Laughing stock

This is an interesting and detailed accounting of US “maximum pressure” efforts against Syria. Googletranslate worked pretty well. I haven’t seen the material in the English-language press. The Americans are trying to use their own and European pressure to get political reform and reduce Iranian influence in Syria. The pressure is intended to come from new sanctions, withholding normalization, blocking reconstruction assistance, and drying up Syrian finances.

Meanwhile the Russians are supporting a regime offensive into Idlib province and blocking humanitarian assistance from crossing the Iraqi and Jordanian borders. Both Washington and Moscow seem inclined to wait the other out. Tehran–under pressure on the home front, handicapped by Soleimani’s death, and preoccupied with US threats–are losing some traction in Syria, yielding to Moscow’s stronger hand. Damascus meanwhile is stonewalling the UN effort to negotiate political reform.

Presidents Assad and Putin think they are holding the stronger hand, as we can tell from this joking conversation about inviting President Trump to Damascus so that he’ll see the light:

I think they are right. There just is not enough in the American pressure package to stop Assad and Putin from laughing at Trump, who has been busy claiming to his supporters that US troops in northeastern Syria are “keeping the oil.” He is apparently unaware that the amount is small, it is sold locally (likely to Damascus), and I suspect the proceeds go to the Kurds helping to protect the oil field, not the Americans. No need to mention that any “keeping the oil,” even the profits from it, would be a warm crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as several other international agreements prohibiting pillage.

The American approach to Syria has been ineffectual from the first, when it started in the Obama Administration. That is partly because the Americans don’t really care about Syria at all, but only about extremists and Iranians present there. From that perspective some progress has been made: the Islamic State has lost its geographic caliphate and the Iranians are finding it difficult to sustain their efforts there as the Russians claim whatever meat is left on the bone. It is good news that the Americans and Europeans are maintaining the sanctions and continuing to insist on political reform as the price for reconstruction assistance, but it isn’t likely to happen anytime soon.

What does all this mean for Syrians? Nothing good. The standoff between Moscow and Washington is likely to continue, the Turks are busy trying to stabilize a good part of northern Syria, the Russians and the regime are pressing ahead in Idlib, and the Americans are doing their best to hold on to a toehold in the northeast with their Kurdish friends. The war has declined in intensity, but large numbers of people are still being displaced (many of them after several previous displacements), and the regime is increasing its control over humanitarian assistance.

The Americans are continuing to prove ineffectual. Make America Great Again appears to mean becoming a laughingstock for Assad and Putin.