 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. In today's International Roundup, we will be looking at the changes that are likely to happen in Syria now that Donald Trump has announced his decision to pull out U.S. troops from the country. And to talk more on this, we have with us Prashant. So Prashant, now that ISIS is more or less defeated, Donald Trump has said that the United States will no longer keep troops in the country. And many have expressed surprise over this decision. But do you think it is very unexpected for Donald Trump to have decided to do this now? I would think the answer is both yes and no, in the sense that on the one hand Trump has often indicated his desire to pull troops out. And one of his explicit campaign promises was to basically withdraw troops and bring them back home, which is actually very popular with the World Bank in the U.S. So that's something that has been, that's an agenda he's been pushing for quite some time. On the other hand, such that those plans have also been met with a huge amount of resistance from the Pentagon and from the Department of State. So it was always a question of whether he would actually be able to, say, overcome his advisors' suggestions and basically take his own decision. And that seems to have, that is what seems to have happened right now. So in the sense, I think it would be both yes and no. So they tried really hard, almost the entire U.S. state establishment tried very hard to stop it and they finally just gave up. So in some senses, although it's been building up for some time, it's finally happened and so that is what has happened, yeah. So now that Trump has gone against all of his advisors and the people around him, what do you think he expects to achieve from this decision? So there are multiple factors to be considered, basically. So the key question is, of course, Turkey. And we know that the U.S.-Turkey relationship, although Turkey is a member of NATO and has been a long-standing U.S. ally, the U.S.-Turkey relationship has really suffered in recent times. So there is, of course, the Islamist preacher Gulin, who is basically in the U.S., Turkey wants him for his alleged role in the coup against Erdogan. Similarly, there's a U.S. What do you call a preacher who was also arrested by Turkey. And Turkey has also been moving far more closer to Russia and China, the whole sale of the S-400 defense systems, for instance. Turkey, for instance, was one of the countries which refused to accept the U.S. sanctions on Iran also and insisted to continue to buy Iranian oil. So it's been a very difficult, it's been a very strange situation. As far as the U.S. and Turkey are concerned. And I think what the United States risked at this point of time was Turkey completely going over to the other camp, from their perspective, of course. And the Americans desperately wanted to prevent that, at least, Trump did. And he was convinced that that was the best option. So I think Turkey was also planning an incursion into the northern part of Syria where the Kurds are basically, they have their base. And they wanted to build some sort of a barrier, some sort of, say, move troops about 10, 15 kilometers inside. And this would have put the American soldiers in a very bad position because they would either have to side with the Kurds or they would basically have to stand by while the war was going on. So I think Trump took the decision that he didn't want to be involved in all of this and he wanted Turkey firmly on the American side. So that is basically the primary driving agenda as far as this is concerned. The second part, of course, is the U.S. establishment itself. Its main aim to stay in Syria at this point of time, after ISIS has more or less been defeated, is basically to try to counter Iran's influence, which is part of the overall hawkish attempt by the neoconservative sections in the U.S. to, say, attack in target countries like Iran and North Korea, for instance. So again, that is basically the only reason remaining for the U.S. troops to be in various areas. For instance, there's al-Tanaf where there is no real logic except for the fact that it connects Syria and Iraq. The U.S. troops wanted to maintain an establishment over there. So they could basically choke off those connections whenever possible. So as far as the United States was concerned, at this point it is no longer really about fighting ISIS, but about various other strategic needs. And Trump seems to have taken a decision that it makes far more sense to have Turkey on your side and leave, basically, to remove the troops from Syria, where anyway they don't have too much of a role because it's not they have been achieving any major military successes. The bulk of the fighting is still being done by the Syrian government with the aid of the Russians, with the aid of the Iranians. So basically, this whole notion that the key question was what was the role of the U.S. except fulfilling its own strategic interests and what was termed a strategic interest in that region. And Trump has decided basically that it makes far more sense to have Turkey on its side. And apart from, of course, whatever Trump expects to achieve in this region, do you think there's also some larger kind of plan at play behind his decision to withdraw troops from there? I would be very skeptical of ascribing larger plans to Trump, of course, I'm very unsure about that. But we can make certain assumptions about what is likely to happen in this region. So one of the key things, of course, would be the fact that Turkey has immediately announced that it is going to postpone its planned incursion into the northern parts of Syria. So that's going to be postponed for some time. But that threat still remains and it's going to be probably a very difficult confrontation when that happens. So that is one thing that we really need to watch out for. What is likely to be dynamics? The most ideal situation everyone would prefer is if the Russians and the Syrians managed to convince the Kurds to stand out and maybe disarm them or maybe keep them, say, manage to restrict them. In which case it's a win-win situation for everybody. But the Kurdish leadership has been, I think, slightly defined. They want the Syrian army only to patrol the borders and they want autonomy within their territories. So it really remains to be seen if the Russians and the Syrians are able to convince the Kurds that say to basically accommodate the Turks, so to speak. So that's one aspect of it. The second aspect of it also means that it marks for Syria also a key moment because on the one hand the Syrians will have to divert some soldiers to target the remaining ISIS bases north of the Euphrates. But at the same time it also indicates that as far as Syria is concerned, the presence of the US troops meant a particular declaration of support for the Kurds. And which also raised a question about the future of Syria itself, about the structure the country would have. So this, I think, marks a significant move towards making sure that Syria remains a united centralized country. And that is also a key point as far as Syria is concerned. And this also actually in some senses marks an admission of the fact that the whole US strategy in this region was also fundamentally flawed. That it was neither really able to make any significant advances in the fight and what it called was a fight against ISIS. Or for that matter, it's attempts to say counter Iran or whatever have also absolutely not worked out. So in that sense it's also cutting the losses as far as Trump is concerned. So now the real aim is to try to ensure that, say they can bring some, they can bring Syria back and Turkey back into the NATO fold. And they're trying to sell as Patriot missiles to Turkey as well. So these are the key developments that are likely in the region. I think Russia will play a far more significant role in the fight against the last remaining ISIS bases. So that's another element likely to happen. So in some senses, although a lot of these things were already happening on the ground, I think this move actually marks, in some senses, can we say an official indication of many of these tendencies as well. And now this decision of course came during Donald Trump's call with Turkish president Erdogan. When Erdogan said now that ISIS is more or less defeated, what are you still doing here? And Trump said, okay, we'll pull out. This was a bit of a surprise for Erdogan as well, because now that US leaves, what is Turkey's position going to be in the area? What do you think about that? I think what Turkey is going to do is basically try to play between both these groups, because I think on the one hand, it's not that just because this has happened, Turkey is going to completely go back into the US fold. So it also has a lot of compulsions it needs to examine. So it'll probably try to play between, say Russia and Iran on one hand and the US on the other hand, while at the same time trying to ensure that the Kurds are as far suppressed as possible. So I think Turkey's position is also going to make sure that it's say aspirations, strategic aspirations in the region get as strengthened as much as possible and they get realized as much as possible. And this would be basically also trying to be a key player in the process regarding the future of Syria. This could be also in the writing of the constitution in basically say, conducting negotiations with some militant groups which it supports to try to, say get them to stand back so that get them to stand back for instance. So all these factors need to be considered but Erdogan also has to look at his domestic politics. So in the sense that there are elections coming up, local elections are coming up in a couple of months. And he also has to make sure that it does not become say too complicated a situation like a violent conflict for instance might be quite bad for him. So what I think Turkey will try to do is to flex muscles as much as possible while trying as much as possible to ensure to avoid a conflict or a very violent conflict so to speak. So for Turkey this is also a very key moment regarding how it negotiates all of this. So thank you for Sean for joining us today and thank you for watching this clip.