I found it gratifying that strategist and international relations thinker Edward Luttwak echoed the views I articulated earlier in his piece at UnHerd:
The foreign busybodies in the State Department, Foreign Office and the French foreign ministry, who are already now pressing for the reconstruction of a unitary Syrian state, should reflect on the country’s history. Syria was never meant to function as a unitary state. Nor under Sunni Arab majority rule, as it is likely to now.
concluding:
Perhaps the Syrians are best left alone to rebuild their state as they see fit. But if benevolent Western officials do intervene, they should not automatically favour a unitary and centralised state — a preference unfortunately shared even by American officials who come from a federal state. A confederal Syria would be a much better alternative.
I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Syria as it was constructed by the French in the aftermath of World War I ceases to exist. There are signs that the Druze of the Golan Heights would actually prefer to become part of Israel while I wouldn’t be surprised if the Kurds in Syria’s north decided that the fall of Assad’s regime presented a wonderful opportunity to form their own state, a move that the Turks are already moving to prevent.
How the Alawites on the coast will react to developments is anybody’s guess. Might they seek to join with Lebanon? That would leave the Sunni Arab population that is preponderant in the rest of historic Syria in a bad situation.
What I don’t expect is a liberal democratic Syria within its existing boundaries to take form peacefully.
One possibility is that Turkey annexes everything north of the Euphrates plus Damascus and its surroundings. The Kurds are going to be destroyed unless the US forcibly intervenes. The HTS is a side show, and will disappear.
I disagree with this appeal to “intentionality” as an historic matter. The British “meant” for the area conquered from the Ottomans to be governed by one or more Arab states, probably headed by Sunni Hashemites. Faisal would have been King of Syria with pretty much the same boundaries as today had he agreed to cooperate with the French on Lebanon and the British on Palestine. It was only after Faisal was forced out by the Franco-Syrian War that France divided up the country to weaken resistance to its mandate.
I also think he’s got the situation backwards. The greatest risk of a non-unitary state is continuing U.S. protection of the Kurds who hold the oil fields needed to power the cities.
I’m wary of the overtures the Kurds have been making to the U. S. for the last decade or so. I haven’t kept up with the situation but at the outset the heads of their political “parties” were traditional chieftains. That sounds like a sort of “astroturfing” to me. I don’t believe we should assume that the Kurds are liberal democrats.
Trump said in 2020 U.S. troops are in Syria to take the oil, and some sales were used to pay the Kurds for their assistance. I don’t think he was doing this to promote democracy.
The Kurds have been allies with the U.S. counterterrorism operations in the region. I’ve read that the need for those operations is no longer necessary. How would one know?
Luttwak doesn’t mention the oil. It seems like that is the most important dynamic. U.S. stays and keeps the oil, which would continue to break down Syrian social/economic life. U.S. leaves and the Syrian government returns the oil to its pre civil war condition and if the Kurds resist, Turkey will offer its services against the Kurds. The most likely scenario appears to be U.S. withdrawal with some negotiated assurances for the Kurds. But right now, U.S. control of the oil fields is probably the largest factor in constraining a Syrian government’s state capacity, pretty much the opposite of Luttwak’s reading of the situation.
We’ve been supporting the Kurds at least since the fall of Saddam Hussein if not before. It didn’t start with Trump.