Obama’s Dangerous “No War, No Peace” Strategy in Syria

Dimitri K. Simes, Paul J. Saunders

Security, Middle East

"U.S. leaders should respond to Moscow with a combination of strength and pragmatism rather than weakness and inflexibility."

President Obama is about to add another dismal chapter to his foreign policy record. He may believe that his administration's “no war, no peace” response to Russia’s intervention in Syria will avoid subjecting the United States—or him—to the potential costs of making a choice between two unattractive alternatives. Unfortunately, this posture may well be the most dangerous approach of all for it conveys both weakness to U.S. allies and inflexibility to Moscow, thereby encouraging further assertiveness at America’s expense while allowing Syria’s civil war to rage and ISIL to gain ground.

Before Russia’s intervention in Syria, four years of civil war there had firmly established America’s conventional wisdom: the United States has no good options, a view this president clearly shares. Now, after several days of Russian airstrikes and a few cruise missile attacks, a new conventional wisdom is emerging: standing up to Moscow should serve as Washington’s defining objective in Syria. But this is in essence a sharply negative foreign policy, one that rests, not on forwarding American interests, but on seeking to stymie the Kremlin. Has the administration or outside advocates thought carefully about how the United States might advance its new aims in Syria--or what unintended consequences might ensue?

It is unfortunate, if predictable, that much of Washington’s foreign policy elite would line up behind a confrontation with Russia over Syria. Americans perceive Russian President Vladimir Putin as an autocrat and a bully and are frustrated that he appears to have outmaneuvered the Obama administration. Add in Putin’s support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and you have more kindling for an emotional bonfire to torch the U.S.-Russia relationship. Moscow’s bogus claims that it is focusing on attacking the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria and that it is not intervening in Ukraine make it only more attractive to cut Putin down to size.