America should get out of the way in Syria


The Obama administration’s effort to enlist Russia as a partner in imposing a peace settlement in Syria has been a predictable failure. So, what’s next?

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is the nation’s foremost neoconservative hawk. In a Wall Street Journal column, he advocated an aggressive U.S. military engagement in the Syrian civil war. Its failure is also highly likely. And it would take risks and incur costs highly disproportionate to true U.S. interests in the outcome.

According to McCain, the United States should ground Syrian President Bashar Assad’s air force by destroying his planes if they fly. McCain says we should do this with “coalition partners.” But so long as Russia is in the picture, no other country will be joining in that mission.

And what about Russia? McCain says that “if Russia continues its indiscriminate bombing, we should make clear that we will take steps to hold its aircraft at greater risk.”

Translation: We should threaten Russia with war in Syria.

Let’s take a breath and gain some perspective. Who governs Syria is more important to Russia and Iran than it is to America. Assad provides Russia its only naval port in the Mediterranean. Iran has a stake in Assad as an ally in the larger Shiite-Sunni contest for regional influence.

Russia and Iran will always be willing to take the fight deeper and longer than the United States. They won’t be cowed by a U.S. military bluff.

A better approach would be for the U.S., which has been training and arming selected rebel groups, to get out of the way.

The opposition forces are Sunni Islamists of some flavor or another. They aren’t fighting for democratic governance or free markets. They are fighting to oust a Shiite dictatorship in a Sunni-majority country. There are jihadists among them. But the other reality is that adversity on the battlefield has caused the rebel forces to largely unite.

Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey want to see Assad gone. They have wanted to do more to arm the rebels and aren’t as fastidious as the U.S. about who gets the aid, as long as it is aimed at Assad. America has held them back.

If the United States got out, Assad’s regional enemies would see to it that he faces a more robust opposition. That wouldn’t bring peace. In fact, it would presumably make at least the ground war more intense.

However, it would increase the cost of war to Russia and Iran, which might create the preconditions for discussions of a peace settlement that basically partitions the country.

The true strategic interest of the United States in the region is reducing the writ and capabilities of the Islamic State terrorist group. Focusing on that means accepting some strange, at least de facto alliances. Shiite militias with Iranian ties are fighting both for Assad and against ISIL.

The Obama administration has been an inept failure in Syria. That, however, isn’t a reason for the United States to become a combatant in Syria’s civil war.

Robert Robb writes for The Arizona Republic, where this column first appeared.