Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 171
June 22, 2017
Problems Crop Up in America’s Crowded Oil Fields
Shale basins here in the United States are busy places these days. Oil and gas producers are busy installing wellheads and drilling out multiple horizontal wells from each rig that can extend for miles, laterally. That’s becoming a problem, because as the WSJ reports, some of these horizontal wells have been striking other vertical wells:
The emerging problem is known as a “frack hit,” and it has flared up in Oklahoma, where a group of small oil and gas producers say more than 100 of their wells have been damaged by hydraulic-fracturing jobs done for companies like Chesapeake Energy Corp., Devon Energy Corp. and Newfield Exploration Co.
James West, an analyst with Evercore ISI who has been following frack hits, said they are of special concern in places like Oklahoma and Texas, where those drilling new wells must navigate around older wells drilled over decades.
“It’s becoming a pretty sizable issue,” Mr. West said, noting that Colorado in 2013 enacted regulations after state engineers had identified frack hits as a potential problem. “I suspect every basin is probably facing the same type of challenge.
The oil industry has a long history of dust-ups between producers, and this isn’t the first time a new well has been accused of damaging an existing one. But the nature of shale drilling—that, deep underground, these wells extend horizontally along productive seams of shale rock—makes it more likely for a new drilling project to run into another well. And, as more and more companies flock to a particularly productive part of a shale basin, we can expect problems like these to increase.
This isn’t an existential issue for fracking (sorry greens), but it is one worth keeping an eye on.
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June 21, 2017
Are Democrats Waking Up to Russia Insanity?
RCP highlights an MSNBC hit from Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy in which the liberal lawmaker says that the party’s D.C. elite is spending too much time focusing on “issues like Russia” rather than policy questions that concern his constituents.

Over the past few weeks, the maximalist “Russian puppet” narrative, pushed so hard by top Democrats and the media, has been unraveling in a big way. Centrist pundits are cautioning against going too far with this issue, and the leak pipeline about Trump’s contacts with Russia seems to be drying up. The obstruction investigation getting press now is focused on determining whether Trump mishandled the Russia investigation which so far has not turned up a smoking gun.
The truth is that the Democrats have zeroed in on the Russia attack line because it casts a pall of illegitimacy over Trump’s election, and this helps salve the wounds from their unexpected defeat. But while the Russian hacking of DNC servers was a deadly serious matter, it does not invalidate the election, and there is still no evidence that Trump participated in any way.
The Democrats need to grow up and become a serious opposition party. The country is worse off when a single party operates unchecked. Instead of acting perpetually aggrieved at the fact that their anointed candidate was so incompetent that she could not beat a complete political neophyte, they might instead get back to the business of governing the country.
That would mean working with the GOP where possible, while focusing like a laser on their opponents’ policy shortcomings. The Senate’s rushed and secretive handling of the AHCA, for example, ought to be a ripe political target. Instead, coastal Democratic operatives are spending days focusing on whether or not Trump’s lawyers slipped up on TV in discussing Trump’s tweet about whether he was or was not under investigation by a special counsel appointed by an acting Attorney General for firing the FBI director for refusing to say in public that he wasn’t being investigated. Can the rest of the country be blamed for tuning out this noise?
None of this is to suggest that ongoing investigations into the Russia affair ought to be dropped. After all that has been alleged, if there was in fact no collusion, the Trump Administration and the Republican Party above all should want to read an exhaustive report exonerating them. But the Democrats’ demented fixation on the issue is not only politically self-destructive, it’s also harming the very fabric of our country. It’s good to see a prominent member of the party waking up to this harsh reality. More, please.
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The Rise of Mohammed bin Salman
The Saudi royal family has had a major succession shakeup overnight, as the New York Times reports:
King Salman of Saudi Arabia promoted his 31-year-old son, Mohammed bin Salman, to be next in line to the throne on Wednesday, further empowering a young, activist leader at a time when the kingdom is struggling with low oil prices, a rivalry with Iran and conflicts across the Middle East.
The decision to remove the previous crown prince, Mohammed bin Nayef, 57, comes as some members of the royal family have chafed at the rise of the younger prince, who emerged from relative obscurity when his father, 81, ascended the throne in January 2015.
Prince Mohammed bin Salman has since accumulated vast powers in the wealthy kingdom, a crucial ally of the United States, serving as defense minister, overseeing the state oil company and working to overhaul the Saudi economy.
Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was expected to eventually rise to the top spot to inherit his father’s throne, but the timing of the move has raised eyebrows. When King Salman ascended to the throne in 2015 there were rumors that he was in bad health and might have some form of dementia. These rumors were quashed by King Salman’s relatively frequent public appearances in which he has shown his age but appears entirely capable. The appointment of MBS as crown prince can only resurface questions about Salman’s health.
It also cements MBS’ position as the driving force in Saudi politics—for better or for worse. MBS has taken the lead on the Aramco IPO, which the Saudis think, perhaps foolishly, will be the largest corporate valuation in history. As Defense Minister he has overseen the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen, which has not gone well. His Vision 2030 economic reform plan is the best economic reform package that a few thousand billable hours to management consultancy firms can buy. An Iran hawk, he is believed to be a leading figure behind the ongoing crisis with Qatar, which the State Department announced yesterday has left them “mystified” by the confusing actions of Saudi and the UAE.
If the rise of MBS helps accelerate his reforms, the ouster of Mohammed bin Nayef (MBN) will remove some of the brakes. MBN was viewed as more conservative and traditionalist on all of the above questions. He advocated more restraint towards Iran. He may also have been “the most pro-American prince ever to be in line to the throne” and was a favorite of the American intelligence community. While it would be narcissistic to think that Washington plays much of a role in Saudi succession planning, it’s worth wondering whether the Trump Administration’s poor relationship with the intel community and apparently close ties with MBS made the timing of this move easier for the Saudis.
Whatever the precise cause of the timing, the driving motivation for all of these reforms, as Walter Russell Mead wrote on Monday, is a Saudi fear that the future is slipping away from them. Surrounded by rivals, unsure of whether or not oil will continue to guarantee wealth, and rife with internal tensions, the Saudis seem willing to try something radical.
Since the founding of Saudi Arabia in 1932, the six kings prior to Salman reigned for an average of about 14 years. Should he rise to the throne within the next five to ten years, MBS can reasonably expect to rule Saudi Arabia for the next half century. If they weren’t already, American policymakers looking to grow the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia should start paying attention to Mohammed bin Salman. He’s going to be with us for a long time.
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New Russia Sanctions Hit A Roadblock
As journalists and pundits eagerly chase leads and leaks about Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, a more consequential Russia story is playing out in plain sight. In recent days, the Trump Administration and a Republican Congress have been doing a delicate dance over new sanctions against Moscow, in what could be a telling indicator of where relations are heading.
Last week, the Senate overwhelmingly passed an amendment to expand and codify sanctions against Russia. As we wrote at the time, the story in many ways featured a repeat of Obama-era dynamics over the Magnitsky Bill, with a Russia-hawkish Congress trying to tie the hands of an Administration more eager for a reset.
Then, as of today, the Trump Administration won itself a reprieve: the Russia sanctions bill has hit a snag in the House, with Republicans citing a procedural “blue slip” violation to argue that it cannot be taken up in its current form. As The Hill reports, many Democrats are crying foul:
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) lambasted the move, arguing they’re using the procedural roadblock to cover for Trump, “who has been far too soft on Russia.” […]
Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, added that Republicans could easily work around the violation by introducing an indention House bill.
“[But] I predict this isn’t the last excuse we’ll hear for trying to slow this bill’s momentum, but make no mistake, anything short of an up-or-down vote on this tough sanctions package is an attempt to let Russia off the hook,” he said.
The Democrats’ allegations aren’t just partisan hot air. Last week, Politico noted that the White House was lobbying House Republicans to water down the Senate sanctions and preserve the Executive’s ability to lift them at a time of its own choosing. It looks like that lobbying has borne its fruit. A spokesman for House Speaker Paul Ryan said that the Senate bill “cannot be considered in its current form,” opening the door to a re-drafted bill that might be more lenient. And Senator Bob Corker, one of the architects of the Senate sanctions, has indicated a willingness to work with the House to address its objections—and perhaps those of the White House as well.
Meanwhile, the Treasury Department actually expanded sanctions against Moscow on Tuesday, blacklisting 38 new individuals and entities on the same day that Trump met with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. As Timothy Ash argues in the FT, those carefully timed sanctions may have been designed to convince Congress to back off on its own sanctions push and allow the executive a free hand:
What we saw on Tuesday was a well choreographed bit of theatre, with Ukraine’s Petro Poroshenko invited to the White House, dropping in on President Donald Trump … just as the US Treasury announced a new sanctions iteration on Russia. Happy faces all around. […]
What we saw was an attempt to demonstrate to US Congressional hawks that the Trump administration is sufficiently tough on Russia and supportive of Ukraine, and a plea to cut it some slack by backing down over codification.
This is all more evidence suggesting that the Trump Administration’s attitudes toward Russia really are a lot more mainstream than a lot of the overheated partisan blabbering would have you believe—perhaps more dovish and hopeful of some kind of rapprochement being possible, but not somehow outside of acceptable . And the fact is, the Senate’s measures would severely constrain the executive’s ability to deal with Moscow; President Trump just wants maximum flexibility in foreign policy—just like every other President before him did.
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Merkel May Dance With France on Eurozone Reform
In an unexpected change of tune, Angela Merkel says she could be willing to support French efforts to reform the Eurozone. The Wall Street Journal:
Germany could support two central French demands—the appointment of a eurozone finance minister and the creation of a common budget—if some conditions were met, Ms. Merkel told business leaders in Berlin on Tuesday.
“We can of course think about a eurozone budget as long as it’s clear that this is really strengthening structures and achieving sensible results,” she said.
In a striking softening of previous language opposing broader financial burden-sharing among member states, Ms. Merkel said “we could think about a common finance minister…if we aren’t pooling liabilities in the wrong place.”
As qualified as it is, Ms. Merkel’s surprise overture on an approach long taboo in Germany suggests the stalled process of reforming the eurozone could kick back into life sooner than most experts had expected.
This is very clever politics from a Chancellor cruising toward a fourth term. The impression of a unity of purpose between Germany and France that is not linked to any specific German financial commitments is very helpful to Merkel as she moves to crush any remaining SPD hopes of a surprise win in the September elections.
The SPD strategy was to run an anti-Trump, pro-Europe campaign, but Merkel seems to have outflanked them on both sides. She has made the deep differences between her views and Trump’s very clear, and with Macron’s help she is projecting the vision of a re-energized Franco-German partnership that will save Europe.
The question of whether they can accomplish this will be answered only after the German elections, and there will be tough bargaining and politically difficult decisions on both sides. But for now, Angela Merkel is in a happy place.
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President Obama Silent as Illinois Sinks
Former President Obama remains grimly silent as the state that sent him to the Senate and gave him a national career crashes and burns, taking the hopes of its poor with it. From the Illinois Policy Institute:
Illinois’ rapidly growing budget deficit for the fiscal year ending June 30 is estimated to arrive at $6.2 billion, according to a fiscal review conducted by the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, or COGFA. And COGFA predicted that if Illinois were to enter its third fiscal year with no budget, the deficit would grow to $7.7 billion and the state’s unpaid bills would rise to $22.7 billion by June 2018.
Decades of blue model governance have left Illinois with powerful public sector unions, a legislature subservient to them, and an intractable public pension problem. Politico recently labeled Illinois America’s first “failed state,” as feuding between the Democratic legislature and the Republican governor over how to handle the state’s cascading fiscal crisis brings governance to a standstill.
President Obama’s leadership in the crisis would be helpful—but then again, it might force him to confront some inconvenient truths about the failures of doctrinaire Democratic policymaking.
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A Game of Brexit
The Brexit negotiation, whatever else it is, is a political drama of the score-settling type. So let’s imagine it, focusing on a crucial subset of the dramatis personae, as if it were a play about a game whose congealing theme is: What should it cost to leave the European Union?
Shortly into Act One, Theresa May invites Jean-Claude Juncker for dinner at 10 Downing Street. Afterward they stand before the media and agree that the meeting has been “constructive”—that beautiful catchall synonym that usually stands for other adjectives. The following day, the EU delegation’s minutes are leaked to the German press. “Constructive,” we learn, can apparently also mean “catastrophic.”
The Eurocrat-in-chief concludes that the British leader is “on another planet”. The de facto leader of the European Union, the German Chancellor, warns the Bundestag a few days later against the specific dangers of being on another planet.
Theresa May responds in parliament by accusing the EU leadership of attempting to influence the British election with its leaks—Russian parallel very much intended. Angela Merkel then reprimands the Commission’s incontinence. And so the score is even between the most powerful leaders you probably never heard of: Martin Selmayr and Nick Timothy.
Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince (1513) was a job application. The unemployed Florentine wanted to show his prowess at using the lamentable realities of the world for the benefit of the necessary. A better title for the book might have been He Who Would Be Counselor, for the book is really written for those who clear the path for the leader.
Machiavelli was willing to say what everyone who did such things for a living already knew very well in the early 16th century: That, occasionally, regime considerations necessitate actions that are seen as immoral from the perspective of individual ethics and community values. This is because there will always be those looking to derail the leader’s political project, and good leaders will be opposed as well as bad ones. This is as true in Western democracies in 2017 as it was in the city-states of medieval Italy.
Behind a great leader stands therefore an often-formidable chief of staff. Shortly after she was deposed, Margaret Thatcher’s confidante, Alistair McAlpine, wrote a textbook on the Machiavellian skill set for use in modern democracies. The Servant (1992) outlines the key tasks of the chief of staff: keep support troops in line; keep tabs on missteps; collect debts; avenge injustices; and nip insurgencies in the bud.
When the partnership works as intended, the chief of staff complements the leader. The chief of staff focuses on the trees so that the leader can focus on the wood, or vice versa. McAlpine stressed that, since leaders are as prone to human weakness as the rest of us, they need someone to move vigilantly in circles they themselves do not frequent, to know the things they cannot know, and say the thinks they could never say—in short, to be a more ruthless manifestation of themselves.
When the Brexit process began, Selmayr and Timothy were staff chiefs for the two key leaders in the Brexit process. Neither the President of the EU Commission nor the British Prime Minister was born to greatness. Perhaps for that reason, both employed formidable right-hand men who have given their political project shape and content. This applies to both Juncker’s more-power-to-the-union and Theresa May’s blue-collar conservatism.
These two young men were perched on top of their respective centralized bureaucracies, not weighted down with line responsibilities but only that of keeping the leader in and on a line. Selmayr and Timothy thus acquired an opportunity to exert significant power. Both did, for a time. Juncker and May had such confidence in Selmayr and Timothy that the two were seen as their master’s voice. The two men’s fates intersected in Act One of Brexit.
Both young men understood that the Brexit process will have a winner and a loser in the eyes of the relevant constituencies, and that this single question will therefore define the legacy of their respective leaders. Yet as befits a good play, we have here two very different personalities.
Martin Selmayr is a true representative of the competent EU bureaucracy. A lawyer with awe-inspiring knowledge of the Union’s rules and procedures, Selmayr pursues the dream of a united Europe with the same ruthless single-mindedness with which Germans have cultivated other nationalisms before it. His weakness is an inflated ego. Rumors have it that Berlin asked to have him removed after the deliberate leak, but Selmayr survived.
His counterpart, Nick Timothy, is a completely different personality. With rumpled attire and colorful language, Timothy is an atypical representative of the upper strata of British administration. He is not educated at one of the two universities that feed the British central state apparatus. The son of a steelworker, he sees the conservative working class as the Conservative Party’s fountain of strength. Most believe it was he who made Theresa May (who had voted to remain in the European Union) into the chief proponent of Brexit and hence an unexpected Prime Minister.
“It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both,” Machiavelli famously wrote. Timothy and Selmayr, both Machiavellian figures, have relied on fear to inspire respect. They were the ones who ensured that some careers prospered while others languished. Ministers and commissioners alike took their calls with a sinking feeling. Both built their power on access to the leader. Few could spend time alone with the boss without the staff manager’s lingering presence. Yet they, too, are mortal and fallible.
In Act Two, Nick Timothy convinces the Prime Minister to announce fresh elections in order to translate favorable polls into a larger parliamentary majority, strengthening May’s power base and, thereby, her negotiating position with respect to the European Union. Had Shakespeare been writing yet again about some intrigues in Italy, he probably would have built a few lines around fickle fortuna for, alas, on June 8, the Conservatives lost their majority. Amid a haphazard election campaign, the Prime Minister refused to meet the opposition leader for debate, turning her “strong and stable” campaign slogan into a joke.
May seemed weak and insecure: Advantage to Selmayr after gross miscalculation by Timothy.
When the Prime Minister thus wrested defeat out of the jaws of victory, the challengers in the party did not come at her openly. Instead, they demanded Timothy’s head. And in line with McAlpine’s playbook, Timothy fell on his sword, because the servant must defend the leader without reservation. He suffered the consequences so that May would not have to—at least not yet.
A weakened British Prime Minister now faces an uncertain future. British Conservatives are known to conspire against weak leaders, and without Timothy they no longer fear the Prime Minister. As Act Three begins, conspiracies are hatched and knives are sharpened while the Brexit negotiations languish.
The fate of Nick Timothy offers a glimpse into the Brexit process, which can be understood as part drama, part political bloodsport, in which the relevant bureaucracies will handle the myriad details and lawyers-turned-diplomats will niggle one another over the interpretation of the legal frameworks. But the Brexit process most centrally contains an intense political dimension, a kind of “battle over reality.” What is at stake; what is reasonable; what is important? Why, just by the way, should Britain need to pay anything to leave a relationship?
At the beginning of Act Four, things get off to a bracing start when the EU reportedly demands a hundred billion euros from Britain. Usually one has to lose a major war to be asked for such a sum.
Whoever prevails will do so largely through the ability to set the agenda. The United Kingdom will probably need to split the EU block and build subordinate coalitions in order to prevent the Commission from dominating the agenda. The British challenge is to build a coalition with sufficient gravity to draw in the hold-outs.
The EU’s preferred negotiating mode is one where negotiator Michel Barnier alone speaks on behalf of all 27 member-states. Both Russia and the United States have managed to divide the European Union in the past, however; we should probably assume that British diplomacy is equally competent. If the British do not get into parallel negotiations with different actors, there will likely be no deal, because the sum of accumulated demands on the EU side is, well, 100 billion euro. But in losing Timothy, Theresa May lost her Machiavellian strategist and with him, perhaps, her best chance at dividing the EU and gaining an affordable settlement.
In order for the Commission to retain control of the process, a UK divide and rule strategy must be parried at all costs. The EU leadership sees the Brexit negotiations as a golden opportunity to illustrate the benefits of membership, and the costs of exit, by harrowing the British. The Commission’s problem is that a harsh, punitive settlement is at odds with there being any agreed settlement at all.
If the UK is to get a deal it can stomach, it must likely happen during the first few rounds of negotiations, which means that the Commission should compromise sooner rather than later. But, in keeping with the EU’s almost autistic approach to diplomacy, it probably won’t. If negotiations draw out, French influence will grow, and French expectations of a high payout will strengthen as time passes. If that happens, the Brexit talks will likely fail from the fact that there are simply too many actors with clear expectations and unclear negotiating positions.
If no “big bang” agreement is reached, the alternative looks to be a tangle of limited bilateral arrangements, similar to the current arrangement between Switzerland and the European Union. But while the EU-Swiss relationship came about gradually and without a great deal of enmity, neither condition would apply to a prospective UK relationship with the EU. Act Four could grow very long, and tragic, indeed.
The post A Game of Brexit appeared first on The American Interest.
EU Moving to Undercut Trump in Asia?
The European Union seems to be offering up its services to help broker a peaceful solution to the growing crisis in North Korea, the Wall Street Journal reports:
The European Union is in discussions with South Korea and China about taking a potential role as a broker for negotiations with North Korea on ending its nuclear program, according to EU officials involved in the effort.
The discussions reflect concern in Brussels, Seoul and Beijing that sanctions alone won’t persuade Pyongyang to halt its nuclear program and that negotiations are needed to avoid military conflict.
On the one hand, this initiative is unlikely to achieve anything by way of actual negotiations; this ground has been worked over pretty thoroughly for many years. But it will be welcomed by those who believe that putting up with North Korean weapons progress is better than war. And it certainly gives cover to China and South Korea for stepping back from Japan and the United States, and makes it harder in general for the U.S. to drive the pace of events.
It is also a way of signaling Europe’s biggest card if it gets truly fed up with the US: it could always tilt toward China, selling arms and tech to a country many in the U.S. believe is the greatest long term threat to America’s global position.
There are lots of reasons why the Europeans wouldn’t want to go that route, not the least of which is that a secret-stealing, export-promoting, rule-of-law-despising China isn’t the greatest partner for the EU. But the Europeans are intensely frustrated by the bloc’s inability to play the game of thrones effectively at the global level. Inserting itself into Asian diplomacy is a way of signaling to the Russians as well as to the Americans that the EU has global ambitions and, economically and diplomatically at least, a global reach.
But at this point it looks more like an empty gesture than an actual move. There are few signs that the EU is internally united on this policy, or that it really has anything to contribute given that it has no military assets in the region and no special relationship with North Korea that offers the prospect of a better negotiation than anybody else has had. As is often the case, the EU Foreign Affairs Council, which doesn’t speak for individual countries, is a solution in search of a problem, a bureaucracy in search of a role.
Still, even vain gestures can have consequences. Beijing and Seoul could see the EU suggestion as a way to slow down the Trump Administration’s drive to push North Korea toward a settlement by raising the temperature in Northeast Asia. To the South Koreans, who fear that they will be the greatest losers on any confrontation, and who are already uneasy about their tense relations with China over the THAAD missile system, supporting an essentially empty mediation offer by the EU could be a welcome way to freeze the diplomatic system for a while, while scoring points with China as well.
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How Colleges Can Revive Free Speech on Campus
In yesterday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the crisis of free speech on America’s college campuses, the First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams pointed out that the impulse to suppress unpopular ideas is coming primarily from militant students, rather than overreaching administrators:
“What brings us here today is that time and again, speech is being effectively banned on campuses because the speaker has ideas that offend,” said Floyd Abrams, senior counsel at the firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel and another witness. “That’s the problem. It does not arise in the main because university administrations are seeking to suppress speech, it arises more often than not because students find it intolerable to have certain speakers appear and certain ideas expressed with which they disagree and they find offensive or even outrageous.”
It is troubling that elite college students—the next generation of business and media and political leaders—are spearheading a movement of illiberalism and intolerance. But it also points to a relatively simple potential remedy: Colleges should choose students in part on the basis of their commitment to open and honest inquiry. That is, admissions officers should be directed to reward students who demonstrate intellectual humility and respect for disagreeable ideas, and penalize those who seem predisposed to respond to argument with shouting and heckling and censoring rather than debate.
There is a simple way for an enterprising colleges to do this: Simply add a short essay question to their application asking students to explain what free speech means to them and perhaps to describe time that they have learned something from material they found disagreeable or even offensive. This would help filter out students who saw free speech as a tool of oppression rather than an essential building bloc of liberal society. This essay would not be out of place among the many questions about values and personal experience that are now found on college applications. And the process of writing it might help shape opinion among the incoming class.
Many colleges have issued statements affirming their commitment to free speech in response to the recent episodes of runaway mob censorship. Fewer have backed them up. One productive step forward would be to consider ways to make students’ demonstrated respect for liberal values part of their admissions criteria.
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June 20, 2017
Eastern Syria Heats Up
The past 48 hours have been busy in Eastern Syria. Yesterday, the U.S. coalition announced that it had shot down a Syrian regime plane which was bombing predominantly Kurdish SDF positions. On Sunday, Iran launched medium-range ballistic missiles at ISIS targets near Deir ez-Zour. Today, the coalition announced that it had shot down an armed UAV that was headed towards coalition positions near the U.S. base at al-Tanf.
As I wrote over the weekend, this is just the beginning of a conflict in Syria that is reaching an inflection point. As ISIS is pushed towards defeat, the other actors in the region are jockeying for position. The Syrians, Russians, and Iranians want to test U.S. commitments, whether it’s by sending drones to al-Tanf or launching air raids against the SDF.
The thing is, these U.S. commitments only make sense if they are being made with a long-term strategy in mind. Defending SDF units that are engaged in the fight against ISIS would be one thing. Shooting down Syrian planes attacking SDF positions in areas where ISIS appears to have been already been removed implies a whole different set of priorities. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Dunford on Monday justified the shoot-down in legal terms, referencing the 2001 and 2002 authorizations for the use of military force against al-Qaeda. That’s a questionable line of argument, particularly as unlike the recent strikes around al-Tanf, there’s no indication that there was a U.S. troop presence nearby—only Kurdish SDF forces.
Is the goal, once ISIS is defeated, to block Iranian ambitions in Eastern Syria and to support the SDF indefinitely to that end? If so, President Trump ought to have a frank discussion with Congress, and the American people, about it. Because plans and ambitious like these are not a trifling matter.
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