Interventionism v Isolationism: The United States Withdrawal from Syria

To intervene or not to intervene? That is the question the United States has been battling against since the declaration of its independence and the establishment of its Constitution. Indeed, the United States has constantly oscillated between interventionism and isolationism. The country’s latest withdrawal from Syria in October 2019 raises the eternal question of the United States position in the world and its role in international politics and security.

In 1923, President James Monroe established the founding of American isolationism through a doctrine which stated that the country would not intervene in foreign conflicts in order to focus on domestic politics and would also not interfere with current European colonies in the New World. However, the country failed to stick to the Monroe Doctrine. Indeed, Manifest Destiny went against the principles of the doctrine and served as an excuse for the United States to conquer Spanish colonies such as Florida and to fight against Spain during the Spanish-American War which led them to acquire Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. Therefore, the United States were already deviating from the doctrine and asserting its power internationally. 

While it was still widely considered an isolationist country at the start of the 20thcentury, under Woodrow Wilson’s presidency the United States parted ways with its neutral status and intervened in the First World War in 1917 to preserve its commercial interest, therefore breaking with a century of isolationist foreign policy. However, the Senate opposed this new interventionist mindset and brought back the country towards isolationism by refusing to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations. Furthermore, the new president elect, Warren Harding, campaigned with the slogan “America First” in a time where American help and leadership was most needed by the international community for the reconstruction of a decimated Europe. 

This stand on foreign policy lasted until December 7th1941, when Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese and the United States engaged in the Second World War alongside the Allies against the Axis. Once again, when the United States saw their direct interests and national security threatened, the country broke with their isolationist policies. 

The Second World War marked a turning point for the country’s foreign policy as the United States became the prominent power in the Western World and started intervening in every part of the globe in order to fight communism and ensure democracy and capitalism. From the Korean War, to the Persian Gulf War, through the Vietnam War and Soviet-Afghan War and its control over Latin America, the United States played a role in every major international conflicts and regions of the world in the second part of the 20thcentury.

While the Monroe Doctrine was not sustainable in the long-term, the United States however adopted a far too imperialist mindset after WWII as they asserted their domination around the globe through hard power. After 9/11 the United States’ War on Terror only confirmed this foreign policy conundrum. Indeed, by engaging troops in Iraq, the US deviated from its objective to target and destroy Al Qaeda as the country in reality also sought to preserve its interest on oil in the Middle East. But this intervention only led to subsequent chaos. Indeed, the US military’s presence spurred the emergence of many insurgencies and led to violence and disorder more than it led to democracy and security. 

In this context, Barack Obama conducted the withdrawal of US troops in Iraq in 2009. But with the chaos that American intervention on the Iraqi territory and the Middle East had led to, withdrawing troops left a void in the region which was fill in by terrorist groups. Indeed, from the ashes of the war in Iraq which had been initiated by the US, the Islamic States rose and established a Caliphate in a decimated region. To designate the United States as the only responsible for the rise of ISIS would be a falsehood as other factors contributed. However, the country greatly participated in exacerbating the tensions in the region, leading to the rise of terrorism, and gave an ideal opportunity for the establishment of ISIS by withdrawing troops before the conflict it had started was solved. By withdrawing and fulfilling the wish of the American public, the United States subsequently fled its responsibility in the Middle East and is now dealing with the consequences of both its intervention and its rushed withdrawal. 

While the United States military has never fought the Islamic State directly on the ground, it has armed, trained, and worked in northeastern Syria alongside the Kurdish army who was the main armed force to fight ISIS and to regain conquered territory in the Middle East. This alliance with the Kurdish—initiated under Barack Obama’s presidency, as a way to avoid direct military intervention but to keep a close presence in the region, and carried on by the Trump administration until a few weeks ago—was essential in the fight against the Islamic State. Additionally, American presence in this region served to stabilize geo-politics and to protect its Kurdish allies who are a stateless nation spread on parts of Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey. Turkey is the main enemy of the Kurds and the country which the US military based in Kurdish territory served as a shield against.

But Donald Trump—who, similarly to Obama, campaigned on the promise to remove troops from the Middle East, but unlike Obama did so through an openly isolationist discourse and the slogan “America First”—took the decision on October 6thto immediately withdraw troops from the Kurdish region, stripping the Kurdish people from its shield against Turkey, and backstabbing its closest ally in the fight against ISIS. Indeed, the next day, Turkey invaded Kurdish territory, consequence of which thousands of civilians were forced to flee their homes and are currently displaced, many Kurdish soldiers died in combat, and hundreds of Islamic States prisoners have fled Kurdish prisons. 

While he tries in every way to be the opposite of Obama, by withdrawing troops from Syria, President Trump is replicating the same mistake President Obama did with his premature 2009 withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Indeed, despite Donald Trump’s threats to the Turks and its leader Erdogan, the situation in Syria is escalating as a direct consequence of his rash decision to withdraw US troops and the fulfillment of his isolationist agenda.

The questions the successive administrations should ask themselves is how to find a compromise between isolationism and interventionism, as both have proven to be fundamentally flawed? Why does it have to be either one or the other? When the United States intervene in a country, why does it have to exit the country before the conflict is resolved, and therefore escape the chaos they have initiated? How can the United States live up to its foreign policy responsibility without infringing on other countries interest and sovereignty? Why has the United States not learned from the consequences of more than two hundred years of oscillation between those two political approaches to foreign politics? 

While the answer will most probably not be brought by the current administration, future presidents and political leaders in the United States should come about the fact that due to the country’s status in world politics, it can’t limit itself to the narrow frame imposed by either an interventionist or isolationist mindset.