Once, Donald Trump decided to go after Al Quaida after the destruction of ISIL; he would attack Idlib since it is their main bastion of power, which would also be attacked by Assad since it is also the last major rebel outpost against him. Then what? Would Trump attack the people attacking his (and by extension America’s enemies?) Or would he be fighting alongside the same Assad regime that he has stated he loathes because “it gases children?” If he opts for the former, he would end up being in direct conflict with the Russian armed forces, who have made it clear that they will protect their allies with the same intensity that the Americans have demonstrated when protecting the Kurds and other anti-Assad rebels.
Meanwhile, as the ISIL thrashes about in its death throes, AL Qaida is busy poaching its fighters so that when it collapses and implodes, their highly charged and motivated fighters would be willing to die for the cause of Salafist terror.
In this way, the war that Trump would be waging would not end, even if he declares victory over the ISIL. But rather the same highly charged and ideologically motivated terrorists with the same weapons would be fighting the same war. Only under a different brand name.
The war may come to America
Yes, this was and indeed is very definite possibility as well as being a really grave threat. As the ISIL dies and entropies, its legions of western passport holding fighters would head back to Europe and America to launch revenge attacks. Europe to its detriment, has seen how devastatingly effective even ‘lone wolf’ attacks can be.
But this new breed of fighters who have extensive combat experience and a near pathological hatred for America could end up creating massive havoc provoking an incensed Trump to ‘lash out’ and thus creating a vicious cycle of cause and effect’. that may last well beyond Trump’s tenure.
Of proxy wars and beyond in Syria
These are answers that require extreme patience and that is not a trait that Trump is particularly well known for. In this dystopian vision of every increasing and multiplying ‘Proxy wars within Proxy wars,’ the chances of an inadvertent mistake or miscalculation are immensely high. And that is not a good idea at all, when you have someone as impulsive as Donald Trump at the helm of affairs.
Any such war, once unleashed could easily result in a nuclear holocaust due to a series of highly unfortunate circumstances.
The nightmare of a nuclear exchange is so horrific that it has kept the peace amongst all nuclear armed adversaries ever since the weapons were first invented. If war were to break out between Russia and America on Trump’s watch, it would be the very first time in the history of the world that two full-fledged nuclear powers would go head on against each other.
Under the circumstances, it would make sense for the losing party to unleash a thermonuclear salvo if he thought that defeat was all but inevitable.
