Trump faces tough road ahead in Syria

President Trump faces a slew of unappetizing choices in Syria as the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) winds down.

The administration recently acquiesced that U.S. troops will stay in the country even after the terrorist group’s defeat. But Trump’s voter base could see the indefinite stay as an example of the sort of nation-building the president promised to end, while lawmakers are warning they haven’t authorized such a mission.

Meanwhile, NATO ally Turkey has begun bombing a Syrian Kurdish force that the U.S. built up to help fight ISIS. Lawmakers say the situation is an example of Washington’s chickens coming home to roost after choosing to back a force another ally sees as a terrorist group.

“We need to have a hearing on this,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said, referring to the way forward in Syria. “We need to find out what have we done here. What is our Syrian strategy? Our Syrian strategy cannot be to hold Arab territory with a bunch of YPG Kurds … who are seen by Turkey and people inside of Syria as being unacceptable.”

His comments came after Turkey this week began an offensive against a Kurdish force known as the YPG in Afrin, a region in northern Syria.

Ankara considers the YPG to be a terrorist organization linked with outlawed insurgents in Turkey. But the U.S. considers the Kurds the most effective force fighting ISIS on the ground in Syria.

Turkey has long complained about U.S. support for the Kurds, but the tensions came to a head this month after U.S. officials described a “border security force” — a term they later walked back — that Ankara worried would legitimize and cement a Kurdish presence at its border.

In a call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday, Trump urged Turkey to “de-escalate, limit its military actions and avoid civilian casualties,” while also inviting “closer bilateral cooperation to address Turkey’s legitimate security concerns,” according to a White House statement on the call.

Jim Phillips, a senior research fellow for Middle Eastern affairs at The Heritage Foundation, said that Turkey’s actions have made the path ahead for the U.S. more complicated.

“It appears that the administration is pivoting from a primary focus on ISIS into more of a broader Syria policy that is also focused on — in addition to preventing the resurgence of ISIS — that is also focused on pushing back against Iran,” he said. “Turkey has made that even more difficult.”

The U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS continues to battle the terrorist group in Syria, seeking to rout it from its remaining pockets in the Middle Euphrates River Valley. Those ongoing efforts were brought into focus Tuesday when the coalition announced airstrikes that killed up to 150 militants.

Still, with ISIS’s so-called caliphate practically vanquished — the Pentagon says the terrorist group has lost 98 percent of the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria — the Trump administration has been turning its attention to stabilizing territory and deciding how to deal with Syrian President Bashar Assad.

“The Americans have a not-very-happy choice in front of them,” said Robert Ford, former U.S. ambassador to Syria now at the Middle East Institute and Yale University. “I’ve come to the conclusion on Syria that Iran and Russia together have bested the United States, that it is so far gone that, short of a major military intervention … there’s really nothing you can do.”

In a speech last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson outlined his vision for the path ahead. In Tillerson’s telling, the 2,000 or so U.S. troops in Syria will stay there to ensure that ISIS doesn’t re-emerge, as well as to counter Iranian influence and keep the territory stable until a diplomatic process leads to Assad’s removal.

“A total withdrawal of American personnel at this time would restore Assad and continue his brutal treatment against his own people. A murderer of his own people cannot generate the trust required for long-term stability,” Tillerson said. “U.S. disengagement from Syria would provide Iran the opportunity to further strengthen its position in Syria.”

But lawmakers in both parties have been crying foul, saying the authorization for the use of military force that allows for the war against ISIS doesn’t apply to dealing with Assad and Iran.

Earlier this month, when a State Department official hinted that was the plan at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said that “certainly the authorizations are not there for that kind of activity.”

His Democratic counterpart on the committee, ranking member Sen. Ben Cardin (Md.), has likewise said there’s no authorization for U.S. forces to confront Iran inside Syria.

“I’ve expressed myself about the concern of the use of force beyond just dealing with ISIS, and there’s no authorization, and Secretary Tillerson seemed to be implying there is not going to be any rush at all to reduce our presence,” Cardin said Tuesday.

Cardin added that he could “spend the next couple hours” talking, as “there’s a lot of issues that we have concerns about in Syria.”

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the committee is concerned about the Syria strategy.

“Right now, we look at it from a readiness perspective as to where our resources go the furthest,” he said Tuesday.

Phillips, at Heritage, said he believes the Trump administration can successfully argue to the public the advantages of an indefinite military commitment by citing what happened after the U.S. withdrew from Iraq. He said that calling the continued presence in Syria “nation building” is a “loaded phrase.”

“One strong argument that the administration has is that we shouldn’t repeat the mistake we made in Iraq and withdraw on an arbitrary political timeline,” he said. “I think we’re in there for the indefinite future and as long as casualty rates remain very low and as long as Americans remember the three Americans that had their heads cut off by ISIS, that’s politically very sustainable.”

But Ford, the former ambassador, said he thinks a long-term presence could invite attacks on U.S. forces and diplomats.

“Over time, given the hostility of Iran and Russia and Syria to a long-term American presence in Syria, it is reasonable to assume that there will be unconventional attacks on our people,” he said. “So far, from September 2014 until January 2018, I don’t think we’ve lost more than two people in Syria. Great, hurray. Can we assume that will continue as more and more the focus becomes us and less ISIS?”