Trump administration officials consistently point back to the Obama administration’s failed Syria policy to justify their approach, which includes teaming up with Russia, accepting the continued rule of Bashar al-Assad and abandoning many of the rebels America supported for years.
But although the Trump team inherited a terrible hand in Syria, the way it is playing it repeats the same fundamental mistakes made by President Barack Obama — and it will likely have the same negative results for the Syrian conflict, as well as for American interests.
Last week at the Aspen Security Forum, CIA Director Mike Pompeo laid out what he sees as U.S. interests in Syria. He said the United States has two principal enemies there, the Islamic State and Iran. In addition to stopping Iran from establishing a zone of control that spans the region, the U.S. goal is “providing the conditions to have a more stable Middle East to keep America safe.”
President Trump has no choice but to work with Russia in Syria because Obama and then-Secretary of State John Kerry “invited” Putin into Syria in 2013 to work on a chemical weapons deal, according to Pompeo. But there’s still no real evidence that Russia wants to fight terrorism there, he said.
“We don’t have the same set of interests” in Syria as Russia, said Pompeo. What are the Russian goals in Syria? “They love a warm-water naval port and they love to stick it to America.”
Pompeo is right, but he’s not in charge of U.S. Syria policy. That portfolio belongs to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who made completely contradictory remarks in Hamburg this month, right after he and Trump met with Putin to arrange a cease-fire in Syria’s southwest.
“Russia has the same, I think, interests that we do in having Syria become a stable place, a unified place,” Tillerson said.
Tillerson’s top Middle East official, acting assistant secretary Stuart Jones, also spoke in Aspen and said the United States has effectively outsourced security in Syria to the Russians by having them police the cease-fire.
“This is a real test of the Russians’ ability to lead this process,” he said. “The solution is to put this on the Russians and, if that fails, it’s a problem.”
If that sounds familiar, it should. That’s almost the same exact formulation Kerry used when he was negotiating Syrian cease-fires with Russia in late 2015 and early 2016. Over and over, Kerry said Russia’s willingness to be a constructive partner in Syria must be tested. Over and over, Russia proudly failed that test by helping the Assad regime expand its control and continue its atrocities against civilians․
