Situation Report: Washington’s balancing act; Syrian chemical weapons still in the mix; senators call for 100,000-strong Arab army to fight ISIS but Clinton says not so fast; Russia possibly upping effort in Syria; New Syrian Army growing pains; and lots more

By Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley

We’ve reached peak Syria. Turkey’s shootdown of a Russian Su-24 bomber a mere 17 seconds after it passed into Turkish airspace last month has thrown the complexities and confusions of the war in Syria into high relief. And the careful wording of U.S. officials on Monday in trying to piece together a coherent way forward shows what a delicate diplomatic tussle the war has become.

Meeting in Paris on the sidelines of a climate summit, President Barack Obama expressed “regret” to Russian President Vladimir Putin over the incident, on the same day that the State Department confirmed the Russian jet had crossed into Turkish airspace before a Turkish F-16 shot it down. But what the administration didn’t say was that Turkey was justified in knocking the Russian plane out of the sky, a complicated bit of diplomatic footwork Washington is playing in order to avoid angering either Russia or Turkey at a very volatile moment.

As FP’s John Hudson points out, “Washington needs Russian President Vladimir Putin’s help to forge a diplomatic solution to the war in Syria, which means it has to be careful not to go too far in blaming Russia for the lethal run-in. At the same time, Turkey is a key regional power and, crucially, a NATO member; failing to back Ankara’s version of events would risk alienating an important American ally.”

More Syria trouble. Just a few hundred miles to the north, in The Hague, U.S. and European diplomats used an international arms control conference to slam the Syrian government for allegedly continuing to launch chemical weapons attacks on its own people. The attacks appear to have continued despite the destruction of nearly all declared Syrian chemical weapons as part of a European and U.S. effort to get rid of the country’s chemical stocks.

Washington’s representative to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons conference, Rafael Foley, declared that “the Syrian regime has continued to use chemical weapons on its own people,” while European Union representative Jacek Bylica added it is “impossible to have confidence” that Syria has actually dismantled its chemical program. FP’s Paul McLeary writes that the comments come amid an ongoing international investigation into a series of alleged strikes over the past year, including evidence of an attack on the Syrian village of Sarmin in March that killed three small children.

Answers? Questions, at least. Don’t forget that the House Armed Services Committee is holding a hearing Tuesday morning at 10:00 a.m. where Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford will discuss the administration’s policy in Syria and the Middle East.

Air power. For the Russians as well as the U.S.-led coalition, the war in Syria has been an air war, and if that’s your thing, U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh is speaking at the Atlantic Council at 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday on “The Future of American Airpower.” Can we assume it involves the F-35?  Livestream here.

Pounding sand. That air war might have a larger international ground component, if a few influential U.S. Senators have anything to say about it. In a Monday appearance on CNN with Sen. John McCain (R-Az.), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called for the creation of a 100,000-strong “regional army to go into Syria” to fight the Islamic State, claiming that Qatar and Saudi Arabia were already on board with the plan. And now it looks like you can add the United Arab Emirates to the list.

Speaking with local media on Monday, Emirati State Minister for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said his country would “participate in any international effort demanding a ground intervention to fight terrorism,” and “regional countries must bear part of the burden” in the Syrian fight. Speaking with reporters on a trip to Baghdad over the weekend, Graham — who is running for president on the Republican ticket — also called for more than doubling the number of U.S. troops in Iraq from 3,500 to 10,000.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton isn’t so sure about that one, however. “I cannot conceive of any circumstances where I would agree” to send more U.S. troops to Iraq or Syria, she tells CBS News’ Charlie Rose in an interview to be broadcast Tuesday. Clinton appeared to be open to sending more U.S. commandos to Syria on top of the 50 the Obama administration says are on their way to help train local rebels, “but in terms of thousands of combat troops like some on the Republican side are recommending, I think that should be a non-starter,” she said.

Rebalanced. The U.S. Army has announced that 4,500 soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division’s 1st Armored Brigade are packing up and heading to South Korea early next year, as part of a regular rotation of units to the peninsula. “The 1st Cavalry Division reflects mutual commitment between the Republic of Korea and the United States by providing continued support with a rotational force brigade,” said Maj. Gen. Michael Bills, the commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division. The unit will bolster to the more than 20,000 American troops already in the country, including the Army’s 2nd Infantry Division.

Here we are again for another morning of SitRep, and we’re glad to have you along for the ride. As always, if you have any thoughts, announcements, tips, or national security-related events to share, please pass them along to SitRep HQ! Best way is to send them to paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or on Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley.

Syria

A senior defense official tells USA Today that the Pentagon is considering sending more special operations troops to Syria beyond the 50 it has already pledged to deploy. Whether the Pentagon decides to increase the numbers depends on the progress of local forces in retaking ground from the Islamic State.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford picked up the phone and called his counterpart in Russia, Chief of Russian General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov, on Monday, according to Tass. Details on the discussion are lacking but the two reportedly discussed the fight against the Islamic State in Syria.

Vice profiles the New Syrian Army, the rebel coalition in Deir Ezzor which the U.S. is reportedly arming to take on the Islamic State in eastern Syria. The coalition is comprised of local rebels with distinguished battlefield pedigrees and its fighters have reportedly received U.S. training in Jordan along with American weapons. But the New Syrian Army’s western backing and focus on fighting the Islamic State at the expense of operations against the Assad regime has caused some dissent within the wider rebel coalition ranks.

Russia is allegedly looking to increase its footprint in Syria to include another airbase, according to Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai. The newspaper reports that Russia will use Al-Shayrat air base near Homs to supplement the existing Hmeimim air base in Latakia and support the recapture of Palmyra in eastern Syria, providing air cover to Iranian and Hezbollah ground forces. Earlier this month, NBC reported that Russia had already opened an airbase at Sharyat along with a new forward staging base in Hama and a facility housing attack helicopters in Tiyas.

The Defense Department is brushing off suggestions that Russia’s deployment of its S-400 air defense missiles will interfere with its air campaign against the Islamic State in Syria. Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said Monday the presence of the S-400 has “not had any impact on our operations” and that U.S. does not “face any particular threat from Russia” in Syria since “there is no reason for either side to be targeting each other.”

The Islamic State

Congress has quietly given the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command authorization to carry out propaganda campaigns countering the Islamic State’s messaging. The Federation of American Scientists‘ Steven Aftergood caught a reference to the move in the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Congress had been resistant to giving the Defense Department a counter-messaging role, preferring to leave that responsibility to the State Department but the NDAA directs the Defense Department to “to counter and degrade the ability of adversaries and potential adversaries to persuade, inspire, and recruit.”

Ukraine

The Washington Post’s Thomas Gibbons-Neff recently traveled to Ukraine and found that some major pieces of the $260 million in U.S. equipment that Washington has sent to help Kiev fight back against Russian-backed separatists in the country’s east are falling apart. The gear includes U.S. Humvees with plastic doors and tires that are falling off after driving just a few hundred kilometers. U.S. defense officials said that the sorry state of some of the gear is due to the fact that Washington hadn’t appropriated cash for the Ukrainian effort so old gear was sent quickly to the front lines.

Defending budgets

When the Pentagon’s JLENS radar balloon slipped loose from its tether and drifted across two states, knocking out power lines along the way, many thought it might spell the end for the program — already troubled by complaints from oversight officials that the system doesn’t perform to expectation. But the Los Angeles Times reports that JLENS still enjoys bipartisan support from defense appropriators in Congress, none of whom would voice any critique of the program when asked by the paper.

Defense Department comptroller Mike McCord says that modernization will slow down in the next fiscal year, National Defense magazine reports. McCord explained in a speech on Monday that sequestration has led to a $15 billion gap between what the Pentagon had hoped to receive in funding and what Congress will provide. Modernization programs will apparently suffer as the Pentagon looks for ways to close that funding gap.

Not a bad deal: DynCorp has been awarded a $61 million contract by the U.S. Army to provide maintenance services for Saudi Arabia’s Land Forces Aviation Command. The contract runs through January 2021.