唐纳德·特朗普总统上周日宣布，美国将从叙利亚-土耳其边境的阵地重新部署军队，这遭到了众多外交政策机构的抨击，称其背叛了瓦阿灵顿的叙利亚库尔德伙伴。环城公路上的愤怒是显而易见的:国会议员要求很高解释；参议院外交关系委员会的资深议员是要求作证；和社论作者哀叹导致这一决定的政府内部混乱。
为什么这么多人对特朗普政府的决定感到不安并不奇怪。叙利亚库尔德人一直是华盛顿针对伊斯兰国最有效的反恐伙伴。叙利亚没有其他人能与之媲美。但是仅仅因为此刻怒火中烧并不一定意味着这是合理的。以太中渗透着许多错误的信息。是时候改正记录了。
首先，提醒人们美国和叙利亚库尔德人的伙伴关系是什么——而不是什么——是很重要的。华盛顿投资与库尔德人主导的叙利亚民主力量建立关系有一个非常具体的原因:蚕食伊斯兰国的领土哈里发，以至于该恐怖组织不再能够控制大片领土。事实证明，美国空军和库尔德地面部队的结合非常有效，以至于物理哈里发现在已经成为历史的灰烬。美国寻求实现的国家安全目标——伊拉克和黎凡特伊斯兰国作为一支领土部队的消亡——事实上已经实现。
归根结底，美国和叙利亚库尔德战士之间的关系充满了实用主义、共同利益和共同敌人。那些认为美国军队应该无限期留在叙利亚东北部以阻止土耳其对该地区的军事入侵的人歪曲了维系美国和库尔德人伙伴关系的根本粘合剂，并将其目的扩大到远远超出其初衷。事实上，这一论点是使命蔓延的完美例证，在这种情况下，美国在叙利亚的政策变得越来越脱离核心目标，转而支持那些更雄心勃勃、无法实现的目标。
尽管华盛顿的许多人难以接受，但美国不对叙利亚的内部政治负责——美国也没有义务支持或捍卫叙利亚库尔德社区的政治愿望。这样做可能会造成更多问题，使美国陷入长达数十年的土耳其-库尔德竞争之中，并进一步恶化已经饱受争议的美国-土耳其关系。直截了当地说:美国军队多年前首次部署到叙利亚时，并没有签署永久充当库尔德人的外部保护者的协议。
如果特朗普政府犯了什么罪，那就是不愿意支持叙利亚库尔德人，因为他们试图在叙利亚实现自己的政治和解。相反，华盛顿给库尔德领导人错误的希望，即美国军队将在叙利亚东北部保持长期的安全存在。美国没有在早期坦率地与库尔德官员谈论这种伙伴关系的交易性质，而是一直模棱两可，事实上公开反对库尔德人试图与大马士革和解。对美国来说，在外交和经济上孤立阿萨德政权优先于接受这样一个现实，即尽管阿萨德令人憎恶，但他仍将留在这里。
特朗普总统宣布后的几天里，叙利亚库尔德官员建议与大马士革的会谈可能是阻止土耳其军队深入其领土的唯一机会。讨论可能会围绕叙利亚东北部接近战前的现状展开，在那里，大马士革重新控制了叙利亚-土耳其边境，叙利亚库尔德人重新融入叙利亚国家，享有与任何其他叙利亚公民相同的权利和特权。这样的提议不太理想。但是，再一次，寻求理想是一项失败的事业，也是对宝贵时间的浪费，否则这些宝贵时间可以用来在局势陷入又一场武装冲突之前稳定局势。
如果谈判确实可行，特朗普政府应该让开，允许库尔德代表做符合他们自身最大利益的事情。对华盛顿来说，让这些讨论变得比现在更加困难，将会犯两次同样的错误。
随着安卡拉在入侵前夕和叙利亚库尔德战士为这场可能是血腥的战斗做准备，接下来的几天和几周将充满巨大的紧张局势。特朗普总统上周末做出决定的方式并没有帮到自己。他自己政府的许多成员措手不及，这是对国家安全政策制定过程变得多么杂乱无章的一个毁灭性控诉。
然而，这些都不应该掩盖大局。美国和库尔德人的安全关系从来就不是长期的，更不用说永久的了。美国在叙利亚的影响力总是极其有限，即使有几千名美军驻扎在沙漠中。尽管有人大声抗议美国的背叛，但美国在饱受内战蹂躏的叙利亚的核心国家安全利益总是狭隘而具体的:摧毁伊斯兰国的实体哈里发。
叙利亚的政治不是由美国决定的，而是由利益攸关方决定的，这些利益攸关方的利害关系更大。
U.S.-KURDISH SECURITY TIES WERE NEVER MEANT TO BE LONG-TERM | OPINION
President Donald Trump's announcement last Sunday of a U.S. redeployment of forces from positions along the northeastern Syrian-Turkish border has been panned by a wide swath of the foreign policy establishment as a betrayal of Waahington's Syrian Kurdish partners. The anger in the Beltway is palpable: members of Congress are demanding an explanation; senior lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are calling for testimony; and editorial writers are bemoaning the internal chaos within the administration that led up to the decision.
It's not surprising why so many are upset about the Trump administration's decision. The Syrian Kurds have been Washington's most effective counterterrorism partners against the Islamic State. Nobody else in Syria comes close. But just because the anger is boiling hot at the moment doesn't necessarily mean it's justified. There is a lot of misinformation percolating in the ether. It's time to correct the record.
First, it's important to remind people about what the U.S.-Syrian Kurdish partnership is—and is not—about. Washington invested in a relationship with the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces for a very specific reason: to chip away at the Islamic State's territorial caliphate to the point where the terrorist group was no longer capable of holding dominion over a wide swath of territory. The combination of U.S. air power and Kurdish ground forces proved to be extraordinarily effective, so much so that the physical caliphate is now in the ash heap of history. The national security objective the United States sought to accomplish—the demise of ISIS as a territorial force—has in fact been accomplished.
At bottom, the relationship between the United States and Syrian Kurdish fighters was one steeped in pragmatism, mutual interest, and a mutual enemy. Those who believe U.S. troops should remain in Syria's northeast indefinitely in order to deter a Turkish military incursion into the area are misrepresenting the fundamental glue that held the U.S.-Kurdish partnership together and broadening its purpose far beyond its original intent. Indeed, this argument is a perfect illustration of mission-creep, in which U.S. policy in Syria becomes increasingly detached from the core objective in favor of those that are more ambitious and unattainable.
As difficult as it is for many in Washington to accept, the United States is not responsible for Syria's internal politics—nor is the U.S. obligated to support or defend the political aspirations of the Syrian Kurdish community. To do so would likely create even more problems, putting the U.S. smack-dab in the middle of a decades-long Turkish-Kurdish rivalry and further deteriorating a U.S.-Turkey relationship that is already suffering from a number of disputes. Bluntly put: serving as the Kurds' external protector in perpetuity is not what U.S. troops signed up for when they were first deployed to Syria years ago.
If there was any sin committed by the Trump administration, it was an unwillingness to support the Syrian Kurds as they sought to strike their own political accommodations in Syria. Instead, Washington gave the Kurdish leadership false hope that the U.S. military would maintain a long-term security presence in Syria's northeast. Rather than speak frankly to Kurdish officials early on about the transactional nature of the partnership, the U.S. remained ambiguous and in fact openly opposed Kurdish attempts to reconcile with Damascus. For the U.S., isolating the Assad regime diplomatically and economically took precedence over accepting the reality that Assad—as loathsome as he is—was here to stay.
In the days since President Trump's announcement, Syrian Kurdish officials have suggested that talks with Damascus may be the only opportunity to forestall a Turkish military offensive deep into their territory. Discussions would likely center on something close to the pre-war status-quo in northeastern Syria, where Damascus retakes control of the Syria-Turkey border and the Syrian Kurds are reintegrated back into the Syrian state with the same rights and prerogatives as any other Syrian citizen. Such a proposal would hardly be ideal. But yet again, a search for the ideal is a lost cause and a waste of valuable time which could otherwise be used to stabilize the situation before it descends into yet another armed conflict.
If talks are indeed possible, the Trump administration should get out of the way and permit Kurdish representatives to do what is in their own best interest. For Washington to make these discussions any more difficult than they already are would be to commit the same mistake twice.
With Ankara on the eve of an incursion and Syrian Kurdish fighters preparing for what could be a bloody battle, the next days and weeks will be filled with a significant amount of tension. President Trump has not helped himself by the way he rolled out his decision last weekend. That many members of his own administration were caught off guard is a damning indictment of just how haphazard the national security policymaking process has become.
None of this, however, should obscure the big picture. U.S.-Kurdish security ties were never meant to be long-term, let alone permanent. U.S. leverage in Syria was always extremely limited, even with a few thousand U.S. troops sitting in the middle of the desert. And despite loud protests about American betrayal, core U.S. national security interests in civil war-ravaged Syria were always narrow and specific: destroy the Islamic State's physical caliphate.
Syria's politics will not be determined by the United States, but rather by stakeholders who have much more at stake.
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a columnist at the Washington Examiner
The views expressed in this article are the author's own.
