January 27, 2018

The U.S. Has Put Itself in an Impossible Situation in Syria

Featuring: Ilan Goldenberg, and Nicholas Heras

Source: VICE News

Journalist: Greg Walters

After years of battle, the U.S. is on the cusp of defeating ISIS in Syria, but the tactics it’s used to do so have left the military in a strategic hole of epic proportions. Case in point: the spiraling crisis in Northern Syria where the U.S. finds itself stuck in the middle of a turf war between two allies: Turkey and Syrian Kurds.

And as this new conflict unfolds, Washington risks losing the little leverage it has to realize other goals it’s talked about but done little to achieve, analysts told VICE News, such as removing the dictator Bashar al-Assad, rolling back Iranian influence, and stopping Assad’s regime from deploying chemical weapons.

Read the full article here.

Authors

  • Ilan Goldenberg

    Former Senior Fellow and Director, Middle East Security Program

    Ilan Goldenberg is the former Senior Fellow and Director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. He is a foreign policy and defense expe...

  • Nicholas Heras

    Former Fellow, Middle East Security Program

    Nicholas A. Heras is a former Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), working in the Middle East Security Program. His work focused on the analysis of complex...