At Arc Digital Nicholas Grossman does a pretty fair deconstruction of the wars in Syria. There isn’t just one. There are five:
- Assad vs. the rebels
- U. S.-backed coalition vs. DAESH
- Turkey vs. the Kurds
- Israel vs. Iran
- Russia vs. the U. S.
Ironies abound. In the wars in Syria the U. S. is arming Al Qaeda and protecting DAESH. Our allies the Turks are fighting our allies the Kurds.
To me the entire situation is tragic. We have no friends in this conflict, many enemies, and practically nothing to gain whoever prevails.
Here’s how Mr. Grossman sees the endgame:
- Assad (and Iran) restore Syrian sovereignty, but have to give up some control.
- Russia gets a foothold in the Middle East, but does not dominate all of Syria.
- The Kurds and Sunni Arabs get greater political control, but not independence.
- Turkey has to live with more Kurdish control to its south, but retains its buffer in Syria’s northwest, and can rely on a sustained American commitment to discourage cross-border attacks.
- ISIS gets nothing, and everyone else agrees to prevent its return.
I think he’s making some weak assumption as, for example, that the Turks won’t just decide to remain in their present holdings in Syria and that they won’t fight an ongoing war with Kurds, and that anybody could consider the U. S. a reliable ally at this point.
Putin wants access to that warm water port and will fight to keep it. Assad has the will to keep order in a country that is basically a collection of warring tribes, and so has Putin’s backing.
That missile strike angers him, but in no way threatens his interests there. Which is why we dared do it.
The key result is that Iran now has its Shia corridor from Teheran to Beirut. Russia keeps its bases in Syria, and has influence in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Turkey. The US keeps troops indefinitey (30 plus years) in Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Somalia, Afghanistan, and across Africa. Low level violence a la Somalia for decades. Several hundred or a few thousand dead American servicemen for decades.
Eventually China cleans up the world, meaning it sweeps US into the dust bin of history.
We have always been at war with…