President Trump’s U-turn in Syria has created another dismemberment in the country

The United States is content to abandon its Kurdish allies, but not Big Oil in the east. In the north, the Kurdish people have been left to the mercy of Turkey and a subsequent ethnic cleansing

There are U-turns. And then there are Donald Trump U-turns. Having announced, apparently almost on a whim, to take US troops out of northern Syria a fortnight ago, the president now proposes to send “mechanised forces” to the east of Syria.

Thus, before long, and in two spectacularly inept moves, the United States will end up with more personnel in Syria than it started with; they will be far more exposed to a resurgent so-called Isis; and will be in constant danger of conflict with Russian or, more likely, Russian proxy forces currently undertaking bogus peacekeeping duties with their Turkish allies.

The deployment of tanks in this part of Syria is especially pointed, as they have not been deployed before, and they betoken a readiness to engage, if need be, in heavy combat, either with Turkish militia or President Assad’s Syrian forces.

For what President Trump has created in eastern Syria is a further dismemberment of the country. There will now be, in effect, an American military protectorate covering the part of Syria neighbouring Iraq. It just happens to be where Syria’s oil reserves sit, and where the US-based giant Conoco has significant operations.

The contrast could not be starker or sorrier. The US is content to abandon its Kurdish allies, but not Conoco and Big Oil. In the north, the Kurdish people have been left to the mercy of Turkey and a subsequent ethnic cleansing, with Mr Trump laughing at their contribution to the US efforts in the Middle East because they weren’t involved in the Normandy landings in 1944. Indeed Mr Trump adds fresh injury and insult by suggesting that the Kurdish refugees huddled around the Turkish-Syria border now relocate to the east of Syria, inside the US protectorate, no doubt safer there because of the oil fields.

On the other hand, then, we see America fulfilling every conspiracy theorist’s and every enemy’s claims and every friend’s fears that its basic motivation in the world, and particularly the Middle East, is driven by money, corporate interests and oil. It is a charge laid at the door of the west ever since the British and Americans colluded to bring down the Iranian government in 1953 to prevent the nationalisation of BP assets, and has been repeated ever since, with more or less justification.

The claim that US foreign policy and the lives of young American soldiers were being sacrificed in the name of Big Oil was the most wounding of charges against the invasion of Iraq in 2003, for example, and has been repeated over America’s mostly staunch support for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, during their merciless proxy war with the Iranians fought in Yemen and elsewhere. It was vociferously denied by the likes of George W Bush and Tony Blair, who said they were “liberating” Iraq from a dictator. Yet along waddles the Donald tweeting merrily: “When these pundit fools who have called the Middle East wrong for 20 years ask what we are getting out of the deal, I simply say, THE OIL, AND WE ARE BRINGING OUR SOLDIERS BACK HOME, ISIS SECURED!”

Isis is indeed secured, but not in the sense the president means. Liberated from their Kurdish captors, many battle-hardened and experienced so-called Isis jihadists have escaped and are now free, for example, to prosecute their war against the US-guarded oil installations in east Syria. Isis represents one of the most vicious and cruel bodies of fighters the world has ever seen, and the American forces in the region will find them a formidable, desperate, ruthless, suicidal death cult – and heavy armour will be little use against Islamic State’s mobile guerrilla-style terrorist campaigns. If President Trump wishes to safeguard the welfare of America’s fighting forces he could scarcely have made a more foolish decision than to let Isis soldiers out to take them on in asymmetrical conflict. President Trump’s promise to “bring soldiers home” had no rider to the fact that they would be coming back in body bags. The characteristic Trump response – a massive bombing raid on civilians – will do nothing to restrain or deter Isis.

One day, President Trump’s meddling in military strategy will serve as a case study at officer training academies in how not to run a war.

In the meantime, the grisly consequences of his irrational, impatient and ill-advised orders will simply cost countless lives. Before long, Mr Trump will find himself picking up the phone again to his former Kurdish friends as he realises they are America’s only reliable ally in the region. After another humanitarian disaster visited upon them, will they then answer America’s call for assistance?