The United States is leaving Syria. Not with the thunder of collapsing Saigon embassies or Black Hawk Down spectacles, but through a quiet, undignified fade into irrelevance. Three of America’s eight military bases in northeastern Syria are closing. U.S. troop levels are being halved—no declaration, no defined endgame, no accountability. What looks like prudent disengagement from a peripheral war is, in reality, the latest episode of America’s strategic abdication. The cost? Not just the abandonment of allies but the empowerment of adversaries—and a region inching toward chaos.

This is not a pivot; it’s a pattern. Like Afghanistan before it, Syria is another case study in America’s inability to match tactical success with strategic resolve. The illusion that a battlefield victory—defeating the Islamic State in territorial terms—would allow for a clean withdrawal has collapsed under the weight of Middle Eastern geopolitics. And while Washington looks away, the region is being reordered by powers with clearer aims and fewer scruples.

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It’s worth recalling that the U.S. never had a grand strategy in Syria. The initial aim was modest: degrade ISIS and prevent its resurgence. And in 2019, the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate was destroyed. But even then, the critical question remained unanswered: what comes after?

That silence, maintained across administrations, now defines America’s presence in Syria. The Biden administration, much like Trump’s before it, has drifted—supporting the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) with minimal commitment, while avoiding a broader political or diplomatic engagement. This vacuum has left the U.S. presence not as a stabilizing anchor, but as an exposed, shrinking outpost with no political backing at home and even less........

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