In war, when the enemy’s defeat is nigh, victorious allies tend to fall out and fight over the spoils. This happened with the Second World War which history books say ended in 1945, but in fact the main allies, the United States and the Soviet Union, waged a cold war for another 40 years.
Something similar is happening on the border between Iraq and Syria. The defeat of ISIL in the Iraqi city of Mosul and its headquarters in the Syrian city of Raqqa on the Euphrates is widely predicted – though the battles could continue for months. Never mind that unfinished business; the web of understandings that has allowed the bewildering array of belligerents in this war zone to focus on the battle against ISIL is unravelling.
The big question is not, will ISIL be destroyed, but who is going to control eastern Syria when the head-chopping jihadists are forced to go underground?
The question is all the more acute because the US military is scheduled to pack its bags and go when the ISIL safe haven is rubbed out. For those who do not trust Washington – such as the Iranians and their militias which are propping up the Assad regime in Syria - this is the time to make sure that the Pentagon knows how dangerous it would be to stay in this hostile land.
But the Americans do not want to appear to be forced to flee, but to be able to say “mission accomplished” when they go, this time with more conviction than George W Bush’s premature victory ceremony in May 2003 aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Confusion in Washington as to what the Trump administration is planning for Syria gives reason to doubt what will really happen.
It is clear that one of the goals of the US military is to control the Baghdad-Damascus highway to curb the spread of Iranian power westwards towards the Mediterranean. But who are they going to hand over control of that highway to? There is no answer.
With the stakes growing daily and confusion thickening by the hour, eastern Syria could slip in a moment from managed complexity to US-Russian dog fights and drone battles between Uncle Sam and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Already the US air force has shot down a Syrian aircraft that had bombed US-allied Kurdish forces who are the spearhead of the American plan to liberate Raqqa from ISIL. Two Iranian drones have been shot down, while the Iranians have used missiles to bombard eastern Syria, formally in response to an ISIL terrorist attack in Tehran but more lastingly as a sign that Iran sees no limits to its power play in Syria.
The Russian foreign ministry has said that Moscow is now tracking all aircraft, including drones, west of the Euphrates and has promised to shoot them down if they pose a threat to Russian aircraft. This statement sounds as scary as anything heard from Moscow since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. For the moment, however, the hotline between the US and Russian militaries is still in operation.
But that tool of “de-confliction” is not guaranteed to prevent Syrian aircraft provoking an air battle. Despite the exhaustion of the Syrian army and its reliance on Iranian and Russian support, the Syrian leader Bashar Al Assad is determined to extend his rule throughout the country.
For this reason the Kurdish-dominated area along the eastern border which the Americans are nurturing is something he needs to destroy before it becomes established. In wanting to cut the Kurdish parties down to size, he has a strong backer in Turkey, formally a long-standing American ally but in this conflict a free agent whose interests clash with Washington’s.
The uncertainty over what the US intends for Syria is exacerbated by a long-standing feature of Washington politics, congressional grandstanding over foreign policy. The US senate has voted by 98-2 to expand existing sanctions against Russia and enshrine them in law, which means they cannot be removed by the president. In effect, they are likely to be there for years to come, as it is rarely in the interest of any senator’s political career to do Russia a favour.
This is exemplified by the Washington zombie known as the Jackson-Vanick amendment of 1974 which punished Moscow for stopping Jewish people from emigrating and remained on the statute book until 2012, long after the collapse of the USSR and at a time when all Russians had passports to go where they wanted. It was killed only when it could be replaced by a more focused form of sanction against Moscow, the Magnitsky Act.
In Moscow the news sanctions – still to be approved by the house of representatives – are seen as proof that the US will not stop until Vladimir Putin leaves power and his successor dismantles the political system he has built up. In a word, regime change in Moscow.
This puts Russia in the same basket as Iran, where the Trump administration is openly advocating an end to the rule of the ayatollahs, though Rex Tillerson, secretary of state, has tried to discourage the idea of Iraq-style regime change by talking of a “peaceful transition” in Iran.
At this delicate time in the eastern Syria, Washington’s confusion and grandstanding only raises the chances that some provocation could lead to a catastrophic misunderstanding.
If the US is indeed planning to pack up its tents and leave when ISIL is crushed, then surely this requires close coordination at all levels with Russia. For all his faults, Mr Putin’s goals in Syria are clear: to be recognised as a regional power with interests in Syria and to restore the integrity of the Syrian state. The ultimate US goal should be to offer a Moscow-Washington entente to weaken the Russian-Iranian link. Russia is hardly keen to be forced into a long-term embrace of a surly and expansionist Iran, but that is the effect of the signals emerging from Washington.
Alan Philps is a commentator on global affairs
On Twitter: @aphilps
