The Trump team has said little about its approach to Iraq and Syria. Trump himself sees ISIS as a military problem, and he will likely sustain the current U.S.-led air campaign against ISIS and support for Iraqi security forces moving to recapture territory inside Iraq. Trump, however, has expressed little interest in the Iran-Saudi/Turkish competition that is a driving force for many of the conflicts in the region. Because Trump wants to avoid entanglement in new wars in the Middle East or nation-building efforts, his administration will likely not seek to expend much effort to help the quarreling Iraqi communities reach common ground, nor will it expend much effort to help rebuild Iraq.

Similarly, Trump won’t enter into new military commitments such as a no-fly zone in Syria or airstrikes against Syrian government forces. Trump might even shift U.S. policy on Syria toward collaborating with Russia (and thus also Iran and Bashar al-Assad) against Islamic extremists and indirectly against the moderates who fight alongside them against Assad. Turkey will urgently press its case against the Syrian Kurdish P.Y.D. fighters whom the Obama administration has favored against ISIS. To the extent that Trump seeks to complement confrontation over the Iranian nuclear program with efforts to contain Iranian expansion in the Levant, Trump might even implicitly line up with the Turks on Syria. However, his oft-expressed distrust of trying to micro-manage local politics in the Middle East will make it hard to convince the administration to seriously challenge the Russian-Iranian-Assad domination of Syria. Over the longer term, Turkey and Saudi Arabia will have to accept Russian-backed Iranian domination of Syria that enjoys American acquiescence, or to challenge that domination by boosting aid to the Syrian Sunni Arab opposition even without U.S. involvement.