Trump's terrible Syria policy

The future is up for grabs - the U.S. shouldn't pre-emptively give up its influence

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The fall of the regime in Syria brings to an end a 50 year period in which the al-Assad family has dominated the country. Like everyone else, I don’t really know what’s going to come next and whether it’s going to be better or worse.

The rebel group taking the most credit for victory is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Islamist group which claims a Syrian rather than international orientation and whose many fights against Al-Qaeda seem to give the claim some credibility. Then there are also Kurdish armed groups and the Southern Operations Group, many of whose fighters come from the former Free Syrian Army, a group which the West supported in earlier stages of the conflict. ISIS also remains a force in the country, albeit one much degraded after a decade of being attacked by everybody else.

On top of this, there’s also the international dimension. Iran’s position in Syria seems to have spectacularly collapsed (more on this later), and the result has been a kind of free-for-all. Over the weekend Turkey, Israel and the United States have all pounded Syria heavily with military strikes. Turkey is attacking Kurdish groups which it opposes, the U.S. is hammering ISIS, and Israel seems to be trying to generally degrade the Syrian military and destroy any remaining chemical weapons capability. In the meantime, Russia is trying to maintain its military presence, particularly its naval base at Tartus and airbase in Latakia.

Each of these countries - Iran included - is going to try to steer the direction of the new Syria.

All that being said, here are some thoughts on the future. They’re in bullet points because it’s too early to have some sort of coherent story to tell about what happens next:

1. This caps off an annus horribilis for Iran. Assad’s regime was Tehran’s main regional ally, and also its link to Hezbollah, which is now geographically isolated and much harder to rebuild. Hezbollah relied on networks in Syria not just for the resupply of its military forces, but also economically, with a big chunk of the organization’s funding coming from narcotics and other shady economic activity in Syria. That’s all now likely gone. Meanwhile, Israel’s position in the region is more dominant than it has been in years. It even seized some strategically important Syrian territory over the weekend, and it’s hard to see who could make it give the land back if it doesn’t want to.

2. This all places Iran in a terrible position to cope with the incoming Trump administration, which has promised a return to the “maximum pressure” tactics of 2016 - 20. Hezbollah was always Iran’s insurance against a direct military strike from Israel or the United States. Now it has no insurance. There will be hawks in the Trump administration who want to use this moment of weakness to push for a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities or even the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. Trump’s unpredictability makes it hard to know where he’ll come out on this, although he seems to have quite a high bar for authorizing military action.

3. One way for Iran to get some insurance back would be to develop a nuclear weapon. If Tehran believes that Trump’s isolationism extends to not caring if it does that or not, the rational thing would be to do it.

4. In Syria itself, the main U.S. concerns will become international terrorism and preventing Iran from rebuilding its influence. The latter might seem unlikely, but let’s not get fooled into thinking that the personnel and power structures which supported Assad have just disappeared overnight. That was the mistake that the U.S. made with Saddam Hussein’s supporters in 2003, and it turned out many of them had just stashed their weapons in order to fight another day. Syria’s Alawites, many of whom held senior positions in the military and government, would have been fools not to do the same. The rebels are already saying that they intend to prosecute former senior officials in the regime, which will push those figures into (potentially armed) opposition quickly. This could just be the opening of a new phase in the war, not its end.

5. ISIS remains the primary terrorist problem. But the U.S. will be keeping its eyes on HTS itself, which is also a proscribed terrorist organization in the United States. If HTS really has decided to adopt a Syrian orientation and give up on its international goals, then it will probably find itself in a situation similar to today’s Taliban - reviled by the West, but not actively combated. ISIS may attempt to reconstitute itself and launch attacks on the West, but it will also have plenty to worry about at home. And the United States has gotten remarkably good at containing organizations like ISIS using a combination of intelligence, drones and special forces over the last decade or so.

6. One really bad answer to all of this is to throw your hands up and say that it has nothing to do with America. But that’s exactly what Donald Trump has done, posting a message saying: “This is not our fight. Let it play out. Do not get involved”.

7. This is a really bad message to send because it implies to every other player in the conflict that the United States doesn’t care what happens anymore. And that touches directly on U.S. interests. Imagine the debates going on within HTS right now about what attitude to take towards ISIS, or support for international terrorism, or the rights of Syria’s Christian minority. Believing that the United States might punish them for easing up on ISIS or cracking down on Christianity makes them less likely to take those steps. For Trump to just pre-emptively declare that he doesn't care what happens is just giving up America’s influence for no reason.

8. Beyond the message it sends, it’s also a bad policy in more direct ways. ISIS was defeated by a coalition of Syrian and Kurdish fighters supported by U.S. special forces, several hundred of whom remain on the ground in the country. This was, by any measure, a cheap win for Washington - so much so that Trump still boasts about it. But does Trump’s present policy mean that he wouldn’t take any steps to oppose the reconstitution of ISIS, such as Biden’s air strikes over the weekend? Would be pull U.S. troops out of Syria, as he tried to during his first term? That could directly enable the reconstitution of ISIS and signal to HTS that it needs to reach some sort of accommodation with the group.

9. Withdrawing U.S. support for Kurdish forces in the country’s north would also be a terrible betrayal, leaving them to the mercies of Turkey. This wouldn’t be the first time that the U.S. has sold Kurdish groups down the river, including under Trump. But as well as the moral imperative, there’s a very concrete reason not to do it. There are also about 9,000 ISIS fighters imprisoned in SDF jails in northern Syria, and any shift in the situation in that part of the country could lead to their escape or release, a major setback.

10. Most of all, this sequence of events is a reminder that international politics is complicated and unpredictable, and it’s good to have a president with the knowledge and temperament to cope with that. Unfortunately, the U.S. is about to have the opposite.

Some more posts on the Middle East: