Don’t Lose Sight of Syria Just Yet
Damascus and Syrian Kurdistan are the key pieces holding Russia in check.
Syrian conflict has historically remained a touchy subject in American foreign policy. This persists today. American leadership in the current climate is right to be hesitant regarding a third major front in the Middle East that shows no signs of abating.
But this doesn’t mean we should take our eyes off of Syria. The country sits physically at the strategic crossroads of a greater MENA, and the battlefield is one that draws Russian, Turkish, Iranian, and Saudi (all alongside American) personalities into varying and eternally shifting degrees of coordination and conflict with one another. The Syrian state has for years maintained a delicate balancing act that affords the tiny minority Alawite community in the northeast corner of the country centralized power over its entirety.
The Alawite community is congregated in Latakia — the city and its slim coastal flatland that plays primary host to Russian military elements in Syria. Latakia, Russian interest, and the rugged spine of highland that detaches it from the remainder of the state are critical to understanding the pincer unleashed by Turkish forces during the brief withdrawal of American personnel.
Admittedly, it is possible that a sudden US evacuation was designed as a ruse to create movement among ISIS leadership — in particular Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, who was successfully killed during these unexpected realignments. However, the lasting damage that it has wrought elsewhere was too steep a price to pay for a head of dwindling importance.
By repositioning American troops elsewhere, we left Kurdish allies without any support and trapped between an unmoving Russian contingent and a rapid American retreat. Kurdish fighters had been instrumental in routing ISIS gains across northern Syria, and our absence created dramatic lane for Turkish armor and men to exploit. Their deployment crippled a number of key footholds for the Kurdish rebellion that had almost unilaterally pushed back ISIS combatants and then built and maintained systems of government in spaces that Syrian state authority has completely lost.
The real loser in this movement is the Kurdish population spread across the lower, east, third of Turkey.
By allowing for the rapid deployment of Turkish military equipment, the American government has singlehandedly threatened Kurdish security inside of Turkey’s borders. As Turkish troops return to their posts, they will be traveling through spaces most heavily affected by Kurdish protest movements. Erdogan has shown himself to be highly resourceful in applying pressures on national inconveniences.
The American government has handed Turkey a golden opportunity to strategically place a bolstered military presence in its most autonomous region without the requirement of internal justification.
American withdrawal is also a win for Russia. The maintenance of a warm water port in the Mediterranean along with its 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula places Russian naval assets at critical nodes in proximity to either end of the Dardanelles and Sea of Marmara — the narrow waterway connecting the Mediterranean with the Black Sea. Particularly important: Ukrainian, Romanian, and Bulgarian shipping’s only outlet, and potential pressure points on a longtime American ally in the region in Turkey.
Russian foreign policy has always considered the long game, and it regards buffer states to its south and west as essential components of internal Russian security. The ability to hold former Soviet republics in the Balkans hostage serves this larger purpose. It also weakens a European Union that has recently enrolled many of these nations, and by extension it weakens the NATO alliance.
If American policymakers lose sight of Syria, it presents an opportunity for the regime to welcome further Russian advances in exchange for continued support against a hodgepodge rebellion that is unified only in the goal of removing Bashar al Assad from Damascus. Greater Russian presence here forms the pressure point on American interests farther south across the Middle East as well as on European ability to check aggressive Russian ambitions for the continent unfolding to its west.
