On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan renewed his call to create a safe zone in northern Syria. With American air cover (and, yes, “boots on the ground,” in the form of US special forces), such a zone could serve as a haven for besieged Syrian civilians.
It could also lead to a more strategic, American-led future reorganization of Syria as a loose confederation of separate Sunni, Alawite and Kurdish statelets.
Yes, it’s complicated. Turkey is more interested in fighting against our Kurdish allies than against ISIS or Hezbollah. But we won’t be able to lean on Turkey (or on our Arab allies) to do the right thing in their neighborhood unless we’re present in their neighborhood.
It’s also true that Russia already controls much of Syria’s airspace. Were US planes to intervene, it could lead to actual US-Russia conflict. But Israel has proved it’s possible to avoid the danger zone. Jerusalem has long been hitting Russian-allied Hezbollah targets in Syria since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struck agreements with President Vladimir Putin on how to conduct those strikes without baiting the Russian air force.
So there’s no reason Trump couldn’t negotiate similar understandings.
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