Who benefits from Donald Trump’s sudden decision to withdraw most of the US troops in Syria? The troops themselves aren’t getting to go home just yet: they are first moving across the border into Kurdish Iraq. Russia, Turkey and the regime of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, have enjoyed more immediate gains. But the most unwelcome beneficiary, from a US point of view, is the entity that Trump said he had defeated in February.
Russia has wasted no time in making a deal with Turkey that allows its ground troops to patrol the buffer zone. The numbers will not be large so the costs will be low: the gain lies in the symbolism of Russia replacing the US, which will be greatly welcomed in Moscow.
Russia’s toehold in the Middle East has now become a footprint, with air force units in Syria, an expanding naval base at Tartus on the country’s Mediterranean coast and, now, ground troops in the north-east. It brings Vladimir Putin much closer to his aim of regaining influence in the region at the lowest possible cost and without getting mired in an unwinnable war.
