US must get Russia’s support on Syria deal

Missile strikes signal that using gas is wrong but it’s not the same thing as a long-term strategy for peace

here cannot be a military solution to Syria’s multiple civil wars. The only way the troubled country can return to normal is for all its various factions to come together and rebuild their state together.

This will have to be done in several stages and the first round will have to be between the regime and the internationally recognised opposition.

Later the Syrian Kurds will need to be included despite any Turkish reservations, and they will all have to take part in taking over the territory currently occupied by Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and Al Qaida affiliates, which cannot be part of Syria’s future.

This is the political context in which any judgement has to be formed over US President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb a Syrian airbase in punishment for the regime’s use of chemical weapons on its own people.

The military strike itself has no real political outcome as it is not part of a coherent political strategy. But it was designed to shock Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, and it certainly encouraged the opposition who were bracing themselves for what seemed like an inevitable return to power by Al Assad.

But this political impact is not the same as a political effort by the US to re-energise peace efforts in Syria. This is why the US needs to put pressure on Russia as Al Assad’s premier international ally to get the Syrian leader to take the peace talks more seriously.

This has become all the more urgent after the refusal of the G7 meeting in Rome to impose new sanctions if Russia failed to pull its armed forces out of Syria and end its support for Al Assad.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is understood to have said that America now backs regime change in Syria, although he has still refused to call directly for Al Assad to go as the US does not expect imminent regime change, and its immediate priority is stabilising Syria. That will come when the US gets Russia to work with the Americans and the rest of the G7 and like-minded countries to build a new future for Syria.

Trump’s sudden U-turn from refusing to take action to taking drastic action may well encourage Russia to sit it out and wait for the next shift in Trump’s volatile policy.

The Americans need to make sure that Russia recognises that that would be wrong.