Obama’s Legacy Problem and Syria

President Obama, as with most US Presidents when nearing the end of their term in office, attempt to manipulate how they want history to remember them.  Obama has made many trite comments about someone “being on the wrong side of history,” and he is taking great pains to paint his legacy with diplomatic achievements with Iran and with Cuba. The problem is that Syria has become inexorably tied to Iran, and the end result of the Iran nuclear deal will eventually pull Obama to the dreaded wrong side of history.

We only have to look at the devastation in Syria to see what the Iran agreement will leave in its wake. At this point, I want to make clear that there may not be a clear-cut best answer to Syria. If we study the social, religious, and ethnic make-ups of all of the Middle Eastern countries, I don’t believe the removal of dictatorships, whether from Iraq, Yemen, Egypt (an elected president in this one), Libya, or Syria have proved to be any better for their countrymen. I would even argue that once the dictator’s boot was off the neck of the people, each country turned violently worse, with the society breaking down into murderous sects and clans that hack away at their enemies. Our western civilization’s ideal of free people determining the direction of their country does not apply in the Arab world.

Against this backdrop of chaos in Syria, President Obama chose to do nothing. He did not arm any moderate rebel groups (again, for the record, I doubt that a moderate group by an American definition actually exists), nor did he take any particular action to remove or overtly weaken Bashar al Assad. Remember those pesky and embarrassing red lines? He simply led from behind and watched the war unfold. The problem is that al Assad is a client of Iran, and Iran is an ally of Russia. Putin has already demonstrated in Ukraine that he has no reticence with military intervention when it suits him. The Islamic State is a cancer that can spread to any Muslim nation, and Russia has a number of them along their southern border;  thus it is to Putin’s interest to limit any escalation of Islamic State’s influence.

Couple the Russian moves in Syria with the mouth-watering yearning of Obama to complete the Iran nuclear agreement, and the price for the completion of the agreement just became unbearable. Unbearable, however, for anyone except Barack Obama who has already offered up the entire diplomatic cash-box to Iran. So here we have the current situation. The Russians move into Syria with combat forces, and we react by telling the US Air Force to maintain liaison with the Russians to preclude any battlefield conflicts.  Since we supposedly support ground operations with rebels against Syrian government forces and the Russians will be supporting the Syrian government backed forces against rebel forces, a decision will have to be made to ensure no missiles are exchanged between the opposing aircraft. I guess it will be approved for both air forces to attack IS positions which will in actuality place the US and the Russians on the same side for the operational moment.

The likely end result is that the US will not demand that the Russians leave because the Iranians will not hesitate to dangle the nuclear agreement in the face of Obama. The US will slowly cede the airspace to Russia, and al Assad will continue in control of most of Syria as the rebel forces gradually dissolve under increasing Russian pressure.  Russia becomes the biggest player in Mideast policy by default.  Finally, since Obama appears to detest Israel’s Netanyahu, Israel will work directly with Russia instead of the US in the Mideast. This will be nothing new for the Israelis and the Russians who tacitly maintain short-term supportive relationships.

We have hardly scratched the surface of incompetence with Cuba, yet.