Conditioning American withdrawal from Syria
Now that President Donald Trump has announced US forces will be soon leaving Syria, the administration must rethink its previously stated conditions for withdrawal.
Back in January, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that American objectives in Syria were to suppress any Islamic State (IS) resurgence, oust Bashar al-Assad from power, reduce Iranian influence, continue to back a Kurdish-dominated enclave and reassure our Turkish allies. This speech has now disappeared from the State Department website, along with all the former secretary of state's other pronouncements. And this week, President Donald Trump announced that American forces will soon be withdrawn from Syria, while the State Department put a hold on further stabilization assistance to areas liberated from IS.
Tillerson’s announced objectives were mutually incompatible and largely unachievable, even were the United States to sustain its modest level of military and economic engagement in Syria. Trump’s announcement, therefore, makes some sense, but only if conditioned on a more modest set of conditions for withdrawal.
