Russia has insisted that it opposes any offensive in Raqqa that does not go through Damascus and Moscow. Unlike previous US-led offensives against Isis, the regime positioned its troops near the front lines in Raqqa, as well as between Raqqa…
#Syria
Hassan Hassan: US strikes mark a new turn in Syria and beyond. Destination unknown – The Guardian
Posted in International Relations, Noted & Quoted, Operation American Greatness, War Tagged with: Syria
Joshua Landis: America’s Failure, and Russia and Iran’s Success, in Syria’s Cataclysmic Civil War – TPM
I just attended a conference at the Baker Institute where the attitude of many analysts was to let Russia and Iran choke on Syria. Let’s see if we can turn it into a swamp for them, seemed to be the…
Leon Wieseltier: Aleppo’s fall is Obama’s failure – The Washington Post
If Obama wants credit for not getting us into another war, the credit is his. If he wants credit for not being guilty of “overreach,” the credit is his. If he wants credit for conceiving of every obstacle and impediment…
Itani and Abouzahr: Lessons from Russia’s Intervention in Syria – Atlantic Council
Whatever its merits, the United States’ limited involvement in Syria granted Russia a powerful first-mover advantage, which in turn has complicated US policy options, granted a strategic foothold to a historical rival, facilitated mass atrocities, and undermined the concept of…
Marc Lynch: What’s Really At Stake in the Syria Debate – War on the Rocks
For many U.S. politicians and pundits, forceful action in virtually any arena is its own reward. In Syria specifically, many interventionists have argued that the United States needs to be more deeply involved in the war because this will give…
Frederic C. Hof: The Non-Option of Disengagement from the Middle East – MENASource
The next president, like it or not, will have his or her hands full with the Middle East. The starting point for getting anything right is to reject the proposition that we will always get it wrong; that it is…
Philip Gordon: Obama Should Have Bombed Assad… – The Atlantic
Goldberg: But you still believe a limited strike would have been the right thing to do? Gordon: I believed it, and I said so at the time. And this is what I thought the president thought as well. The president…
Defense and Defense Mechanisms
Diehl assesses the Obama Doctrine, or Jeffrey Goldberg’s Obama’s Obama Doctrine, as, in a word, neurotic – as much a psychological construct or defense mechanism as a policy – enabling the President minimize the importance of any setbacks, the alternative being emotionally intolerable.
If Obama Had Followed Through (Hof on the Red Line)
“…[H]ad it laid waste to Assad’s air force, field artillery, Scud missiles, and rockets, the strike would have emptied Assad’s victory speech of substantive content. Yes, the chemicals would have remained in place, and perhaps so too the Assad regime. But instruments of mass terror would have been neutralized, the migrant crisis afflicting Europe might have been averted, and tens of thousands of people now dead would still be alive.”
Understanding American Interests (Steven Heydemann in Washington Post)
“It is sadly ironic that the president’s commitment to inaction has undermined his vision of an international system in which military restraint and a smaller U.S. footprint would produce a more stable and peaceful international order.”