The Biden administration reflects on America’s role in the ongoing conflict in Syria as the United States tries to distance itself from the wars in the Middle East, but Vladimir Putin’s top diplomat has already been occupied on the ground, trying to gain support for a Syrian approach that could establish Russia as a security agent. and power in the region.
The new U.S. administration has yet to say how it plans to handle Syria, which is now fragmented among half a dozen military personnel, including U.S. troops, due to a war that has killed and displaced millions. The conflict includes al-Qaeda affiliates, Islamic State forces and other jihadist groups eager to use Syria as a base.
Russia and Iran have intervened to prevent the collapse of Syrian President Bashar Assad, which has carried out chemical attacks, barrel bombs and starvation to crush what had begun as a peaceful revolt. The conflict has just entered its eleventh year.
Dealing with the war in Syria will test the Biden administration’s determination to focus on Asia and not the Middle East. If the United States diminishes its presence, Russia and other hostile American rivals are willing to intervene and increase its regional height and resources.
Hence that of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov He is touring the Middle East this month.
Lavrov stood alongside the foreign minister of a generally friendly Gulf state in Washington, UAE, who sent a message in line with Moscow’s position: US sanctions on the Syrian regime backed by Russia they blocked international efforts to rebuild Syria. Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan said it was time to welcome Syria to the retreat of the Arab nations.
In other words, Russia’s message is that “the war in Syria is over, Assad has won, Assad will be in power as long as he breathes oxygen,” said Frederic Hof, who served as an adviser and sent to Syria to the US to the Obama administration.
Hof said there was an undeclared part of the message: Russia plans to be within reach as “Syria is built from the ashes,” benefiting from any international reconstruction resources and positioning itself as an intermediary for manage the security threats posed by Syria in the region.
Hof and James F. Jeffrey, a career diplomat under Republican and Democratic administrations who served as President Donald Trump’s envoy to Syria, argue that the United States continues to be a significant presence in the country, citing Russia’s ambitions.
“If this is the future of security in the Middle East, we are all in trouble,” Jeffrey warns. “That’s what Putin and Lavrov are pushing for.”
The Biden administration is reviewing whether to consider Syria as one of the most important national security issues in America.
No sign of doing so is yet shown. In particular, where President Joe Biden has outlined some other Middle East issues as priorities, including the Yemen war and Iran’s nuclear program, for which Biden appointed envoys, he and his officials have said and they have done little public about Syria.
In Congress, Syria is at the center of a debate in Congress over whether to reduce or end the authorities given to presidents to carry out military strikes following the 9/11 attacks.
It was the war in Syria that sparked this debate, when President Barack Obama first considered military strikes there, said Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat and a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “Congress has moved away from some of the most important decisions a country can make.”
One of the few public mentions Biden has made of Syria since taking office came last week, when he included it among the international issues on which the UN Security Council should do more.
On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the start of the Syrian conflict last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a statement with his European counterparts, stressed the need for humanitarian aid for Syrian civilians and accountability by the Assad regime.
U.S. troops are helping protect an opposition enclave in northeastern Syria, in an area that includes oil and natural gas. During Biden’s campaign last year, Blinken framed the military role as a “leverage point” in negotiations over Syria’s international management, rather than an ongoing force.
National Security Council and State Department spokesmen declined to answer specific questions about Biden’s policy in Syria, including whether the administration sees the Syrian conflict as a major threat to national security or plans to do so. appoint an envoy.
Biden follows Obama and Trump in trying to downplay the U.S. military role in the Middle East and shift the focus of U.S. foreign policy to Asia, where China has been increasingly aggressive.
But the conflicts in the Middle East and the U.S.’s own strategic schemes have a way of pushing back Americans. Biden became the sixth consecutive U.S. president last month to bomb a Middle East target and struck an Iranian allied militia in Syria that had attacked U.S. personnel and allied with neighboring Iraq.
Some current and former U.S. diplomats in the Middle East have argued that Syria is not a security threat to the United States.
Robert S. Ford, the Obama administration’s ambassador to Syria with years of diplomatic experience in the region, concluded last year in a foreign affairs article that Washington should seek to withdraw its troops from the north. east of Syria, arrange for Russia and others to deal with the jihadists. fighters and put U.S. money to help war refugees.
But Hof and Jeffrey, two others who dealt with Syria for previous administrations, argue against the withdrawal.
“If I were an ISIS leader who was now desperately trying to organize an insurrection to return” to Syria, “I would pray that this advice is taken,” Hof said. For the Islamic State group, “if you can have as enemies the (Syrian) regime, the Iranians and the Russians, it will be no better than that.”
A test of the Biden administration’s intentions is approaching as Russia tries to use the position of the UN Security Council to close a humanitarian aid route in a part of Syria that is not controlled by the Syrian government. supported by Russia, says Mona Yacoubian, a Syrian adviser to the United States Institute for Peace’s Thought Group.
Maintaining or strengthening the U.S. footprint in Syria will be important, Yacoubian said, not only as a lever in political negotiations, but also to shape the rules of the game for Russia’s presence in the Middle East. And there are still other immediate goals for the international community: to make life “more manageable and less miserable for Syrians,” he said.