Victoria Coates, Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for the Middle East, joined me this morning to discuss the Turkish invasion of Syria:

Audio:

10-15hhs-coates

Transcript:

HH: I begin this hour with Victoria Coates. She is deputy assistant to President Trump. She is the senior director for Middle East at the National Security Council. She was my traveling companion with John Bolton when we went to Jerusalem and Ankara at the beginning of this year. Here we are, ten months later, Victoria Coates, and there is quite a disaster in the making in Turkey. Can we begin at the beginning? How did American troops get to Syria in the first place?

VC: Good morning, Hugh. Thanks for having me on. It’s good to hear your voice. I mean, the troop presence in Syria goes back to the previous administration. This was their solution to the Syrian problem set, I guess you can call it. And that is the policy we inherited.

HH: And so how many did we have in the area that President Erdogan threatened to invade a week ago?

VC: A couple dozen. It wasn’t very many. And that’s part of the issue we have when you have a military the size of the Turkish Army threatening territory like that and you have just a couple dozen troops in place whose mission is a counterterrorism mission. It’s not, I think, a great idea to have those guys in harm’s way when that’s not the mission they’re there to do.

HH: It has been widely reported, I believe erroneously, but you tell me the truth, that President Trump green-lighted the Turkish invasion. Did he do so?

VC: That is utterly untrue. Across the board, the administration has been unified in conveying to our Turkish counterparts that this is a terrible idea. Nothing good can come of it. We did not in any way endorse it, that we offered mediation, we have been negotiating with the Turks. I mean, you were with us in Ankara when that process started, as you mentioned. Yes, it was moving slowly. No, that was not entirely the United States’ fault. But it was moving. And I think that what the Turks decided to do, what Erdogan decided to do, was extremely rash, but certainly not in any way green-lighted by the president of the United States.

HH: And was, is it the opinion of the White House and the President that Erdogan was acting as a result of domestic political pressure, and finally had reached the point where he was going to roll in regardless of whether or not American troops were in his way, because they were a trip wire, and I know they were a trip wire. But they were a very, very small trip wire.

VC: I think there’s a lot of logic to that. The pressures that Erdogan is under, both politically and economically, are pretty well known. And President Trump has spent a great deal of time over the last year trying to talk him out of this, and has been successful up until now. But I think those pressures after some recent electoral mishaps proved for him to be too much. And you can see from the response in Turkey, you know, this move is very popular domestically for him at the moment, because there haven’t been any costs to it, yet. You can see why he would do this now.

HH: Now Victoria Coates, I am reminded of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon to establish a safety zone in 1982. It never works, but I guess regimes never realize that if you break it, you bought it. He’s going to be stuck in Turkey, he’s going to be stuck in Syria in that 20 mile zone for a long time, and they’re not going to become suddenly happy Turkish citizens, right?

VC: Well, I think, I, it’s a bit of a stretch for me to equate Israel with Erdogan’s Turkey, but I do think again, you’ve made an excellent point. You had a reasonably stable area there that compared to the rest of Syria was pretty prosperous. And to disrupt that so aggressively, and we’re hearing very disturbing accounts of what he plans to do in terms of changing the ethnic makeup of that region, and it’s very hard for me to see that being a model of stability.

HH: Now there are also reports that Assad, who is a butcher, and we all know that, has been requested to assist the Kurds so that we may end up with a Russian-Syrian-Kurdish line opposing a Turkish-Syrian line. Is that were we think this will stabilize?

VC: I don’t know that I’d call that stable. That sounds like a pretty bad mix to me, and it’s another reason why I think our service members should not be there at this time. As I’m sure you know, the President spoke with General Mazloum last night, or yesterday afternoon, rather. And the General’s message was that that was not a finalized situation. So we’ll wait and see how that plays out.

HH: So by not finalized, we don’t know who is where, yet, along the front, and we don’t even know where the front is?

VC: Exactly.

HH: Now I’ve been trying to read everything, and I don’t believe anyone knows anything at this point because of the chaotic nature of the fighting. I don’t think I could say with certainty that ISIS fighters have escaped, or that ISIS fighters, you know, the one thing I know isn’t happening is that the caliphate isn’t reemerging out of the ashes of the ground like some phoenix, is it?

VC: No, not at the moment. But that’s something, of course, we’re very mindful of. And important to note in the President’s statement yesterday, the troops that would come out of Northeastern Syria are redeploying in the region. So they will allow us the ability to continue to monitor that situation. And the President has not given any direction for withdrawals from the garrison at Tanf. So the notion that we’re suddenly fleeing the Middle East is not accurate.

HH: Now my friend and your new boss, Robert O’Brien, is on a plane with Mike Pence, the Vice President, to talk to Erdogan. You know, when we went with National Security Advisor Bolton, Erdogan wouldn’t meet with Bolton. Do we expect Erdogan to meet with the Vice President and National Security Advisor O’Brien?

VC: Well, they’re not on a plane, yet. And the meetings aren’t set, yet, so when we get more details on the travel, we’ll share that. But is that certainly up to Erdogan? You know, the President talked to him yesterday afternoon as well, and those lines of communication are open to him if he would like to talk. Certainly, Robert’s offer to, you know, to go over and mediate, and as you know, he’s an extremely skilled diplomat. This is what he does. I would see it as a great opportunity for Erdogan to sort of tone this down a little bit.

HH: In the meantime, are there in fact moves to remove America’s nuclear weapons from the Air Force base in Turkey?

VC: There are no plans for that at the moment that I’m aware of.

HH: And what is the European Union’s position and the NATO alliance’s position vis-à-vis a member-state attacking across an international boundary? Is there going to be a collective response?

VC: Well, obviously there’s a great deal of concern, and we’ve been in close contact with our European allies. I’d sort of bring up the example of 1974, which I find fascinating. In the summer of ’74, in the invasion of Cyprus, something that basically went unnoticed in the United States, because of course, we were doing something else in the summer of ’74. But my old boss, Don Rumsfeld, was ambassador to NATO during that crisis and remembers very vividly how the NATO alliance was a vehicle in which all parties could keep talking, and keep communicating sort of out of the spotlight, and it really helped to defuse it. So I think that NATO could be a real resource to us at this point.

HH: Now I want to make sure the people understand as well something you said. We are not leaving Iraq, because I tried to explain the first part of this. This all goes back to 2011 and the precipitous withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, which launched ISIS by virtue of creating a vacuum into which ISIS came with its black flags, which eventually led to having to follow them into Syria, which led to American troops being in Syria, and Turkey wanting to come across the border. It’s all very complicated. It’s all very old. It’s all very Middle East. The question is, though, are we firm in our commitment to remaining in Iraq?

VC: This is something that obviously is a question for the President, but despite the fact that his views on the origins of the Iraq war are well known, we visited Iraq with him at Christmas this year, and he was extremely impressed by the resources that we have there and their ability to execute counterterrorism missions which are keeping us safe at home. And so obviously, the government of Iraq gets a vote in this as well. But I don’t see any plans to abandon those resources at this point.

HH: And finally, General Mattis said on Meet the Press on Sunday, the enemy has a vote as well. ISIS has a vote. But let’s reemphasize. I have not seen any evidence that ISIS has reestablished any physical caliphate anywhere. Am I correct?

VC: Oh, you’re absolutely correct. And you know, we continue to fight against ISIS, to monitor ISIS. The destruction of the caliphate is one of the great achievements of President Trump’s first term, something he directed the day after he was sworn in. And we’ve talked a lot about the protection of religious minorities, the ethnic minorities. The great predator for those communities is ISIS. And that’s what the President has taken out. And so certainly, we have no interest in letting those gains fly away.

HH: Victoria Coates, deputy assistant to the President, senior director for the Middle East at the NSC, thank you for joining me. I appreciate the update.

End of interview.