US President Donald Trump shakes hands during a bilateral meeting with Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan during the G20 leaders summit in Osaka, Japan, June 29, 2019. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
After much speculation and tweeting about crippling Turkey’s
economy, US President Donald J. Trump announced on October 14 his
administration’s response to Turkey’s invasion of Syria and assault on the
United States’ former partners, the Syrian Kurdish splinter group, the People’s
Protection Units or YPG. There is nothing crippling about what the president
announced—sanctions that target three Turkish military officials, the Turkish
defense ministry, and the Turkish energy ministry; suspension of far-off trade
discussions; and a steel tariff increase from 25 to 50 percent. President Trump
further threatened
to “swiftly destroy Turkey’s economy” if the offensive continues, a message echoed
by US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
The problem with all this bluster is simple: it’s hard to
bluff when your cards are already on the table.
To recap. President Trump reportedly
went off-script in a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on
October 6 and announced he would withdraw US troops from northeast Syria,
giving Turkey the green light to launch an invasion and attack Erdoğan’s
longtime adversary, the YPG. Condemnation from both sides of the aisle was
swift, with Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) immediately promising sanctions on
Turkey if Ankara crossed the border. The Trump administration quickly tried to
half walk-back the president’s strategic blunder—which was apparently made
against the recommendation of his military advisers—by joining the sanctions threat.
Turkey, unbowed, crossed the border and continues to escalate offensive
operations against the YPG.
The implications are nothing short of earth-shattering.
Trump in one short phone call upended the US- and rebel-maintained buffer zone in
northern Syria, set NATO against one of its own members, allowed the Turkish
military to assault the United States’ once-partners in the fight against
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ISIS, solidified Assad’s grip on power in
Syria, and provided space for ISIS to remerge with a territorial safe-haven in
Syria.
The most appropriate and effective way to confront this
issue would have been to take coordinated action with European Union and NATO
allies, make clear that US security guarantees in the buffer zone still existed
and that the fight against ISIS was the only tolerable Turkish military action,
and present a unified front to Turkey while pressing Ankara to finalize a
comprehensive agreement on restoring bilateral relations that was within reach
at the very moment of the now infamous Trump-Erdoğan October 13 phone call. The
Trump administration’s way of cleaning up this mess? Sanctions, of course.
But seeking to rely on sanctions to somehow solve all those
problems is malpractice, and undermines the tool. Sanctions can be used to
change behavior or deter future bad behavior, but like all threats, they must
be credible. It is hard to take seriously threats by the US government to ruin
the Turkish economy when Trump himself gave this green light in the first
place, and continues to equivocate via his Twitter feed; one minute justifying
the Turkish assault and thirty minutes later threatening
sanctions. Under such circumstances, sanctions have almost no chance of
succeeding in putting this genie back in the bottle.
That does not mean that sanctions cannot harm the Turkish
economy. Turkey’s economy is heavily reliant on the US dollar and very limited
sanctions in 2018 on two Turkish officials over the jailing of a US pastor
caused significant economic
distress—the lira plummeted and inflation hit 24.5 percent. If the US administration
follows through on its threats to increase sanctions if Turkey does not
withdraw its troops, broader measures targeting key financial institutions and
other major economic actors would have a major impact on an already vulnerable
economy. But by the time those sanctions are deployed and have time to take
effect, the damage will have long been done. The YPG have already allied with
Assad, whom President Trump (rightly) refers to as an US enemy. The Turkish
military has already crossed the border and disrupted the area under Kurdish
control, allowing a hundreds of ISIS
captives to flee. And the Turkish military’s mission, as it were, may be
largely accomplished by the time the sanctions bite.
And perhaps most critically, a significant wedge has already
been driven in the relationship between NATO and its eastern bulwark, Turkey, a
key strategic hedge against Russia. Many NATO allies have frozen military
exports to Turkey, and the more Ankara moves away from the alliance, the closer
it gets to Russia. The green light followed by the erratic switch to
threatening crushing sanctions threatens to turn a difficult period into a
permanent split that will substantially undermine US and allied interests.
Looking forward, it is possible that Trump has left his
Turkish counterpart a dignified way out. Trump’s demand is not that Turkey
withdraw from Syria, but that it implement a ceasefire. This may be a demand
that Erdoğan can accept, because it will allow him to declare victory at home
and avoid more punishing sanctions.
If that approach is unsuccessful, where we go from here is
anyone’s best guess, but here’s a shot. The Trump administration’s sanctions
will do little to deter Erdoğan. Spurred on by continued Turkish aggression,
the administration, Congress, or both will impose more significant sanctions
targeting the Turkish economy in the next two to three weeks. After some short interim
period of economic pain to Turkey, Ankara will declare its mission complete and
announce it is pulling back its troops in a deal with Washington to lift the tougher
sanctions. Somewhere in this scenario—admittedly something of a best case—is an
outcome that can salvage some relationship with Ankara that limits the damage
to strategic US and NATO interests. There will still be substantial damage to
the mission in Syria, US reliability as a partner, and the fight against ISIS,
but the goal of the Trump administration, the Congress, and allies in Europe
should be on minimizing that damage.
Either way, the use and threat of US sanctions will have failed to achieve even the status quo prior to October 13, let alone a desirable outcome, not because they don’t have impact but because they never had a chance to succeed in the first place. Using sanctions effectively requires consistent and implementable policy goals, which are not present in this situation. Instead, sanctions will serve as a last-gasp attempt to rescue what little good can come out of a massive strategic blunder; a misguided use of an otherwise powerful tool.
Brian O’Toole is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global Business and Economics Program. He is a former senior adviser to the director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) at the US Department of the Treasury. Follow him on Twitter @brianoftoole.
Further reading
Tue, Oct 15, 2019
Getting the United States out of “endless wars” is an admirable goal. But military forces, trust among our partners, and standing firm in the face of adversaries play critical roles in reaching that goal. Getting those functions back in balance will be necessary in moving forward.
New Atlanticist
by
C. Anthony Pfaff
Sun, Sep 22, 2019
Sanctions allow a US president to exercise power unilaterally and often expeditiously. They are often one of the few middle grounds between war and words.
Feature
by
Brian O’Toole and Samantha Sultoon
Fri, Sep 20, 2019
The only appreciable impact of the September 20 designation will be to further impair the delivery of food and medicine to the Iranian people, who are already struggling to get needed supplies and to antagonize US partners around the globe.
New Atlanticist
by
Brian O’Toole
It is hard to take seriously threats by the US government to ruin the Turkish economy when Trump himself gave this green light in the first place. Under such circumstances, sanctions have almost no chance of succeeding in putting this genie back in the bottle.
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