Stevenson’s army, October 15

The Trump administration says it wants a cease-fire in northern Syria. Treasury announced sanctions against 3 ministries and higher tariffs on Turkish steel.  VP Pence is supposed to go to Ankara sometime soon to talk about a cease-fire.  Sen. Graham and Speaker Pelosi have talked about a joint measure to punish Turkey.  We don’t know what the US and Turkish leaders said in their Monday phone call, but there is at least one report that Erdogan promised not to attack the Kurdish stronghold of Kobani.

Cease-fires don’t solve problems; at best they just turn them to a simmer. We can’t go back to the status quo ante. Do we want to keep Turkey as an ally? What about our nuclear weapons there? Will Trump pull remaining US forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan?  Whatever the president decides, will there be a coordinated interagency effort to carry it out?

How did we get here? David Sanger says Trump rejected the advice of his national security officials and acted on gut instinct.

Meanwhile, the Russians have moved in, patrolling between Turkish and Kurdish forces. [And Putin was lavishly treated in a visit to Saudi Arabia]

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).