Ariana News Agency-\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n President Trump\u2019s efforts to dress up his retreat from Syria as a victory are an embarrassment. He squandered America\u2019s leverage, abandoned our Kurdish allies to a Turkish invasion and thereby reopened the door for a defeated enemy, the Islamic State, to resume attacks on the West.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s performance shames the United States, especially the military. Imagine what it felt like for U.S. Special Operations forces as they withdrew this month from the Syrian battlefield pelted by tomatoes thrown by their irate former Kurdish allies. A bitter end to what had been a hugely successful campaign against the Islamic State.<\/p>\n Now Russia steps into this space of northeast Syria. And it\u2019s useful to examine, without blinders, some reasons President Vladimir Putin has achieved so much. The first, dark fact is that he has been a cynical and brutal partner for an even more brutal Syrian regime. But it\u2019s more complicated than that.<\/p>\n Putin has triumphed partly because he has used the instruments of power effectively. He intervened in Syria in 2015 with limited force, but decisively. Frustrated by Syrian dependency and mismanagement, he pulled some forces back after the initial campaign and threatened to withdraw more.<\/p>\n Russia has leverage partly because it talks to all the warring nations in the Middle East. Moscow has friendly relations with Iran but also with Israel. Russia talks to the Turks and also to their mortal enemies, the Kurds. Ambiguity is part of Putin\u2019s tool kit. He doesn\u2019t exclude himself from the bargaining table.<\/p>\n America, not so long ago, was a similar interlocutor. It was the essential partner because it talked with all sides. The United States was Israel\u2019s faithful ally, but it also had a deep relationship (initially in secret) with the Palestinian guerrilla groups. It brokered deals among parties that couldn\u2019t talk directly.<\/p>\n America\u2019s addiction to sanctions is part of our self-neutering process. These economic penalties are often a reflexive substitute for a more serious policy to advance U.S. interests. We sanction Russia, Syria, Iran, China, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela .\u2009.\u2009. and after Trump foolishly encouraged Turkey\u2019s invasion of Syria, the instant reaction was \u2014 sanctions! This tool is so overused that it\u2019s becoming counterproductive.<\/p>\n The United States (for several decades) has used sanctions when it wants to be seen as taking action, as opposed to actually doing so. That\u2019s not a mistake Russia makes. It intervenes with low visibility but punishing impact.<\/p>\n Russia also owes its recent gains in the Middle East to well-trained diplomats who speak good Arabic and foster multilateral negotiations in a way the United States once did. Since 2017, Russia has been sponsoring a dialogue (known as the \u201cAstana process\u201d) that brings together Turkey, Iran and various Syrian groups to discuss rebuilding the country. The U.S. alternative of Geneva talks has been moribund.<\/p>\n Russian diplomacy is partly a game to maintain Syrian President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s regime. But Russian specialists have also reached out to the Kurds, as in a 2017 draft constitution for Syria that promises a \u201cKurdish Cultural Autonomy\u201d region and proposes to remove \u201cArab\u201d from the country\u2019s official name, the Syrian Arab Republic.<\/p>\n For Russia, it\u2019s about interest, not ideology. \u201cRussia intervened in 2015 to prevent state collapse and restore stability,\u201d says a Western nongovernmental organization representative who has been dealing with Russian officials closely for five years in Syria. \u201cThe Russians are not trying to remake the region. .\u2009.\u2009. They want stability and business.\u201d By contrast, he argues, American interventions are driven by \u201cideological fantasies\u201d and have led to instability.<\/p>\n I\u2019d counter that American values remain one of our strengths, but the interventionist impulse has certainly gotten us in trouble.<\/p>\n Putin\u2019s biggest weakness in Syria has been the same as at home: corruption. Moscow\u2019s crass strategy for seizing oil fields in Kurdish regions protected by U.S. forces was to employ mercenaries who would get a percentage of any oil they seized. That\u2019s thuggery, not statecraft. Similarly, notes the NGO official who worked closely with them, the Russians \u201ccould not train a single professional Syrian unit, unlike the U.S. success in creating elite special forces\u201d among Kurds, Iraqis and Afghans.<\/p>\n Russia has dreamed for centuries of having the influence in the Middle East that it\u2019s now gaining. This is part of the original \u201cGreat Game,\u201d after all. How bizarre that in the end, what Russia has so desperately wanted, Trump is giving them for free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s heretical to say so, but Russia has earned its current success in the Middle East. It\u2019s using the same mix of military and diplomatic tools that made the United States dominant in the region for so many decades. America didn\u2019t lose this battle for influence; it surrendered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_mat_hreflang_tags":[],"addvideo":"","video_duration":"","farsit":"","target":"0","top_stories":"0","top":"0"},"categories":[305],"tags":[137,71,72],"class_list":["post-4304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","tag-middle-east","tag-russia","tag-syria"],"acf":{"myctype":"change","target":false,"top_stories":false,"top":false,"farsit":""},"yoast_head":"\n