I find it interesting that it is Bolton that appears to be tasked with ensuring that our withdrawal from Syria goes as smoothly as possible.  It is a daunting task and I wish him well.  In my opinion, Ankara is right to worry about the Syrian Kurds, particularly the YPG.  No matter what anybody does or says, I am utterly convinced that they will continue to support their brothers and sisters inside Eastern Turkey and they will continue to work toward autonomy and eventual independence both inside Syria and inside Turkey.  There is a very active, very serious Kurdish insurgency going on inside Turkey and communication between Syrian and Turkish Kurds is ongoing.  I don’t know what the toll has been in human lives, but Aljazeera believes it to be in the neighborhood of 40,000.  I understand Turkish President Erdogan’s concern and believe that from his perspective, he has little choice to do other than what he is doing in creating the buffer zone between a very well armed YPG and his country.  I also understand his frustration with Washington as he has watched us train, arm and advise fighters that he believes will soon turn against him.

On the other side of the same coin, I sympathize with the Kurdish people’s desire for a country of their own and admire the effectiveness of their cooperation with us in our campaign against ISIS.  They carried the ground war, suffered the major casualties, and were a critical element in achieving the degree of success that we have had in reducing the territory held by the rogue caliphate.  I agree with their analysis that they were staunch allies in our time of need and we are now abandoning them.  It makes little difference that both they and we saw ISIS as a major threat that had to be eliminated.  Bolton is charged with the task of ensuring that Ankara does not take advantage of the situation to pursue its’ objective of destroying what it sees as allies of the Kurdish insurgency just across the border.  Ironically, the hated Assad is being asked to play a positive role in ensuring this outcome.  Syrian ground forces are already occupying positions between Turk and Kurd in the Manbij region.  The Kurds were wise enough to keep a channel of communication open with Damascus all during the civil war and managed to keep Assad off of their backs even before the United States became involved in the situation.  My guess is that we are currently encouraging a Kurdish rapprochement with the Assad regime.  Because Assad hates Erdogan there is almost certainly room for Bolton to maneuver.

I do not know what will happen, but I believe that the odds are that Trump will continue with the withdrawal of US forces from Syria and that we will agree to provide the logistic support that Turkey will need to replace us.  In the short term, I believe that the odds are that Ankara will resist any overt moves against the Kurds and the Kurds will avoid provoking the Turks unnecessarily.  Should that not be the case it will almost certainly be because somebody on the ground made an error.  Washington, Ankara, Damascus, Moscow and Teheran appear to all be on the same page at the present time and the Kurds are playing the only hand they have - Damascus.  I would imagine that their internal debate is rather intense at the present time, but they have little support from Kurds elsewhere in the region with exception of those battling Ankara inside Turkey.  Internal politics within the greater Kurdish community is badly divided between a multiplicity of factions that are seriously at each other’s throats.

From our point of view, leaving morality aside, the withdrawal of US forces from Syria opens the door a bit wider to Teheran to further strengthen its’ position vis-a-vis Israel.  I presume that President Trump is counting on his attempt to strangle Teheran economically to be the principal defense of Israel, but I would not be surprised if we found out that Moscow was also urging Teheran to proceed slowly in pursuing this objective.  Moscow’s immediate objective is to get Washington out of Syria.  The destruction of Israel is not an important Russian objective.  Although their motivations are very different, both Putin and Trump are in agreement on this point.  I presume that Trump is telling all and sundry that if anyone tries to attack Israel, the United States will respond with massive force.   I also presume that Jerusalem is most unhappy with the way things are developing inside Syria and in Washington.  Jerusalem almost certainly sees the Syrian playing board shifting in Teheran’s favor and the economic boycott of Iran failing to achieve results fast enough to ensure Israel’s security.  President Trump's uncertain political future also plays into the situation.

Although it is not the principal concern, the future of ISIS is also in question and that has potential implications for our own domestic political situation here inside the bubble.  There is no question but that President Trump has defeated ISIS.  There is also no question but that ISIS has not been destroyed.  Estimates run into the tens of thousands of ISIS fighters still running around in the area and returning to their original homelands.  I very much doubt that Ankara will pursue these fighters as vigorously as we would like.  If the ISIS remnants are wise enough not to provoke Ankara, the Turkish military will not pursue them aggressively.  They will return to the shadows to await reemergence at some future date when their stars realign.  We should understand that President Erdogan is willing to work with an Islamist political spectrum that is much wider than our own.  President Trump’s belief that the maintenance of a US military presence in Iraq will permit us to strike a resurgent ISIS is almost certainly an attempt to pacify his critics inside the beltway.  No one is asking who the surrogate ground force would be in such an effort.  Presumably not the Kurds.