Donald Trump’s chaotic foreign policy promises only more ‘endless wars’

We understand if some of our readers prefer not to read anything about Donald Trump, hoping that he will be out of office in 15 months and will not have started a nuclear war in the meantime.

Such readers may take the view that they know what they think of the president and it is not worth the emotional energy being outraged by his latest departure from the standards expected of the holder of high elected office.

In which case we must apologise for intruding on your attempt to preserve your equanimity, for it is our duty to report that Mr Trump is at it again.

He has, in effect, invited Turkey to invade northern Syria in order to attack the Kurds, and then threatened to “destroy and obliterate the economy of Turkey” if it “does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits”.

Of course, his words are almost comic in their absence of dignity. But it is the chaos of US foreign policy that will have such a damaging effect for the people of the region.

At the start of this week Mr Trump spoke to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, and the White House press secretary put out a statement saying the Turkish invasion was imminent. The statement did not use the word “withdrawn”, but it said that US forces “will no longer be in the immediate area”.

Mr Trump triumphantly declared: “It is time for us to get out of these ridiculous endless wars.”

Almost immediately, Lindsey Graham, a senator of Mr Trump’s own nominal party, protested that the US was abandoning the Kurds, whose forces had done so much in the fight against Isis in Syria and Iraq.

Mr Trump’s response was an absurd combination of denial, defiance and bluster. He threatened the Turks with economic sanctions if their invasion were not “humane”, and mimicked Monty Python in demanding to know what the Kurds had ever done for us. He appeared not to know that they fought with the Allies in the Second World War.

Nor had the president given any thought, apparently, to what might happen to Isis prisoners being held by the Kurds in Syria.

On Thursday, Mr Trump added insult to injury when the defence department announced that more US troops would be sent to Saudi Arabia – according to the president this was different because the Saudis would be paying for them.

Obviously, The Independent is as opposed to “endless wars” as Mr Trump claims to be. But the president is encouraging a new conflict in northern Syria. It does not make it any better that US forces are not directly involved.

Just as Barack Obama was not opposed to all wars, just to “dumb wars”, The Independent is opposed to dumb withdrawals, the dumb abandonment of valuable allies, and the dumb creation of a bigger refugee crisis and more human misery.