ABOUT THE AUTHORS: Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated columnist at the Chicago Tribune. Will Walldorf is a professor at Wake Forest University and Senior Fellow at Defense Priorities.

For the first time in more than a decade and a half, Syria is close to getting its full sovereignty back. Despite occasional flare-ups of violence and lingering skepticism in the West that Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa can unify the country, Damascus is now consolidating its authority in parts of the state that haven’t seen a central government presence in years.

The rapid Syrian government offensive in the provinces of Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa and Hasaka, which forced the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to sign a ceasefire on the Syrian government’s terms, and the ongoing transfer of up to 7,000 ISIS prisoners to Iraq have led to speculation that Washington’s nearly 12-year-long military presence in Syria may finally be coming to an end.

The mere mention of a possible U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria has generated panic among some in Washington. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., declared that ISIS would be the only winner if the U.S. withdrew. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote in The Washington Post that leaving Kurdish allies in the lurch “will have serious implications for American credibility and deterrence across the region.”

The case for keeping U.S. troops indefinitely deployed in Syria is a poor one. If there was ever a time when the United States could contemplate withdrawal, it’s now.

First, it is worth noting why U.S. Special Forces went into Syria in the first place: to defeat the ISIS caliphate. If there was one point of agreement between President Donald Trump and his first predecessor, Barack Obama, it was the need to continue those operations until the caliphate was eliminated. Trump accelerated attacks against ISIS and with the assistance of U.S.-supported Kurdish forces on the ground, the last ISIS-controlled village fell in spring 2019.

But, instead of making the strategically smart move to withdraw U.S. troops once the job was done, Washington embarked on new missions — like guarding Syrian oil fields, protecting the Kurdish-administered statelet in northeast Syria from Turkish-backed militias and the Assad regime, and at times mediating disputes between the Kurds and Arab tribes under its purview. This virtually guaranteed a U.S. military presence in perpetuity even though none of these new missions was important to U.S. national security.

Today, at roughly 1,000 troops, a continued U.S. military presence in Syria makes even less strategic sense. ISIS remains weak, the Assad regime is long gone, and the United States now has a true counterterrorism partner in Damascus. In November, Syria joined the multinational counter-ISIS coalition, a symbolic move since Syrian government forces were already partnering with the U.S. military to strike ISIS positions. Operation Hawkeye, which hit 70 ISIS targets in December, was executed with the Syrian government’s cooperation. Al-Sharaa’s forces have unilaterally attacked ISIS as well.

Advocates of a continued U.S. military presence in Syria claim that all of this progress could come undone if Trump orders a troop departure. What they conveniently omit is that no player in the Middle East, and certainly not the new Syrian government, has an interest in seeing ISIS regenerate. Al-Sharaa cut ties with al-Qaida a decade ago and is now the leader of a weak state desperately trying to reset its relations with the region, attract foreign investment, and prove to Trump he can be a useful partner. Trump is notoriously fickle with foreign leaders, which means al-Sharaa has even more of an incentive to keep the boot on ISIS’s neck.

What about the Syrian Kurds? True, the SDF was Washington’s primary counter-ISIS partner on the ground for years. But the Syrian Kurds were fighting ISIS to save their own communities, not because the United States told them to do so. ISIS was an existential threat to the Kurds, so it’s no surprise they were clashing with the group even before the U.S. airstrike campaign began in 2014.

The U.S. appreciates Kurdish sacrifices, but this should not automatically translate into providing indefinite protection against a government in Damascus that the Trump administration is seeking to build relations with. The best option for the Kurds today is negotiating their inclusion into the Syrian state, which will provide them with added insurance against the possibility of a Turkish attack. The Trump administration is correctly aiding these negotiations and should continue to do so until an acceptable, realistic arrangement is struck.

Finally, it’s worth noting that keeping troops in Syria is not cost-free for the United States. In the last two months of 2023 alone, U.S. troops in Syria came under attack at least 55 times, injuring about 60 service members. In December of last year, two U.S. service members and an interpreter were killed in Syria. The longer the U.S. military remains embedded in Syria, the more likely similar incidents will occur.

Trump mulled withdrawing from Syria numerous times during his first term. In the end, he chose to stay. The question today is whether he will miss another opportunity, or finally do what’s right for the sake of U.S. national security and bring the troops home.