The United States has a window to facilitate an orderly transition in Syria without deploying military force. But the window is narrowing — and the Obama administration will need to adjust its political strategy to succeed.
Diplomatically, the administration has focused on engaging the U.N. Security Council and the Friends of Syria, a French-created group of 88 participating states, seven international organizations and one observer (the Vatican). But the Security Council remains in stalemate by Russian and Chinese vetoes, and the Friends of Syria is too unwieldy to reach agreement on operational measures that would change conditions on the ground.
Militarily, the administration's decision to provide only nonlethal assistance to the Syrian opposition is prolonging unfavorable trends on the battlefield. While opposition gains have precluded the possibility of President Bashar Assad shooting his way to victory, the opposition is too weak to bring the conflict to an end. Beyond exacerbating the human toll, a long civil war increases the likelihood that state institutions will fragment, that weapons of mass destruction will be used or fall into the wrong hands, that extremists — such as fundamentalist Salafi Islamists and al-Qaida — will make headway, and that ethnic and sectarian bloodletting will go on after the Assad regime falls. To facilitate an orderly transition without deploying force, the U.S. must do five things: