Syria shows risks of US withdrawal for Europe

Bloomberg

Asked if the European Union hadn’t exposed its impotence during Turkey’s recent military offensive inside Syria, French President Emmanuel Macron was blunt in his response: “I share your outrage.”
More than any other recent foreign policy challenge, the way that Turkey’s “Operation Peace Spring” against the Kurds unfolded has exposed the potential reality of a post-transatlantic world: The EU’s near irrelevance in events that shape security in its own back yard.
“I understood that we were together in NATO, that the US and Turkey were in NATO,” Macron said after a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels.
“And I found out via a tweet that the US had decided to withdraw their troops.”
The EU was absent, too, for the agreement to pause hostilities in Syria in order for the Kurdish allies of the US-led coalition against IS to retreat.
Russia, the Syrian government and the US were all involved in some fashion, but not Europe, where administrations were rocked in 2015 by an influx of refugees from Syria’s battlefields.
On Monday, Turkey gave Kurdish fighters until 10 pm Tuesday to retreat from a 120-kilometre (75-mile) strip of territory along Syria’s northern border, or face attack when the truce Recep Tayyip Erdogan negotiated with the US expires.