As the Syrian Civil War Escalates, America Must Face the Consequences of Passivity

March 3 2020

Beginning last month, Turkish and Syrian forces have been involved in escalating clashes in the Idlib province, which raises the specter of a direct attack by Bashar al-Assad’s patron, Vladimir Putin, on a member of NATO. Over the weekend, Turkish airplanes engaged in nearly around-the-clock attacks on Syrian positions. Both sides have sustained considerable casualties. Noah Rothman notes the worsening situation has not been aided by nearly a decade of American inaction:

This is now the most dangerous period of the conflict since Turkey shot down a Russian warplane in 2015 in the earliest days of Moscow’s military intervention on behalf of its besieged client in Damascus. As it did in 2015, Turkey immediately invoked Article IV of the NATO alliance treaty—a provision that compels member states to enter into emergency consultations, a prerequisite for triggering NATO’s mutual defense provisions in Article V. The Atlantic alliance was able to talk Turkey off the ledge in 2015, but the West can produce few inducements that might convince Ankara to endure these deadly assaults on its soldiers and sovereign dignity indefinitely.

None of this should come as a surprise. This is what American disengagement looks like. The United States beat a hasty retreat from northern Syria last year. . . . In its wake, America left behind a fiction of a “ceasefire” arrangement, the fragility of which was apparent to most observers.

For all the consternation U.S. deployments in Syria caused advocates of American retrenchment, the small and cost-effective American presence in the Levant deterred states like Russia and Turkey—whose interests in Syria are in direct conflict—from litigating their grievances on the battlefield. In America’s absence, deterrence has broken down, and the prospect of something far more dangerous now looms large. American disengagement from such a crisis is an untenable position.

Read more at Commentary

More about: Syrian civil war, Turkey, U.S. Foreign policy, Vladimir Putin

American Middle East Policy Should Focus Less on Stability and More on Weakening Enemies

Feb. 10 2025

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.

Read more at Foreign Affairs

More about: Iran, Middle East, U.S. Foreign policy