The Biden administration’s position on the recent developments in Syria, where extremist militias led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Al-Nusra Front) are making gains, seems to suggest more than mere indifference to the chaos unfolding there.
True, Türkiye is the primary beneficiary of these developments so far, and it is widely and probably correctly believed to have implicitly allowed the armed groups' attack on Aleppo. However, for its part, Washington also seems to be engaged in a cunning geopolitical ploy at a highly critical moment. Merely calling for "all parties" to de-escalate reflects a calculated strategy, a deliberate bet on these developments creating traps for the Trump administration and hampering the Kremlin, which has been exhausted by the war in Ukraine.
For Trump, who promised to end the United States' "forever wars," Syria amounts to a minefield that could undermine the trust of his base. The US indifference to the aggravation of instability in Syria suggests that the Biden administration is seeking to hamper Trump's strategy to pull the US out of the Middle East and create the impression that his claims of ending wars are nothing but empty and unfair political rhetoric that Trump uses to attack Biden and the Democrats.
The fact is that the grave developments in Syria could force Trump to make one of two costly political choices: either re-engage in the region that he had pledged to exit, or allow for chaos, which his critics would interpret as abandonment and disregard for global security, after he had long claimed the world would be safer with him in the White House.
All politics is domestic politics; this is a rule that defines political practice in Washington, and it reinforces the notion that we are seeing the Democrats play a dangerous game. They understand that Trump's promise to end wars resonates with American voters who are weary of the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.
Trump would benefit immensely if he were to succeed in navigating the complexities of the region without US military involvement. He would have succeeded where his predecessors, including Biden, had failed. That would be nothing short of a nightmare scenario for the Democrats, who face the prospect of a strong Trump resurgence that could keep them out of power for many years.
Conversely, if Trump stumbles into a trap in Aleppo, his foreign policy promises would be broken, with negative economic repercussions for Americans. The Democrats would present this failure as proof of his incompetence, using it to rally the public opinion behind a narrative that undermines Republican support in the Midterm elections that will be held two years from now and the presidential election two years after that, thereby making a swift return to the White House.
The Biden administration's strategy has a second target: President Vladimir Putin, for whom the developments in Aleppo are equally significant. The last thing Putin wants, given his deep preoccupation with the war in Ukraine, is an additional major escalation in Syria to deal with. It would force him to divert critical resources from Ukraine to Syria in order to protect the regime, thereby creating gaps Kyiv could exploit and adding burdens to his already strained war machine.
Indeed, nothing could be better for the Biden administration than developments in the Middle East that expose the limits of Russian power and diminish the credibility of Putin's geopolitical moves, even if this comes at the cost of empowering Islamist extremists, whom the Democratic Party had bet on in the past.
The Biden administration understands that Russia is making advances on key fronts, in eastern and southern Ukraine, and that Ukraine finds itself in an increasingly difficult position as airstrikes on its cities intensify. Potential disruptions in Western support for Kyiv after Trump is inaugurated adds to this challenge. Consequently, the Biden administration hopes that the developments in Aleppo will leave Russia overstretched and remind Putin that maintaining influence cannot be guaranteed if he is forced to confront two crises simultaneously.
The ambiguous US stance in Syria might reflect a degree of strategic cunning. However, this is a short-sighted and extremely dangerous policy. It not only risks undermining the United States’ broader strategic interests in the region but also threatens the region’s stability, which explains the moves by Arab states aimed at cooling the situation in Syria and using their leverage to push all parties toward stable, durable settlements. Such arrangements would allow for a different kind of stability that contrasts with what we have seen in recent years, paving the way for rebuilding national authorities and redefining the regional influence of the parties concerned.
Allowing proxies of a revamped Islamist project, like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, to gain ground in Syria poses an obvious existential threat to the stability of nation-states in the Middle East. It would undermine national authorities and weaken national institutions in favor of ideological extremist groups that thrive on sectarian conflict, destabilize regional equilibriums, and deepen social divisions.
Strategies to bolster national state power by protecting the remnants of institutions are not enough to address this challenge. Even more crucial is ensuring reconciliation among the communities in Syria and reshaping the constitution, state and the authorities.
