Regarding the Tragedy in Northern Syria and the Need to Revisit U.S. Security Commitments

Christopher A. Preble andDoug BandowPresident Trump ' s decision to give a de facto green light to a Turkish invasion of northern Syria continues to engender understandable criticism. Lost amidst this furor are several relevant facts: the modest U.S. military presence was inadequate to achieve any of the very ambitious objectives that the missions ' supporters imagined it could. Aswe wrote elsewhere, these troops were not going to " force Assad to yield, ensure free elections, limit Russian influence, oust Iranian forces, prevent an Islamic State revival, or protect the Kurds. "A separate point concerns the conflicts and contradictions underlying U.S. policy in Syria, and indeed throughout the greater Middle East, which have been laid bare in recent weeks. These problems have been compounded by a tendency among the foreign policy elite to conflate U.S. obligations to formal treaty allies with those implied or inferred toward temporary partners of convenience. As we explainin this article at War on the Rocks:The Syrian Kurds used Americans much as the Americans used them, to battle a common foe. Washington provided military assistance to a group which faced extinction should the Islamic State triumph. Importantly, the U.S. commitment was against ISIS, not Syria, Iran, Russia, or Turkey. And there was no formal alliance, no treaty ratified by the Senate, and no public debate. There wasn ’t even legal authority for the deployment, let alone a commitment to go to war on behalf ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs