Fallout from the seismic Syrian civil war and upheaval besets the Middle East. Aggressor regimes and extremist groups have capitalized upon the chaos and despair.
It will be very difficult at this late juncture to get America’s Syria policy right, but the moral and strategic stakes are too high to keep getting it wrong. Instead of slouching toward a fatally flawed paradigm, the Trump administration should conduct an urgent policy review, such as it did for North Korea and Iran.
U.S. efforts in Syria are hampered by a narrow focus on defeating ISIS and corollary downplaying of the threat posed by the bloodthirsty Syrian regime and its allies; inadequate attention to atrocities and the plight of civilians; and failure to tackle the complexities and prepare for the future.
Obama administration officials were mostly idle and mute as the civil war and the tragic human toll escalated out of control. They did little or nothing in response to the Bashar Assad regime’s slaughter, disappearances, systematized torture, starvation sieges, and use of barrel bombs, heavy artillery and chemical weapons on civilians.
Even worse, the Obama administration deferred to Russian “peace plans” while resisting calls for strong sanctions on Syria, a humanitarian corridor and serious assistance for vetted pro-democracy rebels. This had the effect of buying the brutal President Assad time – often when time was running out for him.
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