Research & Commentary Results

With an estimated $1 trillion in natural resources and sitting astride an international crossroads of increasingly critical importance, Balochistan is becoming a stage on which the world’s powers are playing out their ambitions. China, the U.S., and India have all formulated Balochistan policies in the past few years, hoping to utilize the region to achieve wider international goals — and the three countries across which Balochistan is divided, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, have been eager to use it as a bargaining chip for their own purposes.

The news of Donald Trump’s sellout to Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan hit Israel like a lightning storm. Trump has managed to do the unthinkable: unite all Israelis around a geopolitical cause.

Nate Rosenblatt, a fellow with New America’s International Security program, and Aaron Y. Zelin, the Richard Borow Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, join host Alistair Taylor to discuss Tunisia’s struggles with extremism and the factors that led it to become a major source of recruits for ISIS.

They won’t make up for backing out of Syria and failing to stand up to Iran.

While the Turkish military offensive against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syria might, once again, bring Moscow and Tehran together tactically in support of Assad’s rule and Syrian sovereignty, the two powers have fundamentally different visions for the war-ravaged country’s future.

Turkey’s cross-border incursion into northeastern Syria has stirred up a hornet’s nest of instability and threats. If left unchecked, this latest “war within a war” will have deeply destabilizing consequences for many years.

In one fell swoop, the U.S. has found itself evacuating a third of the country; breaking away from a 100,000-strong partner we trained and equipped; and watching it surrender to the regime that we have stood against from day one. In the chaos that has ensued, ISIS prisoners have been let loose, hundreds of thousands of civilians have been displaced, and a once relatively stable northeastern Syria has been thrown into a potentially intractable pit of ethnic, sectarian, and political conflict. The consequences of America’s self-destruction in Syria will be felt for many, many years to come.

The biggest losers from President Trump’s arbitrary decision to allow Turkish forces to enter Syria may end up being pro-revolution Syrians and civilians living in Idlib.

Putin’s visit to Saudi Arabia and the UAE takes place as the U.S. position in the Middle East collapses in the face of a series of misjudgments and “own-goals” by the Trump administration.

Washington has a hard long-term choice when it comes to Syria. The best chance for an optimal solution through a negotiated political deal was lost years ago. The U.S. now must choose a policy which will yield only a “least-bad” result.

The erosion of U.S. global hegemony in recent years is rarely a matter of dispute among American strategists. The United States has lost its preeminence in part because others, most notably China, have caught up, but also because it has overextended and exhausted itself abroad, leading to budget constraints, rightist populism, and acute political polarization at home.

Transcript

Q: How do you see the situation in northeastern Syria developing?

While President Trump might think he’s protecting American interests by leaving Syria, he’s actually granting ISIS the gift of rebirth. What looks set to follow from this is a dream scenario for the group.

Lately, Iran has begun leveraging LinkedIn to hack espionage targets and has developed sophisticated disinformation campaigns to exacerbate distrust of its adversary governments.

A unilateral Turkish military operation will worsen the already toxic mood vis-à-vis Erdogan on the Hill and might prompt a new round of sanctions at a time when Trump was trying to convince the Congress to hold off on punishing Turkey.