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For the Kurds, President Trump’s decision to withdraw US forces from Northern Syria and permit Turkey a free hand in the region will create a sense of historic déjà vu. They’ve been here

before, when, in 1919, they invested their faith in another American president – Woodrow Wilson – and the 14-point manifesto, which included the right to national self-determination, he took

to the Versailles Peace Conference. At first, the longstanding Kurdish ambition for a national homeland prospered and was confirmed by the 1920 Treaty of Sevres, only to be overturned by

the subsequent Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 which set the boundaries of modern Turkey and left the Kurds with minority status across the newly formed nations of that part of the Middle East,

along with a burning sense of historical injustice. To the casual observer of Middle Eastern affairs, the Kurds will seem to occupy a minor subplot to the main regional script. To the 45-50

million scattered across Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and the global diaspora, it doesn’t feel like that. They believe they have existed as a coherent racial, linguistic and geographical entity

since Antiquity, descended from the Median tradition of ancient Persia. To the western imagination, the most vivid Kurdish historical figure is probably Salah al-Din Yusef ibn Ayyub,

abbreviated to Saladin, founder of the Ayyubid dynasty and nemesis of the Christian forces of the Third Crusade which saw Jerusalem recaptured for the Islam, the armies of the Christian West

decisively defeated at the battle of Hattin and the final relics of the True Cross lost forever. Any traveller leaving Baghdad and heading north will gain a similar sense of Kurdish

identity. The duochrome landscape of central Iraq has a palette of black and brown and the oppressive heat of central Mesopotamia limits human activity across its monotonous plains. But as

the same traveller approaches the Kurdish-dominated areas of Northern Iraq the landscape becomes more mountainous, the air clearer and the colours more vivid. Kurdish society has always had

a tradition of female emancipation and the frank stares of Kurdish women dressed in brilliantly dyed fabrics is a sharp contrast to monochrome reticence of their Arab Iraqi peers. The Kurds

are nominally Sunni Muslims, with all the traditional constraints that come with that, but anyone who has spent Nowruz (the Persian New Year) in expansive Kurdish company will know that the

prohibition on alcohol is observed with a light touch. The strong sense of Kurdish national identity is underwritten by an impressive military vocation. The Kurdish irregular Peshmerga

(those who face death) have held their own against Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regular army and the ruthless ideologues of ISIS with equal facility; indeed, if the ISIS caliphate was defeated by

a single military organisation, it was the Peshmerga rebranded as the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the pre-eminent fighting unit of the Syrian Democratic Forces. In a typically

Kurdish way, the YPG has a female equivalent in the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), a force with its own formidable reputation. Western Special Forces have directed the air support which has

been a decisive factor in defeating ISIS, but, when it has come to the dirty and visceral business of closing with the enemy, they have been admiring onlookers to the ferocity and

efficiency of Kurdish forces. The print, digital and broadcast media are full today of tactical analysis of the latest act of Presidential caprice, and this needs little further elaboration.

A Turkish incursion into northern Syria brings with it the possibility of military confrontation with the YPG, another seismic movement of refugees and a Turkish/Russian/Iranian carve up of

whatever passes as a political solution to Syria. But this also feels like a strategic watershed, albeit one drafted as a Tweet, and a series of consequences beyond the tactical can now be

glimpsed on a longer horizon. The first is a complete breakdown in confidence in American statecraft. President Trump may rejoice in his _ great and unmatched wisdom _ but he is probably

alone. To let one conclusive strategic outcome slip through his fingers, as he did with the painstakingly negotiated denouement with the Taliban in Afghanistan, is unfortunate. To allow a

second, in Syria, is negligent. Combine that with the loss of adult supervision of the Pentagon and the State Department and America is left with a gaping hole that was once occupied by the

well-oiled machinery of imperial power. To threaten to _ totally destroy and obliterate _ the economy of a NATO partner and cosignatory of the agreement limiting refugee access to Europe,

bears little resemblance to the cool rationality that is the traditional prerequisite to strategic success. Put more succinctly, it is the language of the madhouse and America’s reputation

suffers accordingly. The second is that the Gulf in particular and the Middle East in general no longer has a guarantor power. This role was provided by the British until the 1960s and

subsequently – until today – by the Americans. This system had its disadvantages and the strategic infantilism it encouraged in countries like Saudi Arabia is an example, but it promoted a

stability that many in a volatile region craved. The Arab Spring, the calamitous invasion of Iraq, the rise of Iran and the incipient Sunni/Shia confessional war within Islam have all

chipped away at the idea of hegemonic power within the region, but it has taken the deliberate American decision to vacate the Middle Eastern ring to mark the end of a strategic era. The

first intimations of this occurred when President Obama stepped back from his red lines on Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people. This has been followed by President Trump’s

reluctance to back his bluster up with physical force, a trend which culminated in his offer to hold Saudi Arabia’s coat while it decided what to do about the Iranian attack on its oil

industry. The decision to precipitately withdraw from Syria completes a process of US disengagement that has never seemed to be the product of a strategic design, more the result of a series

of politically expedient decisions made for limited tactical advantage but, taken in aggregate, with strategic consequence. There are pretenders to the role of guarantor power, but neither

convinces. Russia has made the very best of not very much in making what seems like a decisive intervention in Syria. But its economic fragility does not commend it to a wider regional role

and President Putin might chose to quit while he’s ahead. Another of the strategic shifts in the last few decades is that most of the trade leaving the Gulf now turns left, to China. US

energy self-sufficiency plays a role here but, it is China’s economic success that is the main factor; a trend that will be compounded by the One Belt, One Road initiative. China seems to

have military strategic ambitions in its own backyard and, in particular, within the Western Pacific sea area. Playing a similar role in the Middle East would be a stretch and premature for

a power that is yet to punch its weight militarily. So, it will be left to the people who live there to sort out the Middle East, and the alliances are already emerging. Turkey and Qatar

provide a slightly improbable axis with a natural sympathy for the more radical expressions of Islam. A more conservative axis has been formed between the traditional powers of Saudi Arabia

and Egypt. The moral abomination of the war in Yemen continues, Iran flexes its insidious power, and Israeli intelligence estimates place the likelihood of war at higher than for a

generation. Taken against this background, history might conclude self-determination was long overdue; alternatively, it might paraphrase Louis XIV’s epithet to describe President Trump’s

legacy: _ après moi, le deluge. _ The final consequence brings us back to the long-suffering Kurds. They will feel they have been stabbed in the back, again, in accordance with what seems to

be historical predestination. But they won’t take it lying down. The sense of their national identity, the cohesion of their civil society, the sacrifices of their people and the

sophistication of their global communications make the Kurds formidable potential enemies. With large diaspora populations in Istanbul and Germany and powerful advocacy operations in London

and Washington they are capable of responses ranging from howls of narrative outrage to acts of terrorism within Turkey, or even internationally. The one thing we can be sure of is that they

will not accept the role of passive victims again.