US withdrawal from Syria a grave mistake
American retreat will invite the Al Assad regime in Syria and its Iranian backers to expand their influence
Withdrawing US forces from Syria is a grave strategic mistake. It will leave the American people and homeland less safe, embolden our enemies, and weaken important alliances. Sadly, the recently announced pullout risks repeating the Obama administration’s reckless withdrawal from Iraq, which facilitated the rise of Daesh in the first place.
Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I have worked with three presidential administrations to fight terrorism. I have distilled three principal lessons about combating this complex threat.
Lesson No. 1 is that the threat is real and cannot be wished away. These fanatics threaten American interests and American lives. If permitted to regroup and establish havens, they will bring terror to our shores.
Second, there is no substitute for American leadership. No other nation can match our capability to spearhead multinational campaigns that can defeat terrorists and help stabilise the region. Libya and Syria both testify to the bloody results of the Obama administration’s “leading from behind.”
This truth extends well beyond counterterrorism. If we Americans care at all about the post-Second World War international system that has sustained an unprecedented era of peace, prosperity and technological development, we must recognise that we are its indispensable nation. We built this system, we sustained it and we have benefited from it most of all.
When the United States threw off the comforting blanket of isolationism in the 1940s and took the mantle of global leadership, we made the whole world better, but we specifically made it much better for the United States. If we abandon that mantle today, we can be sure that a new world order will be made — and not on terms favourable to us.
Strategic nightmare
The third lesson is that we are not in this fight alone. In recent years, the campaigns against Daesh and the Taliban, in Iraq or Syria or Afghanistan, have been waged primarily by local forces. The United States has mainly contributed limited, specialised capabilities that enable our local partners to succeed. Ironically, Syria had been a model for this increasingly successful approach.
Unfortunately, the administration’s recent steps in Syria do not reflect crucial lessons. The combination of a US pullback and the escalating Turkish-Kurdish hostilities is creating a strategic nightmare for our country. Even if the five-day ceasefire holds, events of the past week have set back the United States’ campaign against Daesh and other terrorists. Unless halted, our retreat will invite the Al Assad regime in Syria and its Iranian backers to expand their influence. Predictably, our adversaries seem to be relishing these developments. The resulting geopolitical chain reaction appears to have been perfectly distilled by an online video which, according to reports, shows a smiling Russian “journalist” strolling around a just-abandoned US military base in northern Syria. A strategic calamity neatly captured in one Facebook post.
As we seek to pick up the pieces, we must remain guided by our national interests and not emotions. While Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s offensive into northeastern Syria is misguided, is it really the case that the United States would prefer that Russian, Syrian and Iranian forces control the region rather than Turkey, our Nato ally? We need to use both sticks and carrots to bring Turkey back in line while respecting its own legitimate security concerns. In addition to limiting Turkey’s incursion and encouraging an enduring ceasefire, we should create conditions for the reintroduction of US troops and move Turkey away from Russia and back into the Nato fold.
To keep pressure on Daesh, deter Iranian aggression and buy our local partners more leverage to negotiate with Bashar Al Assad to end the underlying conflict, we should retain a limited military presence in Syria and maintain our presence in Iraq and elsewhere in the region. We must also work closely with allies threatened by this chaos and redouble international efforts to pressure the Al Assad regime. Finally, whatever happens in Syria, this situation must chasten the US against withdrawing from Afghanistan before the job is done. We must recommit to our Afghan partners as they do the heavy lifting to defend their country and their freedoms from Al Qaida and the Taliban.
■ Mitch McConnell, a top Republican, is majority leader of the US Senate.