A convoy of US vehicles is seen after withdrawing from northern Syria, in Erbil, Iraq October 21, 2019. REUTERS/Azad Lashkari
As this writer worked with colleagues on the Syria Study Group to
arrive at findings and frame recommendations for our final report, one daunting
problem continued to haunt. Even if US President Donald J. Trump were to accept
the Study Group report as the basis of US policy, how could it get Republicans
and Democrats in Congress on the same page concerning Syria? This seemed to be
mission impossible.
Americans, it seemed, were exhausted by Syria’s endless
travails. Democratic candidates for president had little to say about Syria (or
foreign policy in general) and Republicans seemed firmly behind an incumbent
president who had tipped his hand about gifting northeastern Syria to an array
of bad actors in late 2018. The prospect of bipartisan support for a sensible
policy leveraging a modest military presence to suppress extremists and to
influence the shape of an overall Syrian political settlement seemed
nonexistent. Then a miracle occurred.
President Trump’s telephonic green light for Turkey to enter
northern Syria and push back the partner military force with which the United
States had worked for five years combatting the ‘caliphate’ of the Islamic
State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) triggered an earthquake in congressional
sentiment. The prospect of shamelessly abandoning combat partners—even partners
as politically toxic to a NATO ally as the People’s Protection Units (YPG), who
are the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)—shocked Democrats
and Republicans alike. Shock turned
to rage as the president issued a stream of gratuitously insulting comments
about those partner forces, who had suffered significant casualties in the
course of supporting an important US foreign policy objective. Democrats
and Republicans—354 of them in the House of Representatives—seemed to agree that
this was a profoundly un-American way of doing the nation’s business.
It was not only the betrayal of a partner that got the
attention of Congress. The president’s seeming indifference to the prospects of
ISIS resurrecting itself and Iran expanding its presence in Syria courtesy of a
humiliating US military evacuation provoked push-back that transcended the
betrayal. Senate Republicans have led this remarkable counterattack.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senator
Mitt Romney (R-UT) have highlighted the importance of Syria to the safety of
Americans. They have also stressed the duty of the United States—as a matter of
self-defense—to uphold the post-World War II international system created and
strengthened by Democratic and Republican presidents. They have taken this
position despite a Trump electoral base apparently willing to support the
president’s assaults on alliances and institutions. They have risked angering a
bloc of voters important to their own political survival, while most Democrats
purporting to be qualified for the role of commander-in-chief have been almost
silent on foreign policy, reflecting perhaps the priorities of another
electoral base that might also support the abdication of international
responsibilities were Mr. Trump not the abdicator-in-chief.
The question, however—one addressed in a recent article by
this writer—is whether anything can be salvaged from the grievous setback in
Syria. The answer here is a highly qualified “yes.”
Taking advantage of the miracle of bipartisanship to craft an effective US policy toward Syria will require the cooperation of the president.
Taking advantage of the miracle of bipartisanship to craft
an effective US policy toward Syria will require the cooperation of the
president. This is both unavoidable and far from a given. The vice president
and secretary of state are neck-deep in the salvage operation. But they will always
be one tweet or one phone call away from being absolutely undone unless
the president can be hard-wired into a deliberative process defining US objectives,
crafting a strategy to achieve them, and ensuring that resources—personnel and
funding—are adequate for a disciplined, long-term effort. Whether he knows it
or not, spontaneity and reliance on instincts are not Mr. Trump’s strong suits.
The objectives in Syria are to seal the victory over ISIS
and to bring about Syrian political transition away from a crime family whose
depredations (featuring civilian mass homicide) destabilize the neighborhood
and threaten the West by providing a powerful recruiting tool for Islamist
extremists worldwide.
The withdrawal of US forces from areas recently liberated
from ISIS must stop. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), understandably
panicked by sudden betrayal and stripped of defenses by false promises, invited
the Assad regime and Russia to deploy forces facing the Turkish army. Every
effort must be made to contain those Assad forces in the far north and to
prevent them from moving south into populated areas. This will require the full
cooperation of the Kurdish-dominated SDF.
That cooperation may be hard to obtain. The speedy return of
displaced persons to their homes in the Turkish safe zone will help. But distrust
of the United States under current management may present in insurmountable
obstacle. And for a growing ISIS insurgency to be neutralized, Kurds must be
convinced not only to drop the Assad regime, but to abandon efforts of their
own to govern predominantly Arab areas. Cooperation is a tall order indeed.
If maintaining a US military presence in northeastern Syria
proves impossible, the single most important piece of leverage for Syria’s
future will have been handed over to bad actors for absolutely nothing. Still, there could be important surviving strands
of political transition leverage, starting with the protection of Syrian
civilians from regime mass murder.
Diplomatic efforts with Moscow to get its client out of this
filthy business altogether should be redoubled. Indeed, drawing on the digital
research results obtained by The New York Times and Bellingcat, the
administration should build the case of Russian war crimes in Syria,
seeing to it that Russian military personnel and their Kremlin superiors face
the permanent prospect of prosecution.
Beyond protecting civilians (using missile strikes where
necessary to neutralize the regime’s tools of mass murder), non-recognition of
the Assad regime, opposition to reconstruction assistance moving through and
into the hands of regime operatives, and support of Israel’s attempts to
neutralize Iranian efforts to use Assad Syria as a terror base against it will
all be mandatory, with or without a military presence in northeast Syria.
The miracle of bipartisanship, however, will be fleeting and
inconsequential absent a successful salvage operation. And those prospects are not good if President
Trump proves unwilling to change course and support professionals whose policy
calculations boil down to the safety of Americans and their allies;
professionals who know that what happens in Syria through the combined
depredations of Assad, ISIS, Iran, and Russia does not stay in Syria.
Donald Trump has, quite unintentionally, made bipartisanship on Syria possible. He alone will determine whether this is a brief, passing episode or an enduring reality. He alone will determine whether bipartisanship will facilitate a sensible policy in Syria.
Ambassador Frederic C. Hof is Bard College’s Diplomat in Residence and a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.
Further Reading
Fri, Oct 18, 2019
Time will tell whether the United States can take advantage of a pause in Turkish military operations to broker a diplomatic solution to the Northeast Syria crisis.
SyriaSource
by
Frederic C. Hof
Tue, Oct 15, 2019
Getting the United States out of “endless wars” is an admirable goal. But military forces, trust among our partners, and standing firm in the face of adversaries play critical roles in reaching that goal. Getting those functions back in balance will be necessary in moving forward.
New Atlanticist
by
C. Anthony Pfaff
Tue, Oct 15, 2019
Atlantic Council experts detail how Washington can manage the situation in Syria and prevent the US-Turkish relationship from spiraling out of control.
New Atlanticist
by
David A. Wemer
Donald Trump has, quite unintentionally, made bipartisanship on Syria possible. He alone will determine whether this is a brief, passing episode or an enduring reality. He alone will determine whether bipartisanship will facilitate a sensible policy in Syria.
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