Today, the president reneged on his longstanding promise not to deploy American ground troops to Syria.
It may be tempting to view this development as a change in the administration’s strategy, or even as a sign that they have finally recognized that degrading and destroying the Islamic State will take more than airstrikes and relying on other forces to conduct ground operations.
Regretfully, neither appears to be true, as this deployment will neither be sufficient in size nor capability to make significant headway in the fight against ISIS.
(L to R) Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, US Secretary of State John Kerry, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir and Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioglu stand before a meeting in Vienna, October 30, 2015. Kerry said on Friday he hoped progress could be made in Vienna at finding a political solution to Syria’s four-year-old civil war. REUTERS/Brendan Smialowski.
In the wake of the disastrous and now cancelled mission to train Syrian rebels, to say nothing of the Russian military’s confident and brazen return to the Middle East, the US needs to show that it is doing something—anything—to support the moderate rebels in Syria. Earlier this month, Washington announced that they would provide 50 tons of ammunition to rebels organized under the Syrian Arab Coalition via airdrops. Although the initial airdrops were successful, the risk of munitions not reaching the intended recipients has evidently grown so high that the administration will now deploy fewer than 50 special operations forces to primarily serve in a “logistical” and “advisory” role in Northern Syria.
Is the dedication of ground troops to Syria a sign that the administration is finally realizing the fundamental role that ground forces must play in any successful strategy to defeat ISIS? Doubtful. Is it a shrewd move to establish American turf in what is becoming an increasingly international conflict? Perhaps. But it is equally telling that this deployment will only comprise a few dozen soldiers. A “surge” this most certainly is not.
After going against the wishes of many in the American public and finally deploying ground troops to Syria, it would be logical to maximize the value and utility of this micro-deployment. Yet the Pentagon has assured us that the new group of special operations troops will not actually see combat. Do we think that Russia and Iran have applied similarly restrictive rules of engagement to the soldiers that they have deployed to Syria in recent weeks? Why would we limit the actions of the troops that we are placing in harm’s way, which represent some of the most highly trained and capable soldiers in the force, to logistics and advice?
The answer is that the administration is trying to have it both ways. It is dedicating troops, but only the minimum necessary to establish a visible and credible presence. It’s finally making public that American forces will conduct “direct action” missions on the ground in an effort to appear resolute, even though the US is known to have conducted raids into Syrian territory in the past. It is dedicating additional air assets to the region, but the amount of air strikes conducted over Syria has actually decreased since the beginning of Russia’s bombing campaign. It is trying to keep its intervention “unbelievably small,” while still adding touches of additional capabilities to an otherwise inadequate response.
Forty special operations troops may have been enough to make an impact in the fight against the ISIS of 2012, but not the ISIS of 2015. A pinprick force will only have a pinprick impact, that is, unless they are allowed to exercise the full range of capabilities that they have been trained to bring to bear.
The deployment of special operations forces to northern Syria is a public relations campaign and a last-gasp tactic masquerading as prudence and strategy.
What’s needed in Syria is a real strategy, one that matches America’s aims with its capabilities; a display of unequivocal strength instead of incrementalism and hesitation. The “unbelievably small” approach didn’t work before, and as the conflict grows in complexity, there’s no reason to believe that it will work now.
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