Just over a week ago, barely anyone in the West was talking about Syria. A week later and a brutal authoritarian dictator — Bashar Assad — has been overthrown, as his allies, Russia and Iran, abandoned him. This marks a fundamental rearranging of the chess pieces on the geopolitical board.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Islamist insurgent group, staged a stunning offensive to capture Aleppo, Hama, Homs and now Damascus, ending nearly 54 years of rule by Assad and his father.
Damascus aside, many of these towns were subjected to barrel-bombing and chemical attacks, as Assad sought to brutally suppress resistance to his regime following the Arab Spring. He was only able to do this with Russian and Iranian support, which has now melted away, as they have been stretched by their own conflicts.
This remains a hotly contested zone for geopolitical competition. Each conflict has the potential to shape or reshape trade and affect political relations and alliances. While the conflicts along Israel’s borders have dominated global attention, the events in Syria over the past week show that power can shift brutally quick.
This competition, in particular, involves three regional powers — Russia, Turkey and Iran, with the U.S. and China watching closely.
The northern Middle East is a complex sub-region. Sitting at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, and home to various sects of Islam, it sits just beneath Russia’s “soft underbelly” in the Caucasus. It’s also a furtive hotbed of extremism and terrorism, as the former home of ISIS and elements of al-Qaida. Russia was reminded of this with the Crocus City Hall attacks carried out by the Islamic State-affiliated ISIS-K group in March.
Russia, while not having a direct border with the area, nonetheless sees it as crucial to its interests and security. For Russian President Vladimir Putin, the region is critical to his challenge to U.S. influence. One of Russia’s few warm water ports is located in Tartus, Syria. Following the Russian navy’s effective withdrawal from Sevastopol, in Crimea, in August, this is another strategic blow.
Iran, increasingly allied with Russia since its invasion of Ukraine, and finding common cause in repelling the U.S., sees Syria as a strategic field of operations for supporting its Hezbollah and Hamas proxies, repelling any ISIS resurgence and in its regional competition with Turkey.
Turkey, which shares the longest border of any country with Syria, views it as its biggest security risk, having taken in significant and destabilizing levels of its refugees (now close to 3.2 million), while at the same time attempting to prevent the formation of a Kurdish state.
Which brings us to the United States. The U.S. has supported the Kurds (sometimes as a rather fickle friend) since the war in Iraq in 1991. Following its withdrawal from Iraq and then Afghanistan in 2021, the U.S. maintained a low-level presence in the area, ostensibly to prevent the resurgence of ISIS, but mainly to keep an eye on Iran and Russia in the region.
America’s support for the Kurds is a source of friction between the U.S. and Turkey — a key NATO member.
Initially, Assad, supported by his Russian and Iranian allies, responded with airstrikes to attempt to quell this new Islamist rebellion. But Russia and Iran simply didn’t have have the resources or bandwidth to stage the same intensity of attacks as they undertook following the Arab Spring.
This provides for an interesting geopolitical power audit. Russia is overstretched as it tries to double down its position in Ukraine ahead of the winter and potential “peace” moves in early 2025.
Iran and its proxies have also been weakened by Israel’s recent offensives and are regrouping.
Turkey, the one player not in an active war, no doubt sees this as an opportunity for its proxy HTS (which was also previously an al-Qaida affiliate) to push its security interests in the region, and push back against Iranian and Russian influence.
Turkey, Russia and Iran, and the historic empires that predated them, have been competitors for centuries, occasionally forming mutual alliances of convenience. The West fails to understand these relationships.
This leaves an interesting question for the United States. U.S. president-elect Donald Trump now faces the active test of myriad foreign policy crises. He previously announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the region in 2018, as part of his attempt to end the country’s “forever wars.”
With the U.S. having staged its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, America’s military presence in the region has been significantly reduced, hindering its ability to respond to Russian and Iranian activities in the area.
Keeping a boot on Iran’s neck, in particular, remains popular, even in the most isolationist parts of the Republican party. It’s also America’s only way to manage this part of its complex competition with China. While China does not have a militarily presence in the region, it wields great influence.
The U.S. knows that half of China’s oil imports, and a third of all oil consumed in China, comes from the Middle East. If China is its biggest geopolitical priority, it would be an odd decision for the U.S. to give up one of its few remaining watch-posts on its greatest strategic vulnerability — Middle Eastern oil.
National Post
David Oliver is a geopolitical specialist, who studies at the department of war studies at King’s College London, and is a member of the Royal Canadian Military Institute.