The Sackman Wields the Axe Again.

The White House is full of revolving doors and President Donald Trump is the chief sackman. It is becoming increasingly difficult keeping pace with the number of subordinates that have resigned or have been fired from his administration. The other day it was Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State and it is the third National Security Adviser that we have on seat now. The latest is the US Veterans Affairs Secretary, David Shulkin and Shulkin did not hesitate to fire a parting salvo at his former boss,8 lamenting it should not be this hard to serve one's country. The Rasputin Coefficient measures the level of correlation between the values, beliefs and attitudes of a leader and the values, beliefs and attitudes of his subordinates. A positive correlation, good or bad, sees a high degree of match between the two sets while a negative correlation indicates a high level of dissonance. Hence Kissinger's diplomatic shuttles was an accurate reflection of Nixon's foreign policy mindset while Joe Biden would serve Obama like a faithful steed. When things become 'toxic, chaotic, disrespectful and subversive', as Shulkin has alleged, there is always a high incidence of leaders and aides working at cross purposes. Measuring the Trump administration Rasputin Coefficient was always going to be problematic. It is not all that a static index in the first place, dealing with human emotions, thoughts and passions, qualities that are always on the change and oh, how erratic is our president! This moment, he is threatening to wipe North Korea off the face of earth, the next he is eager to sit down with Kim Jong-un and have a little handshake across the table, if not across the Pacific. When your leader is unstable, voluble, projects the most coherent of his policies in tweets and is always shooting off the cuff, then it is always difficult determining where your minds meet. What made you buddies today might be your undoing tomorrow simply because your boss's thoughts had moved on. What gives you a positive Rasputin Correlation today might give you a negative one the very next moment. Mike Pompeo is the new diplomatic favorite, a hawkish necessity but nothing stops Trump from suddenly becoming dovish and Pompeo would be toast.
It is a win-win situation for Shulkin. We could see him as being fired because he is a stable, rational man who correlates poorly with the 'toxic, chaotic' Trump and if the reason given for his sack is true, an illegal acceptance of Wimbledon tickets, we can always excuse him of having the bad, positive correlation with his boss in the first place. As Trump's thoughts and opinions change, so will his relationship with his subordinates change and we will see the sackman wielding the axe again.

Trump, Turks and Kurds: Leaving Allies to Fry 2

So President Erdogan  sends troops, tanks and warplanes into Syria at will to attack the Kurds while President Trump and Secretary Tillerson look on numbly like rabbits caught plumb in powerful headlights. It does not really matter that Syria is supposed to be a sovereign state, the country had long been partitioned among Russians, Iranians, The Gulf States, Saudis, Turks, Kurds and just anybody that could arm a miscreant with a rifle. This inaction, even silent acquiescence, on the part of the US is even more baffling in the sense that the Kurds remain the only sensible option for securing the porous borders and crossing points  from Syria to Iraq and even to Turkey itself. Hence the decision of the US to convert the YPG to a border force is a well thought out policy, the only effective way to stop the IS from regrouping. After all, Turkey with all its huge army and security paranoia was unable to prevent would-be militants from Europe and elsewhere from using the country as transit points to join  the shitty caliphate in Syria and Iraq at the height of IS ascendancy. Hordes of them were crossing the borders in broad daylight and Turkish officials were looking the other way as a result of compromise or sheer incompetence. The Kurds represent the only credible and capable buffer force in those climes, a fact Trump well recognizes. Hence shrugging helplessly while Erdogan attacks and decimates the forces required to carry out the all-important policing can only be as a result of a foreign policy that is at best, formulated in tweets. Trump is horribly incoherent in his foreign policy and in no instance is this more demonstrated than his inertia in coming to the defense of his most dependable allies in the Middle East. It seems as if he had gathered the Kurds in a police compound for training and then he sends in a bomb-laden suicide truck to blow up the whole place. When policies are set out in tweets, or on a glib tongue, the obvious victims are organization, logic and unity. Senselessness supplanting sense and vice versa.
Maybe Trump thinks that it is a choice between NATO and the Kurds. Then it is equally a choice between where he could put his two feet in and a place that could, in all honesty, admit in other feet. It is leaving immediate, pressing certainty for a long-term certainty, if we can even qualify it as such. It is the Kurds that are in the demand books of the US now, not the Turks. A country that the EU would not even allow in.
Someone said he was confused as to what the US could have done when Turkey sent in its forces into Afrin. Very simple, a couple of US soldiers stationed in very visible places in the enclave. There was no need to do anything combative. No need to unleash warplanes to protect her allies. Something very symbolic would have stopped the tanks. Erdogan's attack on Afrin was no more than a diplomatic test of will, just like Hitler's re-militarization of Rhineland. He was really expecting a firmness from Trump that an attack on YPG and Kurds would be an attack on US troops itself. A couple of  unarmed Green Berets placed on Afrin roads would have driven that home quite trenchantly.
Just like Hitler, all he got in response was sordid appeasement.
After Rhineland, Austria was next and then Czechoslovakia. After Afrin, Manbij, Raqqa and other Kurdish enclaves.
Appeasement is defined as letting a bully have his way always.