I recently said America needs to figure out what we want for Syria after ISIL. Secretary of State Tillerson answered the question pretty fast:
A stable, unified, and independent Syria ultimately requires post-Assad leadership in order to be successful. Continued U.S. presence to ensure the lasting defeat of ISIS will also help pave the way for legitimate local civil authorities to exercise responsible governance of their liberated areas. The departure of Assad through the UN-led Geneva process will create the conditions for a durable peace within Syria and security along the borders for Syria’s neighbors.
U.S. disengagement from Syria would provide Iran the opportunity to further strengthen its position in Syria. As we have seen from Iran’s proxy wars and public announcements, Iran seeks dominance in the Middle East and the destruction of our ally, Israel. As a destabilized nation and one bordering Israel, Syria presents an opportunity that Iran is all too eager to exploit.
And finally, consistent with our values, America has the opportunity to help a people which has suffered greatly. We must give Syrians a chance to return home and rebuild their lives. The safe and voluntary return of Syrian refugees serves the security interests of the United States, our allies, and our partners. To relieve the enormous pressure of refugee flows on the surrounding region and on Europe, conditions must be created for these refugees to safely and voluntarily return home. It will be impossible to ensure stability on one end of the Mediterranean, in Europe, if chaos and injustice prevail on the other end, in Syria. ...
Simultaneous with stabilization efforts, de-escalating the overall conflict is also a critical step to creating the conditions for a post-Assad political settlement. Since July, the United States has worked with Russia and Jordan to establish the de-escalation area in the southwest part of Syria.
The gist seems to be America will remain to protect Syrians who helped us defeat ISIL with the loudly stated goal of preventing ISIL from returning and fighting al Qaeda.
The emphasis will be on ending the fighting, which ratifies the division of the country with Assad controlling only a portion of Syria (about half of the territory and people, it seems).
This will allow Syrians to live in peace and come home, giving Europeans an incentive to back our efforts to throttle the migrant flood roiling their politics and society at one of the sources.
And we will work with Russia to remove Assad and his allied Iranian forces through while not threatening Russian interests or Turkish interests that could prompt them to use force.
As I've said repeatedly, Russia only needs a friendly government in control of western Syria. Which implies that the goal isn't to overthrow the minority Alawite government as much as it is to dilute it by broadening who is in the government. Russia can live with that. And we can live with a weakened pro-Russian Syria that has lost the east, the south, and parts of the north that isn't a client of and base for Iran.
While the motives for aiming for this have changed since I wrote this 5-year-old post, we do seem to be thinking of post-Syria Assad as our immediate goal with the ultimate goal of post-Assad Syria as a "stable, unified, independent Syria," as Tillerson stated, being in our interest.
We shall see if we can put Humpty Dumpty back together or whether this soft partition of Syria is a transition point to the formal split of the country. The Deconfliction Line on the Euphrates River could be one of the new lines (I've settled on the DCL rather than DCZ as my preferred term).
UPDATE: The Turks aren't being nice but they are focusing on the area west of the Euphrates River:
Turkey's military fired into a Kurdish-run enclave in north Syria for a second day on Saturday, one day after the country's defense minister announced an operation to "cleanse" the Kurdish militia in control of the enclave.
Turkey has leaned forward more in the west where American forces are less likely to get in their way.
UPDATE: The Turks have gone in:
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday a military operation in Syria's Kurdish-controlled Afrin region had begun after cross-border shelling by the Turkish army.
We don't like this. But I suspect our red line is anything east of the Euphrates River.
