Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Syria

  • Trump’s Withdrawal from Syria Is a Disaster

    Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Donald Trump
    Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey and Donald Trump of the United States meet in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington DC, May 16, 2017 (Presidency of the Republic of Turkey)

    The calamity of Donald Trump’s withdrawal from northern Syria is hard to overstate.

    • More than 160,000 people have fled the region.
    • A Kurdish politician and at least ten others have been killed.
    • Hundreds of fighters from the self-declared Islamic State (ISIS) — which the Kurds did more than anyone to defeat — have been freed from prison.
    • Trump doesn’t care, saying, “They’re going to be escaping to Europe.” No matter that’s where America’s best friends are, or used to be.
    • Turkey has attacked an American commando outpost in Syria.
    • Abandoned by the West, the Kurds are appealing to Bashar Assad and his patron, Vladimir Putin, for help. (more…)

  • Macron’s German Challenge, What America Should Attempt in Syria

    Emmanuel Macron Alexis Tsipras Angela Merkel
    French president Emmanuel Macron, Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras and German chancellor Angela Merkel speak during a NATO summit in Brussels, May 25, 2017 (NATO)

    Eric Maurice writes in EUobserver that French president Emmanuel Macron’s biggest challenges comes from Berlin, where Angela Merkel and her conservative party are skeptical of plans to create a European Monetary Fund and establish a European deposit insurance scheme to protect savers:

    Although the two plans were initiated by the EU before Macron took them, their rejection would signal a clear rebuttal of the French president’s more ambitious proposals for the longer term.

    Merkel hasn’t ruled out a European Monetary Fund, but — like the Dutch and other deficit hawks in the north of Europe — she wants it to be an “intergovernmental”, as opposed to an EU-led, institution.

    Germany isn’t in favor of creating a eurozone budget and finance minister either.

    I predicted in September that these would be the most difficult items on Macron’s wishlist, but other things are still doable: harmonizing corporate tax rates and asylum procedures, creating an EU military intervention force, reforming the Common Agricultural Policy. (more…)

  • Americans Want Voting Reform, Analysis of Trump’s Attack on Syria

    A Voice of the People poll has found majority support in the United States for introducing ranked-choice voting.

    Also known as instant runoff, it would allow Americans to vote for third-party candidates without wasting their votes. Maine is the first state to consider it.

    Another way to break up the Democratic-Republican duopoly would be to consolidate congressional districts.

    I would support either. The two-party system has polarized Americans. We see in Europe that multiparty democracies are better at managing tensions. (more…)

  • Airstrikes in Syria, Explained

    American EA-18G Growler jet
    An American EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft prepares to launch from the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush on deployment in the Mediterranean Sea, June 9, 2017 (USN/Matt Matlage)

    Britain, France and the United States attacked three targets in Syria last night in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack by Bashar al-Assad:

    1. A scientific research center in the Damascus area.
    2. A chemical weapons storage site west of Homs, which Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford said was “the primary location of Syrian sarin … production equipment.”
    3. A chemical weapons equipment storage facility and command post close to the second target.

    American defense secretary James Mattis called Friday’s attack a “one-time shot” and emphasized that the strikes weren’t aimed at Assad’s protector, Russia.

    President Donald Trump, however, singled out Iran and Russia for their support of Assad.

    “What kind of nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women and children?” he asked. “We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents.” (more…)

  • Italy’s Democrats Split, EU Victory for Macron, Doubts About Syria Strikes

    Italy’s Democrats are split on whether to negotiate with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement.

    At a party meeting on Tuesday, former ministers Dario Franceschini and Andrea Orlando argued for coalition talks.

    The alternative, a Five Star government with the xenophobic (Northern) League, would make Italy look “like Hungary,” Franceschini said.

    However, centrists loyal to the outgoing leader, Matteo Renzi, reject a deal.

    Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio has said it is time to “bury the hatchet”. His talks with the League have not been going well. But the Five Stars still call for overturning Renzi’s signature labor reforms, which made it easier for firms to fire and hire workers. (more…)

  • Orbán’s Rebellion, Liberal Democracy and Trump’s War in Syria

    Hungary’s Viktor Orbán is likely to win reelection on Sunday. The Washington Post has a good story about the rebellion the EU faces in Central Europe. For more on the political trends Orbán embodies, read:

    • Jan-Werner Müller: We are doing Orbán a great favor by accepting him as any kind of democrat. It is democracy itself — and not just liberalism — that is under attack in his country.
    • Tom Nuttall: Orbán’s depiction of himself as an illiberal democrat is largely window-dressing. Were his pollsters to discover that voters were no longer animated by immigration, he would manufacture a different foe. Orbán’s ideologues assemble theoretical scaffolding to justify the channelling of state resources to favored businessmen under the rubric of “economic patriotism”. The EU harbors not an illiberal democracy, but a semi-autocratic kleptocracy in which loyalty offers the quickest route to riches.
    • Dani Rodrik: Liberal democracy is being undermined by a tendency to emphasize “liberal” at the expense of “democracy.” The European Union represents the apogee of this tendency: the delegation of policy to technocratic bodies.
    • Philip Stephens: The West misread the collapse of Soviet communism. It was not, after all, the end of history. Happy assumptions about the permanent hegemony of laissez-faire capitalism and the historical inevitability of liberal democracy were rooted in a hubris that invited nemesis. For all that, the end of the Cold War did produce a big idea. Now, as we are daily reminded by Donald Trump’s Twitter feed, it is being swapped for a very bad idea. (more…)

  • Lies and Distraction from Trump, Putin’s Dangerous War in Syria

    First the lies:

    Just like they don’t want to solve the DACA problem, why didn’t the Democrats pass gun control legislation when they had both the House & Senate during the Obama Administration. Because they didn’t want to, and now they just talk!

    1. It’s the president who unilaterally ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program last year and who is now blocking a compromise. Democrats and center-right Republicans are ready to do a deal.
    2. Democrats tried to get tougher guns laws under Barack Obama. They were frustrated at every turn by Republicans, who turned the filibuster into standard operating procedure in the Senate, as a result of which it now takes sixty votes to get anything of consequence done. When Democrats could briefly muster sixty votes in the early years of Obama’s presidency, they used that opportunity to reform health care. (more…)

  • Trump Gives Putin What He Wants, Pulls Support from Syrian Rebels

    Donald Trump Emmanuel Macron
    Presidents Donald Trump of the United States and Emmanuel Macron of France inspect an honor guard in Paris, July 13 (Elysée/Soazig de la Moissonniere)

    Donald Trump has given Vladimir Putin a win in Syria by withdrawing America’s support from the rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad.

    The Washington Post reports that Trump made his decision a month ago, before he met Putin at the G20 in Hamburg.

    Russia and the United States seemed on the verge of a confrontation at the time. America had shot down a regime fighter jet that was attacking its allies in Syria. Russia responded by suspending a military hotline with the United States.

    It supports Assad, calling him a bulwark against terrorism. (more…)

  • Chemical Weapons in Syria Would Cross Red Line: Macron

    France’s new president, Emmanuel Macron, has warned that his country could strike unilaterally if more poison gas is used in the Syrian conflict.

    “If chemical weapons are used on the ground and we know how to find out their provenance, France will launch strikes to destroy the chemical weapons stocks,” he told European newspapers this week.

    Macron came to power last month by defeating the Russia-friendly Marine Le Pen in the presidential election. He won a parliamentary majority this month. (more…)

  • Why America and Russia Are Closer to Confrontation in Syria

    American F-35 fighter jets
    Four American F-35 Joint Strike Fighter fly over the amphibious assault ship USS America in the Pacific Ocean, November 20, 2016 (USN/Andy Wolfe)

    Russia has suspended a military hotline it maintained with the United States to avoid clashes in Syria and warned that it may shoot down any “flying objects” west of the River Euphrates.

    The escalation comes after an American fighter jet shot down a Syrian warplane on Sunday that was attacking rebel ground forces supported by the United States in the vicinity of the Tabqa Dam.

    The Western-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a secular and largely Kurdish opposition group, has wrestled control of the dam and the nearby town of Tabqa from the self-proclaimed Islamic State after a months-long battle. American special forces were reportedly involved in one assault in January.

    It is unclear why the Syrians targeted the SDF. Bashar Assad’s regime has largely ignored rebels east of the Euphrates since the start of the uprising against him six years ago. (more…)

  • Bashar Assad’s Big Push to Recover His Eastern Border

    Bashar al-Assad hadn’t had control of his Iraqi frontier for years. It’s a major headache; it’s allowed Sunni rebels to supply themselves from Anbar, a favorable route for Gulf states hoping to keep the war going.

    It’s also allowed the Islamic State to slide supplies from its shrinking Iraqi domains to its shrunken Syrian ones.

    The Islamic State famously demolished the literal border wall between the two countries. That was right after they blitzed across it to capture Mosul in June 2014.

    Now Assad’s Iranian and Iraqi allies are hoping to rebuild the border and thereby secure the regime they’ve fought so hard to preserve.

    From Reuters:

    Syrian rebels say the United States and its allies are sending them more arms to try to fend off a new push into the southeast by Iran-backed militias aiming to open an overland supply route between Iraq and Syria.

    The stakes are high as Iran seeks to secure its influence from Tehran to Beirut in a “Shiite crescent” of Iranian influence through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, where Sunni Arab states have lost out in power struggles with Iran.

    The Iraqi-Syrian border already has a checkered history of security. It’s a long, sparse landscape full of Bedouin and smugglers used to crossing it at will. The Americans, for all their efforts, could not secure it during the occupation of Iraq from 2003-11. When the civil war began in Syria in 2011, it made sense that these wildlands would be some of the first to slip from government control. (more…)

  • Erdoğan Discovers Personality Doesn’t Trump Geopolitics

    Turkey still hopes the United States might reconsider their support for Kurdish rebels in Syria, but it doesn’t look like Donald Trump will change this policy from his predecessor, Barack Obama.

    If anything, the new president has doubled down, approving the delivery of more arms to Kurds who do battle with the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

    The Syrian Democratic Forces — a Kurdish-dominated, secular opposition group — recently wrestled control of the Tabqa Dam, Syria’s largest, from the caliphate. They are now less than fifty kilometers west of its capital, Raqqa.

    The United States and other Western countries count on the Kurds to chase the Islamists out of Syria.

    But Turkey fears that would enable them to proclaim a Kurdish republic on its southern frontier. The existence of an independent Kurdistan could then convince Turkey’s own Kurdish minority to secede, or at least demand autonomy. (more…)

  • Eagerness to Criticize Obama Explains Trump’s Inconsistency on Syria

    Critics are calling Donald Trump’s missile strike against Syria a flip flop, but it’s really the logical outcome of holding two wildly inconsistent opinions on an issue.

    In 2013, Trump said to President Barack Obama, via Twitter (caps his):

    AGAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER, DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA — IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN & FROM THAT FIGHT THE U.S. GETS NOTHING!

    Indeed, Trump has expressed a consistent willingness to allow Bashar Assad, a Russian puppet, to stay in power so as to focus exclusively on defeating the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

    While problematic, it is at least an internally consistent talking point. (more…)

  • Trump Strikes Syrian Base in Wake of Chemical Attack

    American cruiser Cowpens
    The American cruiser USS Cowpens fires a missile during an exercise in the Pacific Ocean, September 20, 2012 (USN/Paul Kelly)
    • American cruise missiles struck a Syrian air base near Homs early on Friday from which the United States said a chemical attack had been launched earlier in the week.
    • It was the first direct American military action against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in six years.
    • President Donald Trump announced the attack from his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he was meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.
    • The Syrian army said six of its people were killed in the attack.
    • Russia, Assad’s ally, condemned the strike as an act of aggression. (more…)

  • Trump Seems to Realize Assad Is No Ally Against Islamic State

    It appears to have dawned on Donald Trump that a pact with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad against the Islamists in his country makes no sense.

    “It’s very, very possible, and, I will tell you, it’s already happened, that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much,” the American president told reporters in Washington after it emerged that Assad’s troops had again deployed chemical weapons.

    As recently as last week, Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, appeared to soften America’s position, saying Assad’s future “will be decided by the Syrian people”.

    Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, famously declared Assad “must go”.

    During last year’s presidential campaign, Trump told The New York Times he saw the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq and Syria as a bigger threat than Assad.

    He also repeatedly counseled against American military intervention in Syria. (Which didn’t stop him from blaming the absence of military intervention under Obama for the most recent chemical weapons attack.) (more…)