Last December, President Trump shocked Washington when he announced that he was pulling US military forces out of Syria. Explaining his decision in a video tweet, Trump declared that “we have won against ISIS” and that US soldiers “are all coming back, and they’re coming back now.”

High-level officials in the Trump administration, who were planning on a prolonged military presence in Syria, were taken aback. Arguing that the withdrawal of US forces would leave a vacuum in Syria that could be exploited by ISIS and Iran, they persuaded the president to delay the withdrawal and maintain a contingent of US forces in the country.

What made the officials’ persuasion campaign notable was that it preserved US military support for Kurdish forces who are leading a leftist social revolution in Rojava, the Kurdish-led area of northeast Syria. The Syrian Kurds, who spearheaded the fight against ISIS, have created an autonomous region that unites several cantons in a system of “democratic confederalism.” The novel governing arrangement, rooted in values of feminism, ecology, and democracy, has given hope to many who desire a path forward from the ravages of the Islamic State and the Syrian Civil War.