The Syrian Civil War rages on well into 2016 with no clear end. While the conflict showed a lot of promise with increasing foreign involvement and refocusing of priorities against the common opposition, ISIS and Al-Nusra proves to be more can capable of holding onto key parts of the region. The prolonged US commitment and the inability to put a closure to the war has been poorly received and some have begun to voice their opinions. In a recent internal memo, dozens of frustrated State Department officers signed a critique of Obama's administration's approach to the conflict.
Specifically, the memo calls for direct use of military force to enforce the CoH that is still in effect, but violated to no consequence. The result of such a stance, the memo notes, is that by raising the cost of violation, the immediate negative impact on civilians in the affected areas would be minimized and would facilitate a diplomatic resolution to the conflict.
While this approach might have some desired effect (namely, allowing relief to civilians and concentrating efforts to subduing the common opposition), it fails to achieve the an important objective set by Obama. While the primary intent behind US involvement in this conflict is to put an end to it, Obama has made it definitively clear that Assad must be removed from office. However, the situation in Syria at the moment is not ideal for accomplishing all of these different objectives simultaneously and an attempt to do so will yield undesired outcomes. In this article, I will discuss the current political climate in the Middle East and how the objective of removing Assad from office is infeasible without significant costs or compromises.
Russia
Ever since Russia entered the conflict in support of Assad, they have been a significant barrier for the US in expediting a favorable conclusion where he is removed from power. The goals of Russia is relatively clear. Establish some level of stability to where Russian interests in the region, that is, sale of military hardware and maintaining the Tartus Base, is secure. While Assad himself is not critical to Russia's interest, their vested interest in Syria's patronage and lease of land is crucial to their objectives in the region.
Initially, the Russians were committed to securing Assad's regime by conducting air strikes against the anti-government forces, but as the costly conflict rages on, they appear to be less than enthusiastic about a prolonged conflict. Not only did they agree to the initial CoH, but have also reaffirmed their ongoing adherence to the ceasefire and have actively participated in talks with the US regards to prioritizing the elimination of ISIS and Al-Nusra.
However, Russia's diminished patience and willingness to consider a compromise in combating the common opposition should not be equivocated to abandoning their interests in Syria. If provoked with the possibility of an overt change of regime by the US, an idle reaction is unlikely. Putin has been more than willing to show that Russia will not tolerate western powers interfering with its interests, even to the point of bringing Russia to the brink of a recession under sanctions.
Not only did the sanctions fail to prompt the desired reaction, the Russian economy is recovering (though, this is not to say it is booming as it still remains in single percentage points of contraction, but this is a marked improvement over the the double digit percentage point contractions Russia experienced in 2014-2015) and is projected to return to pre-sanction levels by 2017-2018 at its current pace. Furthermore, maintaining sanctions, let alone increasing them, will prove challenging as many European countries benefited from trading with Russia, nor is the possibility of EU breakdown doing the sanctions any service.
Assad
While the initial efforts of the CoH yielded significant gains as the combined efforts of the signatories of the CoH gained significant ground against ISIS and Al-Nusra, progress has steadily waned (recently, pro-government forces lost southern Aleppo to Al-Nusra). In spite of their combined efforts, the opposition remains strong and the prospects of defeating them can be compromised if the brunt of the ground forces (pro-government elements) become weaker. Given the precarious state of the union of the pro-government forces, forcibly removing Assad from power can have a fractionalizing effect on the temporary "alliance (this including the foreign powers, moderate rebels, and pro-government forces that are prioritizing on the elimination of the common opposition for the duration of the CoH).
In the event that the US does force the issue of instigating a transition of power by overtly forcing Assad to leave office, there would be negative consequences to follow. For one, a political transition would shift the priorities of the country. With a vacuum of power left by the previous regime, different groups would contend for control of the new government. As a result, the ability to coordinate offensives would falter and so too the capacity to subdue the opposition. This would put Syria at risk of falling to the extremists, which would either force the US to commit further into Syria. Furthermore, the military support that the government begets from its alliance with Iran would not necessarily hold if Assad were to be removed from power by the US.
Forcibly removing Assad or pressuring him through direct confrontation would do little in the way of swaying the Syrian population to be favorable of a regime change. In fact, such a course of action would only serve to reinforce the negative imagery of the US and may push moderates over to the other camp. Instead, if the removal of Assad were the utmost priority in this conflict, a war of attrition would be the strategy of choice. A prolonged conflict would lead to growing internal discontent (both civilian as well as military) which then could be leveraged for a negotiation. However, this is an infeasible course of action given that the US also aims to minimize the war's impact on the civilians and are not keen on allowing ISIS or Al-Nusra to regain ground in Syria thanks to a weakened pro-government force.
The Iranian support of Assad's regime is also a major barrier to this objective. Not only do they provide materialistic support, Iran is also deeply vested in the survival of Assad's regime. Syria is a critical geopolitical ally against its rivals in the Middle East. Not only would a forced removal of Assad prolong the conflict, it would also harm US-Iran relations (given the huge ordeal that was necessary to mend US-Iran relations souring it again in mere months would be a definite loss). Given the reoccurring nature of terrorism, keeping up partnership with Iran will be essential in the ongoing fight against ISIS as well as handling future outbreaks of conflict.
The Practical Solution
The issue with the Syrian Conflict boils down to the inability to achieve the objective of removing Assad from power without significant political and material costs. Not only does it have unacceptably high costs, the course of actions necessary to fulfill such an objective would also run counter to the greater regional goal of subduing ISIS. Rather than compromising on many fronts to achieve an ideological goal of removing an "evil authoritarian", it is more politically and materially practical to abandon the notion that Assad absolutely must leave office.
That being said, this is not a dismissal of the issues that Syria suffered from while under Assad's rule. Rather, the alternative is not any more favorable than the status quo, and may have far more negative consequences as a result of trying to "save" Syria from the Assad regime. In fact, such an assessment is neither new or particularly revealing as other analysts have also made similar claims to the dangers of a Syrian regime change (most notably, assessments made by the DIA discussed in this article: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military).
In conclusion, the most sensible course of action would be to abandon the goal of removing Assad and instead focus on the effort in subduing ISIS and Al-Nusra and bringing stability to the country. As to what could be done afterwards, Syria would be in a position where they require significant foreign aid to recover. This is where support should come with conditions for Syria to providing a more inclusive political process and integrate neutral third party observers to ensure that they are conducted in a fair manner. If the intent of the US is to allow a chance for the moderate dissenters to have a voice in the new government, the elimination of the common opposition takes precedence (to ensure a peaceful transition, the CoH will have to be strictly upheld as suggested by the State Department officers after the elimination of the opposition).
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