The Trump administration’s Syria policy was a failure, according to a former US ambassador to Damascus, urging the new Biden administration to change Washington’s approach to rely more on Turkey and Russia in the region.
“During his four years in office, U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly promised to get the United States out of the nation-building business,” Robert Ford wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine, in an article published Monday.
“But the Trump administration departed from its no-nation-building policy to pursue one long-shot effort – in Syria,” Ford continued, saying the US tried to use military force and financial pressure to compel the Assad regime to accept major constitutional reforms and a so-called “autonomous zone” in the country’s northeast.
Under US supervision, that region developed into a so-called “semi-state” with the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the YPG, he wrote.
Turkey has long made the case that the YPG and SDF are not separate groups, but in fact two labels employed by the terrorist group PKK – a group that has taken 40,000 lives in Turkey over the decades – and that US support for them amounts to helping the PKK/YPG establish a terrorist corridor along Turkey’s southern border.
Ford continued: “After six years and roughly $2.6 billion, this statelet is America’s baby, raised under U.S. military protection and shielded from hostile neighbors. Unable to support itself, the autonomous zone will remain dependent on U.S. resources for the foreseeable future.”
“An open-ended commitment of this kind is not what the United States needs,” he added.
Ford argued that Syria “has never been a major” US national security issue, adding: “American interests there have always been limited to preventing the conflict from threatening Washington’s more important concerns elsewhere.”
Claiming the current US policy for Syria “does little” to accomplish that central goal, he said it “has also not secured political reform in Damascus, restored stability to the country, and dealt with the remnants of” Daesh/ISIS.
Source : Anadolu News
