The New York Times:

By David D. Kirkpatrick, Ben Hubbard and David M. Halbfinger

President Trump’s surprise acquiescence to a Turkish incursion into northern Syria this week has shaken American allies, and not just because it was a betrayal of a loyal partner. What alarmed them even more was his sheer unpredictability.

His inconsistent and rapidly shifting positions in the Middle East have injected a new element of chaos into an already volatile region and have left allies guessing where the United States stands and for how long.

Previous American policymakers were clear about their intentions, said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a former Iraqi national security adviser.

“This guy is all emotional,” he said. “It is unpredictable.”

The uncertainties only compound simmering worries about the durability of the American commitment to the Middle East.

American presidents have been promising for almost 15 years to reduce the country’s presence in the region, unnerving partners like Israel and the Persian Gulf monarchs that rely on American protection. But few American leaders have ever made and disclosed major foreign policy decisions with the speed and seeming improvisation that Mr. Trump does.

No longer merely worried that Washington might withdraw, analysts say many allies are now concerned that this unpredictable commander in chief could bolt for an exit without warning.

His decision to get out of the way of the Turkish incursion was apparently made on the spur of the moment during a phone call with the Turkish president, surprising many of Mr. Trump’s advisers. It opened the door to a fierce Turkish assault on the American-backed militia led by the Syrian Kurds, which was key to the ground battle to retake territory captured by the Islamic State. Attacking the Kurds, in turn, risks an Islamic State comeback.

This was just the latest in a series of flip-flops in American policy in the region, including two in Syria this year alone. In December, Mr. Trump promised to withdraw the entire contingent of about 2000 American forces there. But he later changed his mind, withdrawing about half.

He has repeatedly warned that the United States was “locked and loaded” for military action against Iran. But when Iran shot down an American surveillance drone this summer, Mr. Trump reversed himself in the final minutes to call off a planned missile strike.

Then last month, he denounced Iran for orchestrating an attack on Saudi oil facilities but declined to take military action. His hesitance made America’s two most important allies in the region, Saudi Arabia and Israel, reassess the American commitment to the containment of Iran and, consequently, to their own security.

Critics say that Mr. Trump’s zigzagging policies have emboldened regional foes, unnerved American partners, and invited Russia and various regional players to seek to exert their influence.

“It is chaos,” said Michael Stephens, a scholar of the region at the Royal United Services Institute in London. “The region is in chaos because the hegemonic power does not seem to know what it wants to do, and so nobody else does.”

Even in Britain, which customarily keeps its Middle East policies tightly aligned with its superpower ally, “nobody knows what to do any more, because you don’t know what is coming next,” Mr. Stephens said. “Donald Trump is pouring gasoline on the fire and leaving a lot of us very confused.”

In his public defenses of his decision, Mr. Trump insists he is acting consistently and has suggested that he was fulfilling a campaign promise to get out of open-ended conflicts around the Middle East.

“I was elected on getting out of these ridiculous endless wars, where our great Military functions as a policing operation to the benefit of people who don’t even like the USA,” he wrote on Twitter on Monday.

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