U.S. policy toward Syria is defined by an absurdity that can’t be neatly untangled—a low-intensity regime change mission defined as anything other than its central mission.
September 27, 2020
"Information
Clearing House"
- James Mattis famously resigned from his secretary of defense
post citing
opposition to
President Donald Trump’s order to remove U.S. troops from Syria. So it came as
a mild surprise when it was recently confirmed that Mattis opposed
a plan to
assassinate Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria. This opposition was a
prudent move as deposing Assad would not end Syria’s civil war but throw the
country into deeper chaos. But this seeming incongruity of Mattis the hawk contra Mattis
the dove is representative of the larger contradictions in Washington’s Syria
policy.
These contradictions arise from
the fact that U.S. policy in Syria has always been centered around opposition
to Assad, rather than the defeat of ISIS, whose caliphate was
destroyed long before Trump’s withdrawal order.
Perhaps this contradiction is
most glaringly seen in the justifications Washington offers for the U.S.
military presence in Syria. We are frequently told we’re there for one reason
only to be given a new reason a few months later. It’s hard not to notice.
We were told the
ISIS caliphate had to be defeated. But they lost their last
scrap of territory in
March 2019. Denied a physical base of operations, those going under the name of
ISIS today are—as far as legitimate U.S. interests are
concerned—indistinguishable from any other ragtag Sunni militias. But a defeated
ISIS still wasn’t enough to convince Washington to withdraw.
ISIS’s caliphate was destroyed,
completing the military mission that brought U.S. troops to the country. Why
then are our soldiers still there? We’ve also been told they’re over there
to counter
Iran (which, by the way, had the same goal
of destroying
the ISIS caliphate).
Years ago, we were told that it’s important to be in Syria
to counter
Russia too.
But today this mission—if it can be called that—amounts to the occasional
road rage incident involving
convoys representing the world’s only two
nuclear superpowers pathetically
struggling for space on a road or wheat field. It’s notable that this reason
was recently revived to justify the decision to send
more troops to Syria.
We’re also told that it’s important to support
the Kurds and,
though Washington has been quieter on this front lately, we were once
told training
and equipping anti-Assad
militants was also vital. This latter notion resulted in an embarrassing
situation where the
CIA’s favored militants were fighting the Pentagon’s favored militants. These local groups have their own
interests, but they shouldn’t be confused for America’s interests.
More recently, President Trump has touted
a plan to
“secure the oil” and his administration has paved
the way for a U.S. company to manage some oil fields in the war-torn country. Trump has
cited this as a reason for keeping the last few hundred U.S. troops in Syria.
The thing is, ensuring American access to Syrian oil demands a certain level of
security. More bluntly, it necessitates an endless occupation of Syria.
But, like any of the above reasons, it would be a mistake to
accept that oil serves as the principal justification for the U.S. presence in
Syria.
Trump has also defended the decision to keep a small contingent of
troops in Syria by stating that Israel
and Jordan asked
him to keep our forces there. This
justification was reaffirmed in a recent Trump rally where the president
characteristically stated off-the-cuff, “The fact is, we don’t have to be in
the Middle East, other than we want to protect Israel.
We’ve been very good to Israel.”
What are we to make of this flurry of reasons for staying in
Syria? It may be a little bit of each, but the overarching reason has always
been to engage in a campaign of “regime change-lite,” tragically keeping Syria
territorially divided in a simmering civil war and making Syrians bear the
brunt of any—and there are many—negative consequences. This is why the United
States originally armed anti-Assad rebels and why troops that were ostensibly
sent to defeat ISIS have remained after the fall of the caliphate.
But viewing all these reasons together, it is dizzying to keep
track of them. It is perhaps tempting to just take Trump at his word and assume
that we’re actually there for the oil. While the amount of oil in Syria is a
significant amount for Syrians, it’s nowhere near enough to be a vital concern
for the United States. According to the U.S. Energy Information Association,
the amount of oil in Syria is not even two percent of what Iran or Iraq boast,
never mind America's own status as the number one oil producer in the world.
In fact, this is
what’s striking about all of the above reasons in this list—not one of the
justifications is about something vital to the security of the United States. Instead of carefully deconstructing each reason, this bird’s eye
view is all we need to make sense of this confusing list of inconsistent and
constantly evolving justifications for staying in Syria.
One of the greatest contradictions in Washington’s Syria policy is
not the reason(s) that we’re there but the fact that we haven’t left. At least
twice now, there has been an order to withdraw that has never been carried out.
U.S. policy toward Syria is defined by an absurdity that can’t be
neatly untangled—a low-intensity regime change mission defined as anything
other than its central mission. Every now and then, we’re offered a new
explanation for why our troops are in Syria. At this point, the best response
is to say, “enough is enough.”
We don’t need to
keep playing this game of roulette where Washington spins the wheel and tells
us why our troops are there—it’s a racket and should be recognized as such.
Syria’s problems aren't our problems and the only sensible option that comports
with U.S. interests is a full withdrawal of American forces.
Michael R. Hall is the communications manager of Defense
Priorities and a geopolitical analyst. Follow him on Twitter: @michaelryhall.