It is easy, as the many commentaries demonstrate, to bemoan the political, social, cultural and humanitarian tragedy in Syria and point to the inconsistency and fecklessness of U.S. policy in Syria as a cause. Harder by far is to identify a better, more coherent strategy. The “if only we had” alternative may be good politics but many of the proffered alternatives depend on unlikely assumptions and are almost certainly better at dinner party debates than they would have been in real policy. Had the United States and its allies intervened earlier, had it taken military action when Bashar al-Assad crossed President Obama’s red line on the use of chemical weapons, and (most important) had the United States and its European allies armed, trained and helped organize the moderate opposition, the Syrian insurgents would at least have had the possibility of defeating Assad early on and establishing a liberal, even democratic, regime.

Perhaps. Many skeptical specialists doubt that happy result: there never was a viable, operational liberal or moderate opposition; the moderates were too few, too fractured and too implausible as a militarily or even politically successful force; and absent massive external intercession, the Free Syrian Army (including its constituent militias and rival militias) was always a feeble force with an improbable victory.

Whatever the might-have-beens, the current choices are far less appealing. In fact, traditional strategic logic inadequately comprehends the complexities of the Syrian dynamics. The policy dilemma began almost immediately after the March 2011 demonstrations against the Assad regime. The celebration was short-lived. The regime cracked down hard not only on the demonstrators but on the ethnic and religious communities that it understood supported them. It had good reason to fear a broader revolt. The large Sunni majority bore deep resentment against the Alawite minority—a Shiite offshoot—that had dominated the political economy, not only for its authoritarianism and corruption, but also for its religious and ethnic repression and violence. By 2013, the demonstrators for a new, liberal democratic regime were outflanked and overwhelmed politically and militarily by the Syrian Army, by Hezbollah forces from Lebanon backing the administration and also by the jihadi Sunni forces, primarily Jabhat al-Nusra (the Al Qaeda offshoot in Syria) and Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS or Daesh).

Unlike traditional Bismarckian international balance of power logic in which the adversaries are morally neutral states or polities in some struggle over political and territorial modifications and adjustments to revise or restore the balance of power among them, the adversaries in Syria are moral not just territorial or even solely political antagonists. They are locked in seemingly existential conflicts that cannot easily be compromised and that appear resolvable only by the total conquest of their respective opponents. All of the contestants for power seem to be committed to eviscerating their adversaries in zero-sum fights to the death. Their goal is either total submission or expulsion.

Absent that existential dimension, the removal or containment of Assad would not represent an insurmountable strategic puzzle for the United States and its allies. A pact could be fashioned among the contestants (including terms for an Assad role), pressure and the threat of intervention could be mounted, or he could be removed either by domestic or international protagonists in favor of a suitable substitute. However he and his inner circle have provided little, if any, room for compromise. Their gruesome tactics prescribe killing or maiming every source of resistance and every opposing civilian population, especially Sunnis.

Complicating the underlying Syrian dynamics and strategic logic, each of the antagonists has one or more foreign backers on whom it can rely and, in some cases, for whom it is a proxy. Assad and his Alawite community have the support of Iran and of Shiite Hezbollah from Lebanon, notwithstanding that in either place the Alawites would be deemed unacceptable deviants from true Shiism, but as against Sunnis in general and fundamentalist Sunnis, they are brothers or at least cousins. Daesh has the direct backing of some individual Gulf Arab Sunni fundamentalists. The Saudis and other Gulf states do not back Daesh directly but do so indirectly by providing weapons and funds to non-jihadi Wahabis and Salafists implacably opposed to Assad.

The attempt to forge from the anti-Assad mélange an indigenous, organized non-jihadi Syrian fighting force proved unworkable and unraveled, as its various components fragmented, fought one another, and (some) defected to Daesh or al-Nusra. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan insists on Assad’s removal, as does the United States and (less vigorously) its European allies but neither has a compelling anti-Assad military partner.

Any attempt by the United States and its European allies to provide military or political support to one or another of the anti-Assad but also anti-Daesh militias in what Pentagon authorities have called “Syria’s chaotic patchwork of rebel alliances” has to navigate a spaghetti of nearly indistinguishable Syrian splinter groups. Furthermore, any opposition to Assad constitutes inherent, even if indirect and of course only short-term, assistance to Daesh and al-Nusra, and vice versa. Additionally any advantage for Assad and Hezbollah constitutes support for Iran, its Shiite backer. Assistance to any element of Assad’s Sunni opposition also strengthens the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, while any gains by Assad, Hezbollah and Iran, strengthen the central government in Baghdad and therefore constitute opposition to the Sunni tribes trying to get a more equitable arrangement in Iraq.

The Western countries have been faced with a no-win dilemma. For the United States, the strategic challenge has been, and remains, to find a way through this thicket to back some coherent force that could successfully oppose both Assad and Daesh while not simultaneously creating insurmountable animosity among his non-jihadi opponents.

At least a partial way out seemed possible when Kurdish forces made anti-Assad inroads in northern Syria to support fellow-Kurds under attack by the Syrian army. At last, a disciplined force that could take on Assad without immediately and directly advantaging Daesh and al-Nusra which the Kurds also opposed. Alas, of course, support to the YPG (the People's Protection Units)—consisting primarily of Kurds, but also including some Arabs, Syrian Christians, and even westerners—also supports a potential Syrian Kurdistan of which the YPG is the primary armed instrument. Indirectly, it would also entail indirect reinforcement of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party ( PKK) and its armed wing, the HPG (People’s Defense Force), in Turkey. And that indirect buttress remains vehemently opposed by the Erdoğan government—a NATO member government— which has been fighting the PKK insurgency in Turkey for thirty years. Turkey has warned that it “will not tolerate” territorial gains by any Kurdish militia along its borders with Iraq or Syria and has recently shelled YPG positions in Syria to demonstrate that resolve.

The sudden and dramatic escalation by Russia of its engagement in Syria has changed the military and geopolitical landscape and complicated yet further the U.S. strategic possibilities and even the U.S. objectives. As President Vladimir Putin insists, Russia has all along been providing financial and material backing to “the legitimate government of Syria,” i.e., Assad and his regime, including jets, drones, helicopters, tanks, artillery and (significantly, given the absence of air power by any of the insurgents) surface-to-air missiles. Now Russia has taken a direct, kinetic role in the air and apparently even on the ground. In effect, Putin asks the United States which is more important, anti-terrorism or regime change. He takes the view that it cannot have both and, by definition, any attempt by force to oppose Assad’s legitimate government comprises terrorism, and that anti-terrorism trumps regime change.

Putin has several reasons for his stepped-up intervention. The first is his ambition that Russia resume its standing as a world power, and Syria represents an opportunity to reassert the global balance prior to the “geostrategic catastrophe” of the Soviet demise. Second is his antagonism to liberal reform, in particular, to any regime change arising, like the so-called color revolutions, out of mass protests, especially if they are, or if he believes they are, animated by the West. Third is his determination to demonstrate that he is dependable and will stand by his allies, unlike the United States that “dumped” President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, for example. Fourth is his belief that an authoritarian leader that imposes order is preferable to the chaos that has engulfed Libya, Egypt and of course Syria. Fifth, but ostensibly principally, is his fear that some of the Russian Islamists now fighting in Syria will, like those from Afghanistan and Iraq, return to fight in Russia, and promulgate terrorist assaults like those in Beslan in 2004 and in Moscow’s subway the same year and then again in 2010. As he said in his television interview with Charlie Rose, “More than 2,000 fighters from Russia and ex-Soviet Republics are in the territory of Syria. There is a threat of their return to us. So instead of waiting for their return, we are better off helping Assad fight them on Syrian territory. So this is the most important thing which encourages us and pushes us to provide assistance to Assad. And, in general, we want the situation in the region to stabilize.” Sixth is to protect Russia’s naval facility at Tartus and, now, its Hemeimeem and Tiyas Air Bases and ground staging facility near Latakia.

In fact, Russian planes have struck mostly the non-jihadi forces rather than those of Daesh. But even if the non-jihadi insurgents are terrorists under Putin’s definition, it is not their troops, but Daesh’s, that will return to terrorize Moscow in the name of a secessionist caliphate. So, subordinating his protectionist motivations which would identify Daesh as his primary target, Putin evidently wants to rid Latakia, Hamah and Idlib provinces of non-jihadi rebels, create a safe-haven for Assad by creating a defensive zone somewhere north of the line between Hamah and Latakia, protect Assad’s base territory and his familial home ground within it, and, from that shelter, decimate Assad’s opponents, beginning with those supported by the West.

Putin appears willing to grant that political reform is needed in Syria, that Assad should negotiate with “the legal opposition,” that Assad is not himself necessarily an inherent and ultimate part of the needed reform, that Russia is not inextricably bound to Assad himself, and that the Syrian people should decide their own future. But fundamentally he opposes regime change, remains unwilling to abandon Assad personally and wants to demonstrate Russia’s firmness in standing by its allies by contrast with Western vacillation and inaction respecting theirs. Inconveniently, Assad is not willing to negotiate with anyone likely to insist on his replacement let alone to change the basic nature of the regime or submit any proposal to a decision of the Syrian people. As Assad continues to assert, he is fighting Islamist terrorism and so cannot understand the countries, like the United States, that oppose him yet trumpet their anti-terrorist, anti-extremist policies. Plainly, Moscow agrees.

Obama, however, takes the view that Putin poses a false choice and that without proximate regime change, the confrontation with terrorism in the form of Daesh and al-Nusra cannot be won. And of course Obama does not consider Assad’s non-jihadi opponents terrorists. Indeed, Obama articulates for the United States a double confrontation: one with Assad and a second with the jihadis, each the enemy of the other.

We have here two differing definitions of the problem, two differing priorities, two differing theories about the conflict and about who and what is part of the crisis and its resolution, and two differing objectives. Moreover, unlike the United States, no serious geopolitical complexity confronts Putin. He wants to clear the complicated field into two options: back (or at least negotiate with) Assad or watch Daesh win. He will defend Assad against all the challengers, pure and simple. However the more Russia engages militarily, the greater the potential geopolitical confrontation with a variety of countries, not just the United States and not just the potential for a dog-fight over Syria absent rules of engagement and “de-confliction.”

If simple balance of power logic no longer provides sufficient theoretical guidance for the labyrinth of Syria—seventeen countries plus the European Union and the UN, all of them with stakes in the outcome, were invited to the two-day October talks in Vienna  and again in November—what then are the possibilities for U.S. foreign policy?

The first albeit least desirable is to negotiate the differences within, among and between the various Syrian groups and their various patrons and external states with stakes in the outcome, in effect to broker a political resolution, however temporary and probably unstable, but acceptable to the full panoply of stakeholders. That would require finding some kind of accommodation with Assad and the Alawites, perhaps with help from Assad’s Russian ally. President Putin is clearly prepared to pay the price for his investment in the anti-Islamist, anti-terrorist dimension of the conflict and his wager on Assad. Yet, as already noted, Putin has indicated some flexibility about Assad’s tenure. When asked recently whether keeping Assad in place was a matter of principle for Russia, its foreign ministry spokeswoman replied “absolutely not, we never said that. We are not saying Assad should stay or leave. His fate should be decided by the Syrian people.” But keeping Assad in whatever capacity would require President Obama to walk back another “red line” in addition to the one about Assad’s use of chemical weapons and the one about putting no U.S. boots on the ground, namely, that there can be no solution in Syria that includes Assad in any meaningful position and for any length of time and certainly not as president. For his part, Assad would have demonstrated unequivocally that he prevailed through brute force and persistence.

Obama and the West would be left with the consolation that additional thousands of lives would be spared and that the emigration wave would probably abate, surely a relief to Europe. Of course, even if the conflict subsided or ended, millions of refugees would still be left outside Syria. And even leaving aside the thousands in the Balkans, would they voluntarily return to Syria and, if not, would they be deported from Turkey and Jordan? The single-most underreported, under-analyzed element of the Syrian crisis is the enormous financial, social and political cost being paid by Jordan, which of all the countries affected by the conflict is the least able to bear that burden. While Hungary, Poland and Slovakia balk at taking a few thousand Syrian immigrants, Jordan has, according to UNHCR, taken in nearly 750,000 refugees from Syria, the equivalent, conservatively, of 7.5 million in Germany, and that on top of the waves of Jordan’s previous immigrants from the West Bank. Meanwhile, it is many multiples of times less well-resourced than any country in Europe. Some massive program will need to be constructed to deal not just with Syria itself but with Jordan and its Syrian emigres. On Syria’s, north, UNHCR estimates about 1.7 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, which has almost the same population as by far the most generous European country, Germany, which has agreed to take in half as many, about 800,000.

Still, Obama has been willing to consider a “managed transition” from which Assad would not emerge as the long-term president of Syria, an option the Europeans support. In a way, this would call Putin’s hand on his putative flexibility. The Europeans and, especially, Turkey and the Gulf States (perhaps through the Gulf Cooperation Council) would have to agree to the specifics of any such accommodation as would now Russia and Iran. So would Assad himself, his Syrian supporters, and his Shiite partners. Finally, so too would the non-jihadi opposition, although that potpourri would have little alternative. Iran would be the most stalwart defender of Assad, but even Iran is more interested in Shiite interests in Syria and Lebanon than in Assad’s personal ones. In fact like Russia, Iran has indicated its willingness to accept a limited tenure for Assad premised, according to an Iranian official, on the principle that “of course it will be up to the Syrian people to decide about the country’s fate.” Iran’s deputy foreign minister recently affirmed that President Bashar al-Assad should be part of presidential elections, if he chooses to do so: “Only Assad himself can decide on his participation or non-participation,” the implication presumably being that the Syrian people should decide their country’s fate through elections in which Assad should be permitted to stand (i.e., “participate”) and, potentially, to succeed or fail. If Iran were part of the transition agreement, presumably Hezbollah would also concur but, if it did not, its support for Assad would hardly be sufficient to sustain his eroding position, let alone reverse it.  Perhaps the flexibility about Assad among the foreign powers is the brightest spot in an otherwise bleak landscape. Presumably some kind of transitional government with a fixed term, very circumscribed authorities, and a clear (ultimately electoral) exit path would meet all of the interests and principles.

It seems very unlikely that all of this could be accomplished unless, after the transition, Assad and the Alawite community were willing to play a much less prominent role in exchange for guarantees of their own safety. They fear retaliation and with good reason. Perhaps Assad himself could now be convinced to leave Syria for a luxurious retirement, even though he has rejected that suggestion in the past. He is unlikely to accept a European venue where a variety of other dictators have landed, anxious that he will be prosecuted sometime in the future. Perhaps Iran could provide a sanctuary. However, the Alawites as a whole are not leaving, and their position inside Syria would need to be assured.

Of course any such accommodation would not quiet Daesh and the other Islamist insurgents but it would focus on them the force of the Kurds, the Syrian Arab Coalition and, importantly, the Syrian national army (in that event, with support from the West, Russia, Turkey, and the Arab countries). In short, it would simplify the contest and make traditional diplomacy and military policy more possible. The willingness of Russia and Iran to consider a different future for Syria could be a starting point for some way to untangle the cross-cutting and discordant groups and interests.  

Absent such a negotiated transition, a second alternative lies with the Kurds who have already secured a fairly large swath across northern Syria. The hundreds of thousands of Kurds fleeing into Turkey coupled with the capture by Daesh of several hundred Kurdish villages in Syria’s northeast, including parts of Kobani, mobilized the Kurds in Turkey and the Peshmerga from Iraq to support the Kurdish People’s Protection Units and successfully counter-attack Daesh. Although their territory abuts both the areas controlled by Daesh and by the non-jihadi Sunnis, the Kurds are ambivalent about widening their efforts beyond protection of the Syrian Kurds themselves. Why should they take casualties and risks for elements in Syria that have never welcomed them or wished them well, indeed have been hostile to them? Better, perhaps, to consolidate their restricted gains and watch, then deal with a more settled environment later. The answer would necessarily entail both Western financial and military help as well as a guaranteed place of safety, respect, and assured Kurdish participation in a new Syrian political order. (Better yet, from their perspective, would be to include the Kurds in a new Kurdistan, including Kurds from Iraq, Turkey, and Syria, but that still remains a step too far for any of the other protagonists, including the United States.)

As already noted, direct support for the Kurds would antagonize the Turks, at least Erdoğan. His political position in Turkey is now stronger after his November election victory (just shy of 50 percent of the vote but enough to regain a parliamentary majority) which he described as a validation of the AKP’s hardline stance against the insurgent Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Notwithstanding that Erdoğan’s anti-terrorist, anti-Kurd election strategy clearly paid off, a generous response in which his Justice and Development Party (AKP) were willing to find an accommodation with Kurdish ambitions for greater decentralization and more autonomy within Turkey would undoubtedly weaken the insurrection and perhaps even energize Turkey’s moderate, non-PKK Kurds. Were there less conflict, less violence within Turkey, Ankara might be more willing to see an enhanced Kurdish role in Syria as well, especially since that would also mean less turmoil on Turkey’s Syrian (and perhaps even its Iraqi) border. However, given the AKP victory and Erdoğan’s hard line against the Kurds during the campaign and afterwards—airstrikes against the KPP resumed just one day after the AKPs electoral victory—arming and supporting a Kurdish force in Syria would mean convincing Ankara that the Kurds are a necessary ally in the fight against both of Erdoğan’s enemies in Syria, the jihadis and Assad, and therefore a necessary evil. Alternatively it would mean supporting the Kurds notwithstanding Turkey’s objections, perhaps the least difficult, least objectionable, most digestible of the policy options.

The third option remains the illusive preference: supporting the Syrian “moderate” rebellion and some version of the Syrian National Front or the Syrian Arab Coalition (the “moderate” or at least anti-jihadi insurgents but minus the stigmatized Kurds). But so far that has been a sterile inclination. The recent revelation by General Lloyd Austin, Combatant Commander of U.S. Central Command, that after spending $500 million on training such a force (planned for 5,000-6,000), the total number of trained, combat-ready soldiers is less than 70 with only four, possibly five, actually engaging in the combat is beyond just embarrassing. It is a complete failure, at least for the moment. Worse yet, apparently the number of U.S.-trained combatants is higher, but many of them have defected or surrendered or sold their equipment to al-Nusra or Daesh. Moreover, internal differences within the Pentagon about a plausible scenario for success make that job more difficult as indicated by the additional revelations that some in the intelligence community believe Centcom has inflated even the very meager good news in the assessments the intelligence community has provided. The Pentagon will be hard-put to convince President Obama let alone Congress that any such the program and attendant funding should continue. Indeed the Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has taken that option off the table, at least until a plausible successor package can be developed. Moreover, even in the most optimistic scenario, the coalition would be unlikely to control all of Syria and so would be forced to deal with other political and military elements. At the very least, it would probably result in a Lebanon-like environment in which different communities would each control part of the country and in which something like a national government would consist, at best, of a coalition of the communities with very limited, if any, authority over the entire state. That may be the inevitable result in Syria but it would be nearly certain under this option.

The proposal for a no-fly zone to provide a safe-haven for humanitarian efforts and for the non-jihadi combatants is at best only a tactic in the second or third option. Although it would house and hopefully safeguard refugees pending some kind of resolution of the civil war and would provide a physical location for refugees deported by Europe, Lebanon or Jordan, it would at most defend the population from attacks by air but not from the ground. Moreover, without ground forces to guarantee its safety and ready to push out of any such zone, it would create an indefinite island in the protracted war around it, not a tactic in a larger strategy for success. Moreover, without Russian concurrence, a no-fly-zone would come with heavy risk of conflict between allied and Russian air assets.

In one sense, the second and third options are the same, except for sequencing. The Kurds have no ambition to take over the government of Syria after driving the Assad forces out, nor could they. The roughly two million Kurds represent only around 15 percent of Syria’s pre-war population. So even a complete YPG victory in the north would achieve, at best, a safe Kurdish enclave from which, or adjacent to which, other Syrian forces, presumably Sunnis, would, again best case, be able to advance against Assad and his allies and against Daesh. The creation of such a safe haven is hardly new and so far it has not worked, but the YPG is much better organized and combat-tested now and could clearly defend the terrain they wrested from the Syrian National Army in the first place.

 

What should the United States do?

So far, the Obama administration has defined neither clear, realistic U.S. objectives nor, therefore, a convincing strategy to achieve them. The stated goals—removing Assad and containing then destroying Daesh—are also at best tactics in a larger strategy for the former and an objective for the latter. They do not constitute a plan. Even if Assad goes, what, in the administration’s view, would be the larger resolution in Syria and how could it be achieved? And with what constellation of post-Assad elements? In particular, with what resolution of the communal conflicts and those between the foreign stakeholders? A broad liberal democracy, however desirable, is surely utopian in the near term and cannot be the foundation of a realistic U.S. strategy. But what would more realistic aims and plans look like?

It is fair enough that the United States not elucidate in detail its preferences, objectives or outcomes or even, perhaps, that it have in mind one among several possibilities all of which would dislodge Assad and his immediate entourage, destroy or isolate Daesh, end or contain the conflict between the other contending groups so that they can concentrate on Daesh, and bring some kind of peaceful, consensual order to Syria. It certainly should not broadcast the compromises for which it would settle.

But to provide leadership, the United States will need to signal some organizing principles, some clearer set of objectives, around which to rally the fissiparous stakeholders. That would clearly include a regime change which, properly understood, means not just a change in personnel (in this case Assad and his entourage) but a fundamental transformation of structure and process, in this case from a narrow, sectarian, brutal authoritarian dictatorship to a regime that represents the aspirations of the majority of the various Syrians, a modus vivendi among its constituent communities, and institutions and procedures that encode some kind of consensus. In the unlikely event that the various constituent elements could agree on even a nominally efficacious central and representative government, one possibility is a federal union with extensive decentralization to local, probably communal, sub-divisions. As noted, another possibility is a Lebanon-like, confederal state which may well be a Westphalian entity in name more than in substance.

For domestic reasons, most of the stakeholders outside Europe and North America are averse to both federalism and confederalism. The governments at the Vienna table are not notable devotees of constraints on central power. And they are concerned about the potential for centrifugal, separatist tendencies to challenge the coherence of the Syrian state. As already noted, no one (yet) seems to be willing to contemplate Syria’s complete partition into several mini-states. Notwithstanding their aversions, these are the most viable choices however.

Ignoring theoretical arguments about preferable constitutional arrangements, there is now no real state in Syria to preserve. And the constituent components of any polity that might be negotiated for the Syrian territory will oppose any arrangement that does not ensure their own security vis-à-vis the other national constituents. Those horses, as they say, have already left the barn. They will return only if the renovated barn serves its primary purposes and the interests of its various inhabitants. Even if a constitutional arrangement can be negotiated, will the domestic constituents buy into it and, even if they do, will they be able to effectuate it, and will it be politically, economically and socially viable?

Although tasks predominantly for a later round of negotiations, any new national or international architecture should, if possible, address (or begin to address) them in the formative stages rather than, as happens too frequently, wait to find later the fateful flaws in its very foundation. Finally, no institutional edifice can survive absent a minimal accord among its constituents. Certainly the multiple communities—what in Lebanon are so usefully called “confessions”—can successfully resist the imposition of a structure most of them find sufficiently deficient. Excluding the Syrian actors from the central discussions in Vienna, as they have been so far, may serve to simplify the negotiations but may render the result irrelevant politically and militarily.

Obviously, Daesh will oppose any similar regime and will have no role to play in creating its underlying settlement. Daesh will continue to contest any arrangement apart from the establishment of its own caliphate. Its intrepid determination coupled with its far inferior arsenal may nevertheless defeat even a united international consortium supporting an alternatively constructed state and polity. Indeed taking on Daesh will be the one of the new regime’s most immediate and urgent necessities.

The more immediate and even less palatable task is to find a way through the thicket of domestic and international stakeholders with different and often cross-purposes and with such mutual hostility that accommodation is almost impossible. Needed to do so is a clearing of the conceptual underbrush, making some choices, and dealing with the implications for relations with various interested states and parties. A negotiated resolution would be optimal unless the inevitable compromises cut too deeply against the principles of the U.S. and its allies or create an unworkable result, even assuming the absence of Daesh as part of the consultations.

If negotiations do not produce a workable outcome, the U.S. will have to decide which of the stakeholders it will alienate (or at least irritate) to assemble a coalition and strategy with some likelihood of success, and which of the objectives it will prioritize. If the deepest fault line were to prevail, it might, in particular, be forced to choose in priority and sequencing between isolating, containing, and if possible expelling Daesh on the one hand or replacing Assad on the other, but not both. However, any viable strategy will need to signal that all of the respective essential interests of the multiple stakeholders and those of the various communities in Syria, with the possible exception of Assad himself, are guaranteed in any “final” constitutional arrangement.

Still certain realities will need to guide strategy and tactics. First, as a matter of instrumentality, as the most capable domestic force, the Kurds would necessarily be the cutting edge and probably wedge of any ground force in Syria. However, as Iraq has demonstrated in spades, the Kurds cannot accomplish the entire mission on their own. Were they to try absent an alliance with some credible Arab force, however problematic, the effort itself would be more likely than not to shift the objectives and the array of power of all of the Arabs from Daesh and Assad to a containment of the Kurds, and that could well generate the paradoxical alliance between Turkey and Assad. Still, the Kurds will need to be pivotal to the effort and, whatever the window-dressing about a Syrian Arab Coalition (or National Syrian Coalition or any other name by which the ephemeral coalitions form and disappear), will stand at its center until a credible Arab force can be created to partner with it.

Second, as a matter of long-term objectives, Syria will never be reconstructed in the constitutional status quo ante. Even without Assad and his inner circle, Syria will need to be recreated constitutionally, assuming that it can be reintegrated on any terms. It will not be a strong central state controlled by any single community let alone dominated by a single network, family or individual. Reciprocally, neither Iran nor Russia will be able to insist on a replacement of Assad by one of his web or on the continuation with new personnel of the prevailing regime, and Russia has no imperative interest in doing so if the alternative arrangement will preserve its influence in Syria and the defeat of jihadists, both of which would in turn lie in the interests of most of the rest of the stakeholders. Moreover, the Syrian army itself will need to reflect the political and organizational realities of the larger polity.

Once the objectives and strategy have been established or at least articulated, several immediate tactical challenges for the U.S. and its partners lie ahead. The first lies in identifying the modalities to help build a more competent, more united Sunni Arab force and to negotiate a partnership, coalition or loose alliance between it and the Kurds, in short to construct a more effective opposition. That will include forming a common negotiating bloc out of the fragmented civilian leaders as well so that they can theoretically come to an agreement that will stick. The second is to negotiate an agreement among the opposition that would assure the safety of the Alawite community and its place in a post-conflict Syria and to make that understanding public. The third is to assemble stakeholders, preferably including influential Alawite leaders including some close to Assad (perhaps even in the military), that could convince him to leave and help arrange an exit strategy with him. The fourth is to construct an arena—perhaps a small conference of key stakeholders, particularly Syrians—to work through a consensus transitional structure and process or, even better, the embryo for a more permanent constitutional arrangement. The fifth is to forge a specifically anti-Daesh strategy and put it into effect. The sixth is to construct a formula for the repatriation of refugees in Europe but more important in Turkey and Jordan. The seventh is to establish acceptable but evenhanded monitors and guarantors for the implementation of all of these agreements and the entire process.

In sum, the immediate task for U.S. diplomacy is first to untangle as much as possible the Gordian knot of stakeholders and interests, second to try developing a common set of objectives among the them, third, if that is impossible, to maximize the heft of a coalition that can agree on those objectives, fourth to develop an actual and coherent strategy, a blueprint, among that coalition for achieving those objectives, fifth to minimize the conflicts and dissonance within the coalition and the dissenting stakeholders, and sixth to design tactics appropriate to the strategy of its allies while minimizing differences with other players. A tall order for sure, but one without which the chaos of Syria is likely to deepen, the humanitarian disaster is likely to widen, and any resolution short of exhaustion is likely to grow more distant.

Gerald F. (“Jerry”) Hyman has been a Senior Adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and President of its Hills Program on Governance since 2007. From 1990-2007, he held several positions at USAID, including director of its global Office of Democracy and Governance from 2002-2007. From 1985-1990, he practiced law at Covington & Burling in Washington DC, and he taught Anthropology and Sociology at Smith College from 1970-1985.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Elizabeth Arrott.