Surrogate Warfare in Syria and the Pitfalls of Diverging US Attitudes Toward ISIS and PYD/YPG

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the Obama administration’s “surrogate warfare” in Syria and the pitfalls of its policy of recruiting PYD/YPG to fight against ISIS, the two new international actors of the post-Westphalian Middle East. Surrogate warfare aims to externalize the strategic, operational, and tactical burden of a foreign policy crisis to other states or non-state actors, which are directly affected by this crisis. In fact this is not a strategy uniquely applied to Syria but has long been a US tactic to achieve foreign policy targets through regional proxies including violent non-state actors (VNSAs). As this chapter points out, the Achilles’ heel of this strategy, however, is the potential of losing control over these VNSAs and the damage they might do to relations with traditional regional allies. This is exactly what happened in Obama’s Syria policy, which tried to remote control the crisis with relatively smaller costs and liaised with the VNSAs without considering regional sensitivities. This has been the main reason behind the recent tension with Turkey, which expects a greater US involvement in Syria and considers PYD/YPG to be as dangerous as ISIS due to PYD/YPG’s links with Ankara’s arch enemy PKK. This chapter first makes a comparative analysis of the main characteristics of “surrogate warfare” and then focuses on Syria as a case study, to highlight Washington’s efforts to externalize the burden of the Syrian crisis thereby damaging its relations with neighboring Turkey.