{"id":22892,"date":"2015-10-14T11:42:34","date_gmt":"2015-10-14T00:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=22892"},"modified":"2015-10-14T11:41:52","modified_gmt":"2015-10-14T00:41:52","slug":"russias-syria-intervention-and-the-bipartisan-insolvency-of-us-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/russias-syria-intervention-and-the-bipartisan-insolvency-of-us-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia\u2019s Syria intervention and the bipartisan insolvency of US strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"capitol<\/a><\/p>\n

On 6 October, Russian warships on the Caspian Sea fired 26 medium range cruise missiles at 11 targets in Syria. Washington has protested that these strikes have not only struck the forces of the self-declared \u2018caliphate\u2019 but also \u2018moderate\u2019 Syrian rebel groups. US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has argued<\/a> since that by entering the conflict on the side of the Assad regime Moscow is \u2018tethering\u2019 itself to \u2018a sinking ship of a losing strategy\u2019.<\/p>\n

While Carter\u2019s assessment of Russia\u2019s approach may well prove to be correct, it\u2019s clear that Washington\u2019s approach has already<\/em> proven to be a losing one.<\/p>\n

Central to this failure has been Washington\u2019s inability to construct a \u2018solvent\u2019 strategy whereby, to paraphrase Walter Lippmann<\/a>, commitments accurately reflect US vital interests and don\u2019t exceed US capabilities to protect or prosecute those interests.<\/p>\n

Since August 2011 the Obama administration has maintained<\/a> that while only Assad\u2019s removal will resolve the crisis, the \u2018United States cannot and will not impose this transition upon Syria.\u2019 Rather, Washington has sought this indirectly through the imposition of sanctions and provision of support to anti-Assad forces.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Assad must go\u2019 rhetoric and this indirect strategy has led the administration astray.<\/p>\n

First, it has permitted a number of regional players such as Turkey<\/a>, Saudi Arabia<\/a> and the Persian Gulf monarchies to sponsor their own often jihadist proxies<\/a> in Syria. Unsurprisingly, their actions have been guided by their own individual interests first and their strategic alignment with the US a distant second.<\/p>\n

Second, the expansion of IS prompted the administration to give \u2018teeth\u2019 to its indirect strategy<\/a> by prosecuting an ongoing air campaign to \u2018dismantle and degrade\u2019 it and developing a program to vet, train and equip \u2018moderate\u2019 Syrian rebels.<\/p>\n

The former was designed to weaken IS offensive capabilities and allow local anti-IS forces to take the initiative. The problem in Syria<\/a> (PDF) has been that \u2018the secular rebel groups vetted by the United States are divided, weak and unlikely\u2026to augment US-led operations from the air.\u2019<\/p>\n

The latter initiative has been underwhelming. After admitting<\/a> in July that it\u2019s US$500 million training program had yielded only 60 \u2018moderate\u2019 rebels, the administration cancelled the program<\/a> in early October to focus instead on identifying acceptable Syrian rebels \u2018already on the battlefield\u2019.<\/p>\n

The crucial problem bedevilling the Obama administration and the political class in Washington as a whole is that their core goal in the Syrian crisis\u2014the removal of Assad\u2014is not aligned with either US vital interests in the Middle East or the capabilities that the US is willing to deploy to achieve them.<\/p>\n

Two central questions arise here.<\/p>\n

First, does the continued existence of the undeniably odious regime in Damascus imperil vital US interests in the Middle East, let alone US national security? In answering this question, they would do well to recall<\/a> that the current dilemmas Washington faces in Syria \u2018stem not from the mere existence of the Assad regime but instead from the war that emerged from confrontation between the regime and its opponents\u2019. Additionally, the actions of the US and its allies have arguably helped to perpetuate it.<\/p>\n

Or second, does the emergence of IS, a movement bent on the destruction of the territorial and political order<\/a> of the contemporary Middle East, constitute the preeminent threat to US interests in the region? In September 2014 President Obama appeared to signal the administration\u2019s belief that it did in fact constitute such a threat<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since then Washington has pursued a contradictory strategy. On the one hand it has argued that the Assad regime\u2019s continued existence is the \u2018magnet\u2019 that attracts foreign fighters to IS, while on the other it has declined to revise its position<\/a> that Assad\u2019s removal is the precondition for a political resolution to the Syrian civil war.<\/p>\n

As Paul Pillar has argued<\/a>, this ignores the fact that \u2018the untoward effects of this war will be ameliorated only insofar as peace is established in Syria\u2026It is the continuation of the war, much more than any particular outcome of the war or any particular political configuration of Syria, that is the source of most of the trouble that is worth worrying about\u2019.<\/p>\n

This failure is shared by Obama\u2019s Republican critics. Indeed, the alternatives offered by Republicans divorce further the relationship between commitment, interests, and capabilities that should underpin sound strategy.<\/p>\n

Jeb Bush has argued that \u2018defeating ISIS requires defeating Assad, but we have to make sure that his regime is not replaced by something as bad or worse\u2019, while others are bedevilled by wilful obfuscation of the dynamics at play with respect to Syria and IS. In February Marco Rubio asserted that Obama hadn\u2019t implemented a military strategy to combat IS as he \u2018doesn\u2019t want to upset Iran\u2019. That ignores the fact that Washington and Tehran\u2019s interests are aligned when it comes to combatting IS.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult to disagree with Michael Brendan Dougherty\u2019s assessment that the majority of the GOP primary contenders have argued for a \u00a0fairy-tale strategy<\/a> on Syria that will somehow \u2018defeat everyone at once, at low cost, without ugly alliances, and to the benefit of unnamed good guys\u2019.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s intervention in the crisis has served to reveal the inability of the current administration and its Republican alternatives to bring US commitments into alignment with what are deemed to be its vital interests in the Middle East.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 6 October, Russian warships on the Caspian Sea fired 26 medium range cruise missiles at 11 targets in Syria. Washington has protested that these strikes have not only struck the forces of the self-declared …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":22894,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1490,895,163,274,31],"class_list":["post-22892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-airstrikes","tag-islamic-state","tag-russia","tag-syria","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRussia\u2019s Syria intervention and the bipartisan insolvency of US strategy | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/russias-syria-intervention-and-the-bipartisan-insolvency-of-us-strategy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Russia\u2019s Syria intervention and the bipartisan insolvency of US strategy | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On 6 October, Russian warships on the Caspian Sea fired 26 medium range cruise missiles at 11 targets in Syria. 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