The news from the White House today brings the United States significantly closer to yet another Middle Eastern war. Concluding that “forces loyal” to the brutal Syrian dictator Assad had used chemical weapons against rebels, President Obama is stepping up the “scope and scale” of aid to the forces seeking to drive Assad from power. We aren’t hearing anything about ground forces and no fly zones, at least not yet, but we are looking at a much, much deeper US commitment to this ugly war.
The apparent change of heart at the White House was not just because mounting evidence made it impossible to pretend any longer that the chemical weapons “red line” hadn’t been crossed. Escalating Hezbollah and Iran activity looked to be ramping up the conflict and turning the tide in favor of government forces. As presidential adviser Ben Rhodes said in a White House press conference explaining the new situation: “[W]e have seen Hezbollah and Iran increase their involvement in the conflict that has caused an influx of additional fighters….”
Other signs from around the region point towards stepped up US involvement in the war. AFP reports that a Marine brigade is being held in readiness after consultations with Jordan, and fighter planes temporarily visiting Jordan as part of an exercise will stick around when the exercise ends.
Rhodes carefully avoided giving any specific details about what the White House will send the rebels and when they will get it. This looks deliberate. With the next G-8 summit scheduled for next week in Northern Ireland, today’s announcement has to be considered part of a bargaining strategy. It’s likely that the President or others on his team hope that the threat of dramatic escalation on the American side will drive Russia and its allies into serious negotiations over a transfer of power and a political solution. Despite the drama of today’s announcement, it seems clear that the White House still wants to give diplomacy another go before taking any irrevocable steps. President Obama tends to do everything he can to run down the clock and play for more time when he’s being pushed in a direction he does not like, and getting pushed into another Middle East War is not an experience he enjoys.
The administration has done everything it can to avoid reaching this point. Getting involved in the Syria conflict will set back the President’s core Middle East and global strategy. Instead of stepping back from the Middle East and reducing America’s military profile there, he is getting involved in his second regime change campaign. Instead of positioning America as an offshore balancer in the region, intervention in Syria would put American forces into the middle of a murderous civil war.
We’ve thought for some time that steps like this were inevitable sooner or later, and in some ways it would have been better to take these steps earlier, before Syria had so thoroughly unraveled, 93,000 people had died, and the two sides had become so radicalized, so infused with hatred and the hunger for revenge, that there was no easy route to a post-conflict peace. We’ve argued that the mounting violence and horror of the conflict, its growing potential to destabilize the wider region, and the geopolitical need to curb Iran’s push for control would ultimately make abstention impossible—but that the longer the destruction of Syria went on, the harder it would be to deal with the conflict when the day of intervention finally dawned.
Those arguments look more plausible than ever, but we aren’t in the Oval Office, and we don’t get to read the secret briefings that the President sees every day. That’s hardly the point now; we think the situation on the ground and the President’s own past rhetoric make some form of intervention unavoidable, and so the United States is on the verge of yet another armed conflict in the Middle East.
The country doesn’t want more war, and President Obama has done what he could to keep war at bay. But barring dramatic developments (like Assad stepping down or dramatic progress at the G-8 meeting toward a genuine agreement with Russia), the policy of waiting and hoping has just about run its course. As the President moves closer to military action, he—and those who will be called upon to execute the orders he gives—should be in our thoughts and our prayers.
After Iraq and Libya, we should have no illusions about what a post-Assad Syria will be like. We should have no illusions about the strength or cohesion of the rebels, and entertain no fantasies about a clean war and a quick exit. If we were advising the President, we would suggest that before he crosses any Rubicons he go to Congress to get a mandate for action in Syria. We believe he would get one, and it will serve him well if—and when—the intervention and its consequences don’t follow the best-case script and support begins to waver. The mistakes of Iraq and Libya must be avoided this time; there must be tough and realistic thinking about what the post-conflict situation will be, and about how the United States and its allies can cope.
President Obama came into office hoping to shift America’s Middle East role and reduce our commitments there. But executing that strategy turns out to be harder than thought. This is partly because the problem with Iran remains unsolved, and it’s impossible to walk away from a region where you face a major war. But it’s also because of two developments that couldn’t have been foreseen back in January, 2009: the Arab spring and the outbreak of the Sunni-Shia war overturned all calculations about the Middle East. It’s as if the Middle East were simultaneously experiencing the French Revolution and the Thirty Years’ War, and the United States cannot just walk away.
Meanwhile, the pivot to Asia means that the United States must follow up on commitments to allies in that part of the world. China has certainly taken note of America’s growing focus on the Middle East, and it’s likely that China will test the waters at some point to see if we are giving up on our Asian commitments as we double down on Syria.
This is surely not where the President expected to be at the start of his second term, but his grand strategy is about to face its severest tests yet.
It’s at moments like this that American presidents earn their pay.