Michael Singh is the Managing Director and Lane-Swig Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute.
Articles & Testimony
Among other steps, U.S. envoys should seek to ensure continued deployment of sanctions and related tools to press Damascus, Tehran, and Moscow to back the UN political process.
The hasty withdrawal of most U.S. forces from Syria not only has immediate and grave implications for the safety of America’s erstwhile Kurdish partners and the fight against ISIS, but the United States also has ceded its single greatest source of leverage to broker an end to the conflict: the remaining one-third of Syrian territory not under the control of President Bashar al-Assad and Russia. With American forces withdrawing under pressure—from a NATO ally, no less—the instinct in Washington may be to give up on Syria, which if it did not seem like a lost cause before certainly must now. Yet to do so would be a mistake...