Russia desperately wants U.S. military forces out of northeastern Syria.
On Tuesday, responding to a tweet from a U.S. military spokesman, the Russian Embassy in Washington complained that the United States has “no legal mandate” to be in Syria. The embassy added that the U.S. spokesman’s referencing of U.N. Security Council resolution 2254 is “just ridiculous.”
There is more going on here than a Twitter debate. Russia remains furious that the U.S. military is still in Syria. But the Kremlin likely also senses that increased pressure might now lead President Joe Biden to remove U.S. forces.
Vladimir Putin’s interest in such a withdrawal is long-standing. Putin knows that until the United States vacates Syria, Russia and its puppet dictator Bashar Assad will not unilaterally be able to shape Syria’s political future. Nor can Russia reduce its sizable and expensive military presence in that nation. Moscow also resents the U.S. use of its Syria outposts to monitor Iranian infiltration routes across the Iraq-Syrian border. Putin wants to control that border himself, leveraging the control to extract concessions from Iran and the Islamic Republic’s Sunni-Arab enemies led by Saudi Arabia.
Putin has shown he is willing to roll the dice to get what he wants.
Back in 2018, Putin’s GRU intelligence service attempted to massacre American troops in Syria. Things didn’t go according to plan: Then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis ordered airstrikes against the attacking GRU forces. As Mattis put it, those forces were “annihilated.”
Yet, Russia’s pressure on U.S. military forces continues. Acting through its own forces and those aligned with Assad, Russia has orchestrated a harassment campaign against U.S. forces. This has included efforts to run U.S. military patrols off the road and even the occasional firefight. There are also rumors, though I haven’t been able to confirm them, that the Russians may have employed their microwave weapons against U.S. personnel in Syria.
That takes us back to Biden’s fueling Russia’s belief that now is the time to increase the pressure.
After all, Biden’s chief Middle East envoy Brett McGurk has spent the past few months swanning around the region telling U.S. allies that they’re on their own. The Biden administration has also withdrawn approval for a U.S. oil development scheme in Syria that would have consolidated Kurdish and Sunni Arab allies against ISIS, Iran, and Assad.
To be sure, Russia’s referencing of U.N. Security Council resolutions is absurd. Russia is clearly in breach of resolution 2254, for example. That resolution calls for a Syrian-led political transition and an end to attacks on civilians. Fine ambitions. But not ambitions that Russia’s bombing of hospitals and demand that Assad be crowned supreme ruler suggest it respects.
Biden cannot view this tweet as just another SVR Twitter-trolling adventure. Recognizing Russia’s priority strategic interest in extricating U.S. forces from Syria, the president should warn that any attack on U.S. personnel in Syria, even if carried out by Russian proxies, will see active defense and military retaliation.
