Stephen M. Walt
The ruthless Syrian dictator is guilty of countless war crimes—and regrettably represents his country's least bad remaining option.
President Donald Trump is taking considerable flak for his impulsive decision to withdraw U.S. forces from northern Syria. He deserves it because it is hard to imagine a more inept or ill-considered response to the imbroglio he inherited there. But let's not lose sight of the bigger picture: U.S. policy toward Syria has been a failure for years, and the American strategy—if that word is even appropriate—was rife with contradictions and unlikely to produce a significantly better outcome no matter how long the United States stayed. (For a good brief summary of "how we got here," see Max Fisher's piece in the New York Times.)
As depressing as it is to write this sentence, the best course of action today is for President Bashar al-Assad's regime to regain control over northern Syria. Assad is a war criminal whose forces killed more than half a million of his compatriots and produced several million refugees. In a perfect world, he would be on trial at The Hague instead of ruling in Damascus. But we do not live in a perfect world, and the question we face today is how to make the best of a horrible situation.
We might begin by acknowledging that the U.S. commitment to the Kurdish militias—also known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)—was never absolute or open-ended. It was tactical and conditional, based on common opposition to the Islamic State. The Kurds did not fight the Islamic State as a favor to the United States, and it didn't help them out of a sense of philanthropy. Once the Islamic State was under control (if not entirely eradicated), the U.S.-SDF partnership was on borrowed time. I understand the anguish that U.S. military personnel feel at leaving comrades whom they have fought alongside in the lurch, but it was likely to happen sooner or later. With a better president, however, it might have been implemented in a disciplined fashion, and as part of a broader diplomatic agreement, instead of being done capriciously and for no tangible gains. Under Trump, however, that was not to be....
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