Russia Knows Its Next Move in Syria. Does America?
The endgame has begun in Syria’s long and bloody civil war. As the grip of the Islamic State on the territories it has controlled in eastern Syria and western Iraq is pried up, there is no longer any way the question of Syria’s future can be postponed. Moreover, given the competing and clashes interests of the various major players in the Syrian conflict, major clashes are now inevitable unless some sort of agreement can be worked out.
When the Russians intervened in force in Syria in 2015 to support the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and add significant firepower to aid the Syrian ground forces—backed up by Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards—the initial goal was to stabilize Assad’s control over the rump Syria that he presided over and to avoid the spectacle of Assad’s ouster from Damascus. The goal was to produce a stalemate where Assad, on the one hand, could not be forced “to go,” and where the backers of different parts of the Syrian opposition—Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and even the United States—would shift from regime change to deal making along the lines of a “soft partition” for Syria.
Source URL (retrieved on June 30, 2017):
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/russia-knows-its-next-move-syria-does-america-21349
