The mess in Syria is putting America’s credibility on the line

 Beirut

‘If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense,’ said Alice. ‘Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?’ For the United States, and for the rest of us, Lewis Carroll is as good a guide as any to what is happening in northern Syria right now. Turkey — America’s Nato ally — has sent tanks rolling across the border to attack the Kurds, America’s ally against Isis. Thus the United States finds itself supporting both sides in the same war. You see? Some wit in Turkey’s defence ministry has named the offensive ‘Operation Olive Branch’. It is joined by thousands of fighters from the Free Syrian Army (FSA). The US spent years supporting the FSA in a (semi) covert CIA programme. More recently the US has poured arms and money into the Syrian Kurds. Thus the current conflict can also be seen as a proxy war between the CIA and the Pentagon. To be fair to Donald Trump, this state of affairs was always the most likely outcome of how the Obama administration left the pieces on the board. As Trump tweeted, he inherited ‘the Syrian mess’. But he adopted it as his own when he implemented Obama’s plan to arm the Syrian Kurds last May. It seemed that they were the only group the US could find that were actually any good against Isis. But those Kurds (the YPG) are tied by blood and ideology to Kurds in Turkey (the PKK) who have waged a 30-year war of independence against the Turkish state. President Erdogan sees the two as a single enemy and complained bitterly to Trump about arms flow to Syrian Kurds. The two men had a telephone call in November.