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Turkey’s Greenlight in Syria Detracts from ISIS Fight
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Photo:
Manu Brabo/AP
Turkey backed
Washington’s strike last week on Bashar Assad’s alleged
chemical weapons facilities in Syria, but Ankara’s relationship with
Washington remains complicated. Turkey’s offensive in Syria, aimed at
clearing its border from a touted Kurdish threat, is complicating
Washington’s goal of ousting ISIS from what remains of its self-declared
caliphate in the region.
The U.S. teamed
with Kurdish forces in support of this goal, but now
continued support for Kurdish militias in Syria has strained relations
between the U.S. and Turkey, which remains immersed in a longstanding
feud with its sizable, domestic Kurdish minority.
- Washington
is forced to strike a delicate balance between placating a
critical ally and supporting a force that has played a key role in
beating back ISIS.
- Turkey’s
offensive in Afrin has diverted Kurdish forces’ attention away from the unfinished
mission to defeat ISIS, leaving room for the group’s reemergence,
particularly as the Kurds have been the most effective U.S. ally on
the ground in the fight against ISIS.
- As
Turkey remains a critical NATO ally, the U.S. has publically
recognized Ankara’s security concerns and has left the Turkish
military to conduct operations in Afrin. At the same time, however,
Washington has taken steps to protect the Rojava and the PYD from
Turkish incursion, even going so far as to station U.S. troops in
the contested city of Manbij in northern Syria, approximately 60
miles east of Afrin.
Read the full brief,
with expert commentary by:
- Emile Nakhleh, former member, CIA’s
Senior Intelligence Service
- James Jeffrey,
former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and Turkey
- Robert Richer,
former CIA Mideast & South Asia chief
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How Moscow May Have Influenced Our Elections – And Is
Poised to Do It Again
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If U.S.
intelligence is to be believed, the Russians spent significant resources trying to
influence the 2016 presidential election. Just how many votes their
efforts influenced is less clear; the White House claims not a single
vote was influenced by Russian bots or trolls.
Steve Hall
is a
30-year CIA veteran, and Jim
Crounse has spent 40 years working on Democratic political campaigns. The two explore
how the Russians have sought to impact American politics—and will likely
do so again in 2018 and 2020:
- “Imagine
being the Russian intelligence officer in Moscow charged with understanding
how a modern American campaign is run, and then constructing an
influence operation to influence the election…It would have been a
challenging endeavor indeed to run such a wide-ranging, complex
operation only from Moscow. Which are the key battleground states,
and which specific voters are the most persuadable? Who could
provide such modeling data? Which themes resound best within the
diverse American population, and how do you specifically target
voting blocks with the greatest efficiency?”
- “Those
best positioned to answer these and other arcane questions are those directly
involved in the American domestic political process. We believe the
canny Russian intelligence officer would have at least considered
soliciting the services – either overtly or covertly – of a U.S.
political consultant to advise on such questions.”
- “The
attention on the 2016 influence operations means Russia will need to
look for new digital advertising avenues to void detection, and
probably more layers to obfuscate the original source of their
content. Putin’s operatives are likely to continue to try to hack
key individuals and party committees in an attempt to gather
embarrassing information like they did in 2016.”
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