Century Foundation Fellow Proposes Post-Obama Syrian-U.S. Relations Strategy
U.S. President Barack Obama has tried his hardest to keep his distance from the Syrian war. Even as he has made the case that the conflict can be contained, the meltdown of the Syrian state has sent wave after wave of chaos into the wider world — spawning a new generation of terrorists and warlords and creating millions of refugees who have reshaped the politics of Lebanon, Turkey, and the European Union.
Syria has reached an inflection point, and Obama’s successor will have to shape a new response. The status quo hasn’t worked; quite to the contrary, it has destroyed an entire country, killing hundreds of thousands of people in the process while producing a raft of problems — including worsened relationships with allies like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel and the threat of state meltdown and regional collapse — that will bedevil the United States and its allies in the Middle East for decades to come...