Grandstand. The war in Syria precipitates the advent of a new geopolitical era, marked by the fluidity of alliances against the backdrop of a reassessment of American military commitments in the Middle East. The partial renouncement of the United States' role as a policeman in the region incites its traditional allies to empower themselves and to strengthen their foreign policies and their adversaries to test their "red lines" on all fronts. In Syria, President Obama and then President Trump, both anxious to end two decades of the “war on terror”, did not want to see the diplomatic advantages of a military lever which they subcontracted to Russia and Turkey, who have become regional gendarmes. These two powers are fighting on the ground in their ambition to consolidate their respective spheres of influence, forcing the United States, the Europeans and NATO to take a position.
Washington sees the recent escalation of Turkish-Russian tensions as an opportunity to bring Ankara back into the fold of NATO and to show the limits of its rapprochement with Moscow. But this reversal of alliance will in reality be difficult to operate, because Ankara does not wish to choose between Russia and the West and has been following a path of empowerment vis-à-vis the United States since the war in Iraq in 2003. The United States will increasingly have to deal with partners with multiple and sometimes contradictory allegiances, and accept the risks of a de-westernization of crisis management that Washington itself has encouraged.
Syrian and Libyan dead ends
The relationship with Turkey is straining the political cohesion of the Atlantic Alliance and is a fundamental long-term challenge: after the end of the Cold War, the United States and Turkey struggled to define common interests. But the decoupling became more marked after the war in Iraq in 2003, then with American support for the Kurdish militias in Syria, which reinforced the feeling, in Ankara, that the United States was a destabilizing force in the Middle East and that 'They did not fully recognize its legitimate security concerns, in particular on the refugee issue and on terrorism. These disagreements prompted Ankara to reassess its relationship with Washington, reduce its dependence and diversify its alliances, turning in particular to Russia. The purchase of the S-400 is less linked to its desire to align with Russia than to its desire to demonstrate its ability to define a foreign policy more independent of the United States, by positioning itself as a power-balance.