Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel declined Thursday to directly address reports of differences with the White House on Syria strategy, saying “we are constantly assessing and reassessing and adapting” to deal with what he repeatedly called a complex foreign policy problem.
“We owe the president and we owe the National Security Council our best thinking on this,” and that advice has to be candid and direct, Hagel told reporters at the Pentagon.
Hagel sent “a sharply critical two-page memo” last week to National Security Adviser Susan Rice “in which he warned that the administration’s Syria policy was in danger of unraveling because of its failure to clarify its intentions toward President Bashar al-Assad,” according to the New York Times late Wednesday.
Syria has consistently been an afterthought in the administration’s strategy of confronting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Even though aircraft from the U.S.-led coalition began bombing Islamic State targets inside the country in September, U.S. officials continue to insist that fighting the extremist group in Iraq remains the priority.
And though Congress quickly moved to give President Obama the authority he needed to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels, that process has not begun. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that a command-and-control apparatus is in place, sites have been selected and coalition partners have identified trainers, but no prospective recruits had been selected or vetted.
Though the administration has consistently said Assad must go, the focus of coalition military efforts on the Islamic State has reportedly given Assad’s forces the advantage in fighting with other rebel groups, including those whose interests the United States would like to advance.
It also has interfered with Washington’s coalition-building efforts, since Turkey — a country U.S. officials describe as key to the anti-Islamic State fight — has insisted on a greater push against Assad as a price for its cooperation.
“Yes, Assad derives some benefit of that, of course,” Hagel acknowledged, but added: “We’ve got to manage through the realities of what we have in front of us with some longer-term strategies.”
