The Trump White House shocked the U.S. military and the defense community over the weekend with an announcement that U.S. forces, which have been working with Kurdish-led forces in northeastern Syria, will be pulling out — a decision that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wholeheartedly agrees with. And economist and veteran New York Times opinion columnist Paul Krugman has three theories on the matter — all of which he asserts paint a troubling picture of Trump.
Monday on Twitter, Krugman posted, “So, did Trump just betray the Kurds because (a) He has business interests in Turkey, (b) Erdogan, being a brutal autocrat, is his kind of guy, (c) His boss Vladimir Putin told him to. Remarkable that all three stories are perfectly plausible.”
Trump, to be sure, has had very friendly relations with Erdogan. Prior to Erdogan’s presidency, Turkey was among the most liberal and democratic countries in the Islamic world. But it has taken an increasingly authoritarian turn under Erdogan, who Trump has repeatedly praised. Trump has been highly critical of long-time NATO allies like Germany and the U.K., but in 2018, he gave Erdogan a friendly fist bump and exalted him as the NATO member who “does things the right way.”
View the complete October 7 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.