Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, former leader of ISIS, was killed in a raid by U.S. Army Delta Force and Rangers in Syria. This is a momentous occasion with at least as much significance strategically as the death of Al Qaeda head Usama bin Laden. We can now identify a clear end point for the Islamic State caliphate in Iraq and Syria because the self-proclaimed caliph himself is dead.
Baghdadi and bin Laden led rival views of jihadist conquest. Al Qaeda preferred to remain dispersed and occasionally pop up to conduct terror attacks. They grew affiliated groups in many places, but never tried to hold ground as if they were a nation. ISIS, however, quite obviously ran up their black flag of jihad in Iraq and Syria and ruled a large quasi-state with oil revenue and even rudimentary government for several years.
The success Baghdadi achieved is worth noting. For a while there was a physical caliphate the global jihad could point to and claim they had accomplished a major goal of the Islamist movement worldwide. But even if they thought it would last and grow, their atrocities meant the civilized world could never countenance that.
And as Al Qaeda noted, this planted a target on them. The U.S. built a coalition to cut down their black flag and now we have also cut the head off the snake.
Now, what is the U.S. exit strategy for Syria?
President Trump has instituted a good part of the plan we were asked to write by the National Security Council almost two years ago for an End Game in Syria. We based it on these identified threats:
“The danger that Iran will otherwise end up with de facto control of the Sunni areas and safe transit across Syria is extremely high. A third major Sunni insurgency is also likely if Iran or its proxies control these areas. Turkey is negotiating a separate peace with Iran and Russia for control of the North.”
Our plan called for three main objectives (though the U.S. could not get the Kurds and Turkey to agree after two years of negotiations):
- A buffer zone for Turkey to contain the PKK Kurds, a U.S.-designated terror group.
- Protection for the Syrian Kurds, who helped so much in the victory over ISIS.
- Security of oil resources so Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iran cannot use them.
The United States was never interested in a permanent presence in the region and certainly not in Syria.
Now we must solidify the gains we have made and make a few last pushes to ensure that Assad and Iran do not have a path to undo these successes and create the land bridge to the Mediterranean the mullahs in Tehran so desperately crave. There are gains in leverage for Turkey and Russia in the arrangements we have made, but those who are crowing that this was a giveaway to Vladimir Putin and Recep Erdogan should consider what, if anything, has been given.
Turkey is trying to build a buffer zone to stop PKK terror attacks but maintaining that is going to be an ongoing fight against terror groups that have a new set of atrocities to rally around. Putin’s major gains have mostly been media-based as he is credited for a win that really wins him nothing but trouble. Russia’s only strategic interest in Syria is the airbase and naval port, both of which are far removed from all of this.
The United States was never interested in a permanent presence in the region and certainly not in Syria. We were there to kill the ISIS caliphate and we have done that convincingly. Russia and Turkey may be left with a mess of simmering insurgency and civil war that could remind them to be careful what you wish for.
So, what should the US wish for?
1. Deny a land bridge or Shia Crescent across Iraq and Syria that allows Iran to control and supply the region.
2. Empower the Kurds and Sunni in Syria by working with regional allies to rebuild and create trade.
3. Push Erdogan and Turkey to decide whether they are a U.S. ally per NATO or not.
The America First foreign policy President Trump has enacted is a pragmatic approach grounded in the idea that we cannot be involved in open-ended foreign deployments with no clear objectives or path to victory.
We can and will act decisively when an urgent U.S. strategic interest is threatened and no tyrant around the world should feel emboldened or safe. But we will not be the neighborhood watch sticking around to make sure things can’t go bad again. That is a job for the people whose neighborhood it is.
Jim Hanson is President of Security Studies Group and served in US Army Special Forces.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Hi, Adam
I agree that there was nothing “impulsive” about the US Commander-in-Chief shifting around those few dozens or hundreds of US troops in Syria; nor was he acting on impulse when he sent them there a couple of years ago. They were sent there in response to the Turkish “Operation Olive Branch” in January, 2018, to put the breaks on what seemed like runaway Turkish aggression. The main rationale of The US’s move then, as I see it, was to keep Turkish ambitions from interfering with our campaign against ISIS. Now, with ISIS pretty much smashed and beheaded in Syria, this Turkish meddling is no longer a great concern to us.
Communists and Socialists, world-wide, have long been deluded by thinking “The State” can solve all the world’s problems. I see a similar attitude among some on the Right, who seem to think the US can do the same. I don’t agree with either world-view. I’m glad President Trump has begun bringing our men and women home from Syria.
Caliphate is no more dead than the Russian aspirations for empire, Chinese hegemony over Tibet and Mongolia or the British Commonwealth or the French outlying divisions as far away as Tahiti or Guiana.
Some smart Shiite Arab, the recent kill was notoriously stupid, will pick up the pieces and promote the age old Muslim is of Caliphate and universal Muslim dominance over the world no less virulent than Catholic aspirations of the same.
American presence in the world diplomatic and dynamic scene is as necessary as perpetual antibiotics for a chronic infection. Getting ‘out’ means imminent danger that the Atlantic and Pacific oceans can no longer protect us from as in the days of sailing ships.
Getting ‘out’ means achieving our national goal of spreading peace. That means redrawing the boundary lines in the Middle East, not just Israel’s and creating new states, such as one for the Kurds. that’s been our Wilsonian ideal since WWI and its been compromised by the need for control over sources of oil. We may no longer bed dependent upon others for oil, but our markets in Europe are and population increases are increasing the demand for oil despite green efforts.
What Hanson’s revelations about a National Security Council plan that he hoped to draft back in early 2017 mean is that Trump. far from being “impulsive,” was following a plan commissioned by, and approved by, his White House National Security Council staff two and a half years agoto the letter. Apparently it had been part of the NSC plan (and therefore Trump’s plan, because he must have been shown it and approved it at some point) all along that Turkeyshould occupy a “security zone” in northeast Syria. This was partly to assuage Turkish concerns about the possibility that the Kurdish-Turkish PKK rebels might use Kurdish-inhabited locations along the Syrian-Turkey border as a “sanctuary” to raid into Turkey. But the main purpose was to block the projected “Shi’ite corridor” that Iran was, and is, trying to construct from Iran to the Mediterranean. The NSC assumption was that the Turks and their Syrian allies, who are Sunnis, would never permit the “corridor” to run through the territory occupied by Turkey. Trump has been following this two-and-a-half year old plan to the letter over the past two weeks. Right or wrong, there was nothing impulsive about Trump’s orders to U.S. forces in Syria and his “green light” to Erdogan.However, I believe that new developments since 2017 had rendered the plan obsolete, and Trump should have realized this.