The Biden government haunts America’s role in Syria’s ongoing conflict while the US is trying to break away from the Middle East wars, but Vladimir Putin’s top diplomat was already on the ground trying to gain support for a Syrian approach that could establish Russia as a broker of security and power in the region .
The new U.S. government has not yet said how it plans to deal with Syria, which is now fragmented among half a dozen military personnel – including U.S. troops – as a result of a war that killed and displaced millions. The conflict involves al-Qaeda affiliates, the Islamic State and other jihadist groups eager to use Syria as a base.
Russia and Iran intervene to prevent the collapse of Syrian President Bashar Assad, who carried out chemical attacksbarrel bombs and famine to crush what started as a peaceful uprising. The conflict has just entered its 11th year.
Dealing with the war in Syria will test the Biden government’s determination to focus on Asia and not the Middle East. As the United States reduces its presence, Russia and other hostile US opponents are ready to intervene and increase their local stature and resources.
Hence Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Middle East tour this month.
Lavrov added that the foreign minister of a Gulf state that was generally friendly to Washington, the United Arab Emirates, delivered a message in line with Moscow’s position: US sanctions against Syria’s Russia- supported regime thwarts international efforts to rebuild Syria. Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan said it was time to welcome Syria back into the Arab world.
In other words, the message from Russia is: “the war in Syria is over, Assad has won, Assad will be in power as long as he inhales oxygen,” Frederic Hof said. He was a US-Syrian adviser and envoy to the Obama administration.
Court said there was an undivided part of the message: Russia plans to be ready, as ‘Syria is built from the ashes’, and takes advantage of all international reconstruction resources, and will position itself as the broker around the manage security threats posed by Syria. to the region.
Court and James F. Jeffrey, a career diplomat among Republican and Democratic governments who served as President Donald Trump’s Syrian envoy, pleaded for the United States to remain a significant presence in the country, citing Russia’s ambitions.
“If this is the security future of the Middle East, we’re all in trouble,” Jeffrey warns. “This is what Putin and Lavrov are demanding.”
The Biden government is looking at whether it should consider Syria one of America’s most important national security issues.
No sign of it is shown yet. In particular, where President Joe Biden spelled out a number of other Middle Eastern issues as priorities – including the Yemeni war and Iran’s nuclear program, for which Biden appointed envoys – he and his officials publicly said little about Syria and done.
In Congress, Syria is at the heart of a congressional debate on whether the authorities given to presidents to carry out military strikes should be reduced or ended after the 9/11 attacks.
It was the Syrian war that sparked that debate, when President Barack Obama first considered military strikes there, said Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat and member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. “Congress has sidelined itself in some of the most important decisions a country can make.”
One of Biden’s few public statements about Syria since taking office came last week when he mentioned it as an international issue on which the UN Security Council should do more.
In honor of the tenth anniversary of the start of the Syrian conflict last week, Foreign Minister Antony Blinken in a statement with European counterparts stressed the need for humanitarian aid for Syrian civilians and accountability for the Assad government.
U.S. troops are helping to protect an opposition enclave in northeastern Syria, in an area that includes oil and natural gas. During Biden’s campaign last year, Blinken set up the military role as a “lever” in the negotiations on Syria’s international dealings, rather than an ongoing force.
Spokesmen for the National Security Council and the State Department declined to answer specific questions about Biden’s Syria policy, including whether the government views the Syrian conflict as a major national security threat or plans to appoint an envoy.
Biden follows Obama and Trump in their quest to minimize the United States’ military role in the Middle East and shift the focus of U.S. foreign policy to Asia, where China has been increasingly aggressive.
But the conflict in the Middle East and the strategies of the United States have a way of pulling back Americans. Biden last month became the sixth consecutive U.S. president to bomb a target in the Middle East and hit an Iranian-allied militia in Syria that attacked U.S. and allied personnel in neighboring Iraq.
Some current and former U.S. diplomats for the Middle East have argued that Syria is not an extreme security threat to the United States.
Robert S. Ford, an ambassador of the Obama administration in Syria with years of diplomatic experience in the region, concluded in a foreign affairs article last year that Washington should move its troops out of northeastern Syria. pull, to make sure Russia and others the jihadists handle fighters, and put the United States money to help the refugees of the war.
But Court and Jeffrey, two others who have dealt with Syria for previous administrations, are protesting against withdrawal.
“If I were an ISIS leader now desperately trying to organize an uprising to come back ‘in Syria,’ I would pray that the advice be taken,” Court said. For the Islamic State group, “if you can have the (Syrian) regime, the Iranians and the Russians as your enemies, it will not get better than that.”
A test of Biden’s administration’s intentions is imminent, as Russia wants to use its position at the UN Security Council to close a humanitarian aid route in a part of Syria that is not under the control of the Syrian government led by Russia. not supported, says Mona Yacoubian, senior Syria adviser to the US Institute for Peace Brainstorming.
Maintaining or strengthening the US footprint in Syria will be important, Yacoubian said – not only as leverage in political negotiations, but also to shape the rules of the game for Russia’s presence in the Middle East. And other immediate goals for the international community remain: to make life ‘more manageable and less miserable for Syrians’, she said.