Syria: The War Obama Wanted and Could Not Avoid

Obama did not want to enter the Syrian civil war directly. He tried to avoid it as much as he could. However, the situation he faces today means he is at the very heart of it. United States military intervention in the country did not occur until 2014, when the threat of the Islamic State had become more apparent. But even then, Obama kept pledging and breaking his promise that Washington’s role in that conflict would be limited to fighting the terrorist group. Nevertheless, the dynamics of this very complex conflict are forcing the White House to increase its involvement. On Aug. 3, the U.S. announced that its bombing will extend to any protagonist who attacks rebels being armed and trained by the superpower, which could eventually lead, for the first time, to direct conflict between Washington and the troops of Syrian President Bashar Assad. This announcement greatly alters the civil war equation.

In effect, Obama wanted to stay out of Syria wherever possible. Since the start of his term in office, the president has implemented a doctrine of withdrawal, not expansion. Largely for financial reasons, and partly for political ones, Obama has looked for nonpriority sites to replace U.S. military interventions with the use of strategies that have ranged from diplomacy, to leaving conflicts in the hands of regional allies and having them do the work Washington has preferred to avoid. Syria is one of those places. While it had relative importance for the White House, it did not have the same priority that others had within the same region, such as Iraq or the Arabian Peninsula. In addition, Syria has formed part of Moscow’s sphere of influence for decades, and Obama preferred to avoid a head-on conflict with Putin by directly attacking Assad, an ally of the Kremlin.

This was even more evident when Obama was forced to draw a “red line” under his involvement in the war, and later failed to fulfill his own threats. That red line included the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian president. Even as evidence was being gathered that Assad continued to ignore that threat, Obama, with a little help from the Kremlin, found a way to avoid military intervention.

But the Syrian scenario was complicated. The civil war was penetrated by Islamic militants, even by militants affiliated with al-Qaida, and later by al-Qaida’s branch in Iraq, a group that in due course came to be known as the Islamic State. In turn, that organization took possession of vast portions of Iraqi and Syrian territory, blurring the border between the two countries. The issue is that the U.S. had just withdrawn from Iraq and had allegedly left the country in the hands of an army capable enough of facing the emerging threats. Instead, the army, which was armed and trained by Washington, fled after the first Islamic State group offensive. Under these circumstances, the pressure on Obama grew, and the president had no other choice but to intervene militarily against the Islamic State group. However, the group operated both in Iraq and Syria, and it was impossible for Washington to attack it in certain positions and not in others. This is how, in 2014, U.S. planes finally became involved in the Syrian civil war.

But Obama’s strategy against the Islamic State group, as it was initially proposed, was bound to fail. The strategy depended on work on the ground by local militias armed and trained by Washington. Just as in the fable of “The Mice, the Cat and the Bell” (also known as “Belling the Cat”), those who designed the strategy appeared to ignore the fact that they were going to have to fight the militias at the same time — like “Rambo” in the Hollywood movie — against the Islamic State group, against other hostile militias, against Assad’s armies and against their allies, Hezbollah. However, to the misfortune of the strategists, real war is not like in the movies. Several dozen of the first Rambos trained by Washington were kidnapped last week, and not by the Islamic State group, but by one of the staunchest opponents of the group, the al-Nusra Front, also enemies of Assad. That is, in part, what has motivated the European Union to announce that its [European] air force will protect its allies against anyone who attacks it. But there’s more …

It is almost a year since Washington started to deploy airstrikes, and the damage against the Islamic State group has been very limited. Therefore, the White House has had to extend its hand to a key regional alliance: its alliance with Turkey. Ankara finally agreed to get involved in the fight against the Islamic State group, but not without conditions. Erdogan demanded an agreement that, in addition to attacking the Islamic State group, Turkey would also fight against the Kurds and against Assad through Ankara-backed militias. Erdogan also demanded that Turkey maintain a strip of control inside Syrian territory. With that demand, Turkey therefore made ousting the Syrian president its top priority, and the U.S. was forced to act accordingly.

As if that were not enough, there is another element. Up until now, there were already certain actors preparing an alternative way out of the Syrian civil war. The consequence is that Saudi Arabia, fairly active ever since Washington signed the nuclear deal with Iran, has been negotiating a potential agreement with Russia, China and other countries that would allow a negotiated solution to the four-year civil war. We have just learned that Assad is finally to be included in these negotiations. The most interesting thing is that it appears to be a negotiation that not only excludes Iran from the game, but snatches the initiative from Washington. Therefore, it’s no accident that today the United States has decided to seize control with a renewed military strategy aimed at killing two birds with one stone: the Islamic State group and Assad.

This is how Obama, the president of “Yes, we can,” the president of withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, is also the president who could not avoid becoming entangled in another of the great conflicts of the Middle East. And unfortunately for the Syrian population, it is still far from over.