Let’s get some things straight.

1. Syria is not a quagmire. Even if it has not been orderly, what seems to be happening is the ending of a one-party regime and a return to a real multiparty system. The government apparatus, including its army, is cooperating with the people who took up arms against the leader of the one-party regime and against the proxy forces of a foreign country that has been supporting that regime.

2. "A major war in the Middle East" is not inevitable. Nobody in the Middle East is crazy enough to attack a nuclear power. This is especially true when that crazy power is (a) hellbent on burning the whole Middle East to prolong his stay in power to avoid jail time in Tel Aviv or The Hague and (b) answering the "voices" he has recently started hearing in the middle of the night to realize the real estate deal "promised" a long time ago to Moses. Having said that, I am not sure who is actually hearing the voices, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir. But recently they are drawn to the "Promised Land," especially in the form of "Kurdistan," a.k.a., "Terroristan," in Iraq and Syria.

Now back to the main issue U.S. President-elect Donald Trump brought up: The climactic conclusion of a 30-year-long plan of the neoconservatives throughout the Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations to remake the Middle East on behalf of Israel.

During his first reign, Trump had given in to the neocon plan, unable to order the U.S. Army to leave Iraq and Syria. His Syria envoy, James Jeffrey, said diplomatic teams and the U.S. Army commanders "were always playing shell games to not make clear to us (him) how many troops we had there." If you remember, when Trump ordered the full withdrawal of the U.S. forces in December 2018, his defense secretary, Jim Mattis, and his special envoy for Syria, Brett McGurk, resigned.

From that point on, it was the neocons who ran the show, not Trump. He was so submissively pinned down that his new pick for director of national intelligence, Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard, had then said that Trump was a puppet in the hands of neocon puppet masters. (Former Democrat Gabbard now tries to whitewash her harsh words saying that the neocons were trying to undermine Trump’s objectives so they could feed their goals of continuing to keep the U.S. in a perpetual state of war. Trump has strange ways to beat down people to size!)

Well, Miss Tulsi, Elon Musk, Pete Hegseth and many others are the problems of Trump and the American people. Let them deal with it. Our problem is much more convoluted than this. The globe has a leadership vacuum: Can Trump handle it?

With Germany and France both in political turmoil, Trump will take office at a time of instability in the continent. Neoconservatives, or with the better fitting name neofascists, will definitely want to domestically "overhaul the institutions of our government to ready them for a new kind of war against a new kind of enemy," including the FBI, CIA, armed forces and State Department, for the dismemberment of Iraq and Syria, and internationally abandoning all Israeli Palestinian peace processes.

Now, with Iran’s declining power opening doors to Israel and the U.S. and Israel’s tactical gains in Syria, there are mouthwatering developments given the global vacuum. The neocons will try to snatch the opportunity to "export" democracy to Iran, Iraq and Syria. But can Trump interfere with their programs? Wouldn’t he take it upon himself to do something? Is Trump’s statement that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan conducted an "unfriendly takeover" of Syria "speaking softly" or is it shaking a big stick at the same time? After all, the genetic neocon Daniel Pipes and his ilk are waiting in ambush with their sweet talk about how "Americans must put aside their instinctive feelings of short-term humanitarianism and instead think strategically" to do best for the U.S. interests. As we know, Trump would easily succumb to such accolades as "putting aside his feelings and helping the American interests."

Another genetically neocon Michael Rubin says that Trump should not trust the sudden moderation of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) because they are simply buying time to consolidate power. After all, the HTS brought with them the Syrian National Army (SNA), therefore "a tide of Turkish power and influence over the future of Syria," and their first victim would be "America’s Kurdish allies." (Don’t expect Rubin to explain why Türkiye has long considered them an adversary!)

All those neocons and Trump are right: Türkiye has emerged as a winner in Syria. For the last 13 years, the Turkish people, their governments, NGOs and charity organizations have been financially and socially helping the opposition in Syria. All the more, the father and son Assads projected ethnic and denominational differences and fights in their country to Türkiye for the last 50 years. Turkish people endured all these; now Turks' last effort to have peace win in Syria has been vindicated.

But there are two points about which Trump seems to be wrong:

1. Whatever a former empire does in a country that it ruled for more than 500 years (508 years, to be exact) can hardly be "unfriendly." There must be a very sentimental relationship between them to prevent unfriendliness.

2. What a former empire does to a country that it stopped ruling a century ago (106 years to be exact) cannot be a "takeover."

Apparently, despite all of Trump’s talk that his second reign is not going to be run by them, the neocons’ narratives and pipe dreams are lurking in the dark rooms of the Mar-a-Lago mansion. Trump seems to support their "Greater Israel" initiative in the Middle East and the neocon policy of NATO expansion that led Russia to invade Ukraine is not going to end. This highly avoidable conflict that has now cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars at the same time brought the U.S. ever closer toward direct confrontation with a nuclear-armed former empire.

As a side note, not all empires are as benevolent as the Ottomans; some of them do not consider striking back risky.