would soon launch an offensive across its southern border into northern Syria to push the Kurds from territory formerly held by the Islamic State.
To some, the president’s tweet was a shocking if accurate reflection of an accelerated American retrenchment under Mr. Trump, an unvarnished acknowledgement that the world’s erstwhile policeman would now be leaving the kind of crises American diplomacy once
Lasting impactParallel foreign policyThe world is watching
