Michael Crowley @Crowley
TIME
5:45 PM ET
A White House reversal after months of rejecting calls for more aid to moderate rebels
Rebel fighters carry their weapons as they run past damaged buildings to avoid snipers loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in the Mleha suburb of Damascus May 26, 2014. REUTERS/Badra Mamet (SYRIA - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST CONFLICT MILITARY) - RTR3QXRJ
For the better part of three years, President Barack Obama did his best to avoid entanglement in Syria’s civil war. He doubted that the U.S. could shape the conflict productively, or that American weapons wouldn’t fall into the hands of radicals. He had little appetite for getting entangled in another Middle East conflict, and knew the public agreed with him. Even after Syrian President Bashar Assad murdered civilians with nerve gas last year, Obama backed away from threatened air strikes and only approved limited arms transfers and small-scale CIA training of moderate fighters. He resisted pressure from the likes of Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta and David Petraeus to provide the rebels with more support. His ambassador to Syria resigned, saying he could no longer defend Obama’s policy.
Now Obama has dramatically reversed his position. The White House says it is asking Congress for $500 million, to create a Pentagon program to train and arm what it called “appropriately vetted elements of the moderate Syrian armed opposition.”
That is real money, and a clear admission—you might even call it a concession—by Obama that the risks of avoiding Syria are greater than the risks of getting more involved.
Why now? The short answer is Iraq. The march of fighters from the militant group ISIS through much of northern and western Iraq demonstrates that the festering wound of Syria’s civil war is infecting the wider region. ISIS has drawn manpower, money and momentum from its role in Syria’s civil war, and now controls a large swath of Syrian territory. To prevent it from burning down Iraq, the group needs to be stopped in Syria. But Assad’s regime hasn’t been able to do that. And Obama has no appetite for doing so with direct U.S. military action. His goal is to get Syrian moderates to do the anti-ISIS work for us, while also somehow bringing Assad to his knees.
That’s not going to be easy. ISIS and another key group fighting Assad, the al-Qaeda-aligned Jabhat al-Nusra, are much better organized and financed than the rebels described as “moderate,” meaning they don’t subscribe to radical anti-western Islamic dogma. Even if Congress approves Obama’s plan—which is no given, according to a Congressional aide familiar with the issue—it will be months before the training kicks in and produces enough skilled fighters to shape the Syrian conflict.
But in a June 3 interview with PBS, Obama’s recently departed ambassador to Damascus, Robert Ford, insisted that it’s not too late for such a plan to make a positive difference in Syria. Ford said putting more pressure on Assad can still achieve the political settlement in Syria that Obama says is essential. “We can’t get to a political negotiation until the balance on the ground compels — and I use that word precisely—compels Assad … to negotiate a political deal,” Ford said.
Fears that U.S.-supplied arms falling into the hands of radicals—a problem recently made vivid after ISIS fighters paraded American-made Humvees in Iraq—are overblown, Ford added. “We have plenty of information on reliable groups, and we have long had that,” he said.
Complicating matters, however, is the fact that ISIS’s frightening offensive in Iraq has made Assad seem more tolerable in comparison. It’s hard to argue that toppling Assad is more important to American security than crushing ISIS. Assad, whose jets bombed ISIS positions along Iraq’s border this week, happens to be the enemy of our enemy. Some foreign policy thinkers are even calling for a short-term U.S. alliance with Assad in the anti-ISIS fight.
That’s not in the cards for now, apparently. A stronger U.S.-trained rebel force would endanger Assad’s remarkably stubborn hold on power. But unseating Assad is a lower U.S. priority right now than weakening ISIS, and preventing them (or al Nusra) from toppling Assad and taking power.
In other words, we still want to get rid of Assad. We just don’t want ISIS to be the ones who do it.
It’s not exactly a simple plan. But Obama seems to have decided that the only thing worse than the risks of taking action are the consequences of inaction— which are now unfolding across northern and western Iraq.
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