There is little that can stop the brutal assault underway in northwest Syria, where Russian, Iranian and Assad regime forces have launched a major military offensive as millions of civilians flee for their lives. But the record shows that if President Trump acts to try to halt the slaughter, it will have real impact on the ground. Even a presidential tweet could save lives. Time is of the essence.
There’s a lot going on right now in U.S.?foreign policy. The Trump administration is dealing with an escalating Iran crisis, North Korea missile firings, a shaky China trade negotiation and an attempt to oust the Venezuelan regime. It’s no mere coincidence that Bashar al-Assad and Moscow chose this moment to retake the last rebel-held area of Syria using scorched-earth tactics, committing atrocities along the way.
The region of Idlib holds about 3 million civilians, including 1 million children, who were moved there from across the country because they would not submit to the Assad regime. And now there is deafening silence from the international community about their brutal slaughter.
James F. Jeffrey, the State Department’s special envoy for Syria, told me the U.S. government sees a “major escalation” by the regime and its allies in Idlib and is working diplomatic channels to de-escalate the fighting.
“We are raising this at every level with the Russians,” he said. “Any major operation into Idlib would be a reckless escalation of the conflict.”
Assad is dependent on Russian air power, and Moscow has committed a lot of it to the assault, Jeffrey said. That means Moscow is flagrantly violating the cease-fire and de-escalation agreement it signed with Turkey last year in Sochi, Russia.
So far, Moscow is ignoring Jeffrey’s warnings. The Turkish government, which saw its outpost in Idlib shelled, seems unable or unwilling to stop the onslaught. But history shows that when Trump decides to intervene in Syria to protect civilians, Moscow listens.
In April 2017, when Trump first launched missiles at the Syrian regime, he was responding to a chemical weapons attack in Idlib that looked to be the beginning of the very offensive we are seeing now. Trump’s actions persuaded Assad and Russia to back down.
After a Syrian activist told Trump at a fundraiser that the assault on Idlib was beginning again, the president tweeted last September that Assad “must not recklessly attack Idlib” and that Russia and Iran must not support a “potential human tragedy.” The tweet worked.
“It stopped. You saw that. And nobody’s going to give me credit, but that’s okay,” Trump said at the time. “Millions of people would have been killed. And that would have been a shame,” he said.
Now Moscow is testing Trump again. So far, the president is silent. That has a cascading effect inside the U.S. national security system. Several people who work with U.S. government agencies on the ground in Syria told me that U.S. officials throughout the bureaucracy are waiting on Trump to signal his intent before they move to engage in Idlib.
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) understands the importance of Trump’s verbal cues. He tweeted at the president this week asking him to speak up and protect Idlib. Putin surely also understands that in the United States’ Syria policy, only Trump’s words really matter. Trump and Putin spoke for about an hour last week, but it is unknown what, if anything, they discussed about Syria.
Meanwhile, Russian planes are targeting residential areas and hospitals and then killing aid workers responding to those attacks, said Raed Al Saleh, founder of the Syria Civil Defense, a civilian rescue organization better known as the White Helmets. In Idlib, he said, the regime has resumed the use of barrel bombs and white phosphorus, weapons of mass atrocity and mass displacement.
Public estimates of 150,000 newly displaced people are just the beginning, said Saleh. Millions of people are preparing to “form caravans like in El Salvador” to head for Europe. “These people see the international community is not willing to do anything to keep them safe in their homes,” he said.
Several schools in Idlib supported by U.S. aid organizations are now at grave risk. Thirty of those organizations wrote to Trump asking him to give the signal so the U.S. government can snap into action.
“Only you are able to direct our government to use every tool and resource at our disposal for the protection of civilians in Idlib Province,” they wrote.
Syrians will remember that the world abandoned them in their time of most dire need. The fresh atrocities will fuel more extremism. The new refugee crisis will further destabilize Turkey, the Middle East and Europe.
It’s bizarre that the fate of millions could hinge on whether Trump decides to speak up to protect them. But that is where we are. So please, Mr. President, tweet something, say something, do something — anything — before it’s too late. The people of Idlib will give you credit, if they survive.
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@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Adam, I agree with your entire assessment, especially that the US cannot protect everyone in the world from injustice or atrocities, however Trump has disappointed by not at least arming, training, and supporting (by air cover?) those peoples who are moderate and potential or current allies, (i.e. the Kurds). It looks like Trump is just cutting them loose to fend for themselves, much like Israel shamelessly did with the SLA. And why is Trump doing this? To appease Erdogan, the would-be Ottoman emperor? Both Russia and China have used the tactic of arming and supporting proxies to great effect. They get a lot of bang for their buck, so to speak. I know that we do it too, but much less frequently, and not very effectively.
Pompeo to visit Russia as Trump pivots to repairing relations post-Mueller report.https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pompeo-visit-russia-trump-pivots-repairing-relations-post/story?id=62964426. This article on the ABCNews site, reasonably fair and objective for a change, explains Trump’s motivation for “pulling his punches” in public about Russia’s Syrian aggression. He has always favored improving the U.S.-Russia relationship, and has said so publicly many times. But as long as he was under a cloud of suspicion created by the Dems that he was a Russian agent, he couln’t act on this policy and had to get tough with Russia. Now, however, he thinks this is the right time to reduce tensions with Russia.
Pompeo is headed to Russia to meet with Putin and Lavrov. However, Pompeo also hinted to the press that he will confront them in private about Russia’s wrondoings in Syria and the Ukraine, and will try to persuade them to stop.
My own view:Trump has always been concerned that the U.S. might blunder into a war with Russia, and has always been determined to avoid one. I believe that he does feel compassion for the people of Syria. But avoiding war with Russia has always been a priority with him. He realizes that Putin is determined to retake some of the ground that Russia lost when it lost Cold War I, and he is prepared to accomodate this Russian desire to some partial degree. Above all, he thinks it is China that is the long-term threat to America’s vital economic-strategic interests, not Russia. At a time when he is engaging in a trade war with China, Trump has decided that this is the wrong time to provoke Russia, too. He doesn’t think America is powerful enough to take on both of the two other superpowers at the same time, without running too much risk. I think his strategic judgment about America’s national interests is correct, consistent and well thought out. I regret that the U.S. can’t be there for the Syrian people. But Trump is right that America cannot protect everyone in the world from injustice or even atrocities all the time. Sad, but true.
California and New York are effectively at war with the United States, backed by “masters of the universe” like Mark Zuckerman. With that going on, championing the jihadis of Idlib against the Russians is a low priority.
The one thing that Trump could do to halt Russian aggression in Syria would be to impose new economic sanctions on Russia. He has already imposed some economic sanctions on Russia since taking office, but so far they haven’t changed Putin’s aggressive policies. It’s understandible that at a time when Trump is fighting a trade war with China, he doesn’t want to provoke Russia into strengthening its economic-military allience with the Chinese. Hence he is treading carefully in relation to Russia’s aggression in Syria.
By all means, Trump should tweet and issue more formal protests in a press release, and a news conference. Also, perhaps the u.S. should summon the Security Council to discuss the crisis.
But it is questionable whether verbal jaw-boning with help any. Putin, because he has ruled as a dictator for tweet years now, has developed the paranoia and belligerence that often sets in when one man has been in power for too long. Because there is some evidence that he is becoming increasingly irrational and belligerent, he must be handled with care.
And Trump has a lot on his plate at the moment. There are not only all the other foreign policy crises that the author mentions, but also the determined efforts of his political enemies to take him down, which are continuing in high gear. Trump must defend himself and his Attorney General from a massive political assault before he can be expected to rescue innocent people in distant foreign countries. A President needs firm bipartisan support for any major foreign or defense policy initiative, and at present and probably for the rest of his term, Trump doesn’t have this.
We also need to ask whether helping the Sunni “rebels,” who have a relationship with Turkey, is the right thing to do. Turkey has already moved some of thes forces to eastern Turkey and used them to attack the Kurds and “cleanse” them from part of eastern Turkey. Most of these “rebels” are radical Sunni Islamists who are not necessarily more humane than the Assad regime. Some are aligned, at least ideologically, with al-Qaeda.
You can only Tweet so many times before people start ignoring you.