Mark Sleboda: US institutions at odds over Syria foreign policy

Press TV has interviewed Mark Sleboda, an international relations and security analyst in Moscow, about the White House ruling out a US military attack against the government of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.

A rough transcription of the interview appears below.

Press TV: Do you think it is possible that the United States has actually learnt a lesson from Iraq and is actually doing the right thing here?

Sleboda: No, of course not, at least not in the way that you are phrasing it. It is true that Obama is in many ways a lame president, he does not have the full support obviously of his foreign policy establishment, he does not have control of Congress and his institutions such as the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department, are all at odds with each other and with the White House over Syria foreign policy.

This is more a president who is limited by Russia’s intervention, which I believe forestalled a US, Turkish, Libya style operation that would have started with the creation of safe zones along the Syrian-Turkish border last September. I think Russia’s intervention was specifically timed to prevent that and it is primarily Russia’s presence in Syria not some type of lessons learned by the United States that is limiting at least President Obama from escalating in Syria to a conflict. They could presumably end up in some type of great power clash, even a World War III scenario at the most extreme situation.

But it is important to remember that they were talking about overt military strikes, and it is rather interesting that Josh Earnest refers to Iraq, a presidency ago, but does not refer to Libya and the failed state that US overt and proxy war created in that state during Obama’s tenure just a few years ago. But it is not as if the Obama administration has not been using a military option in Syria. A proxy war is a military option and that is what it has been doing for the last six years. It has armed, trained, paid the salaries of proxies to overthrow the Syrian government with the stated aim of regime change. ‘Assad must go’ was a mantra.

The US has spent billions of dollars on this a year. The Washington Post revealed that the CIA program alone to train these moderate jihadists was over a billion dollars a year and that is on top of the much less successful Pentagon program, with a little bit more careful vetting we couldn’t find any moderates at all.

So this is a little bit of facetiousness coming out of the White House. Obviously they are not going to step in at this point. However, Hillary Clinton has taken a much stronger stance both when she was secretary of state, she is a war hawk, if you will, she’s known that, the neo-cons in the US have flocked her banner away from the Trump campaign because of her promises of a more militant use of US force around the world, and I think that this … in a way is paving the road for Hillary Clinton’s greater military action in Syria.

So that gives the Syrian government, Russia and Iran a very small window of opportunity that I believe that they should crystallize with military facts on the ground rather than wasting time with already failed ceasefire talks that the US refuses to cooperate with by separating their proxies from groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra that is al-Qaeda. So they really should react in this window of opportunity before Clinton assumes office.   

Press TV: I am wondering when you talk about that window of opportunity, do you see light at the end of the tunnel? Is it realistic to expect that something will be able to be resolved within that short period of time? 

Sleboda: They could make great steps if they concentrated military forces and we have recently seen Russian and Syrian defense ministers in Damascus, and we have seen the Russian defense minister meeting with Assad. These are high-level meetings, we have to see yet what comes of them and Russia is once again making a diplomatic push that I am afraid will result in nothing.

But the most important things that they could do at this point aside the race for Raqqah, which is crucially important - it is important for the Syrian government to reclaim Raqqah first - but also closing the Turkish and Jordanian borders and liberating the small part of Aleppo that is still in al-Nusra hands. These are the vital steps that can be taken that would severely limit any future Clinton administration military options in Syria.

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