An Emerging New World Order?

"I want to get out, I want to bring our troops back home. I want to start rebuilding our nation."
"It's time. We were very successful against [ISIL], we will be successful against anybody militarily. But sometimes it's time to come back home."
"[The United States had gained] nothing except death and destruction [out of the trillions in treasury poured into the Middle East in the last 17 years of conflict]."
"By the way, we’re knocking the hell out of ISIS. We’re coming out of Syria very soon. Let the other people take care of it now, very soon. Very soon, we’re coming out."
U.S. President Donald Trump

"A lot of very good military progress was made over the last couple years."
"But again, the hard part I think is in front of us, and that is stabilizing these areas, consolidating our gains, getting people back into their homes, addressing the long-term issues of reconstruction and other things that will have to be done."
General Joseph Votel, head, U.S. Central Command

A Syrian civil defense volunteer performs ritual sunset prayers next to the site of a building that collapsed following reported regime air strikes in the rebel-held town of Arbin, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on February 6, 2018. ABDULMONAM EASSA—AFP/Getty Images

"Largely speaking, the Russians and their Iranian partners are going to win. If the Americans aren't in the east, the Iranians will be."
"That logic, in a close call, will prevail over cut-and-run."
Cliff Kupechan, chairman, Eurasia Group, New York

"We believe American troops should stay for at least the mid-term, if not the long-term."
"If you take those troops out from east Syria, you will lose that checkpoint [The base in eastern Syria, at Deir Ezzor where Special Operations coordinate with Syrian opposition fighters wiping out ISIS remaining in towns along the Euphrates River and desert along the Iraq-Syria border]. And this corridor could create a lot of things in the region."
"[We hope that Assad will not be a Tehran] puppet. [Bashar is staying], but I believe that Bashar’s interests is not to let the Iranians do whatever they want to do [expanding influence in the region]."
Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman

U.S. Pres. Donald Trump holds a chart of military hardware sales as he welcomes Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S. March 20, 2018    REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

George W. Bush start the disintegration of 'normalcy' in the Middle East of tolerance for murderous despots when he charged the U.S. military to remove Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and his Sunni-minority Baathist government and military from power, enabling the majority Iraqi Shiites to get the foothold they needed to become the government in a country where a trifecta of religious-political interests vied against one another; Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. In Iraq, the Sunnis, displaced from power and influence morphed into Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and the only vestige of civilized normalcy took place in Iraqi Kurdistan.

In Syria, ruled by the Assad dynasty -- another minority rule of Alawite Baathists -- Syrian Sunnis rebelled, seeking equal status with the ruling Alawite Shiites. This is where Barack Obama stepped into a cesspool of warning over chemical weapons by the regime used to kill its citizens in rebellion. Only to step back when Russia intervened and Vladimir Putin persuaded Obama that diplomacy always trumps the violence of military intervention. For the United States, it was all downhill from there as Putin saw a free passage opening for him to step into the breach, befriend Bashar al-Assad, open a Russian airbase and a deep sea port and expand his influence.

An ambition he shared with the Islamic Republic of Iran which had intervened at a much earlier date, charging Lebanese Hezbollah to fight alongside regime forces which were losing the battle to the Free Syrian militias and the incursion of Islamist terrorists flooding in from Libya and Afghanistan. The Iranian Republican Guard Corps al Quds division gave direction and support to Assad, but it was Russia's entry with its air cover that gave the decided advantage to the Syrian regime while it went on slaughtering, besieging, barrel-bombing and strafing its Sunni population.

The U.S. remained in the picture, its focus on destroying Islamic State, mostly because Islamic State like al-Qaeda before it, refused to stay put in the Middle East, inciting its admirers and fellow travellers in Europe and North America to mount terrorist jihadi attacks of their own. And it was to the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds that credit had to go for representing the sole reliable forces that confronted and defeated Islamic State while giving haven to fleeing, persecuted Christians and Yazidis targeted by ISIL. In the process, an enormous amount of American treasury was poured into the two countries.

NATO has been heavily involved alongside the U.S. in having a presence where NATO members mentored and fought alongside and provided the Kurds with military armaments in its conflict with ISIL. Enter Turkey, which as a member of NATO soon demonstrated that Recep Tayyip Erdogan's hatred of Kurds would steer him toward an alliance with Vladimir Putin and Iran's Grand Ayatollah. Turkey, a member of NATO, a fundamentalist Sunni nation, supporting Iranian ambitions alongside its own, to control the border between it and Syria and in the process slaughter Kurds.

Which just happened to be the same Kurdish militias protecting Kurdish towns and villages that Washington depended on to battle ISIL forces. A circumstance that infuriates Erdogan, all the more when the U.S. strove to establish a border force of 30,000 in northeastern Syria, of mostly Kurdish fighters -- the reliable backbone of the Syrian fighting forces. Whereupon Erdogan launched "Operation Olive Branch" which was a deadly operation minus the olive branch, dedicated to killing Kurds and exiling those that survived from their homes in areas that Erdogan planned to populate with Turkmen and rebel Syrian Sunnis.

And of course, since American and Russian troops are both involved separately on different sides in a country riven by violence and destruction and death, it was inevitable that there would be a clash. One in which an attack by Russian fighters on the U.S.-Kurdish base in the Deir Ezzor region led a defensive reaction that left Russians, estimated from dozens to hundreds dead. The Kremlin denies it was involved, characterizing the dead Russian fighters as mercenaries, not Russian military members. Close, but no cigar.

Little wonder that the U.S. administration and the public is battle-weary and fed up with funding wars without end as Muslims in sectarian conflicts face off in killing sprees, leaving all pretense at civilizational mores in the dustbin of history. The problem is, departing the area is easier said than done. It can be done, but once again, it leaves the field completely open for even larger threats to emerge. That of aspirational Iran for one thing, looking to dominate the region and willing to do so with nuclear threats, concerning to the Arab Sunni majority.

So there it is, more or less, the United States in the throes of deciding how it must declare itself in what may turn out to be perpetuity and arrayed against it and NATO are Russia, Iran and Turkey, the three countries with their own singular agendas which just happen to mesh in an realpolitik agreement despite their differences where a non-Muslim nation of great international ambition, an Iranian theocracy of great determination to conquer, and a Turkish Sunni nation of fanatical disposition come together in an agreement of convenience.

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, left, Russia's President Vladimir Putin, right, and Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lock hands during a group photo in Ankara, Turkey, Wednesday, April 4, 2018. The leaders of Russia, Iran and Turkey are meeting in the Turkish capital for talks on Syria's future. The leaders are expected to reaffirm their commitment to Syria's territorial integrity and the continuation of local cease-fires when they meet Wednesday. (Tolga Bozoglu/Pool Photo via AP)