The Middle East and West Asian region is famously known for being unforgiving of weakness.

I’m thinking that Afghanistan is a lost cause. Mostly because Pakistan has a very different agenda. And our current president has both shown weakness and angered them. The question would be what to do about those we are planning to abandon. Hopefully it will not be another 1842.

In the case of Iraq, we turned them over to Iran back around 2006 when we decided to support the Shia leadership (secular and religious) over the Sunni. This same dynamic is happening in Syria.

The big question then becomes what happens to the Kurds. Under Obama, we likely could have kept their neighbors mostly away. Trump’s uninterested as he can’t monetize them. They have know this and apparently have already sent delegations to Russia.