The Failure of Obama’s ‘On the Cheap’ Policy for Syria

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Former U.S. special advisor on transition in Syria, Frederic C. Hof, explains how Obama’s decision that it would have been impossible to intervene in Syria “on the cheap” resulted in the American failure to protect Syrian civilians. 

The five-plus year failure of the United States to protect a single Syrian from the relentless mass homicide campaign of a rogue Syrian government will help to define the impact and the values of the Obama administration for as long as historians parse the humanitarian abomination that is Syria. It is a failure that facilitated, on an industrial scale, the taking of life, the breaking of bodies, the traumatizing of children and the flight of the helpless. It is a failure that compromised the credibility of the United States and emboldened a Russian adversary, in Syria and far beyond. It is a failure that helped to place at risk European unity and the transatlantic partnership. It is a failure that, if President-elect Trump stays true to pro-Russian and pro-Assad campaign sentiments, provides an easy segue from Obama foreign policy to Trump foreign policy. President Obama’s explanation for the failure only deepens it.

In a December 16, 2016 press conference, the president was asked about Syria and he replied in some detail. He said that “days or weeks of meetings” took place “where we went through every option in painful detail …” What it all came down to, according to the president, was that nothing useful could be done “short of putting large numbers of U.S. troops on the ground.” Given Russian and Iranian commitment to keep Assad in power, nothing at all could be accomplished “unless we were all in and willing to take over Syria …” In the end “it was going to be impossible to do this on the cheap.”

Do what “on the cheap”? Characteristically the commander-in-chief avoided explicitly defining an objective. By referring in his statement to American troops still serving in Afghanistan and Iraq and by alluding to taking over Syria, he seemed to be implying that the objective, against which strategic options were supposedly weighed, was the violent overthrow of the Assad regime. If this was the objective conveyed to the joint chiefs of staff then yes, a sizable American ground force would have been required to invade Syria, defeat an array of enemies, occupy the country and implement a stabilization plan. Clearly, if this is what the joint chiefs were asked to plan against, then a “no way will we do this” decision from the commander-in-chief would have been proper and inevitable.