Obama on Syria

It’s Time to Rethink Syria

For years, I helped advise President Obama on Syria. It’s now clearer than ever that a new strategy is needed.

By  Philip Gordon

If somehow the tragic trajectory of the conflict in Syria were not apparent enough, several dramatic developments in recent weeks have come together to make it impossible to ignore. The most obvious is the influx into Europe of tens of thousands of desperate, hungry refugees—so devoid of hope in their homeland or neighboring refugee camps they are willing to risk drowning and starvation in the hope of finding a better life for themselves and their children.

The second is the growing evidence of the failure of efforts to train and equip a moderate, unified opposition capable of pressuring the Assad regime to change. Despite extensive efforts by the U.S. government and its partners to build such a force, the opposition remains deeply fragmented, dominated by extremists and incapable of threatening Assad’s rule or of stabilizing Syria even if the regime did somehow fall. Even the lesser objective of equipping and training a vetted force able to degrade and destroy the “Islamic State” (ISIL) has proven unachievable, as became clear with the recent U.S. announcements that the small initial group of fighters deployed were immediately killed or captured, and that fewer than ten U.S.-trained fighters are fighting ISIL. It should now be clear that while arming and training some opposition forces might be part of a long-term solution in Syria, they will never be a decisive factor in resolving the conflict.

The third sign was the news that Russia has decided to deploy its own forces in Syria—allegedly to fight ISIL but clearly also to bolster the Assad regime. Russia’s move should not have come as a surprise. President Vladimir Putin has for years been deeply hostile to the concept of regime change anywhere in the region, which he believes threatens not only Russia’s vital interests and allies but potentially his own hold on power. Moreover, Russia has long expressed real concern, not unfounded, that Assad’s fall under the wrong circumstances would not bring stability but even more chaos, displacement and extremism, as ISIL or other Islamist terrorists took over Damascus. Russia’s deployment in Syria underscores the reality that the periodic, hopeful reports that Assad regime may finally be crumbling are likely to be mistaken again. Russia, let alone Iran, is not going to allow the regime to fall unless and until they believe that whatever replaces it will not threaten their core interests.

These developments make it increasingly difficult to deny what has should have been apparent for some time—the current policy of the United States and its partners, to increase pressure on Assad so that he “comes to the table” and negotiates his own departure—must be rethought. As the Coordinator for Middle East policy in the White House from 2013 until April of this year, I watched and participated as the administration grappled with what one top official called “the hardest problem we’ve faced—ever,” and I know just how bad all of the options are. But the urgency of the humanitarian crisis, now with the potential to destabilize Europe as well—along with Russia’s dangerous new escalation—means we must revisit some fundamental questions about a conflict that is tearing the region apart. What’s needed is a new diplomatic process that brings all the key external actors to the table and agrees on a messy compromise to deescalate the conflict—even if that means putting off agreement on the question of Assad.

The essential problem with U.S. Syria policy since the start of the crisis has been the mismatch between objectives and means—the objective of displacing the Assad regime has proven unachievable with the means we have been willing or able to deploy to achieve it. To correct this mismatch, we have two options: increase the means, with whatever costs and consequences might accompany doing so, or modify the objectives.

Critics of the Obama administration, supported by some of America’s closest partners in the region, appear to favor the former approach. Republican candidates for President routinely castigate President Obama for not taking more decisive action to get rid of the Assad regime and almost unanimously call for more arming and training of the Syrian opposition, no-fly-zones, U.S. air strikes or even “boots on the ground.” Editorials in the Washington Post and elsewhere blame U.S. “inaction” for the tragedy in Syria while calling for “robust intervention” and “more aggressive U.S. effort to bring down” the Assad regime. Former U.S. officials like Robert Ford and Fred Hof denounce “piecemeal” U.S. efforts to support the opposition and call on the United States to sharply ramp up those efforts to help bring down Assad. Many pundits and columnists seem to share essayist Leon Wieseltier’s conclusion that Washington’s unwillingness to act “decisively” is proof that “the United States has abandoned its faith in its power and its duty to do good.”

Such calls for decisive action are understandable. But they vastly overstate the prospects for success of greater military intervention and understate the costs and risks it would entail. It is important to remember that for Assad and those who support him, the “political transition” we seek is a euphemism for removing him and all those around him from power, leaving them and the Christians, Alawites and other minorities who support them at the mercy of vengeful Sunni extremists. With Russia and Iran also willing to bear significant costs to protect what they consider to be their strategic interests, no one should underestimate the effort that would be necessary to actually topple the regime. Simply talking tough, or even a limited use of force, is unlikely to get Assad, Iran and Russia to back down. Those who threaten escalation need to be prepared to follow up and consider the consequences, both likely and unintended, of doing so.

Some previous applications of military force—with goals more limited and against dictatorships more isolated than Assad—are relevant in this regard. In Operation Desert Fox in 1998, the United States hit Iraq with hundreds of airstrikes and air- and sea-launched cruise missiles with the objective of degrading Iraq’s weapons capabilities and “sending a message” to Saddam Hussein. The operation had little impact on the overall conflict or Saddam’s hold on power, which only ended when the United States invaded with over 150,000 ground troops five years later. In Kosovo the following year, the United States and its NATO allies flew 38,000 sorties and launched thousands of airstrikes with the objective of driving Serbian security forces out of the breakaway province. Serbia resisted even this limited goal for 78 days, and only then gave way in Kosovo once a credible threat of a ground invasion became clear—regime change in Belgrade would have presumably taken an effort of much greater intensity and duration. Then there is the more recent case of Libya, which started with a humanitarian operation to protect civilians but only ended with ruler Muammar Gaddafi’s violent overthrow after seven months of sustained NATO bombing and arming of rebels and was followed by the country’s descent into civil war and terrorism. None of this means the United States and its allies could not get rid of Assad with military power. These cases do suggest, however, that it is fanciful to imagine limited airstrikes, arms to the opposition, or the establishment of a no-fly-zone would lead Assad to behave differently from Saddam, Milosevic or Gaddafi. And that if and when Assad were violently overthrown, the prospects for stability in his wake would be poor, even if the United States were willing to deploy troops.

Many of those who accept that direct U.S. use of force may not be the way forward still look to increased arming and training of opposition fighters as the best way to increase pressure on the regime. But it should by now be clear how difficult it was always going to be for the United States and its partners to identify, arm and train a “moderate” opposition that would violently wrest power from a standing army backed by Iran, Russia and Hezbollah. And how unlikely it was that if such an opposition did take power it would manage to govern decently and impose stability on an ethnically and religiously divided country after a savage civil war. We will never know if earlier support to the armed opposition would have led to a rapid regime-change and spared Syria from civil war; but it is logically difficult to understand why efforts to overthrow the regime then would not have led to the same degree of relentless counter-escalation we saw later, or why it would have been more successful when the regime forces were fresh and the opposition was in its infancy than they have been since.