Reading the expert commentary about the U.S. drawdown from northeast Syria over the last few weeks, you could be forgiven for believing that the United States is ceding the Middle East to the Russians and the Iranians. Some analysts in Washington, D.C., have equated a U.S. rollback to the dissolution of American leadership as if the U.S. is only a few years away from permanent decline.
The story of Syria’s civil war, however, is far more complicated and multifaceted than the conventional wisdom suggests. Using popular buzzwords like “defeat,” “victory,” and “leadership” to describe what is occurring in Syria is a complete misreading of the Arab nation’s importance to U.S. national security.
Americans have been told that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are the indisputable winners of this conflict. But there are major problems with this interpretation, the first being that Syria is not exactly a great prize for these supposed victors. After nearly nine years of civil and proxy war, to call the country a bloody mess would be a massive understatement.
Consider where Syria is at the present moment.
Entire cities have been destroyed. The World Bank estimates that the Syrian economy has lost $300 billion in gross domestic product between 2011-2018 — a decrease so steep that it could take Syrians over a generation to recover to prewar levels.
The cost of Syria’s reconstruction could be as high as $400 billion, requiring Russia and Iran to spend considerable capital if they have the slightest chance of digging the country out of a gaping-sized hole. Add approximately 6.2 million internally displaced people and an incompetent government in Damascus, and Syria looks more like a burden than a reward.
Nor are the Russians and Iranians gaining newfound control in Syria. They’ve had control for some time.
Moscow’s influence stretches back to before Syria’s current dictator Bashar Assad was even born. Syrian officers have been training in Russian military schools since the beginning of the Cold War, cementing relationships that have continued across multiple generations. Tabqa dam, Syria’s largest dam, was financed by Soviet aid and supervised by Soviet engineers. Moscow was Syria’s main supplier of military equipment, with the value of the trade reaching $34 billion between 1950 and 1990.
Were it not for the Soviet Union’s airlifting of weapons and supplies to Damascus during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, it’s doubtful former Syrian Leader Hafez Assad would have had the capacity to continue operations for as long as he did.
Iran’s relationship with Syria may not be as long, but it is just as extensive.
The partnership between Tehran and Damascus was consummated as an act of pragmatism. Both nations were bitter enemies of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and collaborated to make life difficult for Baghdad. At a time when the West was pumping weapons into Iraq’s arsenal to boost its efforts in the conflict against Iran, Hafez Assad persuaded the Libyans and the Algerians to route military reinforcements through Syria to Tehran in order to counteract Iraq’s military superiority.
Thirty years later, the Iranians returned the favor, providing the younger Assad with the manpower and subsidies that were absolutely crucial to clawing back rebel-held territory. Given the history of this bilateral relationship, no one should be surprised that Iranian advisers, intelligence operatives, and elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard units came to Assad’s rescue.
However, the biggest fallacy in the discourse is the notion that redeploying U.S. troops from Syria will result in the U.S. losing its influence in the Middle East. This, too, isn’t borne out by the facts.
First, Syria has never been important to core U.S. national security interests in the region. Those interests include ensuring there aren’t long-term disruptions in the oil supply, preventing terrorists from launching attacks against the U.S., and making sure no power attains hegemonic status. At 110,000 barrels per day in 2010, the year before the war, Syria’s net export capacity is too small to make much of a difference in global supply one way or the other.
Second, Syria’s war was never Washington’s to win or lose. Compared to Iran, Russia, Turkey, Iraq, and Assad himself, the U.S. had very little leverage to begin with. This is not due to a lack of U.S. leadership, but rather to a lack of interest. Washington has no stake in how Syrians govern themselves internally. As long as the Syrian government, whoever is at the top of the system, is willing to cooperate with the U.S. on mutual threats when necessary (as Washington and Damascus did in the years after 9/11), U.S. national security objectives will still be met.
Whether or not Assad stays in the presidential palace is also immaterial to Washington’s freedom of maneuver in the Middle East. For the U.S., a booming energy producer in its own right, Syria is a minor pawn on a Middle Eastern chessboard fast becoming less geopolitically valuable in a world where the Asia-Pacific is at the center of great-power competition. The same can’t be said about Russia and Iran, both of which are so dependent on Assad remaining a partner that they were willing to devote immense time, money, and manpower on his behalf.
The U.S. national security objective in Syria was limited from the very beginning to eliminate the Islamic State’s territorial caliphate. Thankfully, that mission was accomplished last May, when thousands of ISIS militants surrendered in the small village of Baghouz after a months-long siege. It’s time for Syria’s major players, not the U.S., to mop up whatever ISIS remnants exist.
Syria’s civil war is an ugly, eight-year story of blood, tears, and refugees. The conflict has gutted a once-proud Arab nation into a fulcrum of proxy warfare and rage. If there are any winners, the spoils are minimal.
Countries that have a greater stake in the outcome should be responsible for Syria’s fractured body politic. The U.S. is not one of those countries.
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. You can find him on Twitter @DanDePetris.
